HOUSTON — David Mirkovic had 14 points and 10 rebounds, and third-seeded Illinois flexed its defensive muscles to eliminate last year’s national runner-up from the NCAA tournament, beating Houston 65-55 in the South Region semifinals on Thursday night.

Next up is a meeting Saturday with ninth-seeded Iowa to see which Big Ten team will advance to the Final Four. It will be the 11th Elite Eight appearance for Illinois (27-8) and its second in three seasons under Brad Underwood.

In the Sweet 16 for a seventh consecutive time, the second-seeded Cougars (30-7) were thrilled to be playing just over two miles from their campus. But their poor shooting gave Houston fans little to cheer about and delighted the orange-clad Illini faithful who made the long trip to Texas.

“At the beginning of the game Houston fans were a little louder, but as game was going, [our fans] started being louder in their city,” Mirkovic said. “So it’s just really important for us, I would say just like a wind to our back. They pushed us, and thanks for them.”

Star freshman point guard Kingston Flemings, who is expected to be an NBA lottery pick, had 11 points on 4-of-10 shooting. Milos Uzan made just 2 of 11 shots.

But they were far from the only Cougars who struggled offensively. The team shot just 34% in its lowest-scoring game of the season.

Underwood was asked about his team’s defensive performance.

“I think it’s a mental focus,” he said. “We’ve been very good at times defensively. It’s just sustaining it. We’ve got very capable defenders, we’ve got size and length, and we just got to make shots difficult.”

Illinois finished well under the 84.7 points a game it averaged entering Thursday. But its offense was still plenty powerful enough to send Houston back to its nearby campus. Keaton Wagler had 13 points and a team-high 12 rebounds for the Illini; he and Mirkovic became the first pair of freshman teammates to each have a double-double in the same NCAA tournament game since freshmen became fully eligible in 1972-73, according to ESPN Research.

“Coaches were telling us before the game: ‘It’s going to be a guard game to get rebounds. We need 10-plus out of the guards,'” he said. “So I took that challenge on. I went in there, tried to play as tough as I could, not let them get any second-chance rebounds. I went in there and tried to get every rebound I could.”

Andrej Stojakovic — with his dad, three-time NBA All-Star Peja Stojakovic, in the stands — also scored 13.

By the time the final seconds ticked off the clock, many Houston fans had cleared out and the Illinois supporters stood and cheered as their team celebrated.

“I was proud of our kids’ effort,” Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said. “We just didn’t play good enough.”

The Illini were up by one early in the second half when they broke it open with a 17-0 run for a 44-26 lead with about 12 minutes left. Jake Davis scored five points during the burst, including a 3-pointer, and Mirkovic and Ben Humrichous capped it with consecutive 3s.

The Cougars missed seven consecutive shots as Illinois built its lead. When Uzan finally ended Houston’s drought with a 3-pointer with 11:20 left, it had been almost seven minutes since the team had scored.

“We were getting stops and we were limiting them to one shot, and to tough shots as well,” Wagler said. “Making them shoot tough middies or contested at the rim, 3-pointers, all of that, and then we were going in and grabbing the rebound and offensively we were getting the shots that we wanted, we were knocking them down.”

Consecutive 3-pointers by Chase McCarty got Houston within nine with about six minutes left. But Wagler and Tomislav Ivisic made 3-pointers to fuel an 8-0 run that extended the lead to 58-41.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This St. John’s team can’t shoot.

The Red Storm are 182nd nationally in field goal percentage (45.2) and 225th from 3-point range (33.2).

It doesn’t seem to matter. Rick Pitino’s team (30-6) has been opportunistic, physical and fearless in reaching the Sweet 16, where it will play Duke on Friday.

It is reminiscent of Pitino’s 2012-13 Louisville team that shot just 33.3% from behind the arc (216th nationally) yet won the national title. It’s a far cry, however, from his underdog 1987 Providence team, which reached the Final Four thanks to his then-revolutionary idea of prioritizing the newly created 3-pointer. Those Friars hit 42.2% of them.

