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Mayfields
1, Rest of the world 0
 By Jeff
Mayfield
[DEC.
16, 2000]
Last
evening a most amazing thing took place. A new little child was born into the
world. Now we’re told that thousands of births are recorded each day,
but from this reporter’s viewpoint, none was like this. Sure it was in a
sterile environment, in a nice clean hospital with all the amenities you
would hope to have on hand if you were going to be giving birth to a baby.
Yet, something was unique about our experience.
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We
were blessed with a heaven-appointed doctor who throughout the pregnancy
has displayed outstanding skills and the most wonderful bedside manner.
But even he is not what has made this occasion so special.
Family
and friends have bombarded us with so many cards, gifts and well wishes
that it is downright humbling. My wife and I much prefer to be on the
giving end rather than the receiving end of those kinds of expressions,
and still that encouragement is not what is setting this moment apart.
Having
the delivery in central Illinois is incredibly exciting but not enough to
be the factor to make this situation so memorable.
At
the same time this historic event was taking place, sports fans all over
the area were asking such questions as: Will the Illini make it to the
Final Four? How will all of the Railer sports teams do this winter? Will
the Rams and Colts collide in the Super Bowl? Will Earnhardt and Gordon
make comebacks on next year’s NASCAR circuit? Will the Cubs and
Cardinals make themselves better in the off-season?
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this article] |
The
answer to all of these questions is…who in the heck cares? My son has
just arrived into the world! Stop the earth, stop the presses, and stop
the sports schedules…I’m taking a big TIMEOUT. And if you think some
of those TV timeouts are long, wait to see the one I’m taking! I’ve
been saving up all those 20s those fans in the stands said I should’ve
used way back when I coached college basketball, and I’m using them all…right
now! I don’t care what any athletic team anywhere on the planet or even
in the universe is doing right now. I’m sorry…but, I couldn’t care
less. I’m not even doing any scoreboard watching…the only boards I’m
watching now are the monitors that tell me how my wife and son are doing.
The only one I’m coaching and the ONLY one I’m a fan of, is this
beautiful little boy.
Please
give a warm LDN hello to Payne Montgomery Mayfield, who was born on
Friday, Dec. 15, at 9:59 p.m.! As far as I’m concerned, the only game that counted
yesterday was the
one that I was involved in. And I score it Mayfields 1, Rest of the world
0.
Thank you
all for your thoughts and prayers.
[Jeff
Mayfield]
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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.
[to top of second column in
this article] |
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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