(AP) – Pennsylvania Quakers (18-11, 11-5 Ivy League) vs. Illinois Fighting Illini (24-8, 15-6 Big Ten)<\/p>\n
Greenville, South Carolina; Thursday, 9:25 p.m. EDT<\/p>\n
BETMGM SPORTSBOOK LINE:<\/a> Fighting Illini -24.5; over\/under is 150.5<\/p>\n BOTTOM LINE: No. 13 Illinois squares off against Pennsylvania in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n The Fighting Illini\u2019s record in Big Ten games is 15-6, and their record is 9-2 in non-conference play. Illinois is the Big Ten leader with 37.5 rebounds per game led by David Mirkovic averaging 7.8.<\/p>\n The Quakers are 11-5 in Ivy League play. Pennsylvania is 5-3 in one-possession games.<\/p>\n Illinois is shooting 46.3% from the field this season, 1.2 percentage points higher than the 45.1% Pennsylvania allows to opponents. Pennsylvania has shot at a 44.1% rate from the field this season, 3.1 percentage points above the 41.0% shooting opponents of Illinois have averaged.<\/p>\n TOP PERFORMERS: Keaton Wagler is scoring 17.9 points per game with 4.8 rebounds and 4.4 assists for the Fighting Illini. Mirkovic is averaging 15.6 points and 6.7 rebounds while shooting 51.8% over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n Ethan Roberts is shooting 40.1% and averaging 16.9 points for the Quakers. TJ Power is averaging 20.0 points over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n LAST 10 GAMES: Fighting Illini: 5-5, averaging 83.8 points, 36.1 rebounds, 15.1 assists, 3.9 steals and 4.0 blocks per game while shooting 45.1% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 73.3 points per game.<\/p>\n Quakers: 9-1, averaging 75.6 points, 32.6 rebounds, 13.7 assists, 8.4 steals and 2.9 blocks per game while shooting 43.8% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 69.5 points.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive<\/a> and data from Sportradar<\/a>.<\/p>\n Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(AP) – Pennsylvania Quakers (18-11, 11-5 Ivy League) vs. Illinois Fighting Illini (24-8, 15-6 Big Ten) Greenville, South…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64925,5439,64929,64923,24753,64928,11242,64924,16108,28,30,29,58698,8082,18636,64926,64927],"class_list":["post-141811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-first-alert-4","tag-for","tag-fox-2-now","tag-illini","tag-illinois","tag-ksdk","tag-ncaa","tag-news-4","tag-opening","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-quakers","tag-round","tag-tournament","tag-watching-out-fo-ryou","tag-you"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}