Illinitalk

Quote of the Weekend

"I just hope we have a city when we get back to school," said Mountaineers guard J.D. Collins. "It might get burned down."

In case you haven't heard, WVU proved Wake doesn't play defense. (I suspect this is one of the reasons Good Hope Orange didn't think three ACC teams would make the final...he's starting to look right even though he didn't pick this particular upset.)

Now our game...

Illinois looked to be in midseason form. Except for Augie. He's better. The guy is a beast. And getting better. I told Goop Hope Orange at halftime: "Great. Now he'll want to go pro too."

My good friend replied, "If they win the title I don't care."

True that.

Speaking of midseason form, Dee was so quick, he got the runs. But he sunk his free throws when they counted.

Now, if Weber can just quaranteen him so he doesn't infect the rest of the team. If I was the university, I'd have Dee flown back to C-U on a private jet.

Morrissey...Downey...

Next opponent

This season has it all. One hundred years of Illinois basketball. Big Ten regular season and tourney titles. Undefeated in non conference schedule. Just one loss in the Big Ten. Weber wins Coach of the Year, Dee Big Ten POY...and now the chance to put a severe beat-down on Bruce Pearl.

If you don't know Peggy Noonan you should. She used to write speeches for Ronald Reagan. I don't care what your politics are...all you need to know is Preggy Noonan knows what she is talking about. She had a column this week in the Wall Street Journal about Terri Shiavo. (Please keep readin--this is going somewhere.)

In her column she said that every situation has a legal angle, public relations angle and political angle. Same goes for the upocoming game between Illinois and Milwaukee. The players in this case control the legal angle. That would be the final score.

But others control the political and public relations angle. If I was the public relations folks for the Illinois athletic department I would start backgrounding reporters today about Pearl's actions 15 years ago because that will be all we hear this week.

I don't want Weber to slip one inch to Pearl in the PR department or with recruits or even calls on the court because Pearl is portrayed as a good guy whistleblower.

He is not.

Don't think this could happen? Just read this story from the Washington Post yesterday.

Pearl needs to be seen for the fraud he is. Illinois did nothing wrong.

Finally, I would have a few folks from that era come in and brief the players. Let them know what this guy did to their beloved program. They all have such a strong allegiance to Illinois that it should work to our advantage.

This is also good because it will take the focus off of them for the week and throw it on something else. Less pressure that way.

K

Would someone please get on the phone to Visa or Ford (since K has GM), or somebody and get Weber an endorsement contract?

I mean is this what its come to? Recruiting is now gonna be fought out partly by not only who's on ESPN more but also which coach has is face on TV advertisements during the tournament?

Seriously, Duke folks are genius but it really does disgust me.

I for one would like to see Weber do a Visa ad where he says, "its everywhere you want to be" in front of the Assembly Hall.

Seriously. If K can walk onto his floor at the end of one of his ads, we should be able to do it too. Weber is the National Coach of the Year after all.