Bruce Weber has never coached on the Thursday of the Big Ten Tournament. He doesn’t know what kind of crowd will show up for Illinois’ 4:05 p.m. match up against Penn State. He doesn’t know how the Illini (21-10, 9-7) will react following their 60-53 loss to the Hawkeyes last Saturday. But he does know that the Nittany Lions (11-18, 2-14) have their backs against the wall – and getting a victory won’t be as easy as the last time the two teams squared off in Happy Valley.

“When we played Northwestern up there we were able to pick apart the zone and then we came home and they made adjustments, and obviously, we weren’t as effective against them,” head coach Bruce Weber said. “(Against) Minnesota we go up there and play pretty good basketball and it was more of a struggle at home, so now Penn State made some adjustments even in the second half (on Feb. 24) to what we did.

“You have to flash to the open gaps; you have to make the penetration; you have to play basketball.”

With the loss to Iowa on Saturday, Weber said he is especially hoping the Illini can limit some of the careless fouls and turnovers they committed and play smarter.

The Illini turned the ball over nine times in the first half in Iowa City, Iowa, and had 20 fouls for the game.

The team’s attitude, though, will be key, he said.

“If we have a mindset that it’s going to be easy because we just beat them on their home court, I think we will be in trouble,” Weber said.

After breaking down defensively in the final minutes of its last game, Weber said he would like to see more output from the entire team, along with being able to score baskets when it counts.

Senior Warren Carter is averaging 13.4 points per game, while junior center Shaun Pruitt is averaging 11.6 points per game and 7.4 rebounds per game. In order to take away some of the scoring load from Carter and Pruitt, Weber hopes junior Brian Randle can get back on track. Although Carter called Randle an “emotional guy,” he said he’s an asset to the Illini.

“He played an unbelievable game against Penn State and I’m his roommate and he told me after the Iowa game, ‘My fault,’ which it really isn’t,” Carter said. “Everybody has bad games and I just want him to know that we stick with him. I don’t think he has anything on his shoulder, and I think he is going to have a great weekend up in Chicago.”

A win over Penn State would set up a rubber match with third-seeded Indiana (20-9,10-6) and a chance to prove to most fans that Illinois is better than the sixth seed it was dealt. And in order to appeal to the NCAA Tournament selection committee, the Illini cannot have a repeat performance of last year’s Big Ten Tournament. In 2006, Illinois, the No.3 seed, fell 61-56 to sixth-ranked Michigan State in the quarterfinals. Working in the team’s favor of making the NCAA Tournament is the fact that since the field was expanded to 64 teams in 1985, no Big Ten ream with a winning league record and more than 20 wins has been left out of the NCAA Tournament.

“There are a lot of bubble teams. Besides the top three (Ohio State, Wisconsin and Indiana), nobody is really safe right now,” Carter said. “Everybody kind of has that chip on their shoulder; we just have to go to Chicago and be ready to play.”