NCAA Tournament IV: High Five - Penn

This High Five is going to be the easiest and the hardest one of the series so far. Easy because I know EXACTLY which five clips I want to use but hard because even as I’m typing this I have no idea where I’m going to find those clips. During the regular season and the Big Ten Tournament, the BIG+ app offers full game replays of every game - whether it was broadcast on BTN, Peacock, CBS, FS1, or whatever. I take a screen recording of the segments I want to use, upload those clips to You Tube, and imbed those You Tube videos directly into my article. Easy peasy.

My current dilemma is that for March Madness, the NCAA governs its proprietary broadcast rights with an iron fist. There are no full game replays to be found anywhere - only “condensed games” on the March Madness app. They don’t even allow teams to create a highlight video package for their own social media pages or accounts. So if you typically go to FightingIllini.com to find highlights - you‘re also out of luck.

It appears that I can screen record from the condensed game videos which solves some of my problems, but several of the clips I want to use aren’t included in the condensed game package. I have a ham and egg option - but I’m guessing it’s not going to be pretty.

(This is just a lot of words to say that by next year I need to figure out a foolproof way to rip video clips for use in this segment.)

In the meantime - let‘s see what we can figure out in this“Earth-Quaked” NCAA tournament edition of High Five…

1 - Illinois was not at all sharp in the first half (that would come later), but what they did do in the first twenty minutes was set the physical tone in this game. Illinois established the rules of engagement by which the game was going to be played and Penn was simply not up to the task. The title of my post-game article was “Delivering Blows” and this clip shows David Mirkovic doing exactly that…

You’ve seen this before. Side ball screen from Mirk to coax the small to big switch and Mirk absolutely destroys Michael Zanoni. The funny part of this clip is that it’s actually pretty good help defense by Penn. Lucas Lueth knows he can cheat off of Andrej Stojakovic, but Mirk so quickly and thoroughly buries Zanoni that he can’t get there in time.

2 - Penn was without their leading scorer Ethan Roberts (concussion) so Brad Underwood and defensive coordinator Cam Crocker had but one player bolded at the top of Penn’s scouting report - their stretch four TJ Power. Power is a 44% three point shooter on the season and was coming off of a 44 point/14 rebound performance in the Ivy League Tournament championship game. So who would draw the defensive assignment on the 6’9” Power? David Mirkovic? Tomislav Ivisic? How about 6’2” Kylan Boswell. Advantage Boswell.

(And here is my ham and egg option - using my phone to record the video playback off my laptop. I feel shame. Nothing but the highest quality tech here at Illiniboard.)

In retrospect - it was a pretty obvious call. Despite his height, Power is primarily a perimeter player on offense and Boswell was plenty strong enough to disrupt Power’s flow all night. He had at least three deflections similar to the one in this clip and he was the main factor in holding Power to only two made field goals on just eight attempts for the entire night.

3 - The Illinois defense was the main story of the first half - holding Penn under 1.0 points per possession and to just 30 points overall. So with the defense and physicality of the game established, the Illini offense would need to pick up some of the slack in the second half. 65 points turned out to be plenty of slack. The offensive onslaught got an early boost from something we really haven’t seen a lot of this season - Tomislav Ivisic with a back to the basket paint touch…

Nothing fancy here - just a clear out of the strong side and Tomi posts up for a bucket plus one. Underwood is not typically a huge fan of dumping the ball into the low block, but if Tomi can command a double team down there, he‘s such a gifted passer that he can force teams into rotation pretty quickly. They actually got Tomi a few paint touches and it appeared to give him a boost of energy. He finished the second half with 12 points and 7 rebounds. Sign me up for that kind of production from Tomi the rest of the way.

4 - This one is for Robert. He’s been stressing over Keaton Wagler’s shooting woes since he took a hard fall on his left shoulder at UCLA. On Thursday Wagler shot 4-7 from the arc and we saw the return of his lethal step back three. When you fondly recall Wagler’s single season at Illinois - maybe when you take a quick glance at the banner with his number 23 hanging in the rafters of the State Farm Center - you’ll most remember jumpers like this…

I could listen to the faint whisper of the ball ripping through the net on endless replay.

5 - Keaton had it going. Tomi had it going. Kylan got a few run-outs. All were big contributors to the historically good performance from the Illinois offense in the second half. You know - the performance about which Robert just wrote 1300 words. But David Mirkovic was THE MAN on this night. An all timer type of performance with 29 points and 17 rebounds. His final play of the night was appropriately an offensive rebound and putback…

Mirkovic had actually checked out of the game two minutes earlier and by the reaction he received on his way back to the bench, it looked as if his night was through. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that someone might have mentioned he needed just one more rebound to outright claim the Illinois record for most rebounds in an NCAA Tournament game. He checked back into the game just over a minute later - got the record - and was immediately subbed out again.

Bring on the Rams.

HIGH FIVE!