DES MOINES, Iowa — Illinois came into the NCAA Tournament with nothing to lose, so Thursday’s first-round exit at the hands of Arkansas wasn’t as difficult to digest as their most recent tournament losses.
The No. 9 seed Illini lost 73-63, displaying the same shooting deficiencies and ballhandling woes we’ve seen from them much of the season.
Illinois committed 17 turnovers and shot 38.5% overall and 27.3 % (6-for-22) from 3-point range while hauling down only three offensive rebounds.
“We had a hard time getting into offense, and then every time we made a run, we missed a layup, we turned it over or missed free throws,” coach Brad Underwood said.
“We had opportunities. I love our team. They fought. They never hung their head. They never quit. One of the youngest team from a power five (conference), we forget we lost so much from the last couple teams.”
Arkansas, the No. 8 seed in the West, plays top seed Kansas on Saturday in the second round.
The Illini head back to the drawing board and will have to look at the transfer portal to add some stars for next season. Underwood pointed to three transfers — Alfonso Plummer, Terrence Shannon Jr. and Matthew Mayer — as evidence top players want to come to Champaign.
“We will continue to go find rock stars in the portal like we have the last two years,” he said.
Mayer wasn’t much of a rock star Thursday, going 0-for-6 and scoring his only two points on free throws.
In one of their patented endings, the Illini whittled a 17-point second-half deficit to five on RJ Melendez’s steal and dunk with 2½ minutes left. But a Coleman Hawkins turnover and a high-flying layup from Ricky Council IV at the 1:36 mark pushed the lead back to seven, and the Razorbacks held on down the stretch.
If the Illini players could write a self-help book on how not to start a game, they all would be prolific authors.
They came out and did what they’ve done all season, digging themselves an early hole by missing 12 of their first 15 shots. The Illini went into the half trailing 36-26, shooting 27.6 % (8-for-29) from the field.
Luke Goode hit two 3-pointers, but the rest of the lineup was a combined 1-for-9 in the half. The Illini also committed nine turnovers, leading to 13 Arkansas points.
Underwood said the players didn’t run the plays he called the first three possessions, which Melendez confirmed.
“It’s our fault, kind of, because he’s calling them and we’re not listening to him or we’re not doing ‘em,” Melendez said.
Shannon also said the team has to “do a better job of following (Underwood’s) game plan,” which makes you wonder whether they listen to anything he says.
Underwood told his players before the tournament to “let your hair down” in an effort to get them to play loose. He didn’t tell them to play without one shoe, though Mayer decided to do just that for a few possessions up and down the court in the first half.
Mayer’s right shoe came off on a trip downcourt, and instead of putting it back on he flipped it to the Illini sideline and continued to play with one shoe. Mayer went scoreless in the first half, missing all four shots to continue a cold stretch.
Arkansas missed its first seven field-goal attempts to let the Illini hang around but opened it up by hitting 8 of 10 in a six-minute stretch late in the first half that included dunks on back-to-back possessions from Council and Anthony Black.
The Illini sliced a 14-point deficit to five early in the second half, getting the Illini backers at Wells Fargo back in business. But the Razorbacks built it back up to 17 points at 55-38 with just less than 11 minutes remaining.
The Illini had one last run in them, but it wasn’t enough. The turnovers were too much to overcome.
“We just felt with their size that if we didn’t put pressure on them that we’d be doing ourselves a disservice,” Arkansas coach Eric Musselman said.
It was the third straight disappointing ending in the tournament for the Illini in the Underwood era after losing in the second round to Loyola in 2021 and to Houston last year. Their last Sweet 16 appearance came in 2005, the year Bruce Weber’s Illini lost to North Carolina in the championship game.
After a six-year tournament drought from 2014-19 and the cancellation of the 2020 NCAA Tournament due to COVID-19, the Illini are once again making it an annual tradition.
But the program is long past the point of which just getting in is good enough.
At some point the Illini need to start making some noise. Whether the team loses key players after the season remains to be seen. Goode could be a starter in many programs but was underutilized by the Illini after returning from a fractured left foot before the season.
“If they do go ... we will go find guys,” Underwood said of possible transfers. “We hope we don’t have to do that very often because we’ve got a couple of guys that are damn good players and guys that have grown a bunch and hope they’re all back.”
If the Illini plan to be a national power instead of just an above average program, the transfer portal probably will be Underwood’s best friend.
