INDIANAPOLIS — David Mirkovic committed to Illinois at halftime of last season’s NCAA Tournament title game featuring Florida vs. Houston. He was immediately added to a group text of Illini players that had the Indianapolis skyline as its main photo. That night, Illinois coach Brad Underwood shot him a prediction that next year at this time, Illinois would be playing for the title.
“That made me believe, you know,” Mirkovic told CBS Sports on Saturday.
Illinois did make it to Indianapolis, but neither he nor his Illini teammates are going to play for the national championship Monday because the margin of error in college basketball is oh, so slim.
One of the most special seasons of Illinois basketball is over after UConn — long a nemesis for the orange and blue — defeated the Illini 71-62 in a national semifinal game at Lucas Oil Stadium
The Illini locker room was predictably apoplectic after the loss.
“I’m just so sad, I just couldn’t help my team just get there and get to the opportunity to play on Monday,” Illinois senior guard Kylan Boswell said. “It just sucks to end my career like this. Our team not performing the way that we could have. We played our best, you know? 100% credit to UConn, it did a great job tonight. Dan (Hurley) is one of the best coaches in the nation. He’s a great motivating coach, and they’re ready to play. I think they just got their offense is really, really f—ing hard at guard. How much they move, how fast they move the ball. It’s hard to contain them.”
UConn was the better team over the 40-minute game, but the nightmares from this one may stay in Brad Underwood’s brain for more than a minute. Illinois shot 3 for 14 (22%) on catch-and-shoot 3-pointers, its second-lowest mark of the season. Andrej Stojakovic, an 80% free-throw shooter, missed three freebies in the first half. UConn point guard Silas Demary Jr. ripped away a key offensive rebound with 69 seconds left, which provided an opportunity for the Bringer of Rain to do Bringer of Rain things. Braylon Mullins‘ back-breaking triple with 52 seconds left gave UConn a seven-point lead and proved to be the dagger.
Illinois has now lost to UConn three times in the last three years, but this one had a slightly different tenor than getting eviscerated in the 2023 Elite Eight and losing at Madison Square Garden on Black Friday earlier this season.
Illinois missed layup after layup in agonizing fashion, and UConn banked in a triple and got a couple of friendly rolls on jumpers to illustrate just how cruel this beautiful game can be. The difference between wins and losses can be distilled down to the tiniest things on the biggest stage.
“I mean, we had layups that just circled the toilet bowl, popped out, and theirs hit every part of the rim, the backboard, and the damn Jumbotron and went in,” Illinois assistant coach Orlando Antigua said. “That’s the beauty of this tournament.”
Leading Illinois to the Final Four is a historic moment for Underwood, who has grinded his way up the ladder from junior college to the pinnacle of college basketball. But the gap between the top of the mountain and everyone else is separated by those miniscule moments.
“That’s all we talk about all year long,” Underwood said, still managing a wry smile minutes after this season ended at the hands of the Huskies. “It’s margins. They’re so small. Winning is really hard. Getting here is really hard. Winning is really hard. It’s why I have so much appreciation for Alex Karaban. He’s been to three of them. That’s freaky. It’s a rebound, it’s a loose ball, it’s a ball rolling in, it’s a banked three. One-possession game. It’s what that is. No possessions off, no time to — you can’t afford turnovers or whatever it is. It’s a margin, and it’s very small.”
Another special Illinois basketball season 21 years ago featured a 15-point rally with 4:04 to go in the 2005 Elite Eight, so a 14-point hole with 9:44 left was no sweat, right? Illinois cut it down to four. It notched seven kills on defense, which is three-straight stops. It held UConn to just four buckets at the rim.
And it still lost.
“Maybe it’s the uniforms,” Underwood said. “I don’t know. We make those shots against everybody else. I felt so good about the shots. When you miss some easy ones, then it stresses your defense. I couldn’t have been happier with our defense. I just thought that — again, we’re at the rim in some of those. Those are point-blank shots that we missed. Then it’s wide-open threes. It’s just part of the breaks. I don’t make too much of it against one team, but give them a lot of credit. They are very good defensively. They’re a top-10 defense. But we’ve seen those all year and still made shots.”
