Prior to Illinois’ nonconference game against visiting SIU Edwardsville game on Friday night, the Fighting Illini will have a ring ceremony to celebrate last season’s team, which won the Big Ten tournament and earned the program’s first Elite Eight berth since 2005.
Though those achievements are just eight months in the rearview mirror, it might as well be eight years in terms of roster continuity. Illinois head coach Brad Underwood retained just two scholarship players from last season’s 29-9 squad.
And when Illinois (1-0) revealed before the opener Monday that junior Ty Rodgers will redshirt this season — presumably to be followed by an offseason transfer — sophomore guard Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn is the only active scholarship link to last season.
Gibbs-Lawhorn got his sophomore year off to a flying start with a career-high 21 points in 21 minutes off the bench Monday against Eastern Illinois. He shot efficiently (4 of 8 on 3-pointers, 7 of 8 at the line) and performed well defensively — as indicated by his team-high plus-31 showing.
But Illinois fans will recall Gibbs-Lawhorn put up 18 points in 20 minutes during last year’s season-opening win over Eastern Illinois. And they know the 6-foot-1 Indiana native came to Illinois as an offense-first shooting guard but never reached double digits again last season. So what’s different this year?
“The problem we had with Dravyn (last year) was his hands,” Underwood said. “He was reaching. He was in foul trouble. On a team that didn’t foul very much, he was hurting our team with his fouls. He was trying to be physical, but he was almost trying too hard.
“But then something clicked later in the season. He started to believe in (his work in) the weight room. He could chest people and not have to reach. And then he has continued that (this year). He’s very strong. He’s anticipating better. He understands coverages better. That freshman-to-sophomore thing (for him) is very true as well.”
Gibbs-Lawhorn figures to be one of Illinois’ first two players off the bench Friday at SIU Edwardsville (1-1), which wraps up perhaps the toughest two-game stretch in school history — or at least since the Cougars upgraded to Division I in 2008.
SIU Edwardsville lost 80-61 on Wednesday night at No. 17 Indiana, and that didn’t allow for much chance to prepare for the Fighting Illini, who fell just outside the preseason AP Top 25 poll.
“They were in that (Indiana) thing until midway through the second half,” Underwood said. “Extremely well-coached. They have legit size. They have a great guard.”
That great guard — 6-foot-1 senior Ray’Sean Taylor — produced a team-high 17 points Wednesday at Indiana, but he needed 22 shots to get it done. Gibbs-Lawhorn could be asked to spend most of his time stopping Taylor.
The Cougars trailed 27-20 in the first half before scoring seven straight points, the final three on a trey by Taylor. Indiana answered with a 3-pointer, however, and never trailed again.
SIU Edwardsville coach Brian Barone said his team “made enough plays to put ourselves in position to take the turn to get to the next step to hopefully win the game, and unfortunately, we didn’t make that second or third one that we needed to make. We didn’t shoot great tonight.”
The Cougars shot just 35.2 percent from the field and 5 of 26 from long range.
