God Bless Illinois … and no place else
Illinois 91
Wake Forest 73
Today our basketball team dominated the number one team in the country. We led by as many as 32 points before we loaded the court with our bench and Wake Forest made the final score respectable. Some observations:
1) Props to Bruce Weber for not running up the score on Wake Forest. We could’ve kept our starters in and easily won by at least 25 points. This may help us in the long run by keeping Wake Forest a competitive team. The last thing we would need would be for them to get into a psychological funk, tank the rest of the season and screw up our RPI.
2) The Big Ten went 2-7 in this year’s ACC – Big Ten challenge. Strangely enough, the other Big Ten win was Wisconsin beating Maryland, which means the teams I was cheering for went 1-8 in this challenge. If I could only get one of my nine teams to win, at least I got the right one (Illinois).
3) Today was the 5th rendition of ‘Paint the Hall Orange’ at Assembly Hall, where every fan at the game is supposed to show up wearing Orange shirts. I don’t think I’ve ever seen as much fan support as this year, although I only saw it on TV. Even Bruce Weber got in the act with his Orange blazer.
4) With this win, Illinois will most likely be #2 in the Coaches and AP polls. Currently they are #3 and #5, respectively. Although the 3-5 teams are running very close in both polls. This win will give them enough to put distance between them and Georgia Tech / Syracuse. And since Wake Forst was previously #1, this will push the Illini past them. So look for them to be #2 in next weeks polls, barring a huge upset by Pacific over Kansas.
