Iowa's Bennett Stirtz Explains How Illinois' Kylan Boswell Ruined His Sunday

Iowa guard Bennett Stirtz was a preseason All-Big Ten selection by the media and is considered a future NBA first-round draft prospect – maybe even a lottery pick. He entered Sunday's game against No. 16 Illinois in Iowa City averaging 18.0 points on 50.0 percent shooting through his first 15 games in a Hawkeyes uniform.

Bottom line: Stirtz, a 6-foot-4 senior guard who arrived from Drake with first-year coach Ben McCollum in the offseason, is freakishly talented.

But on Sunday morning at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, Stirtz met his defensive match in Illini guard Kylan Boswell. Illinois' game plan was clearly designed with its first, second and third priorities being to bottle up Stirtz. Much of its success, though, hinged on Boswell simply taking every opportunity to pour sugar in the gas tank of Iowa's offensive engine.

After it was all said and done, Stirtz was held to 12 points on 5-for-17 shooting (his second-worst shooting performance of 2025-26) and a season-low Hollinger game score of 4.0. Those figures had Boswell's fingerprints all over them.

Kylan Boswell 's lockdown defense is a sleeping giant

Stirtz's rough-and-tumble outing was a reminder to all, after a 2024-25 season in which Boswell was somehow left off the All-Big Ten Defensive Team, that the 6-foot-2, 215-pound senior can be an absolute wrecking ball when the conditions call for it.

Brad Underwood on Kylan Boswell rising to the challenge (again) of guarding the other team's best player: pic.twitter.com/USdpYWp7cO
— Glenn Kinley (@glenn_kinley) January 11, 2026

Frankly, that hasn't been the case as often this season as in years past. With 7-footers Tomislav and Zvonimir Ivisic lurking in the paint, with Andrej Stojakovic and Keaton Wagler capable of picking up some slack, and with the teeth of Illinois' team defense having been sufficiently sharpened as the season has progressed, Boswell has been able to devote more focus and energy to the other side of the ball, where he is having a career-best season (14.7 points, 3.3 assists and only 1.3 turnovers per game).

So while Boswell's current offensive box plus-minus of 4.7 per game is almost double his career high of 2.6 last season, his defensive numbers have dipped: a 3.0 defensive box plus-minus (down from 3.5 each of his past two seasons) and a 104.8 defensive rating (slightly better than last season's 105.2 but well off the 100.0 of his two combined seasons at Arizona). As we saw against Iowa, and as Stirtz would attest himself, Boswell, when properly engaged, is as disruptive a force as he ever was.

Iowa's Bennett Stirtz breaks down Kylan Boswell's defense

"They put Boswell, Stojakovic, Wagler [on me], and then they were switching, they were throwing everyone at me – and at everyone else, like Kael [Combs], with the ball screens," Stirtz said after Sunday's game. "They tried to change it up, and it worked. They made us uncomfortable, so credit to them."

Illini coach Brad Underwood pointed out that it wasn't just one player responsible for throwing cold water on Stirtz, but he also went out of his way to detail Boswell's physical and existential impact, noting that "it was him setting the tone." Stirtz seemed to agree.

"He picks and chooses his spots on defense," Stirtz said. "He knows the plays. It's a well-coached team. They knew what was coming, and then the ball-screen coverages were there, too. So it was on point tonight."