After the Iowa loss, Illinois head coach Bruce Weber said a lot of people sometimes put the Superman jersey on guard Dee Brown. Senior forward James Augustine said everything shouldn’t always be put on Brown’s shoulders.

Though Brown scored a game-high 26 points in No. 7 Illinois’ nail-biting 79-74 victory against Michigan on Saturday, it was Augustine who helped lighten the load.

Scoring 23 points and grabbing nine rebounds and two blocks, Augustine complimented Brown well. Augustine made all five of his shots in the first half, while Brown picked up the intensity in the second half and logged 40 minutes in the game, a first for him on the season.

The heavy dependency on the two seniors forms questions about whether the effort to revamp the offense in the last seven days has worked.

“We made some shots today,” Brown said, “.We just have to continue to get better. We’re still not doing what we want to do. Once we just continue to watch film and coach stay on top of us, I think we’ll become a better team.”

The team played pretty well, Augustine said and got “a little better on offense and defense,” but watching the film will expose what they did wrong.

“We’re going to look awful on the film,” Augustine said. “You feel like you played well during the game and then you go watch the film. It’s about an hour long, and Coach is stopping it every 10 seconds.”

Frazier “fails to take care of business”

Backup freshman point guard Chester Frazier did not play in Saturday’s game against Michigan because of what Weber said was “a life lesson, nothing important.” The suspension lasted for only one game and Frazier will be able to play in Tuesday’s contest with Indiana.

“Chester didn’t take care of business,” Weber said, “.Division-I basketball is hard, very demanding, very competitive; there’s high expectations. We’ve had to do a lot of life learning lessons this year with some of our guys.”

Carter’s Clutch

With 17 seconds left in the game, forward Warren Carter sunk a pair of free throws to put the Illini up 77-74. Weber was asked if he would have rather had anyone else at the line, and jokingly said, “probably five or six guys.” Weber did however say that when it has counted, Carter has been clutch for the team.

“You think about that big bucket against Wichita (State) and now these two free throws,” Weber said. “He’s been very important for us.”

Carter’s two free throws, along with Brown’s pair at the end to ice the game, added to the Illini’s 20-of-24 shooting from the line. Illinois was a season-best 83.3 from the free-throw line, a far cry from its 46.7 percent against Iowa one week ago.