HOUSTON — Illinois freshman Keaton Wagler dribbled out the final seconds Thursday night at the Toyota Center while his teammates danced and raised their hands in triumph at making it through the heavyweight fight.
Wagler said he thought to himself: “Just another checkpoint complete.”
The Illini may have bigger goals, but this one was a doozy to get through.
Illinois entered the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament with one of the top-rated offenses in the country, but it needed to match Houston’s elite defense to pull out the gritty win. The third-seeded Illini came through with a 65-55 victory over the second-seeded Cougars to advance to the Elite Eight, putting up their lowest scoring output in a win this season.
Illinois will play No. 9 seed and Big Ten rival Iowa, which beat No. 4 seed Nebraska 77-71 in the first game in the South Region on Thursday night to advance to its first Elite Eight since 1987. Tipoff is scheduled for 5:09 p.m. Saturday in Houston.
It will be Illinois’ sixth Elite Eight appearance since 1975 and second in three years. Since 2000, the Illini also made it to a regional final in 2001, in 2005 during the run to the national title game and in 2024.
Freshman forward David Mirković led Illinois with 14 points and 10 rebounds and Wagler added 13 points, 12 rebounds and three assists.
“It’s just all of us being prepared for the moment and wanting to continue moving on,” Illinois guard Kylan Boswell said. “We can feel it. We can see it in front of us. We continuously just make sure we have a 1-0 mentality, take care of that one game and put all of our effort into it.”
Houston entered as the country’s fourth-ranked defense, according to KenPom. And when the Illini went into halftime Thursday, they led just 24-22, the lowest-scoring half of this year’s tournament.
It was their defense that kept them in it.
Houston center Chris Cenac Jr. (5) shoots between Illinois center Tomislav Ivišić (13) and forward David Mirković during the second half in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament on Thursday, March 26, 2026, in Houston. (Ashley Landis/AP)
The Illinois game plan for Houston was to slow down its three guards. If the Cougars were going to win, it was going to be because their big men beat them with midrange shots over their length.
Guard Emanuel Sharp led the Cougars with 17 points, seven of them late in the game, and All-America freshman guard Kingston Flemings had 11 points. Meanwhile, center Chris Cenac Jr. scored six points on 3-for-12 shooting and forward Joseph Tugler had six points on 3-for-4 shooting.
“We were fairly comfortable with Cenac shooting short- to midrange jump shots, and we were going to live with that,” Illinois coach Brad Underwood said. “Every shot he took was one their guards didn’t take. It worked. And then for the most part I thought we did a nice job of limiting them to the one shot.”
Illinois coaches always stress rebounding, but it was especially important in this matchup, and the Illini came through with a 43-34 advantage.
“We knew that Cenac and Tugler, they back tap a lot of balls,” Underwood said. “They’re elite at it. So our bigs were going to have to hit bodies, but our guards were going to have to come clean it up. So we needed a big, big rebounding game from our guards. I thought Keaton just takes everything to heart. He’s had some big rebounding games this year, but to do this in this moment. You guys have got to understand what a joy it is to coach him, and he doesn’t worry about needing to score points.”
Underwood credited defensive coordinator Camryn Crocker with coming up with the right plan, and his players with coming through.
The Cougars shot 27% from the field in the first half and 34% overall. They finished 28% from 3-point range.
Illinois’ Keaton Wagler, left, shoots against Houston’s Chase McCarty and Joseph Tugler in the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA Tournament on Thursday, March 26, 2026, in Houston. (Alex Slitz/Getty)
“Just our communication, our talk, and I think we’ve built a lot of trust on that end,” Wagler said of the defensive keys. “Practices we built a lot of chemistry on that side. We’ve been heavy, having our hands out. When we do that for a full 40 minutes, it will be hard to score on us a lot.”
Illinois turned the two-point halftime lead into a 44-26 advantage with a 17-0 run. Mirković and Ben Humrichous made back-to-back 3-pointers to punctuate it, and the Illini jumped and danced off the bench into a timeout.
Houston went nearly seven minutes without a basket before Milos Uzan broke it with a 3-pointer with 11:20 to play. The Cougars clawed back within nine points on back-to-back 3-pointers by Chase McCarty with 6:32 to play. But Tomislav Ivišić and Wagler followed with their own 3-pointers to counter.
Houston made another late run, with Sharp’s drive with 42 seconds to play cutting it to seven points. Illinois hadn’t scored a field goal since lengthening its lead to 58-41 with 3:41 to play, though Boswell made 6 of 10 free throws after that. But the Illini held on for the win.
Ivišić said the talk at halftime was to “just keep playing like we played.”
“We knew if we played defense like we played, shots would come in,” he said. “Just keep playing hard, don’t let them be comfortable and we knew that in the end if we stuck to our plan, we would win.”
The Cougars made every shot a battle in the early going. Through four minutes, Illinois shot 1-for-10 from the field and Houston 0-for-7.
Illinois’ Andrej Stojaković (2) shoots over Houston guard Kingston Flemings during the second half in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Ttournament on Thursday, March 26, 2026, in Houston. (Ashley Landis/AP)
Illinois found a little cushion when wing Andrej Stojaković hit a turnaround jumper at the shot-clock buzzer and then a corner 3-pointer on back-to-back possessions to give the Illini a seven-point lead with 4:23 to play in the half.
A Wagler 3-pointer made it eight points with 3:23 left in the half. But the Illini didn’t score again before halftime. Flemings’ 3-pointer with 1 second to play before halftime cut it to two.
“You want to throw the first punch,” Underwood said. “You don’t want to take the chance of getting knocked out if they throw the first one and hit you. So let’s throw the first one. I thought we took some blows, but it was us who were in a good position to withstand them.”
Iowa, which knocked off top-seeded Florida in the second round, continued its surprise tournament run behind 20 points and four assists from senior guard Bennett Stirtz.
Playing in front of a crowd packed with Nebraska fans, Stirtz gave Iowa its first lead of the game with a 3-pointer with 2:10 to play, and freshman Tate Sage followed with another 3 to make it 71-65 with 1:18 left.
Nebraska’s Braden Frager cut it to three with his own 3-pointer. But after a Nebraska timeout, Iowa’s Alvaro Folgueiras got behind Nebraska’s press with only four Cornhuskers players on the court for a dunk and a free throw after a foul. He had another big dunk with 34 seconds to play, and Iowa hung on.
Nebraska started the game hot, making 6 of 10 3-point attempts in the first nine minutes. That included three from Frager and two from Pryce Sandfort, who finished with 25 points.
But Nebraska’s three-minute scoring drought late in the first half allowed Iowa to pull within 40-38. Sage hit a 3-pointer at the first-half buzzer to cut Nebraska’s lead to 46-43, and the Hawkeyes mounted the comeback win from there.
Illinois won its only meeting with Iowa during the regular season 75-69 on Jan. 11 in Iowa City behind a balanced performance from its guards. Boswell helped hold Stirtz to 12 points in the game.
“Playing freaking Iowa for a Final Four is crazy, you know?” Boswell said.