Big Ten Champs!  Again.  Ho hum.

Poor man wanna be rich.
Rich man wanna be king.
But a king ain’t satisfied ’til he rules everything.
–Bruce Springsteen

First off, get a load of Rick Morrissey in the background in this photo. Who’s doing his hair these days, Elvis Presley’s mom?

All right, where was I? It’s a rare thing today, in this jaded, hollow world of ours, that genuine emotion finds its way into sports. It did this weekend, and for a very bad reason. Bruce Weber’s mother died. One minute she’s at the United Center picking up her tickets for the weekend’s tournament, the next she’s being rushed to Rush Presbyterian. Among the last things she told her daughter were first, to not tell her sons Dave or Bruce because they had coaching to do on Friday and she didn’t want them worried, and second, to make sure she left the tickets for the rest of the weekend in her purse because she figured she’d get a chance to go back to the tournament.

So when Bruce Weber announced on Friday night, just hours after his mother’s death, that he was going to coach Saturday, he used a cliche you hear all the time. He said he was going to coach because his mother would have wanted him to. This time, it was true, and once the stories of his mother started to come out, nobody doubted it.

Bruce Weber’s a very human guy. What you see is what you get with Bruce. If anything he’s too open. Too honest. And so in a moment like the moment of silence before Saturday’s tournament win over Minnesota, you see the real Bruce Weber. He teared up. Illini Nation felt the urge to give him a big group hug. So what did he do as the crowd roared and his team huddled up before the tip off? He grabbed a dry erase marker and drew up a play for the tip. It was time to coach. His mom wanted him to coach and he showed up. And now he was going to coach.

And the Illini did what they’ve done 32 times now this season. They won. It wasn’t pretty. The whole Big Ten Tournament was nearly unwatchable. But Illinois, no doubt burdened by an incomprehensible amount of emotional baggage got the job done. Too many teams win their conference and then treat the conference tournament like a formality. North Carolina played like they couldn’t go home fast enough from the ACC Tournament.

But Illinois, a team that swaggers because it’s who they are, not because it’s who they think they should be, needed to get back to the business of scoring more points than their opponents. If a 29-1 team ever needed to win something, they did.

And so they survived their own urge to do everything too fast on Saturday and beat Minnesota. Then, on Sunday, they put the clamps on Wisconsin like nobody’s ever done. These aren’t the Dick Bennett Hickory High Badgers who pass five times before they shoot. The Badgers can score. They didn’t yesterday.

It’s basic basketball. Your offense will come and go, but you can control your defense. It’s effort and playing together. Every time a Badger could manage to get past his defender, an Illini buddy showed up to help out.

Think about that. Effort and playing together. Have we ever seen an Illinois team who could hang their hat on that like these guys can? Every night.

The only question mark swirling around the Illini now is Dee Brown. He struggled through the Big Ten Tournament with his shooting and put up a goose egg in the championship. The Big Ten player of the year went scoreless in the Big Ten title game and his team still won. That tells you everything you need to know about the Illini, doesn’t it?

And if you’re worrying about Dee Brown, you’re wasting your time. When the lights shine brightest, Dee will, too. I don’t know much, but I know that.

—————-

The brackets came out less than an hour after the Illini huddled up for an awkward interview with Jim Nantz and the world’s biggest prick, Billy Packer. But Billy actually did something…nice. He called Dee over and told him simply that the shots will fall. Dee didn’t need to hear it, because Dee knows that no matter how many shots you’ve missed…you’re just the next one away from one in a row…but it never hurts to have somebody tell you that, anyway.

For the next four days everyone will debate which of the four regions is the toughest. North Carolina’s is a doozy. But is there any doubt which one is the toughest? Really? If you’re one of the 15 sent to play in the same region with the Fighting Illini you know what the deal is.

You don’t think Eddie Sutton, Lute Olson and Al Skinner all saw “Illinois” on the top line of their region and let out a sigh and an “Oh, shit”? We’re too close to it. We’ve seen the Illini play 33 times and so we fret about their inside play, or Deron Williams’ unwillingness to take an open shot when he thinks there’s a chance to find a teammate who’s six or seven inches closer.

Spend the next four days however you want. But if you spend them worrying about the Illini…well, you’re wasting your time. We just finally got to the fun part. This is what they’ve been waiting for all year long. Since the balls got rolled out for the first time on October 15, the Illini have been trying to get the top seed in the Chicago region, because they want to do what no Illinois team has ever done. And we get four more weeks to enjoy it. These Illini have been many things this year, but they’ve never been boring. Teams like this don’t come around that often (at least not around here.) They are the rare team that deserves the superlatives. So I plan on enjoying it. And if it ends too early…well,…who says it’s going to?