The Matt Bollant era will officially begin when the Illini open the season with an exhibition game against Marian on Tuesday. The Orange and Blue will face Marian in the first of two exhibition games this season, the first time since 2006-07 the Illini have had two exhibition games on their schedule.

Although the small NAIA school from Indianapolis doesn’t pose much of a threat, Bollant intends to use the game as an opportunity to develop a relationship with the fan base.

“I want the fans to see this is different than what has been here,” Bollant said. “It’s hard to know whether that’s gonna show right away. They will notice how hard we play and how fast we play. I think they’ll notice that right away. The stuff’s gonna work and we’re gonna get better. With coaches, you never feel like you’re ready for your first game, but we’re heading in the right direction.”

Bollant said he’d be surprised if the starting lineup on Tuesday was anything other than Alexis Smith, Ivory Crawford, Amber Moore, Kersten Magrum and Karisma Penn. Smith, a sophomore point guard, is the only new starter in the lineup from a season ago. Even though the game won’t count in the win-loss column, Bollant expects to treat this game like any other.

“Not really, we’ll do what we do,” Bollant said of experimenting during the exhibition game. “We really believe the stuff we do is as good as any, better than most. We’ll focus on us, we’ll do what we’re gonna do in games, get them ready. The stuff we’re doing is the first time they’re running this stuff in game situations. We gotta get ready and spend time doing that.”

Magrum, who has been cleared to play after suffering a concussion a couple of weeks ago, plans to use the game as a learning tool.

“It’s just really important to help us get our confidence,” Magrum said. “Just to really help myself and everybody and really get in our flow of offense and defense, just try to really incorporate the things Coach Bollant’s teaching us.”

Moore, like Bollant has stressed, expects herself and her teammates to go 100 percent on Tuesday while at the same time trying to adjust to the new offense.

“We just wanna play hard,” Moore said. “During practice, we’re playing aggressive; it’s not bad that we’re competing against each other. We just wanna come out and play hard and play together. I’m really glad that we have two exhibition games, to get the feel of how it is playing under their system. It’s gonna be a good day.”

Penn, who as a senior has played in three exhibition games, doesn’t view the preseason games as beneficial.

“I don’t think they really add anything for us as players,” Penn said. “I think it’s moreso for the coaches to see where we are and how we look with the stuff we’ve been doing. For us I don’t really think it’s that big of a deal. If there were no exhibition games it wouldn’t bother me, if there were two more it wouldn’t bother me. I’m really indifferent toward the whole thing.”

This game will debut the fast-paced system Bollant utilized while at Green Bay. Of course, like any new scheme, Bollant expects growing pains as his players adapt to the change.

“It’s hard to know,” Bollant said of how smooth his system will be in the first game. “At Green Bay, our exhibitions looked great, but the cultures were in place. The kids had run the system for three, four, five years. So that obviously helps. This is new and very different to them. So I think there will be some parts of it, like playing hard and playing fast, that people will be impressed by. But then at times playing fast, with the ball control and making the right decisions, and then defensively the rotations and some of that kinda stuff will be different. Some of that they’ll be growing.”

Michael can be reached at [email protected] and @The_MDubb.