INCINATTI-With 3:55 left to play Friday, Illinois stood 10 points shy of its Xavier opponents. The Illini used a TV timeout as a chance to regroup and refocus, cutting the deficit to seven points in a frantic effort to recover. It was not enough.

Illinois fell to 12-3 with the 65-59 loss. Jamar Smith led the Illini with 16 points in the team’s final game before heading into Big Ten competition.

With a longer than usual four-day rest for Christmas, Coach Bruce Weber hoped the Illini would nurse their wounds and recover from colds. Instead, the extra time may have led to a sloppy performance and slow start.

“We have to practice well; you play how you practice,” Weber said. “Your dad told you that, your little league coach told you that, your high school coach told you that. And it’s true.”

Illinois dragged throughout the first half, allowing Xavier to jump to a 14-2 lead five minutes into the game. The team turned up the energy and bounced back to a 26-25 lead at the break.

“In the first half we were letting them kill us rebounding the ball,” Xavier coach Sean Miller said. “If you look at the tale of two halves, we did a much better job of rebounding in the second half, and I think that was a real big factor.”

Smith said Illinois’ biggest break in the first half was overcoming the lopsidedly pro-Xavier crowd. When the Illini bench came in and helped turn the game around, the Musketeers’ fans fell silent.

“The bench saved us in the first half,” Weber said. “We mulled it around at halftime: Do you do with the guys on the bench who got us the lead?”

But Weber returned to the starting lineup for the second stanza, and once again Xavier got ahead. With 10:35 to play the Musketeers had built a 7-point cushion, and they led 50-40 when that final TV timeout began.

“You have chances in games, turning points where you can get back in the game,” Weber said.

It seemed as though that timeout might have been one of those chances, but the Illini couldn’t capitalize. Smith was the primary force in Illinois’ last-ditch effort, sinking four three-point shots for 12 of Illinois’ 19 points in the final stretch. But his efforts could not

pull off the win Illinois’ hoped would create a strong start for a series of tough contests.

“It puts a lot of pressure on us,” Smith said. “We were looking at these three games as the hardest of the season. I think now we’re going to have to come together as a team and take it one game at a time.”

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All photos credit: Brad Vest, The Daily Illini