The Wisconsin Badgers played their second overtime game in three days and found themselves on the other side of the result, beating the No. 8 Illinois Fighting Illini 92-90. It’s a huge victory for the Badgers, who secured their second Quad 1 victory on the season and earned their second top-10 win on the road.
Illinois
3 quick takeaways from Wisconsin’s overtime thriller win over Illinois: What A Game
These types of games have become a theme under Greg Gard, as the Badgers got their second marquee win of the season following their 91-88 win over Michigan back in January. With the win, the Badgers improved to 17-7 on the season and 9-4 in conference play. They now have wins over the top two teams in the Big Ten.
Here are three quick takeaways from the Badgers 92-90 win over Illinois on Tuesday evening.
To win this game, Wisconsin was going to have to hit threes at near or above a 40 percent rate. That’s just the way they needed to do things, given how good Illinois’s interior presence was and the way the Badgers play basketball.
Well, the Badgers hit a whopping 16 threes and shot 44.4 percent from deep and still only won by two. That tells you the difficulty of the matchup, but also the impressiveness and resolve Wisconsin had from deep. The Badgers started this game strong, which is exactly what they needed, hitting four straight three-pointers to take an early 18-10 lead.
They hit seven threes in the first half, scoring at a 35 percent clip from deep. Then, they started the second half shooting well and then found their stroke after the long drought, hitting eight more threes in the second half. The Badgers have won big games this year when they’ve hit threes, and Tuesday’s win was one of those.
The Badgers don’t win this game without John Blackwell’s mentality. Wisconsin had a huge scoring drought of 5:13 in the second half and scored only one point over a 7:07 stretch where Illinois went on a 14-1 run to take a nine-point lead.
If the Badgers were going to find their way back, it was going to have to be one of their star players taking over. And that’s what John Blackwell did. Yes, he shot 9 of 22 from the field and missed some shots at the rim, but it was the mentality that really started things for the Badgers.
Wisconsin was really struggling to get shots at the rim against Illinois’s rim protectors, and their attacking efforts weren’t there as much during the cold stretch. But Blackwell was relentless and kept looking to find his way to the rim, either going up with the shot or kicking out for teammates. And like that, the comeback started.
Blackwell started things with a pair of threes before the cold stretch, but then looked to attack and kick, with Nick Boyd and Austin Rapp hitting a number of threes off the catch. With the Badgers down seven with under seven minutes to go, Blackwell’s attacking finally started to pay off, as he got a pair of layups. Then, he got a defensive steal, which parlayed into an assist for an Austin Rapp three to tie the game with 2:19.
Then, in arguably the most important possession of regulation for Wisconsin with under a minute left, Blackwell attacked hard again and drew two, kicking out for a Rapp three to give Wisconsin an 81-80 lead. Then, in overtime, Blackwell hit another three and the final free throws to finish with 24 points and four assists.
But it wasn’t just those moments. Blackwell’s mentality started to resonate with the team, which had a stellar second half defensively forcing turnovers. Additionally, Nick Boyd, who really struggled to start the game, started to see his layups go down, which were crucial for the Badgers.
The Badgers don’t pull this incredible win off without Blackwell.
This Badgers team just doesn’t give up.
Wisconsin started this one strong, which was crucial, as they were hitting their shots and staying out ahead of the Illini. They did go through some lulls offensively as Illinois started to get ahead, having a two and four-minute scoreless stretch in the period, but still went into halftime down only six.
The Badgers also responded really well out of the gate in the second half, which was just as crucial as their opening start. They started the period with an 8-0 run, with good defense turning into a pair of triples on the other side, and led 51-49 after the first two and a half minutes.
From there, though, things got rough as Wisconsin scored just one point over the next seven minutes, which allowed Illinois to flip the script and take an 11-point lead with 11:40 left in the game. But this Badgers team has shown several times this season that they can engineer a double-digit second-half comeback.
In six of their last nine games, they’ve done so, winning five of those, with the exception being Saturday’s overtime loss to Indiana. That was the case again on Tuesday, as the Badgers found their form again and slowly started to chip away at the lead against a team that you don’t want to be trailing by double digits against.
Still, after some back-and-forth action, the Badgers trailed by 10 with seven minutes left, but found success as John Blackwell started to take over, while Austin Rapp started hitting some pick-and-pop threes. But it was the defensive end where Wisconsin really impressed.
Illinois was still shooting the ball at a high rate, but Wisconsin forced eight turnovers in the second half, which allowed them to mount the comeback and take a lead late in regulation before the game went to overtime. Then, in the final five minutes, the Badgers found a way to steal the game by getting ahead early once again.
Playing deep minutes with two overtime games in three days, the Badgers showed great resilience and just found a way once again.
Sightings of a fireball were reported across Illinois and at least eight other states on Monday night.
The American Meteor Society received nearly 200 reports of a fireball seen over Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, New York, Ohio, and Wisconsin around 10 p.m.
Some of the reports out of Illinois came from Chicago, Aurora, Carpentersville, Warrenville, Addison, Waukegan, Oak Lawn, Shorewood Westchester, and Glen Ellyn. There were also reports from Indiana, including Valparaiso and Fort Wayne.
