Heath's Random Thoughts

NCAA Tourney

Well, apparently I have more fans of my sports writing than I realized and since I don't have as exciting stuff as Luke (http://sgtport.blogspot.com) has to write about I will stick with the Illini. Well as we left off the Illini had just won the Big Ten tournament against the Wisconsin Badgers and were preparing for and easy blow out of the Farleigh Dickinson University Knights. Well, the media and Illini were in for a surprise because the Knights showed up to play and gave the Illini fans a scare going into the second half of the game. The Illini continued to look sluggish throughout the game but managed to avoid becoming the first 1 seed to lose to a 16 seed in tournament history. Two days later they faced the University of Nevada Wolfpack, who had just come off a hard fought victory over the University of Texas Longhorns and this Illini fan was a little nervous and rightfully so. The Illini again came out in the first half and looked disorganized and sluggish and Nevada was able to stay close. But in the second half of the game a different Illini team came out of the locker room. They began blowing the Wolfpack out right away and if it weren't for them trying to run some time off the clock in the final 5 minutes the score wouldn't have been so close. The Illini finally figured out that they could utilize their bigger post up players too and instead of totally relying on their guards were able to take advantage of Nevada. You could totally tell that Nevada's game plan was to tie up the guards and keep them from scoring which left James Augastine and Jack Ingram open for a ton of shots on the block. By the time Nevada figured out what Illinois was doing it was too late and the Illini had won the game and moved onto the Sweet 16.

Now the Illini meet the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee on Thursday night. This should be a good game. The UW-Milwaukee Panthers have upset 2 good teams to get to this game and they are riding on an emotional high. And since the next game will be played in Chicago both teams should have a fair amount of fan support at the game. The Illini will once again have to be prepared because this Panthers team has guards that can score a lot of points, which wasn't the case with Nevada. Hopefully the Illini guards will break out of their slump and give the Illini a dual attack from the perimeter as well as utilizing their big men who came up big against Nevada.

On another note, I am feeling a little under the weather today so I am wrapping this up and heading home. Go ILLINI!!!

posted by Heath @ 4:49 PM