According to Ken Pomeroy's "Luck Ratings," the single unluckiest team in all of college basketball this year has been ... our Illini! That doesn't exactly make us feel better about a loss to Oprah's alma mater, but man, it at least allows us to convince ourselves that the stars have been aligned against us this year.

Anyway, because we're gluttons for punishment, we're gonna be live blogging the first round of the NCAA tournament next week, but our live blogging skills are quite rusty. (And don't compare to MJD's and Sussman's anyway.) So, as practice for that chaos, we're going to be live-blogging the Illinois-Penn State Big Ten Tournament game tomorrow at 2:30 p.m. ET. (Approximately.) We don't expect any of you to really care about our stupid Illini, but it wouldn't hurt us to stretch the muscles a little bit, so we're gonna say goodbye to this wretched team in style tomorrow.

Heck, maybe they'll even win! If they do, we won't be live-blogging that game; it's on the goddamned Big Ten Network.

It's somewhat comforting to know your NCAA tournament hopes have been extinguished before the conference slate has even begun. Saves a lot of time and energy.

It's New Years Eve, so we're going somewhat self-indulgent here, but anyone who has watched this Illini team knows they're not very good. Everyone knows this, apparently, but the players, who were apparently snickering while watching the Tennessee State game tape.

It's just very disappointing that maturity level and understanding that anybody can beat anybody," [coach Bruce] Weber said. "We talked about it last night at our meeting and you have snickers. Just from our clip tape on (Gerald) Robinson and Price, they had to realize how good those guys were, and then we let Houston get involved."

Yeah, they deserved to lose; screw 'em. Save us, Zook, save us!

Illini Find Intensity Eludes Them Again [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]