CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Despite Artur Sitkowski throwing a career-high three touchdowns, Illinois' comeback effort fell short in a 37-30 setback against UTSA on Saturday night at Memorial Stadium. Sitkowski threw for 266 yards and the Illini rushed for 146 yards in the loss. After two home games to open up the season, Illinois will head on the road next week to play Virginia.
Sitkowski back under center
With Brandon Peters still out with a left shoulder injury, Sitkowski made his first Illini start on Saturday. Sitkowski got the team going in the second half, throwing 36 times in the final 20 minutes.
Sitkowski's 266 passing yards neared his career high of 304 yards back in 2019. The Illini QB formed a strong connection with Isaiah Williams, who caught a career-high eight passes for 101 yards, averaging 12.6 yards per catch.
A night to remember for The Lads
James McCourt was perfect on Saturday night, completing two field goals over 50 yards — a 52-yarder and 53-yarder. McCourt's second long kick marked his sixth field goal make over 50 yards, breaking the program record.
Blake Hayes continued to be a strong weapon for the Illini as he landed four punts inside the 20. Hayes averaged 49 yards per punt.
Career night for Barker
Daniel Barker was one of Sitkowski's go-to guys on Saturday. Barker had a career-high two touchdown receptions, with a 14-yard catch in the second quarter and a 15-yard catch in the fourth quarter. He became just the third tight end since 1996 to haul in two touchdown receptions (Matt LaCosse in 2013 and Josh Whitman in 1999).
Barker also tied a career-high five receptions against UTSA, the last time being against Purdue on Oct. 31, 2020. He finished with 74 receiving yards, the second-highest on the team behind Isaiah Williams' 100-yard night.
Deuce Spann does it again
A week after making his Illini wide receiver debut, Deuce Spann scored his first career touchdown. Spann hauled in Sitkowski's longest pass of the night (31 yards) and tiptoed just inside the line to reach the end zone.
Against Nebraska last week, Spann narrowly missed the end zone after making his first career catch of 45 yards.
HIGHLIGHTS
TEAM NOTES
- The Fighting Illini fall to 1-1 to open the 2021 season.
- Illinois scored 30 points in the loss to UTSA, the team's second consecutive 30-point offensive effort to start the season. Illinois last scored 30 points in back-to-back games on Nov. 2, 2019 vs. Rutgers (W, 38-10) and Nov. 9, 2019 at Michigan State (W, 37-34).
- The last time that Illinois scored 30+ points in back-to-back home games was Sept. 14, 2019 vs. Eastern Michigan (L, 34-31) and Sept. 21, 2019 vs. Nebraska (L, 42-38).
- The Illinois offensive line did not surrender a sack in Saturday's game, last accomplishing the feat Dec. 12, 2020 at Northwestern.
- Illinois captains: DB Tony Adams, OLB Owen Carney Jr., LB Jake Hansen, P Blake Hayes, OL Doug Kramer, OL Vederian Lowe
INDIVIDUAL NOTES
- Senior OL duo of Vederian Lowe and Alex Palczewski each made their 42nd career starts (36th consecutive for Lowe) on Saturday. They are now six starts away from tying the Illinois record for career starts (48).
- Sophomore QB Artur Sitkowski threw for a career-best three touchdowns in Saturday's game. Sitkwoski also tallied 266 yards, completing 22 of 42 attempts, the second-most attempts of his collegiate career.
- Redshirt freshman WR Isaiah Williams led the Illini with eight catches for 101 yards. Williams is the first Illinois player with 100+ receiving yards in a game since Josh Imatorbhebhe had 178 yards on Nov. 9, 2019 at Michigan State.
- Freshman RB Josh McCray made his Illini debut in the second quarter, and gained 18 yards on three consecutive carries to begin the first Illini scoring drive. He finished the game with five carries for 16 yards.
- Redshirt freshman WR Deuce Spann, a converted QB, scored the first touchdown of his Illini career, hauling in a 31-yard pass from Artur Sitkowski with 9:21 left in the second quarter.
- Redshirt freshman RB Reggie Love III ripped off a career-long 18-yard rush to set up the Illini's second touchdown of the game. Love finished as the Illini's leading rusher with 11 carries for 39 yards.
- Junior TE Daniel Barker recorded five catches for 74 yards with two touchdown receptions. Barker's two touchdowns marked a career-high. He is only the third Illinois TE to have two receiving touchdowns in a single game in the last 25 years (since 1996), joining Matt LaCosse, vs. Miami (OH) on Sept. 28, 2013, and Illini Director of Athletics Josh Whitman, at Ohio State on Nov. 13, 1999.
- Junior DB Derrick Smith recorded a career-most seven tackles in the first half alone. He finished the game with nine tackles, surpassing his previous single-game best of 6 (4 solo, 2 assisted) set vs. Iowa (Dec. 5, 2020).
- Sophomore LB Tarique Barnes led the Illini with a game-high 11 tackles, including five solo. Barnes' 11 total tackles matched a career-high set Oct. 23, 2020 at Wisconsin.
- Senior K James McCourt hit two field goals from 50+ yards on Saturday, giving him six for his Illini career and moving him past former teammate Chase McLaughlin (2014-18) for the Illini career record.
- McCourt became the first Illini to hit two FGs from 50+ yards in a single game.
- McCourt also tied his career-high with three total FGs (at Rutgers, Nov. 14, 2020) and set a new career-high with 12 points scored.
