Underwood celebrated after the game by waving both arms up in the air simultaneously at the Illinois crowd.<\/p>\n
Illinois, which had a huge height advantage, held VCU to 35% shooting and outrebounded the Rams 45-29. The Illini blocked five shots.<\/p>\n
Terrence Hill Jr. had 17 points for VCU (28-8).<\/p>\n
VCU’s Nyk Lewis went down for the game with a sprained right ankle in the opening minute and Illinois bolted to 20-8 lead.<\/p>\n
But just as they did on Thursday night against No. 6 seed North Carolina, when they came storming back from a 19-point, second-half deficit to win 82-78 in overtime, the Rams got back in it with a series of 3-pointers to take a 28-26 lead behind 12 first-half points from Hill.<\/p>\n
But VCU couldn’t sustain the momentum.<\/p>\n
Illinois took control late in the first half with Stojakovic scoring all nine points during a 9-0 stretch to close the half.<\/p>\n
![\"Illinois](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/18748366_AP26081059698680.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
Illinois guard Andrej Stojakovic dribbles against VCU guard Terrence Hill Jr. during the second round of the NCAA college basketball tournament, March 21, 2026, in Greenville, S.C.<\/p>\n
(AP Photo\/Brynn Anderson)<\/p>\n
The second half was all Illinois.<\/p>\n
The Illini pushed their lead to 17 early in the second half after VCU turnovers led to a high-flying transition dunk from Zvonimir Ivisic and Kylan Boswell’s 3 from the top of the key to beat the shot clock.<\/p>\n
The lead got to 23 with 4 minutes remaining, setting off a celebration among Illinois fans.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Illinois is 3-2 all-time against Houston, but the Cougars won the most recent meeting 68-53 victory in the second round of the 2022 NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n
ABC7 Chicago contributed to this report.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GREENVILLE, S.C. — Andrej Stojakovic scored 21 points and No. 3 Illinois beat 11th-seeded VCU 76-55 on Saturday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[241056,4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":["post-537978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-241056","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}