Illinois vs. UW Pearl

Illinois vs. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Tonight @ 6:27 p.m.

Hoops squads throughout the country play their best basketball during the madness of March, so too do writers step up their games in an attempt to satisfy the basketball jones of loyal fans. Re-typed below is one of my favorite columns of all time. It's about basketball, and it's a bit long. So print it out if you want, but be sure, however, to read Steve Rushin's 'Profession of Faith' before tip-off tonight.

Game Preview

After taking an 11-0 lead in last weeks 2nd round game against UWM, an unnamed Boston College player turned to UWM guard Ed McCants and spewed, "I don't give a sh!t what you did to Alabama. This is the Big East, baby." Unfortunately for BC, UWM closed out the game with an 83-64 run , and earned a trip to the Sweet Sixteen.

UWM plays basketball hard. They play the game the way it should be played -- 94 feet by 40 minutes. W/all but one starter standing under 6'5", UWM's four guard attack has forced a hair under 18 turnovers a game. Still, would it be wise to press a team like the Illini? We have 3 point guards on the floor at all times, and James Augustine and Roger Powell are much more mobile than the other forwards UWM has played in the tournament. All week, Weber has been simulating the UWM press by throwing 7 guys on the floor to defend his team. Augustine, Powell, Ingram, Smith, and Carter have been participating in drills usually reserved for guards.

UWM is relentless, and they proved it during their upset wins over Alabama and Boston College. If Illinois can get out to an early lead, then they cannot afford to go on cruise control. An 11 point lead can disappear very quickly against a pressing team like this. So how will we do it? We will attack when we have numbers, and we will feed our forwards down low when we get into a half court set.

We will get a gauge on how comfortable our players are early in the game. If we are pounding the ball into the ground to beat the press, then we could be in for a tight one. But if we move the ball across half court w/crisp passing, then Bruce Pearl and his team will be on the receiving end of a SportsCenter highlight real. Down low, I expect Powell to have a monstrous game on the glass. He will eat these guys up if he can get the ball consistently on the block.

Much has been made of the Bruce Pearl saga in the week leading up to this game. Tonight, as much as 70% of the Rosemont Horizon will be dressed in Illini orange and ready to cheer their team on to a birth in the Elite Eight. I encourage you all to read Steve Rushin's column below and remember that March is about hoops and not a feud that started 15 years ago. Go Illini.


I believe in b-ball

Hockey players, among all athletes, have the coolest way of entering the game, hopping over the boards with one hand, like Steve McQueen getting into a convertible. But basketball is forever, and so players are often made to genuflect in front of the scorer's table for a moment before stepping onto the court, as if entering a house of worship. Which, in a manner of speaking, they are.

For one is baptized into basketball not with water but confetti (conferred on the head by Curly Neal). And one believes in basketball, as one believes in the Bible and in all those names that are common to both: Moses and Isiah and Jordan…

Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden and so -- eventually -- were the Celtics, and sometime in between I became a believer, and this is my profession of faith:

I believe in Artis Gilmore, whose wife is named --as God is my witness -- Enola Gay.

I believe in new high-tops, always evocative of Christmas morning, for you get to open a large box, remove crinkly paper stuffed into the toes, and -- before wearing them for the first time -- inhale deeply from each sneaker as if from an airplane oxygen mask. (It's what wine connoisseurs call "nosing the bouquet" and works for Pumas as well as pinot noirs.)

I believe in tear-away suits, which make the wearer feel -- when summoned from the bench -- like Clark Kent, ripping off his business suit to reveal the S on his chest.

I believe a team's fortunes can always be foretold -- not from the length of its lifelines but from the integrity of its lay-up lines.

I believe in God Shammgod and Alaa Abdelnaby, and James (Buddha) Edwards (and in Black Jesus, Earl Monroe's nickname long before it was the Pearl).

I believe in accordion-style bleachers that push back to expose, after a game, car keys and quarters and paper cups, which sound like a gunshot when stomped on just right. (And always, stuck to the floor, the forlorn strands of molting pom-poms.)

I believe -- now more than ever, in the time of global disharmony -- in World B. Free and Majestic Mapp. And that control of the planet's contested regions might be better determined by a simple, alternating possession arrow.

I believe that 300 basketballs dribbled simultaneously by eight-year-old basketball campers sound like buffalo thundering across the plains. And inspire even greater awe.

I believe that two high school janitors pushing twin dust mops at halftime can be every bit as hypnotic as dueling Zambonis.

I believe that any sucker can wear a $40,000 gold necklace as thick as a bridge cable when the only necklace worth wearing in basketball is a nylon net that costs $9.99. (but --and here's the point -- it can't be bought.)

I'm a believer in Lafayette Lever and regret never having covered him, for if I had, my first sentence about him would have been, "There must be 50 ways to love your Lever."

I believe that jumping off a trampoline, turning a midair somersault, slam-dunking and sticking the landing -- while wearing a gorilla suit that's wearing, in turn, a Phoenix suns warm-up jacket -- is enough to qualify you as a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer.

I believe in Harthorne Wingo, and I believe in Zap the dingo, the Detroit shock mascot whose costume was stolen from the Palace of Auburn Hills by two men who were caught -- one in the dingo head, the other in the dingo feet -- drinking in a bar across the street.

I believe in dunking dirty clothes into the hallway hamper and sky-hooking -- from the shotgun seat -- quarters into highway toll baskets. And I believe in finger-rolling heads of lettuce into my shopping cart, even though I have never, in the last 10 years, eaten a piece of lettuce at home.

I believe I can still hold, in my right hand, a boom box the size of Samsonite Streamlite while carrying, in my left, a slick rubber ball whose pebble-grain stubble has long before been dribbled away. And that I can do so while riding a 10-speed bike and steering with my knees.

I believe that the Truth (Drew Gooden) and the Answer (Allen Iverson) are out there, if we will simply follow the bouncing ball.

I believe that we, the basketball faithful, speak in tongues: the red, wagging tongue of Michael Jordan and the red, wagging tongues of our unlaced Chuck Taylors.

I believe that Larry Bird's crooked right index finger -- which he raised in triumph before his winning shot fell in the 1988 All-Star weekend three-point contest -- resembles, almost exactly, God's crooked right index finger, as depicted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Which would make sense, If God made man in His image. For I believe, above all, in what G.K. Chesterton wrote, and what Rick Telander echoed in the title of a book: Earth is a task garden. But heaven is a playground.

-Steve Rushin


Illinois - 78
UWM - 65


Sincerely,

Your Last Place Bracket