Pitino can win one way, or the other, or back again; from the Camelot of Kentucky to the late-career rehab of Iona College.

The years change, the teams change. The players, style of play, rules, roster construction, and even the cuts of his neatly tailored suits change.

One thing remains constant.

Pitino wins.

The case for Rick Pitino as the greatest college basketball coach of all time takes some contorting, but each year it gains credence. The 73-year-old coached his first game 50 years ago, in 1976 as an interim at Hawai’i. He now appears better than ever.

Pitino’s 915 victories, .743 winning percentage and two national titles will never compare numerically to, say, Mike Krzyzewski’s 1,202 victories, Adolph Rupp’s .822 win percentage or John Wooden’s 10 championships.

Part of that is by choice — Pitino spent eight seasons in the NBA, including six as head coach in New York and Boston. He also had various NCAA and personal scandals that made him a temporary pariah and, to some, permanently ruined his reputation.

His legacy will always be linked to scandal. He had that Louisville national title, along with 123 victories, “vacated” by the NCAA as a result of its investigation into allegations that a staffer provided escorts at on-campus parties for players and recruits. The program was also at the center of a federal fraud and bribery case involving Adidas.

For a stretch, he was essentially professionally exiled to Greece, where he coached pro ball for two seasons, winning a couple of titles there, too.

Outside the lines, Pitino is one thing. Inside them, though, is a different story. Had he just stayed at Kentucky in 1997 rather than jump to the Celtics — and kept his business in order (perhaps unlikely) — there is no telling what his career totals would be. UK was rolling, after all, winning another national title under Tubby Smith the season after Pitino left.

But he has always bounced around, rescuing six bottomed-out programs (Boston University, Providence, Kentucky, Louisville, Iona and St. John’s). In the season before his arrival, those teams were a combined 76-105 (.419).

No matter.

He led five of them back to the NCAA tournament within two seasons (or in UK’s situation, when a tournament ban concluded). At BU, it took four.

This isn’t to punish other great coaches who built national powers and then stuck with it. Maintaining a juggernaut isn’t simple and deserves credit. Yet, Pitino has proven it was him, not the institution, that made the difference.

Pitino has had talented players (especially the 1996 Kentucky national champions), but he has coached just three future NBA All-Stars — Donovan Mitchell, Jamal Mashburn and Antoine Walker.

This isn’t as impressive as Bob Knight, who won 902 games and three titles despite having just one player who would become an NBA all-star (Isiah Thomas), but it’s also not the Hall of Fame parade that Dean Smith (UNC), Krzyzewski (Duke) or Wooden (UCLA) had.

Pitino, a former New York point guard, is about basketball. He still conducts one-on-one development workouts. He still grinds game footage. He still finds the way to maximize what he has — sometimes with a full-court press, sometimes the old 2-3 zone he learned as an assistant under Jim Boeheim.

He still communicates, harshly but honestly, in a way, for example, that not only empowers current guard Dylan Darling to confidently call for the ball in the waning seconds of Sunday’s victory over Kansas, but allows Pitino to trust “Church Bells” — a nickname stemming from Pitino’s description of Darling’s, uh, fearlessness — to pull it off, even with his off hand.

Pitino’s career has bridged multiple eras; not just in style of play (he coached pre-shot clock and 3-point line), but style of pay. As an assistant at Hawai’i in the mid-1970s, the NCAA dinged him for giving players coupons to McDonald’s. Now, they can own a franchise.

Some of his best work has come recently.

He returned from his Greek purgatory to lead low-major Iona to two NCAAs in three seasons. At age 70, he took over St. John’s, and won consecutive Big East regular-season and tournament titles. Now, the Red Storm are in the Sweet 16 for the first time this century.

The players still listen. They still defend. They still hustle. They still believe.

They still win, even when they can’t shoot all that well.

That’s a pure college basketball coach, perhaps the best there has ever been.

As the NFL continues to expand its reach and capitalizes on the ever-growing popularity of the sport both domestically and globally, talk of adding an 18th regular-season game has become more apparent. 

