Even if the Illini win a game by 32, they won’t have it easy in practice unless all the little things are done right.

This week it was free throws. Next week it will undoubtedly be something else.

As the Illini men’s basketball team shifts its focus from last weekend’s blowout win against Lewis to Sunday’s second and final exhibition game against West Chester, the philosophy has stayed the same. First-year head coach John Groce is determined to implement his “practice matters at Illinois” culture, and this week the focus was the Illini’s putrid performance from the charity stripe in the first exhibition game.

The team usually shoots free throws after each practice, but this week there was an added incentive not to miss.

“We didn’t shoot the ball well from the free-throw line last game,” recently appointed team captain Sam McLaurin said. “We’ve been shooting free throws every day. We do drills where if you miss a certain amount of free throws you have to run. Those drills aren’t too fun.”

McLaurin said players shot around 50 free throws in each practice this week, in addition to individual contributions in workouts. In the last exhibition game, the Illini shot 54.5 percent (12-for-22) from the stripe, something McLaurin’s fellow captain Brandon Paul said can’t happen.

Paul generally didn’t shoot the way he wanted to against Lewis. He was 2-for-4 from 3-point range and 3-for-6 from the field. As a result, Paul decided not to rest on his Wednesday off day, instead choosing to use his free time to head into the Ubben Basketball Complex for some extra practice on his shooting.

Paul, along with sophomore guard Tracy Abrams, also must shoulder the responsibility of igniting the pace of the offense. After a lackluster effort in the Orange and Blue scrimmage per Groce’s standards, the tempo finally picked up in Saturday’s exhibition game. While the Illini didn’t run as much as expected in transition, the shot clock rarely waned down to single digits on offensive possessions. Groce liked the effort, but noted there was still work to be done. Paul and Abrams have been told to run whenever they see a chance, as the team continues to work toward a faster offense similar to the one Groce ran at Ohio.

“We’re getting to where we want to be,” Paul said. “He showed us some clips from last year over when they were at Ohio just to kind of get an idea of what pace they wanted us to run at. We were running, but we weren’t running as fast as we could. We were kind of just told, me and Tracy, when we have the ball, just push it more and run at a high pace.”

Groce said he wants to treat this exhibition game more like a regular season game than the one against Lewis because this is the Illini’s last chance for a tune-up before the season opens Nov. 9 against Colgate.

Groce said he hasn’t decided on a starting lineup yet, and he said he probably wouldn’t until after Friday’s practice. Sunday’s lineup, like the last exhibition game, will be determined by which players grade out the highest in this week’s practice.

For this week, that could mean doing the little things.

Ethan can be reached at asofsky1@ dailyillini.com and @asofthesky.