Latest

Century City

This was a Quad 1 win. USC will drop, but they were #47 in NET this morning and would have to drop to #75 by the end of the season for this to fall into Quad 2, so this will stay on our resume as a Quad 1 win all

Where Do We Stand - February 18th

Michigan winning at Purdue last night flipped my focus a little bit. Their Big Ten title is starting to look inevitable no matter what happens on February 27th, and so my brain has made a shift away from hanging a banner and more towards our NCAA seed (and where we

High Five: Indiana

Greetings from sunny Florida! I unlocked a new Illinois basketball game viewing achievement award on Sunday: watching the game on my phone while in line for the Hagrid’s Motorbike Adventure ride at Universal Orlando. When I saw the wait time listed for the most popular ride across all three

Like Old Times

That's just a fuzzy photo I took with my phone – I didn't even clean the lens so you're looking through some handprints there – at the start of the second half. I took it during Tomi's free throws to show that Indiana hadn&

Low Five: Wisconsin

I was planning to join Robert in Champaign on Tuesday, but ultimately I decided to stay home in order to get things squared away for an upcoming vacation. Actually, my wife would argue otherwise. On press row, my emotions would have been held mostly in check. At home - it

Ugly Night

I'm using that photo there to show you where I'm seated in press row. When I say that I'm observing the Wisconsin bench, that's how far away I am from the Wisconsin bench. I can hear what they say and watch what

Travel Log

I wrote this one all weekend. It's over 6,000 words. It has very little to do with the Illini and a lot to do with my trip on the train to East Lansing and back. I mean, it has everything to do with the Illini – with me

Low Five: Michigan State

It’s been 57 days since I last had to type the letters L-O-W for this feature. Eight weeks of a rather miserable Midwestern winter warmed considerably by 12 straight wins. The basketball was good. Alas, the streak was halted last Saturday in East Lansing and as we are pseudo-professionals

Sell Out or Get the Hell Out

I just had an unexpected ten minutes in my evening. The title of this post came to me, and then I remembered it as a vestige of a 90's rap lyric in my brain, and then I searched for it, and came upon a song from 1990 I

Man Of La Mancha

For whatever reason, I've always identified with Man of La Mancha. Which, I guess, means I identify with Don Quixote. Because the story of Don Quixote was introduced to me through the musical Man of La Mancha, I guess I tend more towards the adaptation than the book.

High Five: Northwestern II

The idea of “High Five“ first took shape in my head after the Tennessee game. I was doing what I always do the day after a game: watching it again. This second viewing is through a more critical lens compared to my “in the moment” viewing experience which is often

Where Do We Stand? February 5th

Oh, we stand. The last three seasons, when writing the Where Do We Stand articles and compiling the I-N-I, we've, uh, never been this high. We're 5th in the I-N-I this week and that's the highest we've ever been. And this is

The Problem Solvers

Games like this one make for a challenging write-up. One can only dive so deep when recapping a 40 point beat down. I feel like Chris Farley in that SNL sketch where he’s interviewing Paul McCartney... “Remember that one time…when Keaton Wagler made a three quarter court shot

Up To Speed - February 4th, 2026

First off, a massive thank-you to Tyler and Heath for carrying the load this last week while I've been parenting. I guess technically I've been "grandparenting", but I've been parenting. My wife and I watched the grandkids for five days in Idaho