Coming into this season, there was a belief that Illinois has a very talented team but with lots of new players and new roles, there were a lot of question marks. There was the potential for a special season, but if things didn’t gel right, it could look a lot like last year or the Matthew Mayer year; some high highs, but ultimately too inconsistent to be a real contender. With the team finally healthy, and four top-15 matchups in the books headed into our December Big Ten games, I thought it would be a good time to look at some of those preseason questions and see to what extent they have been answered this year.Will the returning players take a 2nd year leap?Verdict: Mostly yesKylan Boswell is the biggest name to talk about here. After struggling for most of his first year back in Champaign, Kylan has picked up where he left off in March of last year. The biggest change has been his aggression and efficiency when attacking the rim. He is shooting 61% on two-point attempts and averaging just shy of six free throws per game. If the three-point shot would ever stabilize back to who he was at Arizona, he’d legitimately be an All-American candidate. Defensively he can be the best perimeter defender in the country, although that has been a bit up-and-down in the early going. He is coming off his strongest performance on that end, putting Ja’Kobi Gillespie in hell for 40 minutes in Nashville.While the stats may not show it, Ben Humrichous has also taken a nice leap in his second year of high major ball. The shooting is just slightly better from last year, but he is a completely different player on the defensive side. Last year, he was a liability on that end against stronger, more athletic power forwards. His added muscle has allowed him to wall up more effectively defensively and be more effective on the glass, and he is making smart plays as a help defender to improve his block and steal rate.It is too early to say how much Tomislav Ivisic has improved from last year. A lot of the promise of this season is riding on him being the anchor of the team on both ends on the court, but a preseason tonsillectomy and a knee injury had him looking like a shell of himself through his first couple games while he found his footing and his fitness. The second half against UConn he started finding a rhythm, and that carried over into a much more impactful game against Tennessee. If he can continue to punish smaller defenders in the post, and stretch bigger defenders out to three effectively, he will be one of the better centers in the country.Jake Davis is mostly the same player he was last year, but that is perfectly fine for a role player, and he hit a massive three coming in cold off the bench against Tennessee.Can the high school freshmen contribute anything right away?Verdict: Resounding yesKeaton Wagler is a Braden Smith-level recruiting steal. The only reason Braden will have a better college career is that Wagler is going to be too good to stick around in college for four years. Illini fans are crossing their fingers for two years at this point. Wagler has a pure three-point stroke that he can take from a catch-and-shoot but also is smooth on step backs to his left. I expect the 34% he is shooting so far to improve as he becomes both more comfortable and more discerning. He has an impressive 2.3-1.1 assist-to-turnover ratio and is second on the team in rebounding despite his thin frame, with 5.6 rebounds per game, 2.6 of those on the offensive glass. He is defensively sound, much better than first rounders Kasparas Jakucionis and Will Riley were last year, and his change-of-pace attack draws fouls at a high rate, averaging 5.4 free throws per game. His NCAA readiness as a lightly recruited, beanpole freshman is truly remarkable.Brandon Lee has battled injuries and is not quite the steal that Wagler is (because almost no one is), but he competes defensively and can finish at the rim offensively, if the Illini have a backcourt injury at some point, he should be able to hold his own for 10 minutes or so a game.How will the new Balkans fit in?Verdict: Mixed BagMirkovic has probably been better than expected, while Petrovic so far has been worse than the Adriatic League star we were expecting. Mirkovic has an inconsistent three-point shot that has hurt spacing at times, but his playmaking abilities at his size are better than advertised, and he is a very strong rebounder, with four double-doubles already.Petrovic has been a victim of injuries and the Keaton Wagler breakout. Since coming back from a hamstring injury, Mihailo has mostly gotten spot minutes off the bench. In those minutes, he has displayed some elite point guard skills. He has the ability to get downhill at will and finds either the rolling big man or a kick out for three with impressive precision. Unfortunately, he has been finishing at the rim like a seventh grader laying it up with his off hand, and his size defensively makes him a liability. If he can start making the layups and floaters at a respectable rate and be an on-ball pest who avoids screens well, he will end up being a valuable 15-20-minute contributor off the bench.Although he is not coming directly from the Balkans, I’ll throw Zvonomir Ivisic in here as well. Big Z has pretty much been as advertised. Defensively, he is an elite rim protector who lacks discipline. He jumps at too many pump fakes and can be taken advantage of on the perimeter. Offensively, he floats on the three-point line too much. He has a pretty stroke and can hit big shots like he did with back-to-back threes against Tennessee, but sometimes forces bad ones, and does not