POST-GAME VIDEO: No. 5 Illinois 94, Minnesota 63 - Illini Guard Ayo Dosunmu
Illinois guard Ayo Dosunmu spoke to national, local and statewide media via Zoom video following the 94-63 overtime win at Minnesota on Feb. 20.
The preseason All-America candidate continued his ongoing case for National Player of the Year by being the first player in Illinois basketball history to record multiple triple-double efforts and the junior guard has done it in a 14-day period.
The junior guard from Chicago, who is getting nearly every major news outlet to follow his campaign for Naismith Player of the Year and Big Ten Conference Player of the Year, put up 19 points, 10 assists and 10 rebounds in a blowout road win for the No. 5 Illini inside Minnesota’s Williams Arena.
Dosunmu had 21 points, 12 assists and 12 rebounds in a 75-60 home win over Wisconsin on Feb. 6 and filled up the stat sheet with double figures once again Saturday as the Illini (16-5, 12-3 in Big Ten Conference) rolled to an impressive road win against a Minnesota squad that was 13-1 at home this season coming into this weekend. The only thing Dosunmu didn’t do was called this triple-double in the halftime locker room like he did 14 days earlier against Wisconsin.
“I’m not a psychic,” Dosunmu said with a laugh in his post-game Zoom media conference. “Like I said before, I was just trying to go out today and have fun.”
Dosunmu is one of only three Illini players to ever record a triple-double and owns two of the three triple-double marks among Big Ten players in this season.
Since 1971, when the program began statistically tracking such accomplishments, Illinois has had five players record more than 30 points in a game at least four times in a season and Dosunmu is also part of this elite group of scorers that includes Nick Witherspoon (1973), Andy Kaufmann (1991), Malcolm Hill (2016) and Rick Schmidt (1975).