INDIANAPOLIS — Not this year.Not this Illini team.Someday, perhaps soon, Illinois will break through with its first men’s basketball national championship. Thirty-six Illini teams have gotten to the NCAA Tournament, winning a total of 50 games — second-most among schools that haven’t won it all — but each endeavor has ended short of the mountaintop.This one ended Saturday in a national semifinal against UConn, which was unthreatened for most of the way and won 71-62.The Huskies (34-5) might not have better players than the Illini (28-9), but they rose to the occasion as though it were a matter of fact. Dan Hurley’s team might not have had better X’s and O’s scribbled on the whiteboard, but for stretches it looked that way. The fact Illinois’ two lowest-scoring, worst-shooting games this season were against UConn — it was 74-61 Huskies the day after Thanksgiving — should give coach Brad Underwood something to think about and wrestle with after the first Final Four appearance of his career. While the Illini bricked one three-point attempt after another — finishing 6-for-26 — the Huskies made enough of their own to outscore the Illini by 18 from behind the arc, a crucial area in which the guys in orange failed to deliver.And maybe UConn — which bills itself as the “Basketball Capital of the World” — just has the secret sauce. Six national titles for the Huskies men, all in the last 26 tournaments, and an amazing record in Final Four games of 13-1. A…
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