Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Brightside

So I made a movie of the Illinois/Arizona tilt using iMovie HD. I actually have the linked clip in HD format on my computer at home. iMovie HD is absolutely amazing. For $15, I can edit movies in full high definition format.

Year of the Rat

Coach K's year, deconstructed.

Sunday, March 27, 2005

Down...revolutions

Illinois Fighting Illini Michigan State Spartans

Edit: I guess I ought to explain myself. A couple of times, I have mentioned that I didn't really buy the conventional wisdom that the Big Ten is down this year in basketball. See this post and the links therein.

Orange Rush

I'm still awfully giddy about the win last night. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that last night's Illinois-Arizona game should go down alongside Duke-Kentucky in 1992 and North Carolina-Kansas in 1957 among the greatest college basketball games ever played. And I hope I would say the same thing had Hassan Adams' desperation three gone in at the end of overtime.

Because I'm still too hopped up on adrenaline to think straight, I'm just going to aggregate blog posts and interstice articles here.
Mark Tupper blogs that he's "still trying to figure out what happened a few hours ago when I sat courtside for the greatest college basketball game I've ever covered." Mike DeCourcey writes that Illini Assistant Jay Price and the rest of us saw "the greatest comeback in NCAA tournament history." Bill Rhoden writes in the New York Times that "Just like that, Illinois leaped back to life: a 3-pointer, a basket in the lane, a score after a steal, a basket and then a steal, leading to another basket. ... The Illini miracle continues" BigTenWonk must have put a pot of coffee on after the game because already has gobs of things to say.

One original thought, though.
Looking back, anybody that saw the Michigan game at Crisler Arena this year -- especially that sequence Dee Brown had in the second half -- knows exactly where Illinois' comeback came from. Remember this? "Brown turned three straight steals into baskets, including the go-ahead three-point play, and scored 16 points to keep the Illini undefeated with a 57-51 victory over Michigan on Tuesday night." That's where it came from. Only on a bigger stage.

MIRACLE