So much for home-court advantage.

The Illinois women’s basketball team hasn’t lost outside of Champaign in over two months, with the last loss coming at Texas Tech on Dec. 5.

The Illini have started Big Ten play 5-0 on the road for the first time in program history, tying the school record for conference road wins in a season, with three away games remaining on the schedule.

Illinois will try to continue its road success when it heads to Michigan on Thursday.

“When we go on the road, we’re probably more confident than at home, which is weird,” senior Karisma Penn said. “It makes us band together even more, which is why I think we’ve been so successful.”

Illinois has started to gain national attention with its play as of late. EspnW named Illinois its national team of the week after the Illini played three games in seven days, winning all three: road games at Minnesota and Wisconsin and a home upset of No. 24 Iowa.

“I don’t think it’s hard (to stay grounded) because we haven’t had that,” junior Amber Moore said. “We don’t worry about numbers or rankings or anything, we’re just trying to get better every day.”

Michigan runs a 2-3 zone that allows opponents only 53.0 points per game, good for seventh in the nation. The Wolverines are able to do this without fouling, as they have the second fewest number of fouls per game nationally.

“We’ve been working on running our offense against the zone,” Moore said. “We know Michigan runs a lot of zone, so just playing and reading the options on the zone.”

Moore’s 3-point shooting could be key to beating Michigan’s zone. Moore made five 3-pointers in back-to-back games last week, and Illinois is 9-1 when she makes at least three 3-pointers.

Michigan is also a very accurate shooting team. The Wolverines shoot 38.3 percent on 3-pointers and 45.2 percent overall.

“They’re a lot like Iowa,” Bollant said. “They’re really highly skilled. They pass the ball really well. They shoot the ball really well, and they’re very long.”

Senior guard Kate Thompson is the main reason for Michigan’s 3-point shooting prowess. At 6-foot-4, Thompson is taller than every member of the Illini, and she’s shot almost half of Michigan’s 3’s this season, which she has made at a clip of 44.1 percent.

Like Illinois, a first-year head coach, Kim Barnes-Arico, leads Michigan. She was a head coach at St. John’s for 10 seasons and led the Red Storm to three NCAA tournament appearances. She was named Big East Coach of the Year in 2012.

Former Michigan head coach Kevin Borseth took over for Bollant at Green Bay after leading Michigan to its first NCAA tournament in 11 years.

Michigan is coming into the game on a three-game losing streak. The Wolverines were ranked No. 24 before a home loss to Iowa and road losses to Minnesota and Michigan State. Michigan started the season 15-2 and had a 10-game winning streak from Dec. 1 to Jan. 17, but the team hasn’t won at home since Jan. 13.

Johnathan can be reached at [email protected] and @jhett93.