{"id":64031,"date":"2025-11-25T07:09:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T07:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/64031\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T07:09:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T07:09:08","slug":"stojakovic-scores-24-points-no-13-illinois-beats-texas-rio-grande-valley-87-73-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/64031\/","title":{"rendered":"Stojakovic scores 24 points, No. 13 Illinois beats Texas Rio Grande Valley 87-73"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP)  Andrej Stojakovic scored 24 points for his fourth 20-point performance in five games, leading No. 13 <a class=\"Annotation-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/college-basketball\/teams\/ILL\/illinois-fighting-illini\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Illinois<\/a> to an 87-73 victory over Texas Rio Grande Valley on Monday night.<\/p>\n<p>Mihailo Petrovic had 12 points, and David Mirkovic and twins Zvonimir and Tomislav Ivisic each added 10 for the Illini (6-1). They are 6-0 at home.<\/p>\n<p>Illinois has started the season scoring 80 or more points in all seven games. The Illini haven\u2019t done that since the 1988-89 season, when the Flyin\u2019 Illini, who lost in the national semifinals of the NCAA Tournament, opened with 12 consecutive games of 80 or more points.<\/p>\n<p>Kye Dickson scored 21 points and Filip Brankovic had 15 for the Rio Grande Valley (2-4), which trailed 42-31 at halftime and cut the Illinois lead to six points twice early in the second half, but didn&#8217;t get any closer.<\/p>\n<p>Stojakovic scored 14 points in the first half.<\/p>\n<p>Illinois, the top rebounding team in the Big Ten, outrebounded the Vaqueros. 44-32. Keaton Wagler and Ben Humrichous each had eight rebounds, Zvonimir Ivisic had seven, and Stojakovic had six.<\/p>\n<p>The Vaqueros went 16-15 last seasonr. It was their first winning season since 2018-19.<\/p>\n<p>Rio Grande Valley is a second-year member of the Southland Conference after spending 11 years in the Western Athletic Conference.<\/p>\n<p>Illinois coach Brad Underwood went 53-1 against Southland Conference teams while winning three regular-season and three conference tournament championships from 2013-2016, when he at Stephen F. Austin.<\/p>\n<p>Texas Rio Grande Valley: At Stephen F. Austin on Dec. 3.<\/p>\n<p>Illinois: Vs. No. 5 UConn at Madison Square Garden in New York on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here and here (AP News mobile app). AP college basketball: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/college-basketball<\/p>\n<p class=\"StatsincCopyright\">\n    Copyright 2025 STATS LLC and Associated Press. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC and Associated Press is strictly prohibited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP) Andrej Stojakovic scored 24 points for his fourth 20-point performance in five games, leading No.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2692,763,27,29,28,32639],"class_list":{"0":"post-64031","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-college-basketball","9":"tag-illinois-fighting-illini","10":"tag-texas","11":"tag-texas-headlines","12":"tag-texas-news","13":"tag-utrgv-vaqueros"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64031","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=64031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}