If there is such a thing as a meaningless college basketball game (and actually, there are plenty of them, most of them involve NIU), Illinois is about to play as many as five of them. They have their last home game on Thursday against the Purdue Combovers, then they travel to lovely Value City Arena in Columbus to take on Ohio State this weekend. Then, it’s off to Chicago to play in the Big Ten Tournament, where three wins give them another conference championship (their second in two weeks).
But the truth is that none of these games is particularly important. Sure, if they lost to Purdue and Ohio State and in the first round to some closet-case team like…uh…Purdue or Ohio State, they’d probably lose the number one overall seed in the NCAA Tournament.
But if they lose just once? Well, nobody else has just one loss, so the Illini are golden.
They won’t play a “real” game until sometime Thursday, March 17 at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis, and even that will be against either the 64th or 65th (depending on which one of them wins in Dayton the Tuesday before) best team in the country.
So what’s there to play for between now and St. Patty’s Day?
Perfection.
Billy Bob Thornton asked (while channeling Gary Gaines) his Permian Panthers, “Can we be perfect?”
Can they? Can the Illini win the 11 straight games they need to finish a ludicrous 39-0 and win the school’s first basketball national title?
Of course they can.
Will they?
Well, now, that’s why they play the games.
The thing you like about the 2004-05 Illini is that they have never, not once, shied away from the pressure, or the responsibility, of being number one. They acted like they’d been there before, when in reality, not a one of them ever had. They enjoy the attention. They welcome the hostile crowds and pressure to make sure that tonight those fans don’t get to swarm the court and celebrate knocking off number one. They’ve worn the target that comes with being number one like a badge of honor.
Their head coach is just goofy enough to act the same way. Bruce Weber is a unique individual. He gets it.
He knew that his stay at Illinois would be judged for two things. First, what he did with the loaded team he inherited and second, if he could recruit. To his neverending credit, he has taken the team and propelled them to heights nobody thought possible, and along the way, he’s using whatever media attention he can get to give himself the face and name recognition he knows he’ll need to keep the talent pipeline going.
If it were five years from now and he had a McDonald’s All-American or three under his recruiting belt would he be so flip about how much it means to be number one? Probably not. He could play it cool, and fall back into the comfortable coach speak of how it doesn’t matter who’s ranked number one and blah, blah, blah.
Illini Nation has enjoyed this season like none other. They have a team that you feel completely comfortable with and hurtling your body onto the bandwagon can be done with no second thought. They’re the hardest working bunch in show business. They are right out of one of those stupid “Everything I Needed to Learn About ‘Blank’ I Learned in Kindergarten” books.
They share.
They help each other.
They don’t quit until the job is done.
Can they be perfect? Who knows?
Any team can be beaten. That much we know. And if the Illini go down it won’t come as a shock to anybody. But if they lose, they’ll be beaten. They won’t give it away. You’ll have to take it. There are no off nights for this bunch. There are nights when they aren’t shooting, so they crank up the defense just that much more. There is never a night when the effort’s not there. That’s the difference. It’s what makes them special. They don’t phone it in. They don’t have that in them. And with 11 games to go, are they going to start now?
Hell no.
Media “experts” claim that Illinois needs to lose. Have you ever heard a dumber thing in your life?
You know what they need? They need to keep winning. Right now they are invincible. They feel it, and more importantly their opponents feel it. You lose once, even in a “meaningless” game and you lose the invincibility. Suddenly, you’re just another good basketball team. Now what’s so special about that?
People just can’t seem to put their finger on what makes them so good. Sure they have talent, but lots of teams have talent. Heck, there are probably three or four teams that have more talent.
But their talent is different. It all fits. You can buy 1,000 of the most expensive car parts in the world but if they don’t fit, you don’t get an expensive car. You get a heap of scrap. The Illini have the parts.
It shows in the Big Ten’s inability to pick a player of the year. How can you pick one of the three Illinois guards? It has to be one of them, but which one?
The question is the answer. Every one of them is good, but every one of them is better because of the other two. They are a matched set. Together, they have every weapon they need to kill you.
The parts fit.
