This Week in Illini
Champaign’s finest sports coverage brought to you by Joe Kutsunis from Hail to the Orange:
Its not every day you can say the Illini are leading in the Big Ten title race, (unless of course you are talking about the three titles the Illini earned early on this decade) but that’s exactly where our hard fought scrappers find themselves this weekend. The Illini and MSU will meet on Saturday in East Lansing, the winner of which will be 5-0 and have firm control over the Big Ten. Well, maybe. The Illini are 4-0 over the four worst teams in the Big Ten, and enter into the meat grinder over the next two games with #7 MSU and #6 Purdue.
Though it isn’t as though the Illini were sure winners in their last several Big Ten contests. Aside from their easy win over sad-sack Iowa, the Illini have either played its opponents into overtime, or played in games that came down to the wire in regulation. Saturday’s six point come from behind win at Indiana and Tuesday night’s single point victory are evidence that the Illini have not exactly been the model of consistency this season, but for the most part they have been just good enough to win lately. In those two wins the Illini have been led by their Juniors Mike Tisdale and Demetri McCamey. Against Penn State the two accounted for 41 of the Illini’s 54 points and played 37 minutes a piece. While Tisdale also salted the victory in Bloomington away with his stellar free throw shooting. To say the least, the Illini would not be 4-0 without the play of these two.
The Illini are going to need a few more quality wins in order to make a real case for the NCAA tournament, and their next two games could go a long way in making that case, we will see what this team is really made of after facing the top two teams in the conference.
In football news, fan unfavorite and recently demoted defensive assistant coach Curt Mallory has accepted an offer to be the defensive coordinator at Akron this week leaving the Illini in need of a new defensive backs coach, and without one of the coaches that Zook has had on staff since the beginning.
This week also marked a brief period in which Illini fans hoped against all hope that the #1 wide receiver prospect in the nation Proviso West’s Kyle Prater would reconsider his commitment to USC and come home to Illinois. Well that hope finally died yesterday as news of Lane Kiffin being hired in Los Angeles convinced Prater that USC really was the place for him, Sorry Illini fans, it was not to be.
Check in next week, and apparently every week for the best outsourced Illini coverage in the business. Also you can visit my own humble website Hail to the Orange for more Illini coverage and general childishness.
Loading ...
