It has definitely been a game of runs. The Huskies came out hot, as they took an 18-9 lead when Jayden Ross hit a three-pointer from the corner, and then Tarris Reed Jr got the ball down low by a nice pass from Alex Karaban and Reed finished it with a thunderous dunk. This forced Illinois to call time-out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Illinois came out strong after the time-out, and went on their own 13-3 run, being finished by Tomislav Ivisic hitting a deep three-pointer to give the Fighting Illini the lead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the final 4 minutes, it was all Huskies. Tarris Reed Jr made a hook shot in the lane, Solo Ball hit a three-pointer from the top of the key, Alex Karaban hit a three-pointer from the corner, and Braylon Mullins hit a three-pointer by banking it off the back-board as the shot clock ran down. And the Huskies will take a 37-29 lead into halftime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the end of the day, the difference is the three-point shooting. Illinois’ offense is kick-started by their ability to shoot from the outside, and they only made 3 of 14 in the first half. Meanwhile, UConn is 7-18 from three, as Braylon Mullins is 3-5 from deep and Jayden Ross added two three-pointers from the bench.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tarris Reed Jr looks unstoppable as he has 11 points. And Braylon Mullins has returned home to Indianapolis to get 12 points off his 3 three-pointers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Keaton Wagler has 10 points, and has had some really pretty drives to the basket, but he has been cold from outside. It certainly was a surprise that the only outside threat for Illinois so far as been their 7’1″ center Tomislav Ivisic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, the Huskies have an 8 point lead and are 20 minutes away from the championship game. Will the Huskies defense continue to styme Illinois from the outside, or will the Fighting Illini make a run? As UConn helped continue to remind us last Sunday, no lead is safe in March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It has definitely been a game of runs. The Huskies came out hot, as they took an 18-9 lead when Jayden Ross hit a three-pointer from the corner, and then Tarris Reed Jr got the ball down low by a nice pass from Alex Karaban and Reed finished it with a thunderous dunk. This forced […]<\/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-3664","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\/3664","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=3664"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3665,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3664\/revisions\/3665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}