Mar 15, 2008 7:58 pm US/Central
Fighting Illini Move Past Minnesota
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) ―
Forget fatigue.
Illinois coach Bruce Weber and his players simply have too much at stake now.
With their postseason hopes seemingly gone after a dismal regular-season, the Fighting Illini have become re-energized with three wins in three days, the latest being a 54-50 victory over Minnesota to send them into Sunday's championship game.
"We're not tired at all," forward Brian Randle said. "If you can't get up for a championship game, you shouldn't be playing basketball. Everybody on our team has been in AAU, playing five or six games a day in 100-degree gyms. This is where we wanted to be. This is where we expect to be."
Even if nobody else did.
Somehow, after a season of finding ways to lose, the Fighting Illini (16-18) have finally figured out to win -- and one more win would make them the most improbable team in the 65-team NCAA tournament field.
They face regular-season champion Wisconsin, the top seed, in Sunday's title game with the winner earning the conference's automatic NCAA bid. The eighth-ranked Badgers rallied to beat No. 19 Michigan State 65-63 in Saturday's other semifinal.
How shocking has this run been?
Consider Illinois came into the tournament with a record of 2-6 in games decided by five or fewer points and seeded 10th. Now they have won a season-high four straight games, the last three by one point, by seven in overtime and most recently by four.
The Illini also extended the Big Ten's longest active winning streak against an opponent to 20. Minnesota (20-13) has not beaten the Fighting Illini since the 1999 Big Ten tourney.
Most impressive, however, has been the guile Illinois demonstrated.
They are the lowest-seeded team to reach the championship game since Illinois made it as the No. 11 seed in 1999. But only one team, sixth-seeded Iowa in 2001, has ever won the title by playing on four successive days.
Illinois' mission is to change that.
"They've finally come together, and they're doing it as a team," Weber said. "They don't argue as much."
It's shown.
On Saturday, Randle and Shaun Pruitt exposed their advantage inside. Pruitt finished with 16 points and eight rebounds, Randle added 11 points and eight rebounds and the Illini held a six-point scoring edge in the paint.
That was enough against the sixth-seeded Gophers, who looked fatigued after having less than 15 hours between Friday's emotionally draining victory and Saturday's tipoff.
Like the Illini, Minnesota also was playing its third game in three days.
Unlike the Illini, the Gophers showed the effects. They looked sluggish during the first and last seven minutes of the game and never quite took control.
Lawrence McKenzie led Minnesota with 13 points, but nobody had more than four rebounds and the Gophers trademark defense, which led the Big Ten in steals (9.1) coming into the tourney, produced only five.
It was enough to doom the Gophers' NCAA hopes and likely end coach Tubby Smith's streak of consecutive NCAA appearances at 14.
"Physically, mentally, psychologically, you are spent," Smith said. "It takes time to recover from that. A lot of it had to do with playing a very good team."
Minnesota's biggest problem was its poor shooting. The Gophers opened the game missing 11 of their first 17 field goal attempts, six of their first eight free throws and finished the game with only two baskets in the final 6:51.
Illinois exploited those bookend droughts just enough to pull away.
The Illini opened the game on a 13-5 run, a margin it maintained for most of the game, even though it couldn't break away. Illinois led 29-23 at halftime, before Minnesota's 9-3 run to open the second half finally tied the score at 32.
For a few minutes it looked like the resilient Gophers were about to orchestrate another big comeback after rallying from a 16-point deficit against Northwestern and getting Blake Hoffarber's amazing buzzer-beater on Friday.
But Illinois ran off seven straight points to make it 39-32 with 8:53 to go and Minnesota never got closer than four the rest of the way.
The Illini took control with a late 6-0 spurt in 79 seconds and then hung on to reach their fourth title game in six years.
"It's going to be tough tomorrow, but that's what it's going to take," Weber said. "We've got to get loose balls, we've got to get some balls to go in the basket. We need some magic, that's what it takes."
(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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