March 16, 2006

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Fighting Illini Tournament Central
Championship Central 2006

SAN DIEGO (AP) - The critics were probably half right. At times it looked like Air Force belonged in the NCAA tournament. Other times, the Falcons played like a dubious pick.

Illinois was just too big and too talented, and finally overpowered the Falcons, winning 78-69 in a first-round game on Thursday night.

Guard Jamar Smith had six 3-pointers among his 20 points for the fourth-seeded Fighting Illini (26-6), who were playing in their first NCAA tournament game since losing last year's championship to North Carolina.

The opponent this time was quite a bit different. The tournament selection committee took a ton of grief for adding Air Force (24-7) of the Mountain West Conference as the 13th seed in the Washington Regional.

Now, the Falcons go back to their rigorous academic grind. The Fighting Illini will play Saturday against the winner of the Utah State-Washington game.

Dee Brown was held to eight points, the third time in the last five games that the star Illinois guard has been held to single digits. But he made up for it with nine assists and a career-high nine rebounds.

Air Force tried to hang with the Illini, and succeeded at times. The Falcons' Princeton offense was more efficient in the second half than in the first, and they scored seven straight points, including four by guard Antoine Hood, to pull to 39-38 with 16:18 to play.

Illinois answered with a 3-pointer by Smith and a three-point play by Brian Randle to make it 45-38.

The shots stopped falling for the Falcons for a stretch, and they never got back into it.

Smith hit four 3-pointers in the final 14 minutes, and James Augustine, Warren Carter and Randle dominated inside.

A play by Randle with 2 minutes left seemed to sum up the talent gap. He stole the ball from Dan Nwaelele and went in for an emphatic slam dunk for a 76-62 lead. Air Force called a timeout to regroup.

Air Force scored nine points in 11 seconds in the closing minute.

Randle scored 15, Carter 12 and Augustine 10. Hood had 17 for Air Force, while Jacob Burtschi, Nwaelele and Matt McCraw had 13 each.

The game started with fans streaming into mostly empty Cox Arena at San Diego State. That was the result of the day's schedule being pushed back after bomb-sniffing dogs detected something suspicious two hours before the scheduled start of the opener between Alabama and Marquette.

The crowd was cleared from the arena after the first two-game session, as is the custom, and the compressed time between sessions didn't give fans with tickets to the next two games time to get in before tipoff.

The Falcons led twice early in the first half , including 11-9 after a 3-point basket by Burtschi 11:55 before halftime.

But the Falcons couldn't control the tempo. Augustine scored six points and Carter had four during a 12-0 run that give Illinois a 21-11 lead, forcing the Falcons to take a timeout.