An ESPN talking head and onetime Notre Dame head coach, thinks Illinois will lose a game because of foul trouble. He won’t say how much foul trouble or who needs to be in it, but he’s pretty sure he’s right. If you’re vague enough, you’re never wrong.
If they lose, it’ll be because one of the three guards is gone. Injured. Kidnapped. Stuck in traffic. Whatever. But if they’re all there? One in the middle flanked by the other two?
Well good luck.
You’re going to need it.
Can they be perfect?
You bet your ass.
With BC losing to Pitt, no other team from a major conference has fewer than three losses. Illinois isn’t going to lose to Purdue, especially with Landry out. I thought that OSU would give them a good game in Columbus, but the way Wisconsin took them to school, I don’t see it.
But let’s say they lose one of those games and a game in the BTT. They still finish with the best record in the NCAA (except for Pacific, but they don’t really count). They have a 1 sewn up.
Andy, Illinois can’t play #64 or #65 because the play-in game is on Tuesday and Indy is a Thursday/Saturday site. By NCAA rule, the play-in winner then gets to play on Friday (As if it matters because they’ll lose by 30 to some #1 seed). Anyway, that means the Illini get to play #63 in the first round if they are the top overall #1 seed.
Other than that, I agree with most of the thoughts in the article. I don’t quite know about the positives of “face recognition”, but if Weber can use it to finally get one of the really high-ranked recruits that he has so far not been able to get to come to Champaign, then I’m all for it…
Lets look closely at how to beat the Illini……If Roger Powell and James Augustine both get into severe foul trouble against a team with a stong front line..the combo of Chainsaw and Ingram wont be enough to keep the wheels on. The Illini guard play makes it extrememly difficult to get it into the post but with out those two in the game it would be hard to compensate for. The savy of both Powell and Ingram has been good enough this year to not have had to face this situation…but short of no one being able to put the ball in the hoop ths is the only way I can see they could be beaten. Even Wisconsin couldn’t get both Powell and Augustine in trouble when they played, however they came close. If the Badgers pound it inside a bit more both games they may have had a shot. Once again the guard play overwhelms the opponents front court making it tough to feed the post…..A team that can negate the guard play of the Illini and present a tougher front line could be the Illini’s demise…May not see anyone that matches up until maybe Duke in the elite 8 or Kansas in the final 4…then its up for grabs anyway….Go Illini!
Mouthpiece, your point boils down to “Illinois only has one serviceable bigman reserve.” Very true. Nick Smith’s regression this year has been a joy for me; I’ve always thought he was an ass. Powell’s been in foul trouble quite a bit this year, but Ingraham has been serviceable (at least in the Wisconsin game, which I cared about more than any other).
But I still don’t know if it’s enough to get Powell and Augustine out. Even if they were out, it’s just not easy to get the ball down low against Illinois. Ask Mike Wilkinson, Paul Davis, Terrence Dials, or whoever. The guards extend so far out that there aren’t open passing lanes. Unless a team has guards that can play with U of I, they won’t lose.
The “need to lose” argument is dopey. There hasn’t been a team that entered the tournament with one loss and won the title since N.C. State in 1974, so apparently one loss isn’t that key to a title.
Hey, I made a big shot against Iowa. That counts for something, right?
Prediction: Southern Illinois gets a five seed and is set up for a sweet 16 game against Illinois. Haven’t seen the Salukis play, but they’ve been rolling and cracked the top 25.
“Media “experts†claim that Illinois needs to lose. Have you ever heard a dumber thing in your life?”
Well, no kidding –but it’s my hook< \i>, man. This industry thrives on controversy, and scores and stats bore people, especially methheads stuck in traffic.
So ssshhhhh!! C’mon –work with me, now…
Brian, it’s impossible that the Salukis have cracked the Top 25 with Weber’s recruits. You’re supposed to ignore the results and just count how many stars each player was given a couple years ago by B.C.’s crack(pot) scouting site. You’re also going to get B.C. all lathered up with this talk of Laura Ingraham’s serviceability.
Honesty compels me to say that my view on Ingraham is based solely on his hitting two threes out of nowhere against Wisconsin. They were huge.
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