A look at every Illini appearance in the NCAA tournament

INDIANAPOLIS – Under the most intense pressure, with the world outside gone crazy and a feverish opponent attacking like a pack of hungry wolves, three hustling Illini made Thursday's most popular question seem silly:

"Do you still feel like freshmen?"

Forget the Carolina comparisons. Illinois is just happy to look like Illinois again.

"The games before, I think everybody was coming out tense, maybe worried about all the expectations," Luther Head said. "Today we came out loose and free and having fun. We looked like our old self."

"I think the rest of the way out we're obviously going to be underdogs, so it's going to be good for us to be able to adapt that mind-set," center Robert Archibald said. "Creighton's one of those tough, gritty teams that loves to compete, and at times we struggled to match their intensity. That's obviously not going to be a problem from here on."

The Big Ten co-champions lost 87-81 to Lute Olson's motivated Arizona squad, in the process losing a chance to match the Flyin' Illini's feat of 1989.

"If next year we come up short again, I'm going to be real sick," junior Damir Krupalija said. "We have a lot of people coming back. Right now, everybody's sad. But deep down, we're excited about our opportunities next year."

INDIANAPOLIS — The new four-game winning streak has a theme: Illinois wins ugly.

Badly outrebounded (42-30) despite James Augustine's 15 and shooting at a 42.6 percent rate that is far below their season average, the top-ranked Illini clamped down on Fairleigh Dickinson in the tense minutes after halftime and advanced to the NCAA tournament's second round, 67-55.

For Lou Henson, it was a case of his team again "playing tight" in an emotional setting and failing in the closing seconds, as they did so often in a 23-8 season.

"Wouldn't you know it would end this way?" Henson fumed. "Our young players reverted to form and we didn't shoot it the way we can, either from the field or the free throw line."

If the Illini had survived Saturday, two factors would have changed in Anaheim, Calif. First, they would have been more rested. Second, the Illini might have been more comfortable as underdogs.

"It would have been interesting to see what would have happened with the target on somebody else's back," UI coach Bill Self said.