March 20, 2022: Houston 68, Illinois 53 (Round of 32)<\/a><\/p>\nLuke Goode and RJ Melendez were 2 years old the last time Illinois made it to the Sweet 16.<\/p>\n
They won\u2019t be 19 when the Illini make their next.<\/p>\n
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On the backs of the freshmen and All-American Kofi Cockburn, the Illini nearly roared back to another ugly NCAA Tournament win to advance to the second weekend for the first time since 2005, but a late run by Houston was enough to propel the Cougars to a 68-53 victory at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh on Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n
After a lethargic first 15 minutes of just 11 points, the freshman duo sparked a late run to give the Illini a fighting chance in the second half. Melendez and Goode combined for 11 first-half points off the bench (on a perfect 4-for-4 combined shooting). Neither rookie appeared in Illinois\u2019 54-53 come-from-behind win over Chattanooga in the Round of 64 on Friday.<\/p>\n
But until the pair got going, Illinois\u2019 offense wasn\u2019t doing itself any favors. Six first-half three-point attempts came off the hands of Coleman Hawkins and Andre Curbelo \u2014 neither of who shoots better than 29% from behind the arc. Hawkins made one, Curbelo made none, and despite playing big roles against the Mocs, the two sophomores didn\u2019t get much tick after the break.<\/p>\n
Worse than all of that, until the freshmen got on the court, if your name wasn\u2019t Kofi Cockburn, you were a non-factor on offense in the first half. Trent Frazier, battling an eye infection, made his first bucket of the tournament and a buzzer-beater before the break, while sniper Alfonso Plummer missed his first six shot attempts.<\/p>\n
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Shooting wasn\u2019t the only issue for Brad Underwood\u2019s team. Illinois seemingly couldn\u2019t successfully inbound a pass to get the offense running, and the Cougars \u2014 one of the best offensive rebounding teams in the nation \u2014 dominated the boards, even with big man Josh Carlton in foul trouble much of the second half. Illinois finished with 16 turnovers (7 on inbounds passes) and was out-rebounded 39-33.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How to Watch No. 3 Illinois vs. No. 2 Houston (NCAA Tournament Sweet 16) Game Time:\u00a0~9:05 p.m. CT…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216134,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[84372,81129,84370,84374,7814,56,2742,58,57,763,84376,84371,3112,84373,9915,84375,57715],"class_list":["post-216133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-andre-curbelo","tag-bon-secours-wellness-arena","tag-brad-underwood","tag-coleman-hawkins","tag-greenville","tag-houston","tag-houston-cougars","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-illinois-fighting-illini","tag-josh-carlton","tag-kofi-cockburn","tag-ncaa-tournament","tag-rj-melendez","tag-south-carolina","tag-trent-frazier","tag-vcu-rams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}