INDIANAPOLIS — So what do you want first, the good news or the good news?
But don’t be confused. Illinois coach Brad Underwood isn’t. No. 1 seed Illinois lost 65-63 to No. 9 seed Indiana here Friday in the Big Ten tournament quarterfinals, and, well, what a bummer, right? Wrong, if you listen to Underwood.
“I think it’s great to push the ‘refresh’ button now,” he said. “We came here to win [the tournament]. We didn’t. But it’s not the end of the world.”
That’s because the NCAA Tournament — “why [we] really play,” according to Underwood — is next for the Illini (22-9). They’ll find out the wheres and the whoms on Sunday shortly after a Big Ten final that will take place with the conference co-champs back in Champaign.
The Hoosers (20-12) will have some exciting travel plans of their own to book. They came to Gainbridge Fieldhouse on the bubble and under all kinds of pressure to win a couple of games. They’ve done that now, and get this: They want to win a couple more.
“We didn’t pack for two days,” said Trayce Jackson-Davis, who scored 15 of his 21 points in the second half and put the Hoosiers ahead from the foul line with 26.1 left to play. “We didn’t pack for three days. We packed to win the Big Ten.”
What kind of nutty thinking is that?
The Illini won the Big Ten shindig in 2021, helping them land a No. 1 seed in the Big Dance, and we all know how that turned out — with a second-round loss to Loyola that still stings more than a little. After losing a game to Indiana that, let’s face it, the Illini shouldn’t have lost, Underwood seemed almost relieved.
Someone asked him if a little extra rest might actually help.
“A lot, yes,” he said. “A ton. A ton. After winning this last year? A ton. We were an exhausted basketball team last year.”
Is it really better to go one-and-done in the conference tournament after all that work to win 15 league games? As Underwood pointed out, Baylor didn’t win the Big 12 postseason championship a year ago but still went on to crush unbeaten Gonzaga for the national title. Who won the Big 12 event? Texas, which lost in the first round of the Big Dance — to Abilene Christian, no less — in the very next game.
Still, banners aren’t to be taken for granted, and whoever cuts down the nets here Sunday is going to get one worth hanging. Underwood might even feel a pang of envy as he sits comfortably at home and watches, but one supposes we’ll never know.
Is winning contagious? Sometimes it seems to be with the Illini, who have won 44 regular-season league games over the last three seasons.
But cockeyed shooting can be contagious, too, as the Illini demonstrated while dissolving in an ocean of missed shots and turnovers. It was a truly terrible day at the office for the Illini offense, with no one other than Kofi Cockburn — who was magnificent with 23 points — and Coleman Hawkins (career-high 18) doing anything he’ll care to remember.
The Illini shot an abysmal 35.2% from two-point range. Take out Cockburn’s 8-for-13 and it was an astonishing 19% from inside the three-point line. They missed layups like it was the latest TikTok trend. Hawkins and Omar Payne missed what should have been easy dunks. There were eight missed free throws, too, one of them a front-end killer clanked by the mercurial Andre Curbelo — who later missed a layup attempt for a go-ahead bucket in the final seconds, an ending that was bitterly fitting.
“We’ve just got to make free throws and layups,” guard Trent Frazier said. “That was the game.”
It sounds simple. It had better become simple or else the Illini are going to be bounced from March Madness without delay.
After Hawkins hit a three-pointer for a 57-54 lead with 5:04 to play, all five Illini players slapped the floor at the defensive end. This was what you wanted to see. They hadn’t played well, but the real Illinois was standing up. Right? No, wrong again.
Jackson-Davis scored back-to-back buckets, with a careless Curbelo turnover in between. Hawkins and Frazier would soon join him in the late-turnover department. Another Illini possession would end in a shot-clock violation. Was it amateur hour?
And the missed layup at the end? It left Curbelo at 1-for-6 on two-point shots. Alfonso Plummer was 0-for-5. So many makeable shots missed — an absurd number of them really — and still the Illini nearly won. Which tells you, of course, that they should have won.
Is losing in the conference tournament really a good thing for a team with an NCAA bid already locked up? You can decide for yourself what you think. But there’s losing, and then there’s playing at the offensive end like a team whose season hasn’t even started.
Losing ugly might not be all Underwood cracked it up to be. Matter of fact, it just might be asking for trouble.
