Illinois guard Kylan Boswell fractured his right hand in practice and is expected to be out until at least mid-February, coach Brad Underwood told reporters Tuesday.
The loss of Boswell, the team’s senior leader, is a blow to the No. 11 Illini just as their Big Ten schedule begins to ramp up. In the next three weeks, Illinois has three top-10 road matchups: Saturday at No. 4 Purdue, Feb. 1 at No. 7 Nebraska and Feb. 7 at No. 10 Michigan State.
Boswell is second on the team with 14.3 points per game to go with 4.2 rebounds and 3.4 assists in a team-high 31.7 minutes per game. He typically takes on the opponent’s best player on defense.
After Illinois’ win at Northwestern on Wednesday, Underwood called the 6-foot-2 Boswell an “all caps, PROBLEM SOLVER,” after he had 13 points and six assists and helped defend 6-7 Wildcats forward Nick Martinelli. Martinelli scored 20 points, below his Big Ten-leading 23.7 average.
“It’s just nice to have a guy that versatile,” Underwood said of Boswell. “He solves a lot of problems for us. You look down and he’s playing 37 minutes because of a back issue with Keaton (Wagler). He’s driving the ball to the basket. He’s getting fouled. He’s assisting. I tip my hat to him because he’s playing at an extremely high level and doing it on both ends.”
Underwood said Boswell broke his hand in the same place he did five years ago. He is wearing a splint and will remain around the team to help on the coaching side where he can.
“I feel terrible for Kylan as he’s a senior and he’s having such a phenomenal year,” Underwood told reporters. “It’s the next-man-up mentality with our team, and I think it’s exciting we’ve been able to develop some depth. We’ll see what that looks like as we move forward. … It’s one of the things we do is we find a way, and we’ll continue to do that.”
Freshman guard Wagler leads the Illini with 16.1 points per game, but they will need others to step up. Wings Jake Davis and Ben Humrichous, who together average about 36 minutes, are options to get more time.
First-year point guard Mihailo Petrović has played in only 11 games, averaging just 7.9 minutes. But Underwood praised him after he had four points and three rebounds in six minutes in Illinois’ win against Minnesota on Saturday. Freshman guard Brandon Lee has averaged 6.5 minutes in eight games.
“It could be anybody. It’s not one person,” Underwood said when asked specifically about Petrović. “It’s going to be a lot of different guys having to move into different roles. You don’t replace Kylan defensively. It’s going to take an adjustment from everybody to do just a little bit better defensively.”