Illinois-Chicago did a lot of fumbling and stumbling Tuesday night at the Pavilion but held on to defeat Youngstown State 70-59 and move on to the quarterfinals of the Horizon League tournament in Indianapolis.
The quarterfinal game Friday will be a Chicago showdown, pitting fourth-seeded UIC against eight-seeded Loyola, an upset winner at Wisconsin-Milwaukee in another of Tuesday’s four opening-round games. The winner will play regular-season champion Butler in Saturday’s semifinals.
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Scott VanderMeer’s dominance on the backboards and 10-for-11 free throw shooting in the final 3 1/2 minutes enabled the Flames (17-14) to win despite 19 turnovers.
“We can’t beat other teams in the league if we play the way we did tonight,” said the 7-foot VanderMeer, whose 13 rebounds in 23 minutes were the primary reason UIC controlled the boards 44-30.
Although ninth-seeded Youngstown State never came close enough to threaten after falling behind 37-21 in the first half and 48-29 early in the second half, the three-point shooting of John Barber and Vance Cooksey reduced the deficit to single digits down the stretch.
“We know we didn’t play to the best of our ability,” said Robert Bush, who led UIC in scoring with 14 points.
Six free throws by Spencer Stewart, two each by Jermaine Dailey and Bush and one by VanderMeer sealed the UIC victory. Bush had UIC’s only basket in the last 10 minutes.
“We lost the game in the first half,” Youngstown (9-21) coach Jerry Slocum said. “Offensively, we were poor and they were very, very good. They have a lot of weapons.”
As he did when the Flames won their final regular-season game at Wisconsin-Milwaukee, UIC coach Jimmy Collins substituted en masse early in the game.
“I might have experimented too much and thrown our rhythm off by putting different units in,” said Collins, whose rationale for the move was two-fold: trying to confuse the Penguins’ scouting report and trying to find some subs capable of making an impact.”
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