- Blake Hayes placed four punts inside the 20 yard line on Saturday, his second straight game with four punts inside the 20. Hayes finished with an average of 49.0 yards per punt, the fifth-highest average in a single game in his 47-career games.
QUOTES
"I give a lot of credit to UTSA. Obviously a good football team who did enough to win the football game. From our guy's point of view, I think we just put ourselves in a situation where we were down two scores early and just played behind the chains all game. I felt like I did like the way [the team] responded. I thought a couple of guys came in and brought some juice. I thought Josh McCray came in the game, and kind of changed the dynamic of the game when he was running the football. The development of Isaiah Williams as a wide receiver and the emergence of Daniel Barker at the tight end position.
I thought Art Sitkowski actually got better with the game as well, and some of the stuff he did, he discovered a couple of first downs by running the football.
Defensively we just couldn't get off the field on third down. That was probably the tale of the game. Just put ourselves in third down situations and they kept converting. That was probably the single most frustrating part. I thought our guys knew the plan that they tried to execute. They competed all the way until that last play. I can't take anything away from their efforts or their attitude.
A couple of key moments during the game, right at the end of the half we were trying to get a possession there with good time on the clock. And obviously the ball hit one of our defenders. We just have to be better in that moment, to communicate that to our players and then the communication on the field, because that gave them three points right there. I think if we had some momentum there, that would have been good for us, but again, give credit to UTSA.
This isn't where I want to be. Obviously, I knew this was going to be a tough assignment when we started our preparation last week, and I had been on the guys pretty hard about that. I thought they'd responded very well, but unfortunately, we weren't good enough to win today, but the worst thing that can happen from this point forward is if we don't learn from this moment. As bad as it tears up your insides and it should hurt, I think it does hurt, but hopefully this will be a lesson that we had to learn. Unfortunately, it sucks to go through it, but hopefully it will be a positive thing for us in the future."
Vederian Lowe
"During that (final) drive, that was something we practice every single day. We practice those plays all the time; we practice those moments. Coach B does a great job of putting us in those moments. They always harp on you never know when those moments will come up and we have to be prepared. Our coaches are always well prepared. We knew what we had to do, it just came to execution, and we fell short. So, we're just going to take that and learn from it."
"Art came in and he played his butt off. I'm very proud of Art and I believe everyone is very proud of Art in the way he played. He stepped up when we needed him. I think Art will take this game as a lesson too. Going forward, he'll look at himself and everything else around him and he'll get better from this game."
Doug Kramer
"One of our goals from the game was just executing the Illinois offense. What that is, I think you saw flashes of it last week against Nebraska, you saw flashes of it this week. We just gotta put it all together. We weren't executing at the start of the game and it got us behind in the game. Really just getting back to execution and doing your job, that's when we really started to move the ball."
"We talk about it all the time, 'Football 101,' the way you lose games is penalties, mental errors and turnovers. Right now off the top of my head, I know there were some. That will really come from film study and getting into the meeting room with coaches and figuring that out. Certainly, we had too many and generally those three things cause you to lose games."
"I think you just have to look at it as one game. You definitely have to learn from it. You have to look at yourself first and see the mistakes that you made. You can't point the finger at anybody else. At the end of the day, you have to continue to improve. This coaching staff is going to get us in the correct spot. They're going to make corrections and we're going to come out stronger than this."
Owen Carney Jr.
"Never get too high, never get too low. Just kinda stay even keeled. We had a good performance last week and today, not so good. We take that, we roll with the punches. We're built for adverse situations and we will bounce back."
"You guys saw, when that happens, it does put you in a tough position to win ball games. We had some penalties, we had some mental errors and I believe we had a turnover. You can see it holds true. We just have to be better."
"We bought in Day 1. Everything (Bielema) says almost always holds true. That happening to us makes us respect it even more and listen even harder to what he says."
Tony Adams
"Third down, huge. We speak about it all the time: Win on third down. I take some of that blame on myself, not winning my one-on-one matchup. That's all football is about is winning one-on-one matchups."
"We're supposed to be ready. I'm supposed to be ready for anything. We didn't play up to the standard we needed to. I didn't play up to the standard I needed to. We ended up losing. We didn't execute the game plan to the fullest and it resulted in a loss."
"Watch this film, get better and then move on to Virginia. I'm going to watch the film. I'm going to beat myself up. I'm going to be critical of my play. Then I'm going to have to put it to bed. I've got to put it to bed. I can't let it linger on."
"No loss is easy, but you've got to move on. I've been playing this game way too long. You've got to understand what comes with it. You've got to hit the reset button and move on. Virginia is going to come to play, so we've got to come to play."
Jake Hansen
"It sucks losing. Any loss sucks just as much as the next loss. We're going to really try to stick our heads toward Virginia and try to forget about this week. Get it corrected obviously and fix what we did wrong and then start pounding ahead toward Virginia."
"We couldn't get off the field. Couldn't stop the run on third down. They did get some momentum going with third downs. We've just got to get off the field on third down. That's the biggest down.
"There's a lot of (lessons). Situational football. Being able to get off the field on third down. There's a bunch of different takeaways — positive and negative — but obviously more negative when you have a loss."
Blake Hayes
"It's difficult, and it's difficult to process. It's tough because you got to flip the perspective. You got to take the loss as something positive as hard as that sounds. You really got to learn from the experience. There's plenty of decisions that maybe guys want back. There's plenty of stuff that we can change, and that's opportunities we can learn from and opportunities we can grow."
