Illinois State sinks Deacons with final-seconds 3-pointer
WINSTON-SALEM – One more game at Joel Coliseum went down to the wire. There won’t be another because of how this game ended.
Illinois State beat Wake Forest 78-75 on Johnny Kinzinger’s step-back 3-pointer with 1.9 seconds left on Sunday.
Illinois State (22-12) will face Dayton in a quarterfinal game of the NIT next week. The Flyers won at UNC Wilmington, 80-61, on Saturday.
Tre’Von Spillers led Wake Forest (18-17) with 24 points and made all 11 shots from the field. Juke Harris scored 20, giving him 750 points this season — the second-most of any Wake Forest player in a season.
The Deacons led for the bulk of the second half. The lead was nine, at 59-50, with nine minutes left.
For the rest of the game, Wake Forest couldn’t get many stops. Illinois State scored on 11 of its last 14 possessions.
Five of those scores were 3-pointers — two by Kinzinger and two by Ty Pence. After the Redbirds were 1-for-12 from long range in the first half, they were 9-for-21 in the second half.
Spillers scored two game-tying buckets in the final 90 seconds. But the last-ditch pass went over his head and time ran out on the game — and Wake’s season.
These teams were deadlocked at 32-32 after 20 minutes.
Wake Forest had an early kill shot — a run of 10 straight points or more — before the first media timeout. The Deacons led 20-11 after about 11 minutes.
But within about 1½ minutes, Spillers and Harris each picked up their second fouls and went to the bench. The Deacons couldn’t sustain momentum with them out of the game. Even when they returned after a few minutes, Illinois State kept trading buckets.
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