Last week, the Daytona Beach Invitational proved to be a tough lesson for this new-look Illinois team. Back-to-back losses saw the Illini drop to 3-3 early on in this 2021-2022 campaign. 

On Thursday and Sunday, the Illinois women’s basketball team was back in action at the State Farm Center against two strong opponents in Florida State and Eastern Kentucky, respectively.

The first matchup took place on Thursday evening, when Illinois welcomed No. 25 Florida State to Champaign. This was the first ranked team Illinois faced thus far this season, and it proved to be a good lesson for the team.

Head coach Nancy Fahey knew this matchup would be a challenge for Illinois early in the season, especially ahead of games against several ranked Big Ten foes.

“We really prepared hard this week for Florida State,” Fahey said. “We knew their size; we knew their quickness. They are one of the biggest lineups we’ll run up against.”

The Seminoles got the best of the Illini by a score of 67-58 on Thursday night. Despite shooting 34% from the field and having its bench outscored by 24 points, Illinois was competitive throughout the match. Going into the fourth quarter, the Illini only trailed by five, but the Seminoles pulled away during the last period.

Aaliyah Nye scored a game-high 17 points, while Jada Peebles had 12. One of the odd stat lines of the game came from sophomore forward Kendall Bostic. The transfer led the team with 10 rebounds and dished out two assists. But the only part where Bostic did not impact the game was the score sheet, as she did not have a bucket all game.

This was the first game of the season in which Bostic did not score for Illinois, but with Florida State’s interior defense, it was expected that her numbers would dip. Moving onto Sunday, Illinois found itself in a much different predicament, as unranked Eastern Kentucky was visiting the State Farm Center for an afternoon showdown.

The Illini were looking to return to winning ways after three straight losses, and this team responded to the task. After a slow start in the first quarter, Illinois stepped up its play both on the offensive and defensive end for the rest of the game.

Great offensive days from Nye, Peebles and Geovana Lopes certainly helped Illinois return to winning ways, but Bostic had a historic day for the Illini.

Bostic had 12 points, two steals and two blocks, but they pulled down an outrageous 22 rebounds during the 40 minutes of action. The sophomore knew about the importance of rebounding against this Eastern Kentucky team, as she detailed the game plan during the days leading up to the matchup.

“This was a team we really needed to rebound against,” Bostic said. “The last two days in pregame talks, we spoke about how a lot of the girls on this team liked to rebound. So, I knew it would be a point of emphasis today and that if we wanted to win, we needed to board.”

The 22-rebound performance against Eastern Kentucky put Bostic in the Illinois history books. She had the most rebounds of any Illinois women in the last 42 seasons, the most since Martha Hutchinson grabbed 23 boards against Indiana State in January 1980.

Bostic impacted the game primarily with her work on the glass, but she was proud of her team’s ball movement throughout the game. It took until the second quarter for Illinois to establish a commanding lead, and Bostic was aware of what was working on offense and what was not. 

“We just saw that our ball movement was going to work,” Bostic said. “We hit a few shots in the first quarter from the ball movement, but I think in the second quarter it really picked up. Our guards were hitting shots, we were getting it into our bigs and the high/low was working.”

Fahey loved to see the change in the team’s performance on Sunday and was happy with how the team has been growing offensively. Heading into a slew of Big Ten matchups, if Illinois wants to make some noise, consistent offensive growth with this new-look group is a must.  

“You saw it grow tonight,” Fahey said. “For instance, we came down and took a few early shots in the shot clock, and what I told them was that if you swing the ball, which they were letting us, you’re going to get the same shot back.”

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