Illinois freshman point guard Dee Brown has two personalities: bubbly and extra bubbly.
Brown put his bubble machine into overdrive again Sunday in the Illini’s 85-56 rout of Western Illinois, but not as early as coach Bill Self would have liked.
If Self was eager to find out how senior forward Brian Cook would look in his first game back from a two-game suspension, apparently so were Cook’s teammates. Especially the newest ones.
Cook scored 13 points and sophomore forward Roger Powell 12 to spark the Illini (3-0) to a 42-24 first-half lead, but Self’s five freshmen combined for only four of the 42. Aaron Spears, Kyle Wilson and James Augustine were scoreless but had an excuse: They spent most of the first 20 minutes on the bench. Not so Brown and fellow guard Deron Williams, who had one basket apiece in a combined 30 minutes of floor time.
“Absolutely, [the freshmen] watched Brian too much,” Self said. “They weren’t aggressive. They turned down open shots. The first half they were passive. Passive.”
Traces of that passivity lasted to the 9:15 mark of the second half, when a 22-8 WIU run sliced a 22-point Illini lead to 54-46.
But then Brown and Williams went to work. Brown’s steal and fast-break layup, a three-pointer by Sean Harrington and another steal by Williams, who laid it in for two more, took an emotional toll on the Leathernecks (1-2). Led by Cook, Powell and Luther Head, who finished with 17, 15 and 11 points, respectively, Illinois went on a 31-10 run to end the game.
Brown and Williams ignited it with their intensity. Brown finished with seven points, 10 assists, five rebounds and three steals. Williams had 10 points, four assists, three rebounds and two steals.
“The young guys are good,” said Matt Robins, who led Western’s scoring with 14 points. “Dee was right on me all game. He didn’t give me an inch of breathing room.”
The Illini shot 61.7 percent, but Cook said it was defense–Illinois has held its first three opponents below 40 percent shooting–that keyed the clinching run. “We weren’t making stops,” Cook said. “They were scoring too easy. But then Dee picked up the pressure on the ball and the rest of us started getting into the passing lanes and we got those stops.”
Stopping Western, however, was much easier than Illinois’ next test figures to be. North Carolina (5-0) visits the Assembly Hall on Tuesday for the ACC-Big Ten Challenge.
“We needed this,” Self said. “We needed a game that was kind of tight and that we needed to get stops in.”
