Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Quick Hits

After watching the Illini's loss to tOSU (coupled with the previous loss to Penn State), I might have been a bit off when I wrote that the Illini were on the road to special after the victory in Madison. That being said, the loss to (the) Ohio State was not what I would call an upset. The only team to win in Columbus this year was Michigan State and that was in double overtime. tOSU is a good basketball team who is on fire right now and shooting lights out. While Illinois did not play very good defense, or offense for that matter, I am not sure how many teams could have beaten the Buckeyes last Sunday the way they hit their three pointers.

Anyway, on to Northwestern tonight. While I am of the opinion that Illinois may not be able to afford any more losses if they want to win or at least tie for the conference title, they probably could afford one more loss and still be in a very good position going into the NCAA tournament. Any more than that (excluding the Big Ten Tournament, which history seems to show has no bearing on the tournament selection process) and I think their seeding, location, etc. will start to be impacted in a negative way. Looking at the schedule, that means Illinois needs to win the rest of their home games against Northwestern, Indiana, and Iowa and then win 2 out of 3 on the road against Michigan, Minnesota, and Michigan State. As it is very difficult to beat MSU at the Breslin Center, I am hoping for those victories to come against Michigan and Minnesota in order to take some pressure off for that final game on March 4 in East Lansing. Time will tell.

Previews of tonight's game and/or other articles are here, here, and here.

# posted by Good Hope Orange : 5:38 PM


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