Illinois basketball welcomes March Madness with its confidence high

CHAMPAIGN — As three-game losing streaks go, this one felt more like 10 or 20.

First, Illinois’ men’s basketball team blew a 16-point lead at home against Michigan State and lost 79-65, going scoreless and missing its last 18 shots over the final 8:29.

Next time out, at Wisconsin, the Illini were blown out 95-74, ending their nine-game winning streak against the Badgers.

And after that came — as if anyone needs a reminder — a 110-67 humiliation against Duke at Madison Square Garden, with the Illini missing their first 17 three-point attempts en route to the most lopsided defeat in their 120 seasons of existence.

Not great, you know?

But maybe it wasn’t all bad.

“I think we had to get punched,” coach Brad Underwood said. “And to be honest with you, we got smacked pretty good in New York. [But] they bounced back. And I think when you can get up off the mat, that’s who we want everybody in our program to be — a guy that gets up off the mat when you get knocked down.”

The Illini are officially back up on both feet and standing tall. Since the Duke debacle, they’ve won three in a row — a 20-point drubbing of Iowa at home, a 20-point rag-dolling of Michigan on the road and, Friday night in the regular-season finale, a thrilling 88-80 comeback win against Purdue at State Farm Center.

Against the Boilermakers, to whom they’d lose five straight, the Illini (20-11) closed the game on a 13-1 run that — in game No. 31 — was the highlight of the season. Better late than never to get everything pointed in the right direction.

“We’re peaking right at the right time,” said freshman Will Riley, whose 22-point night included a personal 7-0 spurt with a buzzer-beating three to end the first half, cutting a nine-point deficit to 42-40.

The Illini went down by nine with 15:20 to go, by 10 with 11:07 left and then — after a 6-0 Boilers spurt — by five with under three minutes left. But each time they needed a shot, a stop or a rebound, they found it. Heading into the postseason, with their first Big Ten tournament game on Thursday in Indianapolis, they seem to have found themselves.

“We know what type of caliber team we are and where we want to go,” said junior Tre White, who had 20 points and nine rebounds against Purdue after going for 19 and 11 against Michigan.

Last year’s Illinois team had been around the block, with an old core of Terrence Shannon Jr., Marcus Domask and Coleman Hawkins that didn’t need an app to find its way to second place in the Big Ten, a conference tournament championship and the Elite Eight of the Big Dance.

According to Underwood, that team had “two bad practices” out of 110 in all. Incredible, if true.

This team, with star freshmen Riley and Kasparas Jakucionis — and Morez Johnson Jr., possibly set to return from injury in Indy — plus first-year center Tomislav Ivisic, has needed to be coached hard. But its confidence is ramped up.

“To be very honest, it grew a lot after tonight,” Underwood said Friday. “Just simply the confidence to win a close game when things are really, really hard against an unbelievably good opponent and a team that has the best offense in the league, to get stops when you need them and to find enough moxie when you’re down four or five to make plays. My confidence is really high, and I wouldn’t maybe have said that [before].”