I’m not one of those Illini fans who is mad at Bill Self for leaving Illinois for Kansas. At the time though, I wondered why he was so sure that he had a better chance of winning a national championship in Lawrence. Sure, there’s the whole “Rock, Chalk, Jayhawk” thing, but nobody even knows what that means.
Kansas had not played well of late. They’d been beaten at home by Iowa State, gotten bounced by Mizzou and even dopes like me had them picked to lose a second round game to underwhelming Wisconsin.
But this was Bucknell. A Patriot League school! Sure, Holy Cross had almost beaten Kansas a few years ago in the tournament, but you figured that reminder would be enough to keep the players honest. Bucknell has FIVE scholarships to hand out. Five. They had to borrow a pep band. Their coach looks like Mike Sherman without the obesity and with an even worse haircut.
Watching the game, things got aggravating. First, the color announcer the great Bob Wenzel, proved he can’t pronounce the nickname of Bucknell. It’s Bison. How hard is it to say bison?
Say it with me, “by-sun.” That’s easy.
But no, Wenzel said it, “by-sahn”, but didn’t even say that he literally shouted the second syllable…”by-SAHN!” All day yesterday I waited for him to go on and on about the “bad-GRRRS!”, but he didn’t.
Then, the officiating was…uh…interesting at the end of the Bucknell-Kansas game. The horrific intentional foul call with about a minute to play was the kind of call that thwarts upset bids every time. As poorly as Kansas was playing, Bucknell had to be nearly perfect to stay ahead of them. You don’t come back from a call like that. But they did.
Yesterday, Jim Nantz and Billy Packer wondered if the Bucknell upset of Kansas was the biggest in tournament history. Sure, Kansas had struggled lately, but they had been the preseason number one, and had spent time at number one before the Illini decided there would be only one number one from mid-November on.
You throw in the fact that the Patriot league had never won a game in the tournament, the five scholarship deal and the fact that neither of the Jim Harricks were involved and suddenly, the case looked strong.
Then, you watched the most overrated player in the history of Big Ten basketball, Mike Wilkinson absolutely dominate Bucknell on Sunday, and show that really, they just weren’t that good, and well, it didn’t hurt the “bye-SAHN’s” chance of being the biggest upset ever.
While he was at Illinois, my opinion of Bill Self was that he was a good coach and a great recruiter. Not the other way around. Mike Brey coached the pants off of him in his last game at Illinois, when a mildly talented Notre Dame team upset the Illini in Indianapolis. But Illinois was playing freshmen guards and that wasn’t exactly a recipe for the Final Four.
But Kansas didn’t lose because of Bill Self. They lost because their backcourt was horrific. Aaron Miles and Keith Langford looked like they had never seen a pick and roll before. Sure, Langford’s hurt and Miles has never been as good as everyone wanted to believe he was, but this was basic stuff.
In the end, Wayne Simien got a new appreciation for how good Christian Laettner’s shot was. Not as easy as it looked, eh, Wayne?
The best game of the tournament was the Saturday night Wake Forest-West Virginia game. Just unbelievable. Two teams running completely opposite offenses and not being able to stop the other team.
Illinois didn’t look good against the great squad from Farleigh-Dickinson, though they did start to look like themselves in the second half, and that carried over to the Nevada game. That was the Illinois team we were used to. While Dee Brown was crapping his brains out in tribute to Rashard McCants, the rest of the Illini were doing what they did 29 times in a row during the regular season. They were running their offense and waiting for you to lose somebody, when yo did, that guy got the ball and an easy basket. Most of the time, it was James Augustine.
For some reason, people seem to think that Deron Williams has had a disappointing season. I don’t get it. How can the morons on talk radio and who write their pointless columns in the local papers, go on and on about how great it is that Illinois is so unselfish, yet rip Deron for not scoring more points? How do those two things co-exist? Deron Williams’ best games tend to be the ones where you don’t think he’s doing anything. On a team with three point guards, he’s the real one. He gets them into their offense, he makes it move. He shot and drove more on Saturday because Dee was sick, so he was more noticable. But he didn’t really do anything much differently. He’s a great player. And he’s been it all year.
UW-Milwaukee is a good story, and not just because they’re coached by a federal wire tapping-law violating scumbag, but because they’re in the Horizon League and they’re now in the Sweet 16. But if Bruce Pearl had to pick a team he didn’t want to face it would be Illinois for two reasons. First he doesn’t want to deal with the Deon Thomas stuff anymore than anybody else does and secondly, because if there’s one team in the nation suited to deal with their pressing defense, it’s the Illini.
Make no mistake, the game will be ugly, because Milwaukee tries to make it that way. They want you ragged, they want you running when you don’t want to and not running your offense. Boston College was a perfect team to play with that system. Not only did they only have one day to prepare for Milwaukee, but they also don’t have any real guards. They ended up with forwards trying to dribble the ball up the court, and not just forwards, but forwards who weren’t used to dribbling.
