When the Illinois women’s basketball team hired Matt Bollant as the program’s new head coach in March, changes were clearly going to be made.

Perhaps the biggest change of all was introducing Bollant’s fast-paced system, a scheme that thrived during his five-year tenure at Green Bay. The system encourages shooting and aggressive offensive play to go along with Bollant’s in-your-face Buzz defense. The ball, just like the players, is in constant motion. The team has quickly responded to the new style of play.

Although only seven games into the season, Illinois is second in the Big Ten in points per game at 76.1 and assists per game at 17.7. The Illini finished near the bottom of both categories last year.

No one has benefitted more from the new system than sophomore guards Alexis Smith and Ivory Crawford. The pair has accounted for nearly one-third of the Illini’s scoring and over half of the team’s assists.

Just a year ago, the duo had distinctly different roles.

Crawford, ranked as the No. 88 recruit in the country coming out of high school, was given a chance early by then-head coach Jolette Law. As a freshman, Crawford started 23 contests, averaging 21 minutes per game. Despite receiving plenty of playing time out the gate, Crawford struggled to find immediate success. She made modest contributions last season, averaging 6.6 points and 3.9 rebounds per game.

“It wasn’t that I was frustrated. I think it just didn’t fit us as a team,” Crawford said of Law’s system. “I think it just wasn’t working out.”

Smith, on the other hand, was forced to ride the bench for most of the season. The West Islip, N.Y., native appeared in 19 contests, playing only 5.6 minutes per game. She struggled to find a rhythm in her limited time on the court, scoring 19 points all season while totaling five assists and 19 turnovers. Smith didn’t complain. Instead, she looked at the positives.

“I would say for me it was a learning experience,” Smith said. “It was frustrating that we couldn’t win, but it’s OK because I got all that time to learn. It worked out for me, I learned a lot. Maybe I didn’t get the most playing time, but my teammates were still there.”

Law’s dismissal in early March after five seasons at Illinois and Bollant’s hiring breathed life into the games of Crawford and Smith.

The duo has their fingerprints all over the Big Ten leaderboards in the early going this season. Smith leads the Big Ten in assists per game at 7.4, narrowly trailing Charlotte’s Ny Hammonds, who leads the nation with 7.8. Smith is also ninth in the Big Ten in assist-turnover ratio at 1.5.

Bollant said he saw Smith’s potential before the season even began by watching her practice.

“We get to see them the whole month of October. We practice two-and-a-half hours or so,” Bollant said. “How they practice is how they play, eventually, that’ll show.”

Bollant has especially been impressed with Smith’s recent performances, particularly in matchups against the oppositions’ point guards.

“I was really pleased that she showed a lot of (potential) this last week,” Bollant said. “She had 14 assists in one game and 17 points the other game against (a point guard) in the ACC and (another point guard) in the Pac-12 — highly regarded point guards.”

Smith attributed a lot of her improvement to Illinois’ new system.

“I love everything. … I think it fits us so perfectly,” Smith said of Bollant’s up-tempo offense. “And our defense, I love the Buzz, it’s so exciting to play. Just the aggression that we have on both ends of the floor is just exciting to play in.”

As Smith has provided the distributing, Crawford has helped ignite the scoring. She has emerged as the Illini’s second leading scorer at 16.1 points per game, which also ranks eighth in the Big Ten. Crawford has contributed on the defensive end as well — pilfering 2.1 steals per game, which ranks ninth in the conference — while upping her rebounding average to 5.4 per game. Her free-throw percentage of 77.8 and 3-pointers made per game at 1.7 are good for 12th in the Big Ten.

While the sophomores’ have achieved unforeseen success to start the season, senior forward Karisma Penn said she expected them to step up.

“Before the season, I said that Alexis Smith was going to surprise people. I think she’s been doing that,” Penn said. “Ivory, I remember when I first watched her freshman year coming in, and everybody in the gym was just in awe of her talent, period.”

Although Penn said she expected this kind of production from her teammates, Crawford didn’t even think she would improve this fast.

“I had no clue it was going to be this way,” Crawford said. “I knew that I was going to make a change, but I didn’t know it was going to be this type of way. I thought I was going to be more of a defensive player and just get more steals, but now I’m more of an all-around player, just constantly running the floor offensively and defensively.”

Penn said Crawford can be more consistent. The sophomore guard agreed, saying she must produce on a game-to-game basis. After scoring a career-high 32 points against Cleveland State, Crawford finished with only six points on 1-for-10 shooting in the next game against Tulsa.

“I need to work on just having that game like I did against Wake Forest and Cleveland State and just have that consistency as a leader because my teammates are willing to look up to me,” Crawford said.

Penn herself had similar success in her second season. She put up career-high numbers across the board, finishing the season averaging 17.3 points and 10.0 rebounds per game while breaking the single-season blocked shots program record with 78. But Penn saw a sharp decline in her play during her junior year.

“You just have to have the want to (improve),” Penn said. “My (sophomore) year, I wanted it bad, I really wanted it. They have to have that same mentality every year and block out everything else. You know, just keep pushing through and fighting.”

Bollant said he doesn’t expect Smith and Crawford to slow down anytime soon.

“Those sophomores are going to be part of the core of this program,” Bollant said. “The exciting part is those guys getting better and having three years to build with them. And they’ve had to kind of be thrown into the fire because they have to play right now. They kind of grew up fast and learned on their way, and that’s a tough situation to be thrown in, but that’s where we’re at.”

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