WASHINGTON (AP) — Tracy Abrams scored 23 points but it wasn't enough to overcome a fast start by Michigan in a 75-55 loss in the second round of the Big Ten Tournament on Thursday.
Derrick Walton scored 19 points for No. 8 seed Michigan (21-11), which meets regular-season conference champion Purdue next.
Michigan flew into town only a few hours before tip-off because of travel trouble a day earlier. They wore yellow practice jerseys instead of the game uniforms that got stuck on their abandoned airplane.
The Wolverines were stuck wearing the simple, practice tank tops — no players' names on the back — against ninth-seeded Illinois (18-14) because their proper uniforms, along with everyone's suitcases, were trapped under the plane that slid off a runway during an aborted takeoff Wednesday, according to Michigan spokesman Kurt Svoboda.
No one was injured, Svoboda said.
Players and coaches packed new luggage for the trip, the practice jerseys were retrieved from campus, and Michigan flew — successfully, this time — to the D.C. area on Thursday morning. The team landed at 8:45 a.m., got to the arena at around 10:35 a.m., then were playing basketball less than two hours after that.
And the Wolverines didn't miss a beat.
Michigan went up by 13 at 22-9 a little more than 8½ minutes in, when Zak Irvin collected an Illinois turnover then fed D.J. Wilson for a two-handed alley-oop slam.
Malcolm Hill's turnaround jumper was the game's next basket — and his only one of the game.
Not much later, Michigan's lead had grown to a whopping 20 points at 31-11, when Irvin made a 3 from the top of the arc.
Over the next 2½ minutes, Illinois finally got into the flow of things, using a 12-0 run — the first 10 all from Tracy Abrams — to make the game competitive. By halftime, Michigan's lead was 40-29, but it again got the margin back to as many as 20 in the second half.
Irvin finished with 18 points and seven rebounds for Michigan.
Illinois got 23 points from Abrams on 9-of-13 shooting. Hill, the senior guard who leads the Illini in points, rebounds, assists and steals, wound up with four points on 1-of-8 shooting.
