{"id":11503,"date":"2010-12-14T02:24:14","date_gmt":"2010-12-14T07:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=11503"},"modified":"2010-12-14T02:24:14","modified_gmt":"2010-12-14T07:24:14","slug":"ncaa-mens-basketball-battle-of-illinois-illinois-chicago-at-northern-illinois","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/ncaa-mens-basketball-battle-of-illinois-illinois-chicago-at-northern-illinois-11503\/","title":{"rendered":"NCAA Men’s Basketball Battle of Illinois: Illinois-Chicago At Northern Illinois"},"content":{"rendered":"

Illinois-Chicago AT Northern Illinois
\nDecember 14th, 2010 at 8:00 PM EST
\nOpening Point Spread:\u00a0 Northern Illinois -2
\nCurrent Point Spread:\u00a0 Northern Illinois -2
\nOpening Total:\u00a0 No total defined.
\nMoneyline:\u00a0 Northern Illinois -125 \/ Illinois Chicago +105<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Northern Illinois are 2 point favorites in this in-state battle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Both teams come into tonight’s game with losing records.\u00a0 The favored Huskies of Northern Illinois are 2-4 this year and have lost their past two games, to DePaul (by 2) and to Boise State (by 29).\u00a0 They will seek to rebound against the Flames of Illinois-Chicago, though Illinois-Chicago has won five of the past six matchups between the two teams.\u00a0 However, Illinois State has lost their last three games one to Illinois State (by 10), Akron (by 2), and Valapraiso (by 2).\u00a0 Their last win was on November 28th against Toledo, a one point victory.\u00a0 Because of all the close losses, despite a 2-4 record their point differential is a respectable -2.6.\u00a0 Northern Illinois’s is -3.8<\/p>\n

Last matchup between the teams, Illnois Chicago won by a score of 69 to 49 on their homecourt.\u00a0 College basketball odds have Illinois Chicago is 1-5-1 ATS this year and Northern Illinois is 2-2 ATS.<\/p>\n

Illinois-Chicago is led by 6’0″ senior point guard Robo Kreps<\/strong> and 6’8″ senior forward Paul Carter.<\/strong> The inside-out tandem accounts for 32.2 of Illinois-Chicago’s 62 points per game, and both players log heavy minutes.\u00a0 In addition to being second on the team in scoring, Carter also leads the Flames in rebounding with 8.3 rebounds per game.\u00a0 He shoots a poor percentage from the field (39%) though, and last game agains the Fighting Illini he went 6 of 17 from the floor, and 2 of 7 from behind the arc.\u00a0 Despite only shooting 22.5% from behind the arc, he has already attempted 40 threes through 10 games.\u00a0 Robo Kreps has had more success both from the field and behind the arc, and Kreps has hit 18 threes so far of 47 attempts (38%).\u00a0 He ignites a lot of fast breaks, playing passing lanes well (1.5 steals per game).\u00a0 The Flames will seek to run as much as possible.<\/p>\n

Northern Illinois is for all practical purposes a one man team.\u00a0 6’5″ senior guard Xavier Silas<\/strong> averages 26.3 points per game and has already had three 34 point games so far of the 6 matchups that Northern Illinois has played.\u00a0 He averages over 3 times as much as their second leading scorer (Nate Rucker’s 8.3 points per game), and accounts for over one third of the Huskies points per game.\u00a0 He has been lights out from three point range, shooting 16 of 31 (51.6%).\u00a0 Northern Illinois will go to him as much as possible obviously, as Illinois Chicago, like most teams, has no one to matchup well with him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Illinois-Chicago AT Northern Illinois December 14th, 2010 at 8:00 PM EST Opening Point Spread:\u00a0 Northern Illinois -2 Current Point Spread:\u00a0 Northern Illinois -2 Opening Total:\u00a0 No total defined. Moneyline:\u00a0 Northern Illinois -125 \/ Illinois Chicago +105 Both teams come into tonight’s game with losing records.\u00a0 The favored Huskies of Northern Illinois are 2-4 this year […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40250,"featured_media":4660,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1444],"tags":[4122,4123],"class_list":["post-11503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-basketball","category-headlines","tag-illinois-chicago","tag-northern-illinois"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11503"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11504,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11503\/revisions\/11504"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}