{"id":70291,"date":"2026-03-28T23:06:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T04:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/28\/illinois-and-arizona-end-lengthy-final-four-droughts-with-statement-wins\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T23:06:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T04:06:15","slug":"illinois-and-arizona-end-lengthy-final-four-droughts-with-statement-wins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/28\/illinois-and-arizona-end-lengthy-final-four-droughts-with-statement-wins\/","title":{"rendered":"Illinois and Arizona end lengthy Final Four droughts with statement wins"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>\n<p>Illinois bully Iowa to end 21-year Final Four wait<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Wagler scores 25 as Illini own paint and glass late<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Top seed Arizona into first Final Four since 2001<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Illinois is heading to the Final Four for the first time in 21 years, and Andrej Stojakovic made clear the Fighting Illini have much bigger goals.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t want anybody to think this is it,\u201d he said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t get to the Final Four just to get there. We\u2019re coming to win two more games.\u201d<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/2026\/mar\/28\/elite-eight-scores-illinois-iowa-arizona-purdue\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Illinois bully Iowa to end 21-year Final Four wait Wagler scores 25 as Illini own paint and glass late Top seed Arizona into first Final Four since 2001 Illinois is heading to the Final Four for the first time in 21 years, and Andrej Stojakovic made clear the Fighting Illini have much bigger goals. \u201cI &#8230; <a title=\"Illinois and Arizona end lengthy Final Four droughts with statement wins\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/28\/illinois-and-arizona-end-lengthy-final-four-droughts-with-statement-wins\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Illinois and Arizona end lengthy Final Four droughts with statement wins\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70291\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}