Welcome to “Good Morning, Illini Nation,” your daily dose of college basketball news from Illini beat writer and AP Top 25 voter Scott Richey. He’ll offer up insights every morning on Brad Underwood’s team:
Coming off another stretch of clutch performances, Ayo Dosunmu can improve his candidacy for Big Ten MVP this week as the Illini take on two of his chief competitors for the honor: Minnesota's Daniel Oturu and Iowa's Luka Garza. Beat writer Scott Richey explains that as well as his reasoning for voting the Illini at No. 18 in his AP Top 25 ballot - one spot higher than where they wound up.
Brad Underwood moved Andres Feliz from Illinois' starting lineup and back to the senior guard's role as sixth man for a reason. It simply made Underwood much more comfortable with his rotation.
Not that Feliz as a starter didn't work. The 6-foot-2 guard had a pair of 20-point games to start the season. Plenty of assists and rebounds, too. Underwood was simply less comfortable about what the Illini bench had without Feliz leading the way.
Feliz has found his form in the past two weeks after a rough December and early January. His 17 points, eight rebounds and three assists in Thursday's 59-51 win against Minnesota made a pretty strong case that Feliz is back at his best.
And at his best, in Underwood's opinion, works best with Feliz coming off the bench.
"You want that spark plug," Underwood said. "You want to have that trigger of somebody who comes in and impacts the game as one of your better players. Dre is that.
"He impacts it on the glass. He impacts it with passes. He impacts it by scoring. He impacts it in transition. There's not a piece of the game eh doesn't have a hand in impacting the game. Defensively, he can guard multiple guys because of his strength. He's a very, very valuable piece to everything we're doing."
