Will Riley scored a game-high 19 points off the bench as No. 25 Illinois shrugged off a slow start to earn an 87-40 nonconference victory over Maryland Eastern Shore on Saturday afternoon in Champaign, Ill.
Morez Johnson Jr. recorded his first double-double this season with 10 points and 13 rebounds, Kylan Boswell posted 13 points and Tomislav Ivisic contributed 11 for Illinois (4-1). Coming off a 100-87 loss to No. 8 Alabama on Wednesday, the Illini led by as much as 52 despite hitting just 10 of 40 3-point attempts.
Jalen Ware paced Maryland Eastern Shore (2-6) with 10 points before fouling out. Ketron “KC” Shaw, who ranks sixth in Division I with 23.4 points per game, went scoreless in the first half and finished with seven points on 2-of-11 shooting.
The Hawks canned just 22.1 percent of their shots from the floor.
Illinois broke out to a 6-0 lead in the first 2:06, then missed its next six shots. That gave the Hawks time to pull into an 8-8 tie on Evan Johnson’s 17-foot pullup at the 12:21 mark.
That marked Maryland Eastern Shore’s last points for more than seven minutes as the Illini reeled off 17 straight points to remove any suspense.
Johnson opened the spree with a basket and two free throws, Ben Humrichous swished a 3-pointer and Tre White sank a layup before Kasparas Jakucionis fed Ivisic for a 3-pointer and an alley-oop layup. Jakucionis set up Johnson for a free throw, then drove for an unchallenged layup to make it 25-8 with 5:15 left in the first.
Johnson snapped the visitors’ dry spell with a driving layup at the 4:56 mark, but Illinois went on to establish a 35-15 halftime lead on the strength of 11 offensive rebounds that turned into 12 second-chance points, as well as 13 points off of 10 UMES turnovers.
Maryland Eastern Shore needed nearly four minutes to get its first points in the second half as Illinois pushed its lead to 42-15. The Illini margin ballooned to 70-24 on Boswell’s driving layup with 8:11 to go, capping an 18-0 run.
–Field Level Media
