Good evening and welcome into the Align Inquire podcast. It's Jeremy Warner and Derek

Parker live at TD Garden, where a phenomenal Illinois basketball season ended with a huge thud as the

line I fall to number one overall seed defending national champion, Yukon's 7752.

Aligni picked a bad night to have a bad night. You had to have an A plus game, a game at least against

Yukon to win. i actually thought their defense was

locked in in the first half you're only down 2823 despite terrible offense and we'll talk about

the strategy of that offense uh in this podcast we'll talk about this season as well uh and what is

ahead with the transfer portal already buzzing but a 77 52 loss52 loss all because of a 30-to-nothing run for Yukon in the final minute

and a half through the first, what, eight minutes of the second half.

It was just as big of a knockout blow as you'll see from a dominant team,

Yukon has won 10 straight games in the Instillway tournament by 23 point average. It's insane.

Derek Piper, just first thoughts on what was just an ugly night for the line at.

Boy, it really was. Yeah, a number of different things come to mind. I think big picture,

obviously, like you said, really, really good season. Incredible to be back on this second weekend stage the

doorstep of a final four i know it doesn't feel the final four doesn't feel all that close when you

lose in that capacity although the thing is i think what makes this really painful is that Illinois was

only down five at the half and had a lot of fans believing that they, they withstood that first haymaker from

Yukon. They had the crowd going. They're down 9-0. Damascus gets going and they, they withstand.

And the way the defense competed to hold that Yukon team down, and I don't think they made

a three in the first half, or maybe only had one.

One of 11?

One of 11. One of 11.

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