CHAMPAIGN  Illinois finally won a football game Wednesday night.

   Or at least that''s what the knock-down, drag-out royal rumble at the Assembly Hall seemed like.

   Half expected to see Ron Dayne hop off the Wisconsin bench.

   "I don''t know if escalate is the right word, but when it got a bit physical, it got out of hand," Dick Bennett said after his Badgers'' 62-48 loss. "It was a very difficult game to get any kind of feel for."

   The kind of game the pushy, shovy Badgers usually love. And the smallish, been-outrebounded-in-nine-straight Illini usually loathe.

   But not Wednesday.

   "From the start, we just set a tone and let him know that it''s not going to happen tonight," Illinois center Jarrod Gee said. "We''re not going to be pushed around, and we''re going to fight back."

   In front of their smallest Big Ten home crowd of the ''90s  11,280 paid for a ticket  the Illini won the Wisconsin way, matching the Badgers bump for bump and bludgeoning them on the boards 38-22.

   Bring on Michigan.

   (And some fans).

   "The Big Ten is a very physical conference," Gee said. "You''ve just got to expect, and look forward to, a lot of contact. Night in, night out, it''s banging, banging, banging. There''s going to be a lot of banging Sunday, I''m sure, with (Robert) Traylor and Maceo Baston."

   The win kept the Illini in good Big Ten shape, leaving them at 4-2 and tied for second place with Indiana, Iowa and Purdue.

   It prevented the first three-game losing streak of the Lon Kruger era.

   And it was the UI''s first win over the Badgers since the 1993-94 season, when Wednesday''s high scorer, Matt Heldman (17 points), was shooting his jumpers for Libertyville High.

   "Really proud of the guys," Kruger said. "They really did a good job of avoiding that dry spell that you can have against Wisconsin. They play such good defense that if you''re not really aggressive offensively and really concentrating, they can put a five-, six-, seven-minute lick on you where you don''t score."

   Or 11, like they did during the teams'' last meeting, a 17-point Badger win last year in Cheesehead Country.

   But this time, it was the Badger offense that smelled like Limburger.

   Wisconsin, 10-8, 3-3, shot 34 percent from the field, had one scorer in double figures (Sean Mason with 13) and never got within 10 of the Illini in the second half.

   "If we''re not playing well, it can get downright ugly," Bennett said.

   And chippy. The Badgers were whistled for 25 fouls, one of the technical variety, sending the Illini to the line 29 times.

   And that''s without fouling intentionally down the stretch, when the game was out of hand.

   "We knew they were going to come out and be physical, and we were ready for that," Illinois forward Jerry Hester said.

   At one point, official Ed Hightower gathered players from both teams together and told them to cut it out. The warning came with 10:41 to go, when tempers were starting to flare.

   "He said, ''Just stop all the pushing. Let''s get control of this. We don''t want to have to throw anybody out,'' " Hester said. "He''s a very good referee. I have a lot of respect for him. He got back control of the game."

   Hester had control of it for a while, scoring 13 of his 16 points in the first half and sending the Illini to the locker room up 32-22.

   It was the senior''s highest-scoring night since he had 20 at Iowa four games before. And he only needed one three-pointer to get it, doing most of his damage in the lane, which Kruger likes.

   "I thought that was one of his better games," Kruger said. "More and more, he''s playing with his old bounce, and I think that''s obvious with each passing week."