MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Terence Shannon Jr. scored 34 points on 15-for-17 shooting from the free throw line to help No. 13 Illinois beat Wisconsin 93-87 in a Big Ten Tournament game on Sunday.
Marcus Domask added 26 points, eight assists and seven rebounds and Dayne Dainja had nine points and seven rebounds for the Illini (26-8), who won their second conference tournament title in four years after shooting 16 of 26 in the second half time. They faced double-digit deficits in all three games.
“It was a little different every night,” coach Brad Underwood said. “I love that.”
AJ Storr had 24 points and Chucky Hepburn added 20 for the Badgers (22-13), who went 7 for 20 from 3-point range after going 33 for 79 in their first three games.
Shannon finished with 102 points in three games, one shy of the Big Ten Tournament record, and was named Most Outstanding Player. Keegan Murray had 103 points for Iowa in 2022, but the Hawkeyes went four games that year en route to the title.
After celebrating in a shower of orange and blue confetti and cutting down the nets at Target Center, the Illini headed to a side room for the NCAA Tournament Selection Show to learn they were the No. 3 seed in the East Region, with a game of first round on Friday against Morehead State.
Wisconsin received the No. 5 seed in the South Region and a first-round matchup against James Madison.
“Hats off to Wisconsin. Boy are they good. They’re going to make a lot of noise,” Underwood said.
Shannon, who broke the Big Ten Tournament single-game scoring record with 40 points in the semi-final victory over Nebraska, still faces a rape charge in Kansas for an alleged incident last year. His school-issued suspension was overturned by a federal judge after six games.
Wisconsin fans often jeered at him, but he was not easily angered. He coolly drained a 3-pointer after the break to give Illinois a 41-40 lead 31 seconds before halftime, sending a kiss to the red-clad Badgers crowd of 13,991.
Hepburn’s three-point play gave Wisconsin a 61-51 lead as a game, but Illinois went on a 21-5 run over the next 6 minutes to set up a tight finish.
Max Klesmith hit a 3-pointer for an 82-81 lead with 3:53 left and another to tie it with 1:57 left, but Shannon answered it from deep at the other end to make it 88-85 with 88 seconds left. He then stole a sloppy dribble from Storr on the other end, drove the other way to draw the foul and sank both free throws for a five-point lead.
“There’s been times in my career where those threes would just kill everything,” said Coleman Hawkins, who had seven points, six rebounds and two blocks. “We made some mistakes, but we were able to keep playing.”
Hepburn was a Wisconsin hero overtime win over top-seeded Purdue in Saturday’s semifinals, scoring the game-tying score at the buzzer in regulation and drawing a key layup foul to set up the Klesmit winner.
The junior guard passed the 1,000 career point mark in that game and contributed in all kinds of ways after sitting out the quarterfinal win over Northwestern with a knee injury.
“I feel like he’s one of the best players in our league,” Hawkins said. “When he’s aggressive, I feel like they’re a really good team.”
Illinois won the only regular season game between these teams two weeks ago, a 91-83 win fueled by Domask’s 31 points in the Waupun native’s first Wisconsin game since high school. The Southern Illinois transfer, a first-team All-Big Ten pick with Shannon, went 8-for-11 in that game.
“To come here and get the ring, that’s the conversations, the visions that I had with the coach during the recruiting process,” Domask said, “and we came in here and got the job done.”
Both the Badgers and Illini made their eighth appearance in the conference title game, which was the 26th time they’ve been hosted, a total surpassed only by Ohio State’s nine. Michigan State has the most Big Ten Tournament championships with seven.
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