Basketball is often described as a game of inches.

Saturday night’s matchup between Illinois and No. 2 Michigan will be a game of feet. Six feet to be exact, or the 72 inches that make up Wolverine point guard Trey Burke’s diminutive stature.

On the surface, both are similarly built teams. Both John Groce and John Beilein employ perimeter-based attacks. Each team’s top-four scorers are guards or wing players, and neither team regularly feeds the ball to the post. As a result, the Wolverines and Illini are first and second in the Big Ten in 3’s made per game, respectively, although Illinois has steadily trended downward in that category in the last month and a half.

The difference is Burke. The sophomore is the best player in the country at the most important position in college basketball, and that fact makes itself apparent in the Wolverines’ play. Burke is tied for second in the conference in scoring with Brandon Paul and is first in assists. His 7.2 dimes per game eclipses the next best assist man, Ohio State’s Aaron Craft, by 2.5 per game.

But the numbers don’t tell the whole story. It’s the way Burke controls tempo and pace like he’s holding his fingers to the fluxing pulse of the game that is extraordinary. Not to mention his shot-making ability late in possessions and in games, an added bonus that makes Beilein’s job significantly easier.

“Having a point guard that can make plays during that time is really essential because if you’re trying to pass the ball around and run a play at shot clock time, you can do it,” Beilein said at Big Ten Media Day in October. 

Penn State head coach Pat Chambers has also benefited from excellent point guard play in Tim Frazier, one of the conference’s best before a ruptured Achilles tendon suffered in November sidelined him for the rest of the season.

“We’re an extension of one another,” Chambers said of Frazier before the season. “And to not have someone like that at the point, you can really struggle in this type of league where they’ve got so many talented guards.”

Those struggles have manifested themselves on Illinois, a team whose offense has frequently broken down against the Big Ten’s top-notch defenses. Tracy Abrams and Paul share point guard duties, and while both are good players in their own right, neither has displayed anything close to the game-managing ability of Burke.

Abrams, a sophomore like Burke, has shown vast improvement since his freshman season but is still too inconsistent game-to-game, with flashes of brilliance (27 points, eight rebounds, five assists and only one turnover, against Auburn) accompanied regularly by disappearing acts (against Wisconsin and Northwestern).

Paul, meanwhile, is still an actor playing a part, a terrific scorer often forced into the role of primary ballhandler for a team lacking at that position.

The result, not surprisingly, is a sputtering offense that is constantly out of sync, doesn’t move the ball well (just 50 assists to 76 turnovers during six conference games) and often fails to create open shots.

The Illini got off the mat Tuesday against Nebraska, scoring more than 70 points for the first time since beating Ohio State three weeks ago.

But Michigan is whole different animal, in large part because of the small point guard spearheading the offense. 

Daniel is a senior in Media. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @danielmillermc.