Wisconsin didn’t have an answer for Marcus Domask and Terrence Shannon Jr. Not that many Big Ten opponents have been able to slow down Illinois’ leading scorers this season. Domask went right at the Badgers’ Tyler Wahl for another successful game of “booty ball.” Shannon was his regular freight train attacking the basket, and both banged down multiple three-pointers. It’s enough to make any team want to throw the white flag against the Illini’s high-octane offense.

There’s a reason Illinois has lingered around the No. 4 or No. 5 seed line in NCAA tournament forecasts. The Illini’s overall résumé has simply been OK, with not enough high-level wins to match some of the other top teams in the country. The final nine days of the regular season gave an opportunity to change that with three consecutive Quad I opportunities to finish out the Big Ten. Beating Wisconsin was the kind of start to March that Illinois needed.

The biggest game of the season? Illinois will welcome Purdue to State Farm Center for a Tuesday night clash that still has some Big Ten title implications. Beat the boilermakers, and the door is open. Purdue, of course, needs to help out with another defeat to either Michigan State or Wisconsin. But even if a regular-season Big Ten title is off the table, the Illini can continue their hunt for a No. 3 seed—or maybe a No. 2—with a win.

“I feel like we just got stops when we needed them and just finished the game when it got tough. They made runs. We made runs. We just came out on top. It’s a high-level game. We’ve got a lot of big-time players on our team, so we knew they were going to make big-time plays. That’s what they did down the stretch. (Wisconsin) threw a punch, and we threw a few of them back.” – Illinois guard Justin Harmon after Saturday’s 91-83 win against the Badgers