No. 13 Illinois loses for just the second time ever to Nebraska inside State Farm Center as Illini head coach Brad Underwood questions the team’s effort and mental execution in the post-game radio interview.

By Matt Stevens - IlliniGuys Staff Writer

December 13, 2025

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — For the first time in nearly a decade, Nebraska has left Champaign-Urbana with a win.

Jamarques Lawrence nailed a three-point shot, the 12th of the day for Nebraska, with 0.2 seconds left to give the Cornhuskers a 83-80 victory inside State Farm Center to stay undefeated in the 2025-26 season.

Lawrence’s game-winner came directly Illinois center Tomislav Ivisic hit a shot from beyond the three-point arc to tie the game with 17 seconds remaining.

Illinois was a perfect 6-0 at State Farm Center before Saturday, having won each home game with an average margin of victory of 30 points. Lawrence’s shot, in front of a 15,266 fans despite several inches of snow covering the Central Illinois area, ended a eight-game home winning streak for the No. 13 Illini (8-3, 1-1 in Big Ten Conference) dating back to last season.

“That’s a really good basketball team,” Illinois head coach Brad Underwood said on his WDWS post-game radio interview in reference to Nebraska. “They’re very very old and played together. It was sledding uphill the whole day. We played like we practiced the last few days and that’s no discredit to Nebraska. We stunk. Our practices were never nearly as bad before the games against Tennessee and Ohio State as it was before today. Our focus was off and they exploited it.”

Nebraska (11-0, 2-0) connected on 12 of 26 shots from three-point range that included an impressive first-half shooting birage from Iowa transfer Pryce Sandfort. Sandfort had 26 first-half points as the Illinois defense couldn’t stop the 6-foot-7 forward from finding wide open outside looks. Sandfort, who came into this weekend leading No. 23 Nebraska in scoring at 16.1 points per game while shooting 45 percent from the floor, including 37 percent from 3-point range, hit 10 of 13 from the field and 6 of 8 from three-point range in the first 20 minutes of action.

Illinois survived Sandfort’s scoring in the first half after the forward received his second foul and Nebraska failed to score in the final four minutes and 13 seconds before halftime. Sandfort would finish with 32 points but made only two field goals in the second half.

“You can practice their stuff in practice all you want but they run their offense with tremendous pace but we were completely out of mentally early on,” Underwood said. “All we talked about was transition threes. So, of course Pryce gets two looks in transition. Mast hit a three in transition. David (Mirkovic) was so bad today that I couldn’t play him (Mirkovic finished with four points, two rebounds and three turnovers and was a minus-11 in 23 minutes), couldn’t play him at all.”

Illinois was led by a double-double from Andrej Stojakovic as the 6-foot-7 wing had 19 points and 10 rebounds in 27 minutes with only one turnover. Kylan Boswell had 12 of his team-high 20 points in the first half but the veteran point guard failed to commit a turnover in 37 minutes of action.

Illinois never led in this contest after they took an early 4-2 lead and then watched Nebraska run off a 30-16 lead in the first half.

The last time Nebraska got a win in State Farm Center was Jan. 16, 2016 when the Cornhuskers used a 17-2 run to go up by 10 points late in the first half and never trailed over the game's final 28 minutes in a 78-67 win over the Illini.

“We sure let Pryce have one for the record books against us. We let Bruce (Thornton) get one the other night,” Underwood said. “We’ve either got to get much better at our communication, our switching on defense or we need to just quit switching. We’ll have to figure that out.”

Illinois will now have eight days off before they travel to St. Louis for the annual Braggin’ Rights rivalry game against Missouri inside Enterprise Center just three days before Christmas at 7 p.m. CST on FS1.

“We need to keep practicing and figure out rotations and we better be ready to go in eight days because we better be ready in St. Louis,” Underwood said.