illinois-fighting-illini Page 5 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Champaign's Long National Nightmare Is Over
As an old lifer at the Daily Illini, no story was less fun to talk about than Chief Illiniwek. We once had our own personal take on the embattled "symbol" of the University of Illinois, but we don't even remember what it was anymore: It was talked about every day, in the most banal and "emotional" t...
Trying To Understand The Illini Car Crash
Now that Illini center Brian Carlwell's condition after Monday's accident in a car driven by teammate Jamar Smith has been upgraded to "fair," we think it's probably OK to look at some of the more bizarre aspects to the crash....
Inside The Awful Illini Car Accident
As most of you have heard by now, two Illinois basketball players — center Brian Carlwell and shooting guard Jamar Smith — were injured in a car accident last night in Champaign. Smith suffered a concussion, but Carlwell is currently listed in critical condition at Carle Foundation Hospital, a hospi...
Ron Zook Will Turn Your Conventional Wisdom Upside Down
Our beloved alma mater, the University of Illinois, is having a mediocre year in basketball and has won, like, four games in two years, even forcing us to sit through a 33-0 loss to Rutgers last year that mostly resembled a cock fight between a rabid rooster and an egg. But worry not, fellow alums: ...
Don't You Forget About Ron Zook
The Florida Gators might have overcome a few years of questionable coaching decisions, rugby-style kicks, random substitutions and BALLS OUT INTENSITY to win a national championship ... but rest assured, Ron Zook shall return triumphant! The Zooker's improving! And comin' atcha!...
More Fun With Bruce Weber
Since we already devoted a whole post to a game that pretty much only we care about, we're not gonna bore you (again) with details of our Illini's 73-70 win over Missouri last night, the seventh straight win in the series. (Though it was a rather outstanding game, and some people even live-blogged...
Our Yearly Boring Obsession With The Busch Braggin' Rights Game
It's time for our yearly Busch Braggin' Rights game post. Last year, when we headed back to Illinois for the yearly Illinois-Missouri basketball matchup in St. Louis, we marveled at just how poorly coached Missouri was. Quin Snyder, who can still FIRE UP HIS TEAM with the best of them, was fired l...
That Smudge On Your Floor? That's The Big Ten
You know, new Indiana coach Kelvin Sampson isn't known as a disciplinarian in the way that Bob Knight is, but, jeez, he sure does make his players do some pretty publicly humiliating things to their teammates when they lose on national television, doesn't he?...
Deron Williams Is Making Utah Slightly More Tolerable
True Hoop points out something that Illini fans have known for years now and the rest of the basketball world is unabashedly catching on to: Utah Jazz point guard (and former Illini star) Deron Williams is freaking awesome....
You Need Sunglasses To Watch This Team Play
College basketball is slowly tipping off, with a bunch of high-profile schools taking turns writing a check to places like Savannah State and Florida A&M and letting the backups get some work in while cruising to uninspired 25-point victories. (Our Illini begin this process tonight against old nemes...
Recruiting Makes College Sports Double Plus Unfun
As a fan of college athletics, we will confess to being depressed by the process of recruiting. Some fans are obsessed with it, subscribing to scouting services and reading tea leaves, analyzing every vocal inflection of a 17-year-old kid as if it's going to be an insight to their deeper mindset. (T...
Ron Zook, Water Skiing
After our Illini's shocking upset victory over Michigan State on Saturday, we felt like we had no choice but to post this picture of coach Ron Zook water skiing. Weeeeee!!!!!...
The Will Leitch Suicide Watch
If it's true that Will's got a bad feeling about the upcoming sports weekend, it's probably best that we monitor things, given the events of this past week. I mean, athletes are role models, and you never know how much influence a star wide receiver can have over an impressionable young blogger. N...
Our Teams: A Requiem In Three Acts
I. So now it can be written and known: The spinning, sprinting 12-yard sideaways rugby punts are not, in fact, a device that has come to revolutionize the sport of football. Sorry, Coach Zook. Our Illini very well might be the worst team in Division I-A, and we see no reason they wouldn't lose to Ne...
Fortunately, It Was To A National Powerhouse Like Rutgers
The last time we were able to watch our beloved alma mater play in the New York City metropolitian area, it was the Coaches Vs. Cancer Jimmy V Classic at Madison Square Garden. The Illini lost by 20 to Providence and Ryan Gomes. We thought it couldn't get any worse....
You Got Neil Rackers, Yo
All right, so we know this isn't real, and we know it's just an NFL promotional video (for a product we don't use; we prefer Yahoo for our all fantasy games, to be honest with you), but we still could not resist....
Four Tiny Tidbits On: The Big Ten
We must confess that we can't wait each year for the crunch of shoulder pads; for cleats churning up chunks of turf and red-faced coaches screaming from the sidelines. But enough about lacrosse. College football season is upon us, and to celebrate, we're going to get back into tiny tidbit mode and...
Please Don't Make Us Lonely In July
Forgive this trifle of self-indulgence, but after our brutal sojourn at Busch Stadium is completed, we're heading back toward our home plains of Illinois. Anybody out there fortunate enough to be so near miles of corn is invited to join us....
Ron Zook Rocks It, Dude, Totally
This picture, found by The Wizard Of Odds, features Illinois head football coach Ron Zook ... uh, well, we're not sure what he's doing there. The hand gesture? The crazed, intense look in the eyes? The (gasp) "athletic gear?"...
That Probably Hurt...
Washington advanced to the Sweet 16 with a narrow 3-point victory over... you know what, there's a certain Deadspin editor who would probably rather that this game was never mentioned on this site. So I'm not going to say anything about, other than Washington's Brandon Roy is a stud. And, um... so...