Having punched with and lost to a couple of good teams in Maui, Xavier had a chance to take something from the trip in the seventh-place game against Illinois. They did just that, taking down the Illini with an 83-74 win.
It started with defense for Xavier, where they got stops on 7 of Illinios’ first 8 possessions to establish an 8-3 lead in the early going. As has been the case for the young season so far, though, the consistency wasn’t there. X gave up scores on 9 of 11 possessions after that initial burst, then got 7 straight stops, then gave up 20 points in 12 possessions to end the half.