After tonight’s Orange and Blue Scrimmage at the Assembly Hall, the Illinois men’s basketball team will be one step closer to officially getting its season under way – and one step closer to solidifying rotations and working out some of its preseason kinks. The Illini’s 2006-07 campaign tips off against Austin Peay on Nov. 13.

“We treat (the scrimmage) like a game; we go through shoot-around, we go through pre-game, go home and nap for about an hour and then come back and get ready,” said junior forward Brian Randle, who was named as one of 50 candidates for the John R. Wooden award on Wednesday. “We’re looking at it like we’re Illinois and somebody’s Wisconsin. It’s a big game and a good thing to get us ready.”

Making it an even bigger game is the expected visit of Derrick Rose, the top-rated point guard in the country by Rivals.com. Rose, a senior at Simeon High School, has reconsidered signing with Illinois after cutting his list of schools in August to DePaul, Indiana, Kansas, Memphis and UCLA, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

And while fans and players alike are anxious to get the season going, so too is head coach Bruce Weber and the Illinois coaching staff. With two weeks of official practices under the team’s belt, things are slowly starting to come together for the Illini, who have had to make significant changes in their lineup with the graduation of Dee Brown and James Augustine.

“Some guys have stepped it up, but I don’t think anybody is rock solid 40 minutes,” Weber said. “Everyone has their moments when they’re pretty good and then the next day they’re horrible. It’s early; Shaun (Pruitt’s) been pretty consistent, and Jamar (Smith) has had some consistency, but there are some things I would like him to do better.”

For the younger team members, the scrimmage will be a key factor in determining playing time later in the season. Learning Weber’s motion offense and figuring out roles has not been an easy task for the new additions. Weber said the coaches talk daily about where they think certain players are at in the development process, and that the mental picture for each change often.

“It changes right now a lot, up and down and all over, the highs and lows of early stuff,” Weber said. “You can solidify (playing time) with the Orange and Blue (scrimmage) and the two exhibition (games) and then the early games. It’s kind of dress rehearsal.”

In order to bring along the newcomers, Weber has not heavily relied on set plays. During Wednesday’s practice Weber introduced two new plays, in addition to the two inbounds plays already in place.

“My whole thing is if I start giving them plays (now), they will be dependent on those and then we don’t learn how to play,” he said.

It appears that both the defense and offense is starting to take shape.

“Defense is coming pretty well. For a while, it’s just been a lot of guys bouncing around,” Randle said. “Some of our rotation stuff concerns weakside, baseline stuff is a little shaky.”

Offensively, Randle said the Illini are just now starting to give it a lot of focus. And while he says it’s coming slow, he says it’s coming well.

“If we can get Chester (Frazier) and Trent (Meacham) to pick it up and slow down a little bit, from time to time, we’ve got a pretty good flow,” Randle said.