attack the offensive boards enough for a 7-foot-2 player with athleticism.Can Andrej Stojakovic adjust from being THE GUY on bad teams to a guy on a winning team?Verdict: Roller Coaster RideIt was probably underestimated how much of an adjustment this would be for Stojakovic. At his best, he has carried the Illini offense in games against Texas Tech and Alabama. Against most one-on-one matchups, he can get to the basket at will and score from a variety of angles. However, when the opposing team is helping more and closing off the lane, he has struggled to find ways to be useful offensively. He has tunnel vision with the ball in his hands and is not good at finding the kick out when the defense collapses on him. Surprisingly, given who his dad is, he is not a good floor spacer. In order to be effective away from the ball then, he needs to get better at cutting to the basket opportunistically and using his athleticism to crash the offensive boards for tip dunks.Defensively, he has also been a mixed bag. He did a great job against Christian Anderson in the Texas Tech game and made some nice plays on that end against Tennessee as well, getting into Nate Ament’s chest to make him uncomfortable and digging down in the post for a couple of huge steals. In the losses though, he has gotten caught on screens and seems to have communication problems on blown switches way too often.Two years of playing on losing teams creates bad habits like standing still off the ball and communication errors. If Underwood and staff can coach those habits out of him, the sky really is the limit for this team.Can Camryn Crocker make adjustments to improve the defense?Verdict: Still calibrating, but promisingLast year, the complaint about our defense was that by playing drop coverage on almost all pick and rolls involving a big, we were both too soft and too predictable defensively. Endless uncontested midrange jumpers from Koby Brea at Kentucky sent us home last March, and Brad decided it was time for a change. He has handed new assistant coach Camryn Crocker the keys to the defense, with the mandate to be more aggressive and unpredictable. How has it looked so far? Analytically, there has been improvement, sitting at 17th in defensive efficiency on KENPOM, up from 41st last year. From the eye test, there certainly has been more variability to the defense. Crocker has sprinkled in the occasional zone, and while ball screen coverage has been predominantly drop coverage still, there has been some switching, gap help, and hedging mixed in as well. The worst defensive game of the year-to-date came, unsurprisingly, against the high-powered Alabama offense. While Alabama gets theirs against everyone, the decision to switch 1-5 on most pick and rolls came back to haunt the Illini, as Alabama relentlessly hunted switches to get Mirkovic or Zvonomir matched onto their lightning quick guards and blew by them repeatedly. It took our best defender out of the game.In a couple of our other marquee match ups though, we saw adjustments that Crocker chose to make bear fruit. Against Texas Tech, National Player of the Year Candidate JT Toppin was just destroying Mirkovic, Zvonomir, and Humrichous inside. Crocker made the unconventional move to switch Kylan Boswell onto JT Toppin and fronted the post entries, which, along with Andrej Stojakovic’s length causing problems for point guard Christian Anderson, threw the Texas Tech offense out of rhythm just enough to pull out the win. Against UConn, their methodical offensive sets with a maze of off ball screens were causing the Illini problems in the first half. Switching to a run and jump defense disrupted their flow and gave the Illini a chance to get back into it, if they could only hit some shots.Against Tennessee, the Illini put together their most complete first-shot defensive effort. Tennessee has two main offensive threats in Ja’Kobi Gillespie and Nate Ament. Crocker wanted to keep our best defenders on those players and make someone else beat us. To do so, we hedged a lot more ball screens than any other game, giving Boswell time to square back in front of Gillespie. Meanwhile, Humrichous and Stojakovic were physical with the lanky five-star Ament and forced him into a bunch of uncomfortable contested twos. Both Volunteer stars were highly inefficient, and their offense completely stalled when they stopped grabbing two-thirds of the offensive rebounds.Will this team shoot better from deep than last year?Verdict: SlightlyThe team is shooting 33.2% from three so far, which is up from 31.3% last year. The UConn loss looked very much like a game from last year, where they shot themselves out of the game. However, I do expect as the team gets healthy the percentage to tick slightly higher, as Tomislav Ivisic takes and makes more threes. Keaton Wagler and Kylan Boswell I also expect to end the year with better percentages than what they have right now. Even if the shooting doesn’t improve though, the offense as a whole still looks like a top-10 offense in the country because so many different players can get to the rim and pass the ball.Will Ty Rodgers be able to recover from injury and play a role?Verdict: Still UnknownRight now, the Illini’s bench unit is lacking a strong defensive and rebounding option. When Tennessee punked the orange-and-blue on the offensive glass, someone like Ty Rodgers can be an important stabilizing force. There have been no recent updates on his recovery from his partially torn patellar tendon, but if he can make it back in January, it could provide a needed lift for the Illini to get over the hump in very specific games in March.