Illinois Faces UConn Again in Final Four, But Insists This Is No Rematch

When Keaton Wagler fouled out of the eighth game of his college career at Madison Square Garden on Nov. 28, he had logged 14 forgettable minutes against a UConn team already pulling away. The final score was UConn 74, Illinois 61. At Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis tonight, Brad Underwood's program insists that number means nothing.

The Illini that tip off against the second-seeded Huskies at 6:09 p.m. ET on TBS look almost nothing like the 10-man rotation that shot 21 percent from three in November. Wagler, who turned 19 in February and is the only major college program that ever recruited him out of Mission Northwest High School in Kansas, is now averaging 17.9 points, 5.0 rebounds, and 4.3 assists per game. He earned South Region Most Outstanding Player honors and is a projected lottery pick. "I think we are peaking right now," he told reporters Thursday.

The rotation itself tells the fuller story. Mihailo Petrovic played 11 minutes in November and went 1-for-7 from the field. Brandon Lee got 18 minutes and never attempted a shot. Neither plays meaningful minutes now: Petrovic has scored 10 total points across 15 appearances since that game, while Lee has stayed in single-digit minutes each outing. Those combined 29 minutes have been redistributed to Jake Davis, now a starter after coming off the bench in November, to David Mirkovic, who played just 18 minutes at the Garden and also now starts, and to Andrej Stojakovic, whose instant-offense role off the bench barely existed four months ago. Ben Humrichous has been inserted into the starting five as a defensive specialist.

The defensive identity is the most striking transformation. Illinois allowed at least 1.17 points per possession in six of its final nine regular-season games and dropped five of them. The Illini have since held No. 2 seed Houston to 55 points in the Sweet 16 and dispatched Iowa 71-59 in the Elite Eight. Their offense ranks No. 1 nationally in efficiency on KenPom. The defense catching up to it changed the program's ceiling.

"There's a reason that we got here, and you don't wanna get here and just fall short," said guard Kylan Boswell, who nearly single-handedly kept Illinois in the November loss with 25 points while the rest of the Illini managed 0.92 points per possession, the only time all season the offense fell below one. Illinois is in the Final Four for the first time since 2005.

UConn arrives as the program most accustomed to this stage. Hurley's Huskies, who won back-to-back titles in 2023 and 2024, are chasing a third in four years and enter Saturday 12-1 all-time in Final Four appearances. Freshman guard Braylon Mullins hit a buzzer-beater from beyond the arc to complete a 19-point comeback against Duke in the Elite Eight. Hurley acknowledged Illinois's evolution directly. "They've got length, they're smart, they're physical," he said. "They're one of the best-coached teams you'll see."

The central question Saturday is whether UConn can reproduce the defensive blueprint that held Illinois to 6-for-29 from three in November. Wagler now operates as both primary ball-handler and off-ball scorer, a dual threat he had not fully developed in his eighth college game. UConn senior Tarris Reed Jr., averaging 14.7 points, will need to stay out of foul trouble against the Ivisic twins, Tomislav and Zvonimir, who give Illinois a physical frontcourt presence it lacked in November.

Illinois enters as a 1.5-point favorite. Underwood's program has already absorbed two losses to Hurley's, including the 30-0 UConn run that ended Illinois's 2024 Elite Eight in Boston. Which team's identity survives when the pace tightens in Indianapolis will determine who plays for a championship Monday night.