LOS ANGELES — UCLA was having a very bad week, suffering blowout losses on the road, where coach Mick Cronin angrily — and he later admitted wrongly — ejected one of his players at Michigan State.

Things didn’t figure to get much better with No. 10 Illinois visiting Pauley Pavilion. And they didn’t in the first half. Winners of 14 of 16, the Illini built a 23-point lead while shooting 54% from the floor and 53% from 3-point range.

“I was worried before the game,” Cronin said. “I didn’t like the look on their faces before the game. It was almost like they had lost confidence. And we played like that early, until we forgot about it.”

The Bruins roared back, with Donovan Dent hitting the winning layup with one second left in overtime for a 95-94 victory. Fans stormed the court to celebrate UCLA’s second top-10 upset at home. The Bruins beat then-No. 4 Purdue 69-67 on Jan. 20.

It was UCLA’s largest comeback since rallying from 19 points down in a 90-83 victory over Oregon on Feb. 23, 2019, at home. The Bruins’ 23-point comeback is the largest to defeat a top-10 opponent in AP poll history, according to ESPN Research.

“Even when we went down big, we were still connected as a team in the huddles,” Dent said. “We just kept saying keep fighting.”

UCLA’s defense clamped down, holding the nation’s top offensive team to 22% shooting in overtime and 0 of 5 from 3-point range.

“I hope it helps our confidence,” Cronin said. “You would hope it sends a message to them that if you’re bought in defensively, we got a great chance to win.”

Dent dribbled downcourt and got to the rim in 4.9 seconds, splitting two Illini players near the free throw line and making a move past one last defender for an up-and-under basket.

“I wasn’t making layups to save my life,” he said. “I missed like five in a row, so for me to get down there it was amazing.”

Dent had 14 points, 15 assists and no turnovers in 42 minutes.

“That’s what he’s here for,” teammate Eric Dailey Jr. said.

The Bruins (18-9, 10-6 Big Ten) were coming off consecutive 20-plus point defeats for the first time since the 1944-45 season.

“We got to flush ’em,” Dent said.

Making it worse was Cronin’s ejection of reserve Steven Jamerson II for committing what he believed was a dirty foul late in East Lansing, triggering a slew of negative publicity. Cronin changed his mind after seeing a replay and said he apologized to Jamerson, who played 1½ minutes Saturday.

“There’s a lot of negativity towards our program. Those outside forces, we can’t let them get in,” Dailey said. “One thing we’ve been trying to focus on is positive words toward each other, just encouraging each other to do good. When a player has their head down, pick them up.”

The Bruins have four regular-season games remaining, including against No. 9 Nebraska and two with crosstown rival Southern California. Then, it’s off to the Big Ten tournament in Chicago.

Time is running out to get off the NCAA tournament bubble.

“Our season’s on the line right now,” Dent said. “We’re in desperation.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The No. 10 Illinois Fighting Illini (22-5, 13-3 Big Ten) and UCLA Bruins (17-9, 9-6) meet Saturday at 8 p.m. ET (Fox) from Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles, California. Let’s analyze BetMGM Sportsbook’s NCAA basketball odds around the Illinois vs. UCLA odds and make our expert college basketball picks and predictions for the best bets.

Illinois throttled the USC Trojans 101-65 on Wednesday, covering as an 8.5-point road favorite with the Over (151.5) cashing. After losing back-to-back games straight up (SU) and against the spread (ATS), the Illini have won and covered in 2 straight. They are 16-11 ATS on the season.

UCLA was annihilated by the No. 15 Michigan State Spartans on Tuesday, failing to cover as a 7.5-point road underdog with the Over (139.5) hitting. The Bruins have lost 2 straight — by 23 and 30 points — and are 10-16 ATS on the season.

Illinois won the only meeting between the teams last season, winning 83-78 at home, but UCLA covered as a 7-point underdog with the Over (149.0) hitting.

As America turns 250 years old in 2026, CBS News Chicago is looking back at two presidents who called Illinois home.

Nearly 150 years separated the presidencies of Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama, who both launched political careers Illinois.

In their times in office, they faced very different challenges, but the nation’s 44th president drew inspiration from the 16th president.

On a frigid February morning in 2007, then a U.S. Senator, Obama announced he was running for president. The symbolism of where he delivered the speech was unmistakable – at the Old State Capitol building in Springfield.

At the same building in 1858, Lincoln gave one of the most famous speeches in American history.

“I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free,” Lincoln told the crowd.

“The Lincoln that Obama is linking himself to in that moment in announcing his candidacy is the Lincoln who gave the ‘House Divided’ speech,” said University of Chicago professor Jane Dailey. “And that’s the Lincoln Obama, I think, was channeling in that moment as he talks about visions of community and democracy.”

Lincoln and Obama will be forever linked. Both lawyers from Illinois. Both served in the Illinois legislature before they were elected to Congress and later the White House. The Great Emancipator and the nation’s first Black president.

“You ask me what they have in common, and I think they both have a very strong belief in regular people; the capacity of Americans to be moral people, not every minute of every day, to take a stand on the right side of things if given the opportunity,” Dailey said.

Both Lincoln and Obama came to Illinois from other places. Lincoln was born in Kentucky and moved to Indiana at age 7 before his family came to Illinois when he was 21. Obama was born in Hawaii and lived in Seattle, Indonesia, Los Angeles, and New York before moving to Chicago in 1985.

Where Obama is a product of Ivy League schools, Lincoln was largely self-taught.

“He just read voraciously all the time. He didn’t boast about that, but someone asked him once, ‘Who did you study law with?’ and he said ‘Nobody. I read,” Dailey said.

Poverty drove Lincoln from Kentucky to Indiana then to Illinois. Obama, inspired by the city’s first Black mayor, Harold Washington, moved to Chicago to become a community organizer.

“He ends up serving the state of Illinois. I’m not sure he would have imagined that. When he came to Chicago, I think he was coming specifically to Chicago to do the kind of organizing and activism that he wanted to do in the tradition of people who had gone before him,” Dailey said.

When Obama took the presidential oath of office on Jan. 20, 2009, he placed his hand on Lincoln’s bible. In his second term in 2013, Obama hand wrote an essay submitted to the Lincoln Presidential Library to mark the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

“In the evening, when Michelle and the girls have gone to bed, I sometimes walk down the hall to a room Abraham Lincoln used as his office.  It contains an original copy of the Gettysburg address, written in Lincoln’s own hand,” Obama wrote. “I linger on these few words that have helped define our American experiment: ‘A new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.’”

“One of the things that I think he was signaling – and Lincoln himself signaled this all the time – was the open possibility of the future. Obama says constantly, we want to have a more perfect union. We’re never going to get there, we’re never going to have a perfect union, but if we all work really hard, we might have a more perfect union,” Dailey said.

In writing about Lincoln, Obama went on to say “Lincoln’s words give us confidence that whatever trials await us, this nation and the freedom we cherish can, and shall, prevail.”