Terrence Shannon Jr. scored 34 points on 15-for-17 shooting from the free-throw line, helping 13th-ranked Illinois outlast Wisconsin 93-87 in Big Ten tournament championship game on Sunday.
Marcus Domask added 26 points, eight assists and seven rebounds and Dain Dainja had nine points and seven rebounds for the Illini (26-8), who won their second conference tournament title in four years after shooting 16 of 26 in the second half. They faced a double-digit deficit in all three games.
A.J. Storr had 24 points and Chucky Hepburn added 20 points for the Badgers (22-13), who went 7 for 20 from 3-point range after going 33 for 79 over their first three games.
Shannon finished with 102 points in three games, one short of the Big Ten Tournament record, and was voted the Most Outstanding Player. Keegan Murray had 103 points for Iowa in 2022, but the Hawkeyes played four games that year on the way to the title.
After celebrating in a shower of orange-and-blue confetti and cutting down the nets at Target Center, the Illini hustled to a side room for the NCAA Tournament selection show to learn they're the No. 3 seed in the East Region, with a first-round game on Friday against Morehead State.
The defending champion Huskies earned the top seed in the NCAA Tournament, joined by Houston,Purdue and North Carolina as No. 1 seeds in a bracket that started going haywire even before the pairings were announced Sunday evening.