One thing I’d like to see Illinois do is something Bob Knight used to have Darryl Thomas do when the great Les Jepsen was at the point of the press when Iowa ran this system. Jepsen would be jumping up and down in front of the inbounds passer trying to make his gangly 7’0 frame useful (Matt Bullard and the Vanilla Gorilla Al Lorenzen played this role, too). Knight had Thomas throw the first inbounds pass of the game right off Les’ nose. He did it twice. Les was a lot less active after getting a Spalding to the face. Just some friendly advice.
The Friday night carnage of Syracuse and Kansas saved the first two rounds of the tournament. Until then, it’d been a little…boring. I didn’t mind as much because half of the games were broadcast in lovely High Definition and as you know by now I’ll watch anything in high def (I even watched NASCAR yesterday because it was in HD). The rest of the games will be in HD, so the novelty will wear off (not really–I’m already fired up to see what baseball looks like in HD when ESPNHD does the Red Sox-Yankees opener) and I’ll have to worry about the actual games.
Will Argentina cry for me?
It was Jadlow, my nose, and it only happened once.
Hey there, Ralphie boy!
Has anybody heard the White Sox new homoerotic ad campaign? I was listening to the Illinois game on the Score on Saturday, and there was a commercial for White Sox tickets where they advised you not to sit in the bleachers because you’d be distracted by Scott Podsednick’s good looks. The commercial then advised that you’d be better served to spring for the expensive seats behind home plate where you could watch AJ Eyechart bend over.
Oh, yeah, CT. I greenlit that ad campaign. I really want to appeal to the gays out there to come see my new acquisions. There’s plenty of gays that will happily come out to U.S. Cellular here on the South Side.
[crickets]
I hope Wayne Hagin gets his ass sued by Helton. I am surprised he brought up a name other than a Cubs. I was waiting for him to say something about Maddux or Carlos. Ooh Wayne good luck in court.
If it was just Horton, why does my nose still hurt?
I look like Todd Helton. Does that mean I can sue? I could use the money.
Ho, Ho, Ho, Illini fans!
Latter-day Santa here to wish you well on your trip to St. Louis, where I will await you. You see, I’ll dispose of the Mountaineers (Yes, West Virginia, there is a Santa Claus), then stomp on Rick Pitino’s Louisville Cardinals, and then prepare for all of you before I get to give Mr. Krzyzewksi another coaching clinic.
I’m back, baby! I’m back!
That’s “Three-time Big Ten Champion Mike Wilkinson” to you, chump.
Yeah, it’s a good ad campaign. I am super cute.
During the 98 season, Jim Riggleman told me all about how he asked Jeff Blauser to go off the juice. He was so huge and talented naturally, that he didn’t need that stuff. Us cards announcers get all the dirt. When it comes to stupidity, the Mad Hungarian does not get shown up, sorry Wayne.
Anybody wanna go shag some fly balls?
http://www.suntimes.com/output/campus/cst-spt-bell21.html
This is another good article on the Pearl/Illini situation.
Needless to say, I am hoping Pearl gets a good, loud “Boo” when he enters the arena Thursday and that Pearl’s team gets a butt-whooping from the Illini.
Way to gulp down what Dolan is pedaling, B.C.
You guys need to let it go. It’s old news and doesn’t really relate to the current match-up, tournament, or players. LET IT GO.
I only got free KFC for a year and used hoopty to play for BS. What gives? Now I got the scoots, cramps, a bad shot and my old lady wants me to turn pro…pro, hell I can’t even get my own shot without some slow assed white punk that got no bidness on a D 1 scholarship guarding me….man life sucks…2 points in 2 games…damn.
Is Dolan on a bike, Kool-Aid? What else can he be pedaling? Or is he peddling? Anyway, don’t think we won’t make it known to the players that blowing out, embarassing and smearing Bruce Pearl is the only acceptable result Thursday.
I sure hope you guys like me! Show the D-man some love before I streak again.
Hey, don’t worry, all us tard arms have a shot this year. You did great today. I was thinking maybe you, me, Chad Fox, Woody, Guzman, Regular Joe, and Just Ducky Too should all go out to eat tonight. You know, to celebrate the fact that we actually all still have use of our pitching arms. That is a requirement in this pitching rich organization after all. We do have over 10 surgeries between us, but mullethead and dude-man still like our depth as well as health.
Soon I will be catching arms instead of balls.
Don’t forget me, I’ll be in Des Moines, waiting for your phone call!
“Sox pitching in better shape than cubs”…… Boy am I brilliant.
I’m on Cold Pizza right now. Boy, am I a stinking rat……But it was 16 years ago, let it go people. Worry about Dee Brown not my informing arse.
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