Seven games in 21 days is all that remains of Illinois' 2017-18 regular season. Beat writer SCOTT RICHEY examines three different scenarios for the Illini this month:
Glass empty
Here's where the schedule doesn't do the Illini a ton of favors. Thursday's home game against Wisconsin will be the first of three in a seven-day span. A three-day break follows before Illinois finishes with four games in eight days, including matchups against Michigan State and Purdue. That's where "winnable games" on paper can become anything but, and the end of Big Ten play looks an awful lot like the beginning with considerably more losses than wins.