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Unwrapping Presents

It's been a while since I just sat down and wrote out what's on my mind. The basketball preview is published, and this is a football bye week, so I think I'm in the frame of mind to frame my mind. And the number

2025-26 Women's Basketball Preview

Editor's note: New author alert! Everyone welcome Heath to IlliniBoard. I mean, Heath has been around IlliniBoard for 10+ years. But everyone welcome him as a new writer. Heath approached me about writing some WBB content six months ago. I told him I had some other people interested

A Preview And A Review

It's amazing how cold it got so quickly. At the Ohio State football game, I was very warm. I just walked out of the State Farm Center and it was cold cold. It's going to be 35 tonight and I have no idea how we got

Postscript, Rutgers

This tweet has been bouncing around in my head since I saw it Saturday. I don’t think people truly realize how much they’re going to miss Luke Altmyer and Barry Lunney when they’re gone — Trevor Vallese (@TVallese) November 1, 2025 My first instinct was to scoff at

Much Appreciated

I didn't fret. I didn't sweat. I didn't pace. I spent most of the fourth quarter wandering around the stadium. I set up the tailgate, I ate some breakfast pizza, I went into the stadium, I watched my team easily handle an inferior opponent,

From The Stands - Rutgers 2025

A nice, comfortable win. Exactly what we all wanted today. It leaves very little for me to From The Stands about, but don’t worry, I found stuff to talk about. Old man stuff like “why is this music SO LOUD?” (But seriously, why is the music so loud?) We

SOC - Rutgers

How The Cookie Crumbles

Apologies for not getting this up until Friday afternoon. Other stuff (including the basketball preview, coming out Sunday night/Monday morning) has taken up most of my time this week. But I always need to NERDstat after every game, so let's NERDstat. We'll start with the

Those Were The Days - Rutgers

Yes, there will still be a NERDstats post this week. I'm guessing it will be finished around noon. I kind of split it into two different articles and posted the "offensive schedule" thing on Wednesday and now the rest will be posted later today. In the

Craig Has The Scout - Rutgers 2025

Coming Up Who: Rutgers Scarlet Knights When: 11:00 am – November 1st, 2025 Where: Home Sweet Home How: NBC Opponent Primer: Head Coach: Greg Schiano Greg Schiano is the winningest knight to ever lead the Scarlet Realm of Rutgers, a distinction that speaks more to the perennial sadness of that

An Offensive Schedule

I'll get to the NERDstats tomorrow. I've actually started writing it, but I kept finding my brain circling back to this stuff. And so I think I need to write about this stuff before I can write about that stuff. This stuff? Some context on our

Illini Power Rankings: It's Great to Be Taken Seriously Again

I recognize that I might be making enemies right off the bat here, but you should know that I am a diehard St. Louis Cardinals baseball fan. This is for a variety of reasons—family tradition, a century of success, a general understanding of what is right and just in

Postscript, Washington

Expectations. It’s the thing a lot of us Illinois fans are having to grapple with right now. What do we do with these expectations, and the disappointment that comes from unmet expectations? It was something I was thinking about even before I read the comments of Robert’s piece

Stops

I can make it so complicated sometimes with the NERDstat posts. I'm trying to write from a "let me put this in plain English" place, but then I get lost in Success Rate and Havoc. So let me make this one very simple. We can'