Two games. 232 points. Not much learned.

That’s the Illinois season so far, and none of it is the Illini’s fault. Fairleigh Dickinson came to Champaign and lost 120-45. Penn came three nights later and lost 112-70.

Tuesday night in Lubbock is the first game that goes on the résumé.

No. 3 Illinois plays No. 19 Texas Tech at United Supermarkets Arena at 7 p.m. Central, on Peacock and NBCSN. Both teams are 2-0. Only one of them has been made to sweat, and it’s the home team. Bethune-Cookman twice got within six points of Tech in the second half on Thursday before the Red Raiders pulled away, 76-58.

Round two of Illinois-Texas Tech basketball flips last year’s script.

Last November, in Champaign, Illinois won 81-77 while JT Toppin put up 35 points and 11 rebounds on them. That night the home team was hanging on.

Now Illinois walks into the building where Texas Tech doesn’t lose to outsiders. The Bethune-Cookman win was Tech’s 48th straight nonconference home victory, according to the Associated Press.

Forty-eight.

Which makes for an odd little truth about Tuesday. The ranked visitor is risking less than the team at home.

A loss in Lubbock in the second week of November dents nobody’s March. Illinois went to the Final Four last spring, its first in 21 years. Nobody picking a bracket is going to forget that over one road loss in game three.

A win is another matter.

Road wins over ranked teams are the most valuable thing a résumé can hold, and they don’t come easy in Lubbock. Tuesday is the first time since 2020 that two ranked teams have met in a nonconference game there, according to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. Grab one in the first fortnight and it sits on the record all winter, waiting for the committee to find it.

And Illinois would be grabbing it short-handed.

David Mirkovic, an AP preseason All-American, had an emergency appendectomy two days before the opener while still coming back from foot surgery. He’s out indefinitely. Senior wing Jake Davis hurt his shoulder in the opener and is out indefinitely after surgery.

So the minutes went to the kids.

Which brings up the question everybody keeps asking about this trip, and the answer is simple.

Lubbock is not a decision point for the Illinois rotation. The decision was already made, by a surgeon and an appendix.

The freshmen aren’t auditioning. They are the rotation.

Against Penn, four of Illinois’s six double-figure scorers were freshmen. Quentin Coleman went 8 for 9 from the field for 19 points. Zavier Zens hit four threes and scored 18. Ethan Brown had 13 points and 10 rebounds. In the opener, Coleman and Brown combined for 25 points and 19 rebounds in their college debuts.

“They’re tough, and they compete,” Brad Underwood said of the freshmen after the Penn game.

Easy to say after a 42-point win. Tuesday is the first time the rest of the country gets to check his work, in a building that will be loud from the opening tip.

What makes the trip less scary than it sounds is what Texas Tech is missing.

Toppin, the man who nearly beat Illinois by himself last year, is still out with a torn ACL. The Red Raiders’ tallest starter is a 6-foot-10 freshman. The next tallest is 6-foot-6, per On SI’s scouting of the Red Raiders.

Illinois, meanwhile, has the Ivisic twins, and it rebounds like it’s being paid by the board. The Illini outrebounded Fairleigh Dickinson 65-21. Against Penn they scored 66 points in the paint to Penn’s 28.

“Illinois, they gang rebound,” Peacock’s John Fanta said ahead of the game. “They can really get you on the glass and they can do it in waves.”

Tech’s answer is guards.

Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn, who spent two seasons as an Illini before landing in Lubbock by way of UNLV, scored 25 against Bethune-Cookman. Donovan Atwell made a school-record 130 threes last season.

But the Red Raiders are 23.3% from three through two games, per Wreck’Em Red. A small team that isn’t making shots, against a big team that eats rebounds, is a math problem with only one comfortable answer.

Then there’s speed. Illinois is averaging 116 points a game. Tech scored 76 in each of its two wins, and its whole case on Tuesday rests on dragging this into the mud.

“With our pace, I feel like we broke them down,” Coleman said after Penn.

Penn isn’t Texas Tech. The Red Raiders press the ball, force turnovers and rotate well. They won’t break down just because somebody runs.

But the shape of it is clear enough. Illinois has the size, the depth and the pace. Texas Tech has the building, the streak and a backcourt that needs to get hot.

If Illinois wins, the résumé gets its first real entry and the freshmen stop being a nice early story. They become the reason a team without its best player still looks like a No. 3.

If Texas Tech wins, it has the anchor of a season played without Toppin, and the streak rolls to 49.

If Tech loses, it gives up something no nonconference visitor has taken out of that building in 48 tries.

Forty-eight and counting.

Or forty-eight, period.