Defining Sports Moments

This is the St. Louis edition, so we're throwing some love back to Jack Buck.

"I don't believe what I just saw!... I don't believe what I just saw."

Holy Saturday. The Rev gets to cut down the nets. I'm not sure that God cares about the outcome of sporting events, but just in case He does, it's good to know that not many teams will have an edge on us with the God Factor.

Well, I guess that I don't know as much as I thought... but we still managed to win. How? I'm not sure. 15 points down. 4:02 left. An arena in stunned silence? Right where we want them? Who knew?

I thought that we still had a run left, and I was pretty sure that Deron had a few more points let in him. I knew that things would even out - balls would start falling into our hands, and some of the bad ref calls would even out. I also know that we had a lot of time left. So even with us down a dozen with 2:30 left, I wasn't all that worried. I wasn't sure how it was going to work out, but I had a strange feeling that it was going to be alright.

What I didn't expect was seeing Luther turn it up a notch, force the issue on D, and be heads up. The entire team was great down the stretch - Ingram w/ a big J and bigger D, Powell w/ a tough drive. Dee scoring with speed and hounding on D, Luther making it happen, and Deron refusing to let it slip away. And while we let them shoot 52% for the game, down the stretch, they were 0 for 6 to end the 2nd half. And of course, we kept them 0 of 3 in the three biggest defensive possessions that we had.

There was absolute euphoria for us Illini in the stands. And probably utter disbelief from the Arizona fans. Even today, I'm still not positive that we won that game. And I was probably in the best shape of anyone in our section with 2:30 left in the game.

So, I didn't get home until 3am again. So I slept until 11. So what? Illini cut down the nets, move on to St. Louis. And I've got a ton of work to do. But for the Illini Nation?

"Go crazy, folks! Go crazy!"

Damn skippy, Jack.

-Chairman