ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Here is Ayo Dosunmu, so kind in this moment, after being so cruel to Michigan. His family is waiting to see him, hug him, tell him, wow, that was one helluva shot. They’re down the hallway, waiting alongside families outside the visiting locker room at Crisler Center. Dosunmu is going to take his time, though, and explain every move, every thought, every pump, every fake, every shimmy, every shake.

Time, see, is something that Dosunmu knows and understands. He doesn’t take it for granted. If anything, he uses it against you.

“It was at 10, then nine,” he says of the final seconds falling off the clock on Saturday as he dribbled out near the block M at half court. “I knew I was going at the six-second mark. When 6.0 came, I got into my move.”

Dosunmu is sitting baseline, replaying the moment, pointing to the floor and the remnants of an Illinois road game at Michigan that was never pretty but ended with a portrait: Dosunmu from the left elbow, midair, body contorted after awkwardly jumping with his left foot forward on a right-handed jump shot, letting the ball fly with the Wolverines’ Zavier Simpson reaching high, but not high enough. Dosunmu released the ball over Simpson’s fingertips with 1.9 seconds left. The ball found the net with 0.9 left. The clock stopped with 0.5 left. Illinois won, 64-62.

“I wanted it to be the last shot,” Dosunmu says, looking out at the floor. “I really didn’t want there to be any time left on the clock. That was my goal.

“But, I mean, there was only 0.5 left. I was pretty close.”

This is what Ayo Dosunmu does. The late dagger against Michigan State. The bomb against Wisconsin. The pull-up against Northwestern. The deeeep 3 against Ohio State. Big shots. Big moments. Dosunmu is 51 games into his Illinois career, but a long way into establishing himself as a fearless, cold-blooded, give-me-the-ball-and-get-out-of-my-way finisher. When coach Brad Underwood called a timeout with the game tied at 62 and 24 seconds remaining, everyone in the building and watching on TV and, most important, in the Michigan defensive huddle, knew Dosunmu would be taking the final shot.

It didn’t matter. Not a bit.

What was seen yet again on Saturday is worth pausing for and discussing the fact that this guy has it, whatever it is. Dosunmu breathes in breathless moments.

“He’s made for this,” teammate Andres Feliz said.

“I wish I could pinpoint it,” Underwood said, still trying to comprehend how Illinois is alone in first place in the Big Ten at 7-2 in conference play. “The great ones have that. Maybe some other don’t. But he sure has it. He has that ability to just know.”

Underwood called a four-flat iso for the final possession. The sideline inbound went to Trent Frazier, who held the ball near half court, letting the clock crawl down. He waited, then dribbled toward Dosunmu, flipping him the ball and replacing him on the wing. Dosunmu dribbled alone out top.

Juwan Howard assigned Simpson, his best defensive guard, to Dosunmu for the final possession. Dosunmu had five inches on him.

Along the baseline, Frazier and Feliz ran past each other, switching sides. It was nothing more than window dressing to get the defense moving.


Dosunmu poured in a career-high 27 points, none bigger than the last two. (Rick Osentoski/USA TODAY Sports)

All along, the play call was for Dosunmu to take his man one-on-one and pen another obituary. Underwood said afterward it “wasn’t a very long conversation” when dialing up the play during the timeout. In the huddle, he asked Dosunmu, “What do you think about four-flat iso?”

Dosunmu’s response?

“Yeah, let’s do it.”

That was that.

Eye to eye with Simpson, Dosunmu began with a dribble between his legs, then another, then …

“I just got into my move,” he says, hands moving now, back in the moment. “I cross, I go, I stop, pump fake, (Simpson) stayed down, and …”

Simpson took a mighty swipe as Dosunmu stopped and swung the ball from left to right, across his body.

“I know, having played him three times, he has quick hands,” Dosunmu says. “So if you watch it, you’ll see when I cross him, I keep it tight, because I know he’s going to try to reach in there for it.”

Simpson whiffed, but he got his body into Dosunmu’s chest, at least making things uncomfortable. Dosunmu jabbed his left foot past his right pivot foot to create some space and rose up.

“I just shot it right over him,” he says.

This is why Dosunmu is still at Illinois. This right here. As a five-star recruit from Chicago, he won everywhere he went before coming to Champaign. He led Chicago’s Westside Westinghouse College Prep to a conference championship as an underclassman, then transferred to powerhouse Morgan Park High School and led it to two straight IHSA Class 3A championships. He won heaps of grassroots games with Mac Irvin Fire. He won gold in the 2018 FIBA Under-18 Americas Championship as a member of Team USA.

Then came his freshman year at Illinois. Dosunmu was easily typecast as the homegrown hero who would return the Fighting Illini to some level of prominence. He did little to quell the hype. He told Underwood he was coming to Illinois to help turn around a program that hasn’t been to the NCAA Tournament since 2013. He said the same thing publicly.

The storybook didn’t quite work out.

At this time last year, Illinois was 5-14 overall and 1-7 in the Big Ten. Sure, Dosunmu was a budding star, but what was that worth if the season amounted to nothing?

It might sound like a nicely packaged story, but Dosunmu swears that this, above all else, weighed on him when choosing between the NBA Draft and returning for his sophomore season.

“I’m not going to lie to you, being in the locker room after losing five or six straight games last year — just constantly, constantly losing — it messed with me,” Dosunmu says. “That ultimately led to my decision to come back. I couldn’t leave. I didn’t want to leave a legacy like that.”

It boils down to this. He wants to remembered.

Before Dosunmu pulled up over Simpson for his game-winning attempt, he grabbed a team-high seven rebounds, made 10 of 17 shots, including two 3s, and guarded Simpson for key stretches of the second half. That, more than any single shot, is what winning looks like, and Saturday’s game-winner would never have mattered if he hadn’t done the rest.

“He has that unique ability to do whatever it takes,” Underwood said. “He’s becoming that complete two-way player.”

Dosunmu is above all else, though, a young man made for these singular moments. Saturday’s was perfect. It was only three months ago when he was at Big Ten Media Day, wide-eyed watching Howard, the new Michigan coach, walk by. Dosunmu was there to represent Illinois, wearing a gray windowpane suit and an orange paisley tie. He was a bit starstruck seeing Howard — one of the all-time greats to come out of Chicago. “Looking good, man,” Howard said to Dosunmu, giving a nod. “Thanks, man,” Dosunmu responded.

Now, Howard was on the sideline at Crisler watching Dosunmu pull up and extend his shooting hand.

The air left the building in a rush, then swept back through.

The shot was good all the way. Never a doubt.

Dosunmu finished with a career-high 27 points. He has scored at least 15 points in the last six games of Illinois’ seven-game winning streak and is now averaging 16.1 points per game for a team that’s 15-5 overall and quickly becoming one of the great stories of the college basketball season. Illinois is back because Dosunmu — with plenty of help from Frazier, Feliz, Kofi Cockburn, Giorgi Bezhanishvili and others — has brought it back, just as he said he would.

If there’s a reason to believe the Illini are for real, this is it. For Dosunmu, time doesn’t progress. It only exists. And in his mind, it’s his.

“You’ve got to seize the moment,” he says before heading down the hallway. “You can only worry about now.”