Heath's Random Thoughts

I know, I know, its a been almost 3 weeks since the Rose Bowl and I am finally just getting around to writing about it. My delay is partly due to the drubbing the Illini took at the hands of the USC Trojans. As Kelly can attest to, I was none to happy following that game and to ensure I could make a fair assessment of what happened, I wanted to give myself plenty of time to cool off before I gave my take on the game.

As many of you may know the Illini football team made an improbably run through the regular season to earn an invite to the grandaddy of the bowl games the Rose Bowl. This was after only winning 4 games over the past three seasons. The Illini came into this season with some momentum after playing well the last half the previous season losing some close games to some very good teams (e.g. tOSU). Expectations were high but no one was anticipating a trip to a BCS bowl. Most of us were settling to be happy with an invite to a mid tier bowl and to see some progress finally start to show up on the field. Well after upsets of 3 ranked teams and some close losses to some good teams the Illini found themselves in second place in the Big Ten to finish up the regular season. They did so by some playing hard nosed defense and putting up some gaudy numbers on offense. The Rose Bowl committee wanted to stick with the tradition of inviting a Pac-10 and Big 10 team to the bowl and since Ohio State was slated for the National Championship the invite fell to the 2nd place Big 10 team. On the other side, the USC Trojans got the invite after having a few bad losses early in the season, even though many felt they had finished the season so convincingly that they deserved an invite to the National Championship.

Well, right out the gate the Illini were 14 point underdogs. USC had a track record of winning big bowl games and had a lot of depth and talent on their team. The Illini were still young and trying to find their identity. Well the weeks leading up to the game were full of analysts saying that Illinois had no chance unless they played a near perfect game on offense.

Once the game began it was somewhat obvious that our guys were a little overwhelmed, never being to a bowl game most of them didn't know how to handle media circus and nerves appeared to be winning out. But given all this the team was still within striking distance of the highly vaunted Trojans at half time. Junior running back Rashard Mendenhall played beautifully breaking off a 76 yard run for a touch down to get the Illini back in the game and later taking a pass 50 yards to get within scoring range. Unfortunately, due to some sloppy ball protection by several of the receivers we were never able to capitalize on any of the big plays. I have to give USC credit though, they were excellent forcing turnovers and you could tell they were well coached. One bright spot was that the Illini Defense never let the USC offense run away with the game. They made several stops and forced a few turnovers of their own. Unfortunately, the Offense was never able to stay on the field long enough to give the D a significant and it showed in the 4th quarter where you could see the Defense wearing down. After that it was all over but the crying as USC ran up the score on our exhausted defense.

One thing I would like to point out was the lack of class by several of the USC players. In the first half, when it looked like USC might start running with the game early, there were several instance of the players on the sidelines dancing and taunting the Illini players. There was also an incident in the first half where one of the USC players decided to do a flip into the endzone for a touchdown. Fortunately, this infuriated the USC head coach, Pete Carrol and he benched the player for the rest of the game. USC was penalized to for taunting 2 or 3 times in the game which I just find classless. I will say this, from what I could see, the Illini never bit on any of the taunting and seemed to do a pretty good job of ignoring it. I was happy to see that.

Final Analysis
So, the Illini got blown out and USC fans have been complaining ever since that they deserved to play a better opponent, plus the Michigan fans saying their team deserved to be there ahead of the Illini and would have put a better fight. This I just find funny from a team that lost to Appalachian State and played a terriblely ugly game against Illinois who lost the game more than the Wolverines won it.

Anyway, after I got over the frustration of the game I realized that this team is going nowhere but up. They are young with tons of talent, they have another top recruiting class coming in next year. They have now played in a big bowl and will know how to handle it better next time around. This is a lot better situation than we were in in 2002 when we were just coming off a bad loss to LSU in the Sugar Bowl. That team was full of seniors and we had no talent coming in from recruiting for the next couple of years. This year's team looks like a Big 10 contender for years to come and given another season or two you will start hearing about the Illini football team being consistently mentioned as a top 10 team.

I - L - L!!!!!