All-too-familiar loss as Illinois bows out of NIT
CHAMPAIGN - The painfully slow start. The porous defense against a more athletic opponent.
The lopsided offense that relied far too heavily on junior point guard Demetri McCamey. The patented comeback that started too late and delivered too little.
For those who soured on Illinois' season long ago, the Illini offered familiar tastes to annoy every palate Wednesday night as Dayton dominated for a deceptively close 77-71 NIT quarterfinal win at Assembly Hall.
Illinois trailed by 14 with 2:43 to go and took advantage of some poor free-throw shooting to get as close as 4 with 19 seconds left.
Third-seeded Dayton (23-12) moved into the NIT semifinals at Madison Square Garden, while the top-seeded Illini (21-15) lost at home for the fourth time in the last five games.
"They kind of kicked us in the face right from the start," Illinois coach Bruce Weber said. "Pretty much, it was a mirror of what happened all year."
If Illinois didn't know what it faced in "midmajor" Dayton, it learned in the opening moments.
The Illini opened the night's scoring with a D.J. Richardson 3-pointer. But in the six seconds it took for Assembly Hall p.a. man Mike Cation to announce the basket over the roaring crowd, Dayton's Marcus Johnson flew the other way and threw down an uncontested dunk.
That hushed everyone in orange in a hurry - and the Flyers never relented.
"Our style of play is defend, rebound and run," Johnson said. "I don't think they were prepared at first."
"I thought, possibly, our speed and athletic ability might be effective," said Dayton coach Brian Gregory, the 1985 Hersey High School graduate. "And with the effort our guys gave tonight -"
As the first half unfolded, the visiting Flyers either pushed the ball quickly for easy baskets, nailed unexpected 3-pointers or crashed the glass for rebounds and fouls.
"I'm not blaming anyone," yelled Weber during an early timeout with Illinois already trailing by 14. "But they are playing at a high level and we are not!"
When Hersey graduate Luke Fabrizius swished a pair of 3-pointers in a 24-second stretch, Dayton owned a 29-13 lead with 10:10 left in the half. That massive deficit made it even tougher for Illinois to run its McCamey-heavy attack.
The Flyers rotated swift players all night and pressured him as hard as anyone did all year. McCamey finished with a team-high 13 points and 10 assists, but he needed to hoist 19 shots to bring his team back.
Junior center Mike Tisdale rarely got to use his height advantage in the post for the Illini as he fouled out with 7:58 to go. He finished with 6 points and 3 rebounds - half of his season averages.
Illinois shot 38 percent for the night as Tisdale and Jeff Jordan were the only players to hit at least 50 percent. Dayton, on the other hand, hit 48 percent of its shots overall and an uncustomary 44 percent of its 3-pointers.
Perhaps the lone highlight? McCamey broke Deron Williams' single-season record for assists (7.1 per game).
"You judge a point guard not off stats but off the number of wins," McCamey said. "I didn't get my team into the NCAA Tournament and we didn't win ballgames when they were close down the stretch."