{"id":666470,"date":"2026-03-19T06:51:37","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T06:51:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/666470\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T06:51:37","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T06:51:37","slug":"mens-college-basketball-illinois-prepares-for-penn-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/666470\/","title":{"rendered":"MEN&#8217;S COLLEGE BASKETBALL: Illinois prepares for Penn | Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>GREENVILLE, S.C. \u2014 The Illinois men\u2019s basketball team is playing a unfamiliar opponent coached by a familiar foe to open the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n<p>The No. 3 Illini will be playing the No. 11 Quakers for just the seventh time in history tonight at 8:25 p.m., but Penn\u2019s first year coach \u2014 Fran McCaffery \u2014 has faced the Illini many times in his 15 years at Iowa.<\/p>\n<p>kAm\u201cuC2?[ &gt;J 92E\u2019D @77 E@ 9:&gt; 2?5 9:D E62&gt; 7@C H:??:?8 E96 xGJ {628F6[ 2 8C62E D62D@?[\u201d x==:?@:D 4@249 qC25 &amp;?56CH@@5 D2:5] \u201c(6 925 D@&gt;6 32EE=6D @G6C E96 J62CD E92E H6C6 =686?52CJ \ud83d\ude15 E96 9:DE@CJ @7 x==:?@:D 32D&lt;6E32==] |J :?G@=G6&gt;6?E H:E9 r@2496D &#8216;6CDFD r2?46C[ 2=@?8 H:E9 9:D[ H6\u2019G6 364@&gt;6 G6CJ 8@@5 7C:6?5D]k^Am<\/p>\n<p>kAm\u201cxE\u2019D 2 8C62E @AA@CEF?:EJ] (6\u2019C6 6I4:E65 E@ 36 96C6] (6 @H H6\u2019G6 8@E @FC 92?5D 7F== 724:?8 2 8C62E A=2J6C \ud83d\ude15 W%yX !@H6C[ 4@&gt;:?8 @77 ;FDE 2 EC6&gt;6?5@FD A6C7@C&gt;2?46[ @?6 @7 E96 36DE A6C7@C&gt;2?46D x\u2019G6 D66? 2== J62C[ 2?5 2 E62&gt; E92E[ H96? 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E96 qFD6J x==:?: $A@CED }6EH@C&lt;[ H9:49 :?4=F56D (sp}\\p| `ch_ 2?5 (s}{\\u| `_a]`]k^Am<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GREENVILLE, S.C. \u2014 The Illinois men\u2019s basketball team is playing a unfamiliar opponent coached by a familiar foe&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,217,20109,60065,231,772,1544],"class_list":["post-666470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-basketball","tag-basketball","tag-college-basketball","tag-fran-mccaffery","tag-illinois-fighting-illini-men","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-basketball","tag-ncaab"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116254519742164999","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}