The Illinois men’s basketball team learned its NCAA Tournament opponent late Wednesday when Xavier beat Texas 86-80 in an NCAA First Four game in Dayton, Ohio.
The Illini (21-12) and Musketeers (22-11) will now meet in a first-round game at 8:45 p.m. Friday at Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum.
Here are five takeaways from No. 11 seed Xavier’s win as No. 6 seed Illinois prepares for the matchup.
1. Xavier came back from a 13-point deficit in the first half to pull off the win.
The Musketeers trailed by eight points at halftime and as many as 10 in the second half. But they used a 13-3 run to pull even at 65 with 8 minutes and 10 seconds to play.
They went ahead for good on a Zach Freemantle turnaround jumper in the paint with 1:48 to play. Freemantle made six points in the final two minutes — including two free throws and a game-sealing dunk — to help Xavier pull off the win.
The Musketeers shot 56.7% in the second half, including 50% on 7-for-14 shooting from 3-point range after halftime.
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Coach Sean Miller said at his postgame news conference that Xavier has been more of a first-half team this season, in part because some quick, deep Big East teams wore them down.
“Tonight we did not wear down,” Miller told reporters. “If anything, maybe we had a wearing-down effect, especially with the way the crowd was against Texas. But it was great to see us be down at halftime and respond because we’ve really been more of a team this season where we had to hold our lead and get to the end.”
2. Zach Freemantle’s story is one made for March.
In an era of player transfers, Freemantle, Xavier’s 6-foot-9 forward, is playing his sixth season for Xavier — and this is his first NCAA Tournament appearance.
He missed Xavier’s run to the Sweet 16 in 2023 because he had season-ending surgery on his left foot. He then missed all of last season after another foot surgery.
Despite getting into early foul trouble — and finishing the game with four fouls — Freemantle had 15 points, two rebounds and two assists in 28 minutes. But he didn’t classify it as a “storybook” first appearance in the tournament.
“Storybook, maybe not,” he said. “Obviously we would have liked to maybe win by a little more. But any win we can get is a great thing. It was a very hard-fought game. That’s a very good team we just played, and I’m just thankful to be a part of it.”
Freemantle was selected to the All-Big East second team and is averaging 17.2 points and seven rebounds per game.
3. Marcus Foster was a driving force in the Musketeers’ win.
Foster, a 6-foot-5 graduate student guard who transferred this season from Furman, led Xavier with 22 points and eight rebounds. He shot 8-for-9 from the field and 4-for-5 from 3-point range.
All four of Foster’s 3s came in the second half as Xavier mounted its comeback, including a huge 3 to cut Texas’ lead to one point with 6:27 to play.
Foster is fifth on the team in scoring with eight points per game for Xavier, which is led by Freemantle and Ryan Conwell (16.7 points per game). But he stepped up Wednesday.
“I’m glad my teammates were confident in me,” Foster said. “I know (Freemantle and Conwell) they found me a couple times. So I was able to get some clean looks. And that’s what we need. We need players to step up during these times and pull out wins.”
4. Texas’ hot offensive start tailed off in the second half.
Texas guard Tre Johnson, the SEC Freshman of the Year, showed why he has been a star, making a couple of head-turning plays in the first half. He made an off-balance 3-pointer against a Xavier double team look easy for an early 18-10 Texas lead. Later in the half, he drove the baseline for a pretty layup and a 13-point Texas lead.
He finished with 23 points. But the Longhorns offense struggled more in the second half as they shot 38% — compared with 58% in the first half.
“I would just say (it was) our defensive intensity, getting more deflections, focusing on getting kills at halftime,” Foster said. “We only had one kill and not enough deflections. We’re a 30-deflection team every night. And when we get deflections, it’s hard to beat us.
“So we really just locked in on that. We understood that we really didn’t have much of a problem on offense but a problem on defense. And once we addressed that, things started to go our way.”
5. Xavier had the home-court advantage to aid their comeback.
Xavier in Cincinnati is less than an hour from Dayton, and the pro-Xavier crowd Wednesday was apparent from the TV broadcast.
The Musketeers got their crowd going late in the game, including when Jerome Hunter made a 3-pointer to tie it, the first time Texas didn’t have a lead since the first five minutes of the game.
“Obviously the energy of the crowd, our fans certainly took advantage of the proximity to Cincinnati,” Miller said. “And that emotion when we needed them, it was certainly a factor in the game. All three of these guys would tell you that we certainly felt it, really appreciated it.”
Illinois, playing a few hours from Champaign in the first round in Milwaukee, hopes to give Xavier a taste of its own medicine with a pro-Illini crowd Friday. Xavier, however, is also within driving distance.
