Illinois Outraces Iowa in Big Ten Tournament Second Round

In Thursday's second round of the Big Ten Tournament in Indianapolis, No. 7 seed Illinois and No. 15 seed Iowa could have skipped the tip-off and instead lined up on the baseline in starting blocks. The conference's two highest-scoring teams – both of them currently running red hot – came out firing like an '80s action flick.

Led by three 20-plus-points scorers in Kylan Boswell, Tre White and Will Riley, the Illini (21-11) raced to a 106-94 win over the sweet-shooting Hawkeyes (17-16) to move on to Friday's semifinals matchup with second-seeded Maryland.

Statement game.

In his first Big Ten Tournament game, Kylan Boswell posts a career-high 24 points. pic.twitter.com/RROF9EigSx
— Illinois Men's Basketball (@IlliniMBB) March 14, 2025

Illinois hit 53.8 percent from the field – its third-best shooting performance of the season – and just kept ticking the rest of the boxes. A high-volume three-point shooting team, the Illini were actually hitting them against the Hawkeyes (12-for-26, 46.2 percent). They got to the line often and made it count: 24-for-30 (80.0 percent). With the triumphant return of Morez Johnson Jr. (eight rebounds, including five on the offensive glass), Illinois crushed Iowa on the boards, 41-24.

"You're always nervous the first game of the tournament," Illinois coach Brad Underwood said. "You watch TV and you see so many teams struggle to make shots, and I thought we got a rhythm early, we found a nice flow, we were great in transition – obviously 106 [points]. You're not gonna do that every night."

Neither is Boswell, who paced Illinois with a career-high 24 points on 10-for-14 shooting (and 4-for-7 on threes) despite coming in as an 11.4-points-per-game scorer (on 39.9 shooting from the floor). The Illini defensive ace didn't have much of an impact on the other end against the effusive Hawkeyes – especially the resurgent Payton Sandfort (game-high 20 points, eight three-pointers) – but he kept Illinois' offensive engine humming all night.

During perhaps the game's most critical stretch, Boswell was at his best. With Iowa making a push on a pair of Pryce Sandfort free throws and a Josh Dix layup to cut the Illinois lead to 61-55 at 15:30 of the second half, Boswell couldn't keep a lid on his offensive confidence.

An Iowa defender went under a screen on Boswell, and he splashed a three from the top of the key. Payton Sandfort answered at the other end with a turnaround jumper. An offensive rebound from Johnson was zipped into the corner to Boswell, who sank another long ball. Payton Sandfort sprinted back to toss in a three of his own to make it 67-60 Illinois.

But that was as close as the Hawkeyes could get. After Tre White hit a pair of free throws, Iowa coach Fran McCaffery – who had been consistently leaning on the refs up to that point – leaned a little too hard and was tagged with a technical. When he didn't stop, and threw in some extra color in his commentary, he was sent packing.

The result: Kasparas Jakucionis went to the line for four free throws, hitting all of them to extend the Ilini lead to 73-60, while the under-fire McCaffery left the floor for perhaps the last time as Iowa's head coach.

The Illini scored 57 second-half points and had all five starters finish with double-figures scoring, including Boswell, White (22), Riley (21), Tomislav Ivisic (19, plus 10 rebounds and six assists) and Jakucionis (10).

Illinois will have to quickly rally to ready for Maryland, which hammered the Illini 91-70 in Champaign in a game that Ivisic missed. Friday's Illini-Terrapins game is scheduled for approximately 5:30 p.m. CT (on CBS).

Illinois Outraces Iowa in Big Ten Tournament Second Round

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