Illini foul trouble leads to another loss against Arizona
28-12. No, that’s not the score, that’s how many fouls each team had. 37-9. Again, not the score but the amount of free throws attempted by each team. I’ll give you one guess as to who had the higher numbers. Illinois played a great first half minus the last few minutes that Arizona was able to creep a little closer. The aggressiveness of each team picked up in the 2nd half with each team trading buckets for a stretch. The refs got whistle happy (a common theme these days) and Carter was forced to go to the bench early in the 2nd half with his 4th foul. Then Pruitt picked up #4 followed by McBride and Brock. Late in the 2nd half, the refs missed several fouls committed against the Illini and Coach Weber lost his cool. The refs of course had no problem blowing a whistle and giving him a technical foul. So in the end, the Illini lost 84-72. The lovely storyline was that Arizona overcame a 16 point deficit to win the game. Granted it wasn’t even close to the Illini’s 15 point comeback in the final 4 minutes of the game back in 2005. Positive factors included a great performance by Carter as well as the team looking really dominating in that first half. As we all know, you have to play 40 minutes of great basketball to win the game. Hopefully these guys will continue getting better while we await Randle and Smith’s return from the land of the injured.
