In its final game of the weekend, the Illinois men’s wheelchair basketball team faced a squad that exposed its biggest weaknesses: the players’ lack of size and experience.

Up until the last game, the Illini were undefeated in the annual Illinois Classic. The tournament features a variety of adult club teams and is meant to be a warm-up for the Illini before they go to the Texas-Arlington to face college level competition later this month.

Illinois’ final game of the weekend came against the Milwaukee Bucks. The team is comprised of former college athletes who have played together for Wisconsin-Whitewater. The Bucks were able to utilize their size and experience to get shots near the basket, blowing out the Illini by a score of 85-28.

Illinois head coach Matt Buchi believes his team needs to continue to work on defending larger players.

“We are so worried about trying to stop the pass, and we don’t realize that no matter what happens, the passer is going to be taller than us,” Buchi said. “So we need to make sure we are stopping the baseline and forcing the bigs outside the key.” 

The Illini also tried to implement something new with a triangle offense, an offensive scheme popularized by Phil Jackson’s Chicago Bulls teams in the 1990s. If run correctly, it can create an opportunity for hundreds of different shots.

“It’s great in theory, but it’s never been done in wheelchair basketball before because the passing requires a lot of lateral movement that able bodied players can do in the NBA,” captain Jacob Tyree said. “We are the first team to try it out in the wheelchair basketball.”

While the team did have success running it in its first four games, Tyree acknowledged it was probably due to the other team’s being much slower than the Bucks. Illinois struggled to set up the system against Milwaukee because the Bucks were able to cut off a lot of the passing lanes needed for the triangle offense to work.

The Illini also had trouble with the physicality of game, often times having players knocked over during the game. According to Tyree, a more aggressive style of play is also something the team needs to work on.

“We haven’t played a team that’s that physical before, which we need to because that’s how the college division is like,” Tyree said. “The other four teams have a couple of guys that will push you around post-wise, but they won’t continuously, play after play, fight to get the ball. These guys did. They showed the rookies what it’s like to play a hardcore, physical game for 40 minutes.”

Buchi believes the final game gave the team a taste of how other teams are going to play the Illini in the collegiate level as the team competes for a national championship.

“We are vulnerable in our size, so we need to ramp up our intensity level and hold it for the 40 minutes in order to react to the different defenses and different offenses that (other teams) are going to give us,” Buchi said.

Daniel can be reached at [email protected] and @ddexter23.