The NFL Players’ Association has said players “have no appetite for a regular-season 18th game,” while owners like New England Patriots’ Robert Kraft believes “every team will go 18” at some point sooner than later. 

For former MVP quarterback Cam Newton, he’s taking a step back and viewing an 18th regular-season game from both sides. That assessment has him believing preseason games, which every team plays three before Week 1 of the regular season, will become even more diluted.  

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“Man, it’s a lot on the body,” he told Fox News Digital about another regular-season game added to the schedule, while discussing his Iconic Saga Productions partnership with Offscript Worldwide. “If you really look at it, what’s happening is they’re devaluing preseason games as we know it to be, and they’re trying to put it on the back end. 

“Because, one thing we all know — and I say this with all due respect — America’s new game has been, for some time, American football. It’s just good business. The Super Bowl garners a global audience that no sporting event can attest to, especially domestically in the United States. So, they know, the more they give, the more they’re able to garner from difference audiences.”

So, as Newton sees this simply as “good business” for the NFL, he’s implying the league will once again drop a preseason game from a team’s schedule to add the 18th game. It’s what happened when the 17th regular-season game was added in 2021, as the preseason schedule was reduced from four to three games. 

BILLS STAR DION DAWKINS EXPLAINS HIS ‘COUNTER’ TO POTENTIAL NFL 18TH GAME: ‘CAREERS ARE ONLY GETTING SHORTER’

“I think, when you’re talking about the 18th game, it really comes down to if teams are going to really focus on preseason, or negate preseason altogether, just to get right into the regular season. That’s going to be interesting to kind of see,” Newton added.

While the NFLPA has pushed back at the potential of an 18th game, citing player safety as one of the main reasons behind keeping the schedule as is, others like Buffalo Bills left tackle Dion Dawkins see it as inevitable. 

“It’s going to happen either way,” he told Fox News Digital in a recent interview. 

“Then, 20 years later, guess what? We’re talking about a 19th, then we’ll be talking about a 20th.… Then it’s like, ‘Yeah, we are combat athletes all year long.’ But who knows,” Dawkins added. 

ESPN analyst Cam Newton is on the set of “First Take” on Feb. 6, 2026 in San Francisco, California. (Aaron M. Sprecher/Getty Images)

For now, 17 games is what the NFL schedule will read in 2026. But, as Dawkins noted, who really knows? 

To Newton’s point, it’s simply good business as demand continues to skyrocket for the league as each season passes. 

EXPANDING CONTENT REACH WITH OFFSCRIPT

Newton may not be on the field any longer, but he remains tuned in with the NFL and every other sports moment through his content creation, most notably his “Funky Friday” and “4th & 1 with Cam Newton” shows as part of his Iconic Saga Productions. 

Newton and his production team announced a major partnership with Offscript Worldwide, a creator-owned ecosystem that connects culture-shaping brands and platforms under one roof, which includes REVOLT Sports and 3BlackDot. 

Offscript unveiled this new partnership at the 2026 IAB NewFronts, where they will begin collaborating with Newton’s independent production powerhouse, integrating his hit shows and amplifying the reach of athlete-driven storytelling for global brands. 

Cam Newton on radio row at the Super Bowl LIX media center on Feb. 7, 2025. (Kirby Lee/Imagn Images)

“When you really think about Offscript, it’s like the ecosystem that bridges so many different facets of our lives, from sports, to culture, to lifestyle and so many different things,” Newton explained. “That transition for me wasn’t foreign. Instead of training to be the best football player, or the best athlete. Now, I’m just training to be the best content creator I can possibly be. 

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“I just always want to be a beacon of the person, in a lot of ways, figured it out as I went. I’m just so thrilled that Offscript gives me and Iconic Saga the opportunity to continue to believe in our vision, and we’re not able to do these things without great partners like this.”

As this partnership kicks off, Newton will also be hitting the road for the “4th & 1 College Tailgate Experience,” visiting HBCU’s across the U.S. to celebrate their heritage and shine a national spotlight on student-athletes, academic programs, and the unique game-day culture that defines what it means to be an HBCU. 

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