Iowa jumped out to a 12-2 lead, but the Fighting Illini fought back. Then, there was a horn delay for 11 minutes where after the break. When play resumed, Bennett Stirtz hit a layup and a three-pointer to extend the lead to 7, but the Fighting Illini fought back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second half was more back and forth as the teams kept exchanging the lead. With about 7 1\/2 minutes, Bennett Stirtz got fouled and hit both free throws to give Iowa a 51-50 lead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then Illinois’ David Mirkovic got fouled and hit his free throws to take the lead. Then after a missed three-pointer by Kael Combs, Illinois got the ball down to Tomislav Ivisic who hit a hook shot in the lane. Then Iowa’s Tavion Banks drove the lane but his layup was blocked by Ivisic. Illinois got the ball into him again at the lane, and once again Ivisic would hit the shot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then, Illinois played great defense on Bennett Stirtz, forcing him to try to pass it instead of shooting, and it was stolen by Keaton Wagler. On the offensive end, Wagler drove into the lane and hit the floater and suddenly, Illinois was up by 7.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was a foul by Ivisic on Isaia Howard in the lane, so they brought in his brother Zvonmir Ivisic. As one of the announcers was questioning Illinois’ coach Brad Underwood for the substitution when Tomislav had been so hot, Iowa’s Tate Sage drove the lane only to get stopped by Zvonmir. And then, on the offensive side, David Mirkovic drove the lane and lobbed it to Zvonmir for a thunderous dunk. Iowa would call timeout and the announcer would say that is the reason why he is announcing the games and Underwood is potentially leading his team to the Final Four.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And Illinois did not look back. Iowa’s Howard hit a three-pointer to cut the lead to five. And Tate Sage got fouled with about 2 minutes to play and hit his free throws to cut the lead to 4. But that is as close as the Hawkeyes would get.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Keaton Wagler would make a nice pass underneath to Andrej Stojakovic for a layup, Iowa’s Cam Manyawu missed a shot, and Wagler got fouled and hit his free throws to extend the lead to 8. And the celebration was ready to begin in Champaign-Urbana. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Illinois Fighting Illini are the first team to cut down the nets at their regional site. Next weekend, they will make the 2 hour drive to nearby Indianapolis for a chance to play in the 2026 Final Four.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Iowa jumped out to a 12-2 lead, but the Fighting Illini fought back. Then, there was a horn delay for 11 minutes where after the break. When play resumed, Bennett Stirtz hit a layup and a three-pointer to extend the lead to 7, but the Fighting Illini fought back. The second half was more back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2026-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3611"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3612,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3611\/revisions\/3612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}