There was also a report out of Ontario, Canada.
Home camera footage, posted by the American Meteor Society, shows a flash across the sky in Michigan about an hour Northwest of Detroit.
A car crashed into a home in unincorporated Cary, Illinois, while three people were inside Monday evening, fire officials said.
A spokesperson for the Cary Fire Protection District said they were called to a home in the 2500 block of Oakdale Terrace just after 5:30 p.m. after reports came in that a vehicle had crashed into a house.
When paramedics and firefighters arrived, they found a black Jeep had slammed into a house, causing damage.
Three people were in the home at the time, fire officials said, but they were all able to get out safely and no injuries were reported. There were two people in the Jeep who got checked out by paramedics for minor injuries, but they declined further medical attention and did not want to go to a hospital.
Because of the damage to the home, McHenry County officials deemed it unsafe to occupy until repairs were made.
The American Red Cross is helping the four residents of the home with temporary housing and other needs while repairs are made.
The circumstances surrounding the crash are under investigation by the McHenry County Sheriff’s Office. It was not clear if any charges or citations would be issued.
Article Summary
- The General Assembly passed a bill early Monday that would give rideshare drivers the right to form a union.
- Drivers for companies like Uber and Lyft could elect union representatives and perform union activities, like collective bargaining.
- Drivers say a union is necessary because of low wages, and limited opportunities to appeal deactivations, or to have a say in setting rules.
This summary was written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
Over the past five months, a sea of rideshare drivers in yellow T-shirts flooded the Illinois state Capitol almost weekly, lobbying for the right to form a union. They may be able to do so soon, after Illinois lawmakers passed a bill giving them that ability in the final hours of the spring session.
House Bill 5090 would regulate how rideshare drivers can form a union, elect union representatives and engage in union activities such as collective bargaining.
The bill passed the House 83-28 early Monday morning and now heads to the governor. It passed the Senate 42-12-1 earlier on Sunday afternoon.
Rideshare drivers say a union is necessary because under federal law, they’re defined as independent contractors, despite having little control over work practices while working for companies like Uber and Lyft. That makes a statewide union their only option to collectively bargain and form a labor agreement, they say.
“This goes back to a fundamental belief that when workers are able to organize and have a collective voice, that does lead to better wages, benefits and working conditions,” bill sponsor Sen. Ram Villivalam, D-Chicago, said. Rep. Yolonda Morris, D-Chicago, carried the bill in the House.
“This legislation is urgently needed as drivers face declining wages, rising vehicle costs and unsafe working conditions without basic protection or a real voice on the job,” Morris said.
Forming a union
Drivers who are interested in forming a union would need to follow specific guidelines to do so: They would have to obtain signatures in support from 10% of active drivers to show interest, then 30% to become a certified union. From there, the union can petition the Illinois Labor Relations Board to conduct an election for individual union representatives.
Those thresholds are lower than in other labor sectors, but they were chosen because this industry is so new, Villivalam said. Union membership would be voluntary.
Every four months, transportation network companies — defined as entities providing rides through a digital platform, not including taxi associations — that provide the top 95% of rides would need to give the ILRB contact information for all drivers who, in the past six months, completed 10 or more rides in Illinois.
The board would determine the median number of rides completed by that population, and any driver who completed that number or more would be considered an active driver and would be eligible to join the union.
Like any other organization with unionized employees, these companies would be required to adhere to fair work practices, negotiate in good faith, provide timely and accurate information to the union and follow other standard labor regulations. They could be fined by the ILRB for violations.
This bill also includes a 4-cent-per-ride charge to the companies, to cover the implementation costs under the bill and for a grant program, a charge that companies are prohibited from passing on to the consumer. The grant program, Rideshare Workers Support Fund, would be managed by the secretary of state and paid to the union representative.
The bill also regulates how the ILRB and the Department of Labor would handle bargaining mediation, arbitration, labor agreements and unfair work practices.
The path to unionization
Rideshare drivers in Illinois have pushed for unionization rights since early 2019, initially beginning in the city of Chicago. In rallies and committees, drivers have told stories of dwindling wages and a lack of access to appeals for deactivations.
“Let’s be honest, we don’t operate independently at all. We don’t set our own wages. We don’t control the rules. We don’t decide who is deactivated and how they’re punished. The algorithm, the corporations do,” Brett Currin, a rideshare driver, said at a January rally at the state Capitol.
The bill does not address those issues specifically, but through a union, drivers would be able to negotiate with their company on those issues.
“Hearing these (constituent) stories and then working with organized labor to craft a product that they had already been working on to move forward, really is what this is stemming from,” Villivalam said.
Villivalam, who represents parts of the northwest side of Chicago and its suburbs, said his district has the largest number of rideshare drivers in Illinois.
The Illinois Drivers Alliance led the effort throughout this spring, backed by the local International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, and the Service Employees International Union Local 1, two unions representing thousands of workers across the Midwest.
California and Massachusetts have also passed similar measures, with Massachusetts certifying their statewide union just last week, on May 26.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
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