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The
first half was painful to watch. The Illini went out of the frying pan
into the fire. Sensational Seton Hall guard Darius Lane must have felt
that Illini fans hadn’t yet seen any festivals of lights. He stepped to
the plate and delivered his own spectacular light show...lighting up
Illinois’ defense for 18 first-half points on 4-of-7 triples...and some
of those were bombs. On the Illini side of things, we were launching
enough bricks to build new gyms for both LC and LCC. It doesn’t get any
uglier than 0-10 from downtown; many fans were running for cover. Add to
that the magnificent play of true freshman Eddie Griffin who had nine at
the break and the seven that Marcus Toney-El chipped in by intermission,
and the Illini’s hole looked much more devastating than the 17-point
deficit. Had it not been for the play of Illinois’ Marcus Griffin and
Robert Archibald, while the rest of the Illini were working on their
version of Houdini’s disappearing act, it would actually have been much
worse. It’s conceivable that the point of no return was looming on the
horizon.
No
one really knows what happened at halftime. Illini head coach Bill Self
says he didn’t yell at the guys...although that’s a little hard to
take. The players said they had their say, and they came up with a phrase
that they said would be unsuitable for family media outlets. Perhaps even
aliens entered the Illini locker room and the Illini uniforms, because
when they came back out on the floor they were almost back in the game
instamatically (that is not a Dr. Seuss word, but a quote of Pauly from
the "Rocky" movie). From there it was a dogfight, a battle...no,
it was a war. The Illini made the long climb back and were almost derailed
on the way up. During an Illini timeout, Robert Archibald was accessed a
technical foul for getting too close to an official, and of course that
meant two more points for Lane.
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Then
it was MJ time...I mean, Frank Williams time. I don’t know if he’s been
watching all of those Jordan videos where Michael just takes over at the end
of every game or not, but he sure has manifested it out on the court.
Watching him in the last 10 minutes of this game was magical...it is the
kind of game that legends are made of. His circus reverse layups were a
thing of beauty. His go-up-with-the-right-hand, switch-to-the-left jumper
that put the Illini up with less than a minute to play was Jordanesque.
Enter
Brian Cook. Cook was mired in foul trouble and had not been much of a
factor. After Toney-El drained two free throws with 3:46, Cook got the ball
out beyond the arc. He looked up at the clock and fired what Self later
called "a courageous shot and play." Brian’s 3-pointer made the
sold-out crowd of 16,683 spectators delirious. That set the stage for the
overtime theatrics.
Enter
Cory Bradford. Bradford was having one of those ugly days were nothing seems
to go right. Not only was he missing his shots, but they were way off the
mark. As the teams headed for overtime, Bradford was 0 for 8 from 3-point
land. Twenty-eight seconds into the extra session, the ball somehow got into
his hands. Ignoring the miserable day he was having, he launched again from
a ZIP code just outside of Chambana. The ball hovered over the rim for what
seemed like an eternity...before it finally found its way down the hole.
Cory had tied the record of making a 3-pointer in 73 straight games, and the
Illini never looked back. In fact, they never trailed again. Cook found
Bradford a few trips later, and for good measure, Cory buried another one.
And
when it was all said and done, less was said than was actually done. The
Illini had a cleared a major hurdle. They had beaten a quality team in a
close game.
This may be
the game that is pointed to at the end of the season as the Illini’s
tipping point. Next up for the newly crowned No. 5 team in the nation is No.
6 Arizona.
[Jeff
Mayfield]
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