Scoring was at a premium early on yesterday -- that was until sophomore guard Adrienne Squire started dropping bombs from all over the floor.

An inept Fighting Illini team hung with the Lady Lions, as the score read an ugly 10-8 nine minutes into the ballgame. Squire, whose presence had gone unnoticed during the stretch, opened up the contest by knocking down two consecutive balls from behind the arc, pacing her for a career-high 28 points.

"It was real nice," the long-range specialist said. "Catch and shoot. That's what I like to do best."

It looked just as easy as the description suggests.

On an unreal 7-of-9 shooting, the seven treys tied a Bryce Jordan Center record set by former Lady Lion guard Kelly Mazzante on Jan. 9, 2003, against Iowa.

It was also a return to form for the sophomore, who had struggled of late to get the open looks she needs to be effective. Those who contained her did so by preventing her from simply catching and shooting, forcing her to put the ball on the floor.

At Indiana on Thursday, she just went 1-for-5 from beyond the arc, preceded by a 0-for-1 performance against a stifling Purdue defense.

"I hadn't been shooting very well the past two games," she said. "I kept going to the gym and I kept shooting and it paid off."

Just as Squire had seemingly gotten the game going well into the first half, she also iced it by draining, again, two more 3-pointers just more than five minutes into the second half to bring the game to 42-26.

With the game in hand, Squire continued to unload only to amuse the crowd of 7,975 and Penn State women's basketball coach Rene Portland.

"I started to cheer every time she shot," Portland said, "and I was happy she was shooting it."

Convention suggests when a player is lighting up a defense, or in this case, outright embarrassing it, that at some point the coaching staff makes an adjustment. Instead, Illinois head coach Theresa Grentz stood along the sideline with her hands on her hips much of the second half, a posture her team seemed to employ, as Squire had 20 of her points in the final period without a hand in her face.

"We were running out transitions and they weren't getting out of their screens," Squire said.

Squire said she was surprised that they did not send anybody out to guard her, even more surprising considering she was the only offensive threat, as the team's leading scorers, junior Amanda Brown and sophomore Kamela Gissendanner, were quiet on the afternoon.

So Squire kept unloading, to the chagrin of those in orange, as no one appeared to contest a shot out of the Illini's defensive scheme.

Illinois opted to stay in its zone, a system that Squire abused by running around it. With the big lineup Illinois put on the floor, none of the Illini were quick enough to get out to contest the shots from the perimeter.

"When we play that zone, that back person has got to get out," Grentz said. "We just didn't get her. I didn't think we could play them man-to-man."

So the exposed defense was left without an answer and allowed Squire to have a career day -- simply by catching and shooting.