Thursday, December 03, 2009

Clemson and Jay Bilas

I agree with everything GHO said below. Solid comeback victory last night that will serve as a great confidence, not to mention resume builder. Anytime you can beat a ranked ACC team on the road it's a good day and the selection committee will take notice.

Hopefully the new guys got a taste of what it takes to win at this level and will step up their games accordingly. And speaking of, it was great to see Richardson and Paul on the floor down the stretch. Should the Illini make the Big Dance, I'm not expecting a real deep run but with the recruits we have coming in (Jereme Richmond) big comebacks and down-to-the-wire finishes are important for these young guys to experience for what I expect will be strong NCAA tourney appearances in the future.

Finally, as the ESPN crew evaluated our game at halftime of the Wisconsin-Duke game I heard Jay Bilas say something along the lines of the following: "This was a big comeback by the Illini but make no mistake about it...with every huge comeback there is an epic collapse and this was a huge collapse by Clemson tonight. They are reeling."

I found that quote interesting because it appears that Bilas gave more credit for our victory to Clemson collapsing than he did to Illinois' adjustments and toughness in the 2nd half.

I also found it ironic that he called the Illinois-Arizona Elite Eight game a few years ago and I'm not sure I ever heard him talk about an "epic Arizona collapse." (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) Could it be because that was Arizona and this was Clemson? Perhaps each school's hoops reputation contributed to Bilas' inconsistency in his analysis. Just a thought.

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# posted by Chief : 8:14 AM


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