Loop, Hoop, and Swoosh

As usual, I'm glad that no one reads this. I figure that if people actually did read this, I would have had some death threats already for putting up the cartoons. I mean, those Danish cartoonists are a tough bunch. They were probably pissed that I didn't think that the cartoons were funny. If I had been threatened with my life, I would have had to do the only logical thing - post the rest of the cartoons to prove that they weren't funny.

The Illini seem to be playing better. We took a tough loss up at Michigan, but that will happen when a good player like Daniel Horton just goes off on you, and the other teams makes all of their free throws. We've still got some time to make some adjustments. For example, we need to get into our offense a little faster, and to keep up the intensity. We're still forcing too many shots as the clock gets down under 8 seconds. And we could use some faster entry passes. But, I think that Bruce is an avid reader here, because we've definitely been using two bigs on the floor more and more. And we're not running the three-guard lineup with Richie against a small forward a whole lot, either. And that's good. We've got 2 road games that we have a shot of winning. I think that it would say quite a bit for this team to finish 11-5, after taking that bad loss against Penn St. And I still think that we should be favored on a neutral court against anyone in the Big Ten. I stand by my original prediction of Elite 8, provided that we don't slide down to a 4 seed.

And I think that Dee Brown and James Augustine need some special recognition for being flag bearers for this school. They are class acts on the court, and by all accounts, off the court. And I'm not saying that because Dee bought me a shot at Kams last fall, or because Auggie was chatting me up during flag football intramurals. You would see how pleased they were to talk to fans, to sign autographs, etc. I don't think that either player was as good, as say, Brian Cook or Kendall Gill. But I think that they meant more to this school than either. They play the game hard, they play the game well, and they played the game with honor. They helped keep this program afloat after losing Coach Self. These were Chicago guys who made it cool to stay home, and will have an impact on this program for years to come. And let's just say that next year, senior night with Warren Carter, Rich McBride, and Marcus Arnold won't have quite the impact (though Rich may just be going for 22 points a game next year, and may make me eat my words, and to be honest, Warren is one of my favorites of all time - he's the Manny Ramirez of Illini basketball). Thank you, seniors.

I've been moving my office hours to the coffee shop. I think that it's time to raise the stakes and move it to a bar/grill this week. I mean, no point just sitting there with coffee, when I can have a two-martini power lunch. But that's just me.

-Chairman