Gaining a full appreciation of Kylan Boswell’s work is a bit like watching Harry Dean Stanton on the big screen or Steve Cropper in the studio: You have to have an idea what you’re looking for.
A glance at the stat sheet, for instance, reveals nothing all that special about Boswell, who is averaging 10.6 points and shooting just 34.4 percent from the floor on a team that, frankly, could really use another steady shooting hand from the perimeter.
And although Boswell is best known for his defense, even that dimension of his game doesn’t always leap from the screen or box score. He is averaging just 0.9 steals and 0.2 blocks this season.
Yet he is arguably in the running with guard Kasparas Jakucionis – who is an early favorite for Big Ten Freshman of the Year and is projected as an NBA lottery pick – for Illinois’ team MVP.
“We knew defensively, what we were getting with Kylan,” Illini coach Brad Underwood said after Illinois’ 80-77 win over Missouri on Sunday. “He took on another one of the better guards in the SEC today, who has been playing great, in [Anthony] Robinson and just … non-impact. We felt like we could really crawl up in him and pressure him, and nobody does that better than Bam.”
Always on the attack.
Kylan Boswell was relentless in the lane – on the glass and at the rim.#IlliniPerformanceStat x #InvescoQQQ pic.twitter.com/puwprqnhrI
— Illinois Men’s Basketball (@IlliniMBB) December 22, 2024
Underwood will get no argument from Alabama’s Mark Sears (zero points), Arkansas’ Boogie Fland (eight points on 2-for-12 shooting), Wisconsin’s John Tonje (5-for-15 shooting) or Mizzou’s Robinson (two points on 0-for-3 shooting), all of whom have received the full-body treatment from Boswell this season and learned – the hard way – the meaning of his nickname.
The latest development for Boswell, however, has been on the other side of the floor, where his field-goal shooting is still a work in progress but where he has found another way to contribute: translating his physical play on defense to offense.
Against Missouri, Boswell earned 12 free-throw attempts, converting 11 of them to help the Illini slip by the Tigers. It was the third straight game – and the fourth in Illinois’ past five – that Boswell shot at least seven free throws.
“The offense, for me, is just more open,” Boswell said when asked about what has changed for him since arriving at Illinois in a trasnfer from Arizona in the offseason. “You don’t [face] pack-the-line [schemes] anymore, stuff like that. And then coach, his big emphasis has been on me getting downhill, being a strong guard, getting fouled and getting to the line, easy buckets, easy points for us.”
Boswell’s free-throw percentage is a middling 75.9 percent, but he is shooting 86.5 percent over his past six – just as he has dialed up his frequency in getting there. It has become something of a theme: When the Illini need a lift, Boswell comes through with a boost.
Inch for inch and pound for pound, the 6-foot-2, 205-pound Boswell is one of the Big Ten’s best rebounders (4.5 per game). Increasingly, he is playing more on the ball (3.5 assists per game), taking some of the load off Jakucionis and allowing his freshman teammate room to explore other ways to attack as a scorer. Boswell’s five best performances, according to John Hollinger’s GameScore metric, have come against the Illini’s best opponents: Wisconsin, Arkansas, Missouri, Alabama and Tennessee.
“So the leadership, the experience, we knew we were going to have to lean on that,” Underwood said of the immediate expectations of Boswell in Champaign. Gradually, the production has followed. Calling it a “first-semester type deal,” Underwood noted that Ben Humrichous and Tre White – both first-year Illini transfers, like Boswell – have been forced to make their own adjustments.
And now, with a full week between games and free from schoolwork during the holiday break, the Illini came come together on the practice floor to work out the remaining kinks ahead of the Big Ten stretch run, a thought that delights Underwood.
Imagine if Boswell can begin translating his sharpening free-throw stroke to the floor now that the Illini are starting to grow comfortable with one another and find their individual niches in the offense. In order to make real Underwood’s grand vision of pushing past last season’s Elite Eight appearance and into March Madness final weekend territory, Boswell and the No. 24 Illini (8-3) will have to uncover the versions of their best selves.
“And those days are coming,” Underwood said.
