Feb. 16—STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Adalia McKenzie going to the bench with three fouls felt like a significant moment late in the third quarter of Thursday night’s Big Ten matchup.
McKenzie had been the catalyst again for the Illinois women’s basketball team at Penn State.
But the junior guard’s absence turned out to be not all that consequential.
Instead, Illinois extended its lead as Genesis Bryant came through with some key buckets and carried that momentum once McKenzie returned to the floor to an 86-71 victory against the host Nittany Lions in front of a sparse Bryce Jordan Center crowd despite an announced attendance of 2,376 fans.
“I think this game for us, we talked (beforehand) about it being a Quad I win on the road and we had lost some of the games that we had played recently and just haven’t been ourselves,” said Kendall Bostic, who added a double-double of 17 points and 10 rebounds. “So we just put it to our mindset to go out and just get this win.”
In doing so, the Illini (12-12, 6-8 Big Ten) held one of the league’s top offenses to 15 points below its season average with Penn State (16-9, 7-7) averaging 86.0 points per game — the second-best mark in the conference behind Iowa’s 92.1 ppg — before facing Illinois.
The Illini also limited the Nittany Lions to 39.7 percent shooting.
“I absolutely loved our defense,” Illinois coach Shauna Green said. “We did exactly what we have been talking about doing. We played team defense. We really shut the paint down for them and kept them in front. … We were really, really locked in to execution of our scout.”
McKenzie, meanwhile, finished with game-high 18 points on 8-of-11 shooting to go with three rebounds, three assists and three steals, continuing what has been a strong past few weeks for the Brooklyn Park, Minn., native.
The way the 5-foot-10 guard got to the rim set the tone for the Illini, though.
“With her attacking and having that mentality of, ‘I’m going to get downhill. I’m going to go through your chest,'” Bostic said of McKenzie, “it helped her a ton, especially in transition, because we were able to get the ball up to her and she had no fear driving in there and going up against two or three people and trying to get the and-1 (opportunities). I was very proud of her … of how she came out and attacked.”
The Illini got efficiency across the board, as well, to go with McKenzie’s standout performance in shooting 54.4 percent on Thursday night. It came with balance, too.
Illinois had six of its seven players that entered the game score at least nine points with Makira Cook and Bryant combining for 29 points, Gretchen Dolan adding 11 points off the bench and Camille Hobby supplying nine points and six rebounds.
“We took good shots,” Green said. “For the majority of our shots, we let our offense work for us. We got inside-out looks. Gretchen was really big off the bench. … K.B. was back to feeling 100 percent. We just really had great poise overall. When we play like that with poise and control and confidence, we feel like we can compete with anyone on our schedule and just could not be more proud of our bounce back and how we came back from a tough Maryland game (a 69-53 home loss on Sunday), where we knew we didn’t play up to our abilities.”
That was evident with how Illinois stayed in its offensive rhythm after McKenzie was called for two fouls in the span of five seconds in the third quarter. McKenzie sat on the bench with the Illini ahead 48-42 and four minutes, 25 seconds left in the third quarter.
Still, Illinois saw that advantage balloon to 11 points without McKenzie, thanks to a 14-9 stretch to close ou the third quarter punctuated by a three-pointer from Bryant and a driving layup from the Illinois senior guard just before the third-quarter buzzer.
Bryant’s personal 5-0 run allowed the Illini to lead 62-51 through three quarters, as Bostic also had a second-chance jumper late in the third that aided Illinois’ cause.
“I think we had a rhythm and we’re a rhythm team and so just having that offensive rhythm and our defense, you know, translating to our offense was just huge for us,” Bostic said. “It was just us staying together. They made a run at the beginning of the third, and that was fine. They punched us and we punched back. I think that was the most important part. There have been some games where that’s happened and we rolled over. So with us being able to punch back and attack them with just as much as they attacked us, that was huge.”
Illinois maintained a double-digit lead the rest of the way to earn its third Big Ten road victory and moved within a game of seventh-place Penn State in the conference standings.
The Illini will return home to play No. 14 Indiana in a marquee national-television game with Fox in town for the Presidents Day matinee, which is set for a 1 p.m. tip on Monday at State Farm Center. The Hoosiers (21-3, 12-2) won the first meeting 77-71 on Dec. 31 in Bloomington, Ind. It was Indiana’s 16th straight win against Illinois, which is currently the longest active such streak between two Big Ten opponents.
