This week in practice, Illini basketball head coach Bruce Weber had each player write something on the board that they wanted to improve for Sunday’s final exhibition contest against Quincy.

The 15 Illinois turnovers in the first half last Friday against Missouri Southern State were on freshman guard D.J. Richardson’s mind when it was his turn to write on the board.

“I put ‘value the basketball,’ ’cause I had three turnovers the last game,” Richardson said.

“I think I was just going too fast. I slowed down a little bit after like the second half, so I was pretty much used to playing in college ball then,” Richardson added. “I felt pretty comfortable.”

Now that the freshmen have had an opportunity to play in front of a crowd at the Assembly Hall, the competition for starting positions will heat up Sunday. Weber said he’ll abandon the scripted playing times of last week in favor of letting players earn their time on the court.

“This game, it’s not going to be a game planned minutes ahead of time, it’s going to be ongoing out there and (they will be) performing and doing some of the things we asked, or we’re going to put somebody else in,” Weber said. “I still want to get as many people as we can in and get them a lot of solid minutes, especially the young guys. But at the same time, I need guys to continue to fight to earn minutes by their production.”

The message wasn’t lost on junior guard Demetri McCamey, who isn’t taking his own role as a starter for granted.

“Coach Weber’s been preaching getting better every day, get better than yesterday, and just try to establish good techniques and good mind-set so you can produce better — way better — than you did the day before,” McCamey said. “It’s just establishing yourself, because everybody here is looking for playing time and nobody has set positions, nobody has a starting role, so everybody’s just fighting.”

Weber isn’t setting a date for determining a rotation, saying it could take as long as Thanksgiving or Christmas for the coaches to decide who belongs where. But he’s also reminding the players the most important thing is what they do during the game, not whether they start.

“I think one of the biggest things we have is the change of role with the older guys and then trying to mix in with some young, talented guys, and just figure out where everybody fits in,” Weber said.

“I guess it’s a good thing because we have some guys available that we think could be productive on a daily basis, so there is some competition there,” Weber added.

Sunday’s contest is Illinois’ last tune-up before the season officially begins against SIU-Edwardsville on Nov. 13. And the Illini have more on their minds than just securing a starting spot and winning the game. This group still has some adjusting to do when it comes to playing together.

“Defense, that’s the No. 1 thing on the list — defense and believe in your teammates,” Richardson said. “Chemistry and defense are probably the main two things right now.”

Stuart Lieberman contributed to this report