Eastern Illinois vs Kansas Preview

The Jayhawks return home for a tune-up against the Panthers.

The Kansas Jayhawks are back on the mainland and will return to Allen Fieldhouse Tuesday as they get a reprieve from their span of top-10 opponents as KU faces Eastern Illinois before UCONN comes to town Friday.

Opponent Overview

Team: Eastern Illinois

Record: 3-4

KenPom: 345

Line: KU -35.5

Team Form

The record says 3-4 but only one of those wins has come against DI teams. And that win was a 48-46 victory over Coppin State, which is 361st at KenPom. The Panthers opened the season with an 80-52 loss at Illinois and also got beaten badly by Loyola Chicago 89-65 before keeping it close and losing by eight to Illinois St. (215 at KenPom) and 12 to Miami (Ohio) (269 at KenPom). If you take away the two games against non-DI teams, Illinois State has scored 65 or fewer points in every game.

Players to Watch

The Panthers are a team that uses its bench a ton, to the point that no player is averaging 30 minutes per game but 11 average between 11 and 29 minutes and another two players get seven minutes per game. And no player is averaging more than 11.3 shots per game, while five average between five and 11. That’s all to say there isn’t one or two players carrying the load for this team.

Kooper Jacobi has been Eastern Illinois’ most productive player so far, averaging a team high 11.1 points and 7.4 rebounds as a 6-6 forward. Tiger Booker has been right up there with Jacobi, but hasn’t played since the third game of the season against Loyola Chicago, and some internet searching hasn’t offered a reason. Booker not only averaged 10.3 points per game, but he also was a menace on defense, creating eight steals in his last two games and nine overall. The only other Panther averaging double figures is guard Nakyel Shelton at 10.1 per game on 9.6 attempts.

Matchups to Watch

The offensive numbers for Eastern Illinois are…rough, to say the least. The Panthers’ offensive efficiency is 355th out of 362 teams. EIU can’t score inside, shooting just 38.5% from two-point range (358th nationally), it doesn’t score much on assists (321st), and it turns the ball over on 20% of its possessions (268th). The two areas where the Panthers are best (relatively) — shooting threes and free throws — are areas in which they don’t do much. EIU only takes threes 26.6% of the time (347th) and makes 31.6% (207th) and shoots free throws at a 72.3% clip but is 347th at getting to the line.

The Panthers also play at one of the slowest paces in the country, which is a stark contrast to Kansas wanting to get out and run. But no matter how they do it, the Jayhawks will want to get the ball inside. Teams don’t shoot many threes against EIU because the Panthers are letting opponents shoot 57% from inside the arc and send teams to the line more than all but just 31 teams nationally.

Prediction

This is a game where Kansas could pick its number to win by if it wanted. Nothing EIU does on paper should be a threat to Kansas, who should be able to get the ball inside for easy baskets at will.

What you want out of this is to shake off any Maui jet lag, get your starters to play 20-25 minutes of efficient, turnover-limited basketball, and then get guys like Nick Timberlake, Johnny Furphy, and Jamari McDowell plenty of minutes to get reps and hopefully build some confidence.

More than 35 points is a massive number, but if there’s another game on the schedule where KU could win by 40, it’s this one.

Kansas 102, Eastern Illinois 61

Record ATS: 4-2

Record Straight Up: 5-1

(Last game: Kansas 69, Tennessee 60)