If you haven’t come across a David Mirkovic clip throughout Illinois’ run, you're missing out on one of the most unique personalities to arrive from this tournament. The Montenegrin forward has become one of March Madness’s most affable characters, while he's simultaneously pushing the Illini to the Final Four for the first time since 2005.
It takes a touch of cognitive dissonance to square the personality Mirkovic portrays on the court with what is found in clips of him off it with his teammates. The 6-foot-9 forward is an aggressive bully on the glass and domineers opponents with his strength and motor. Yet off the court, he’s cracking jokes with his coach and teammates, allowing his naivete within a new culture to play out on the national stage, unafraid to laugh at himself.
On the hardwood, Mirkovic is averaging 14.8 points, 2.8 assists and 11 rebounds along Illinois’ path to Indianapolis, recording the second most rebounds in the tournament behind just senior UConn Husky Tarris Reed. But Mirkovic’s impact for Brad Underwood’s team goes far beyond the impressive counting stats and instead can inform you just how game-breaking the #1 offense on KenPom actually is.
Having a forward with so many facets to his game makes it near impossible for defenses to exploit or take away offense if they can overcommit pressure to the ballhandler. This was shown in Illinois’ second-half breakaway from Houston, where Underwood had Mirkovic help Keaton Wagler and Kylan Boswell generate offense by exploiting Houston’s aggressive ball screen defense.
“[Houston brings] two to the ball pretty quickly in ball screens,” Underwood said after the game. “Then it was just a matter of reading what they did, whether it was going to be a full rotation to our pops, to our 5 man, or whether they were just going to let those guys make plays. That's where [Mirkovic is] really good.”
Boswell, Wagler and Mirkovic matchup hunt through the ball screen for 12 seconds of the possession until Mirkovic is set up to be a screener against Houston’s Chris Cenac on the empty side of the halfcourt. From there, Mirkovic reads how Cenac will try to cut him off and switches the side he sets the screen on, then rolls into an angle that Cenac can’t recover from to prevent his dribble drive. The 250-pound forward can drive and finish against his lighter defender.
While the freshman doesn’t overwhelm you with athleticism, Mirkovic’s touch and fluidity at his size make him a nightmare to try to defend in Illinois’ hyper-spaced-out offense. You have to worry about his post-up ability. You have to keep an eye on him in the corner, both as a three-point shooter (40.9% on corner three attempts) and a cutter. He’s scoring at 1.44 points per possession, cutting to the basket.
Mirkovic is intuitive on his cuts in terms of reading when he can be met in stride for a lay-up/rim finish and when he needs to treat his cut as an opportunity for a duck in post-ups. And because of how many screens Illinois likes to run to create mismatches around the court, oftentimes he’s exploiting either bigs uncomfortable defending in space or guards unseasoned in closing off duck in angles.
And because of how much space Illinois’ system generates and how skilled of passers every player on the floor is, the defense gets tilted to the point that the bigs play a two-man game against the poor interior defender on an island.
That’s Mirkovic off the ball. Where the freshman has become a problem, and this being largely a later-in-the-season development, is his ability on the ball as a bully guard, taking what defenses give him, reading matchups, and playmaking.
“I think the best thing about Mirk and really freshmen is they continue to get better,” Underwood said. “Especially those who work as hard as Mirk.
[Early season struggles] were probably head coach mistakes, not playing him through some of those times. I go back to a couple of various games when we just didn't play him.”
But as Illinois dealt with injuries to both Boswell and wing Andrej Stojakovic, Underwood needed to lean on not just Wagler but Mirkovic to develop as playmakers for themselves and others.
“Yeah, I think that we've banked on that a little bit,” Underwood said. “We were a little different team. We call [Mirkovic and Wagler] action guys, and we were putting those guys into a lot of action. I think Mirk continued to grow. With [Boswell] out, with [Stojakovic] out during that stretch, we didn't have a lot of ball handling. He became that. He became a backup point guard-type for us.”
Mirkovic has an assist rate of 17.2% so far in the tournament, sitting at the 95th percentile for forwards. His usage has also climbed from 22% to 25% during these four games. His decision-making is on full display in the pick-and-roll and when he’s on-ball initiating the offense, he punishes defenders who don’t try to pick him up as he gets to the top of the arc.
“Obviously, he's become one of the most valuable players in not only our team but in the Big Ten,” Underwood said. “I just think it's a tribute to his coaching. I think it's a tribute to his work. And we've gotten much smarter as coaches in how to utilize him and put him in those scenarios to be successful.”
Getting Mirkovic in pick-and-roll actions is where this Illini offense can take off. He’s scoring over a point per possession as both the roll man and the ball handler. As a ballhandler, he exploits drop coverage defenders who are wary of his ability to drive with his size by shooting off the dribble. He’s scoring at 1.24 points per possession off the dribble, in the 97th percentile of all players.
Mirkovic’s craftiness as a dribble driver off of screens is borderline unfair. His coordination and handles allow him to get to his spot quicker than help defenders can predict and his ability to change directions and utilize pivoting when finishing helps him create counter angles on his drives. He’s scoring at over 1.2 points per possession both at the rim and with runners in the paint.
That fluidity and savvy handle makes Mirkovic a diverse threat when Illinois is able to get out in transition. He has nearly as many attempts from inside the paint and at the rim as he does as the trailing shooter on three-point attempts, shooting 66.7% on fastbreak field goals, 63.6% from three.
If Mirkovic was only capable of the components of his game that were evident early on in his first collegiate season — his work as a rebounder, effort player and 2nd chance scorer–he’d still be indispensable to this Illini team.
“I think Mirk, all year he's been one of the best freshmen in the country,” Wagler said after Mirkovic’s 29-point and 15-rebound performance in the Round of 64. “With this loaded freshman class we have, he's been overshadowed a bit. We see every day in practice, and in the games, he does all the little stuff for us. He rebounds, plays physical, plays hard all the time.”
Mirkovic has increased his offensive rebounding rate to 15.7% in the NCAA tournament and his defensive rebounding rate to 23.7%. He leads power forwards in the tournament in offensive rebounds, averaging 4 per game. His 4.3 second chance points per tournament game are in the 99th percentile for forwards as well.
Mismatch hunting makes second-chance opportunities a cheat code for Illinois ' offense. The Illini have a 7-footer on the floor at seemingly all times, but it’s actually Mirkovic, often with a guard switched onto him, that makes it difficult for opponents to stop the bleeding against the #1 point-per-possession offense in the country.
When Mirkovic is off the floor, Illinois’ offensive rebounding percentage goes from 41.2% to 34.1%. His team-leading 134 second chance points are 47 points higher than the second-leading putback scorer. 28.8% of his points have come from putbacks in the NCAA tournament.
“That's what I do every day, even practices and on games,” Mirkovic said after the win over Penn. “I just crash the board trying to bring that physicality, and I mean balls on the offensive glass were just like magnets to me because I was crashing and I got a lot of easy points on the rim. That's what [gets] me going and the whole team. Just that."
What’s been clear throughout Illinois’ run in March is that it doesn’t matter whether it’s on the court or off, this team feeds off Mirkovic getting things going.
