illinois Page 7 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Illinois, Penn State Try Out Innovative New Square Basketball On Wednesday
Hey, it wasn't me this time: Scott Van Pelt (he's back!) had this to say about Penn State's 38-33 win over Illinois on Wednesday. "Watching Big Ten basketball is like watching fat people have sex."...

At Illinois, No Jock Left Behind
Here is stately Wayne Manor The Irwin Academic Services Center at the University of Illinois. Here, Illini students can use computer labs and classrooms, schedule sessions with tutors and special counselors, and even relax in oversize leather chairs and gaze at expensive oriental rugs. Wait … you’re...

Chief Illiniwek Lives...Sort Of
Chief Illiniwek, who was officially disbanded by the University of Illinois as the school's mascot in 2007, had a resurrection of sorts on the Urbana-Champaign campus last weekend, when an independent student group hosted a function that included a dance by a student-anointed mascot-in-waiting. From...

The Ron Zook Water Skiing Zapruder Film
So The Big Ten Network has this reality show about the Illinois football team called "The Journey." Even though this is a "Hard Knocks" type series — albeit one with decidedly worse production values and dramatically more nondescript players — about my alma mater's football team, I have never seen ...

College Football Previews: #19 Illinois
You know what my favorite part about college football is? It's that there are so few games — some teams only play 11. 11! — that you can legitimately go through and predict every game that every team in Division I-A (or whatever the hell it's called) plays. It doesn't even take that much time! You ...

Illinois: Now Part Of This Complete Breakfast
It baffles me as to how Illinois could have missed out on the NCAA Tournament, now that we know the existence of the Great Illinois-Shaped Corn Flake. A girl in Virginia noticed the flake it in her morning cereal and immediately recognized it as one of the 50 states, and then slapped it onto the e-B...

The Illini's Ridiculous, Plodding "Run"
Realize that we have seen our Illini do this before. In 1999, an 11th-seeded Illini team rode the hot hand of Cory Bradford to an amazing tourney championship game run, before collapsing, exhausted, to Michigan State (who eventually made the Final Four). That run was thrilling, breathtaking; it was...

Live Blogs You'll Gleefully Skip: Illinois-Penn State
We know, we know: Nobody cares about a stupid liveblog of a pointless Big Ten tournament first round game. We're fully aware. As we mentioned yesterday, it's just, like, practice or something....

Saying Goodbye To These Awful (And Unlucky) Illini
As part of our preparations for the lunacy that lands on our sports radars this Sunday, we've been digging around the irreplaceable Basketball Prospectus, trying to find those odd little tidbits on Oral Roberts and Siena. And we discovered something kind of amazing and oddly satisfying....

Chris Lowery's Nose Itches
The College Basketball Closer is written by the gang at Storming The Floor....

Yeah, Well, Kelvin Sampson's Still A Jerk
We couldn't possibly agree more with legendary Illini basketball reporter Mark Tupper, who said, "at no time did I think Illinois was going to win that very exciting, very emotional basketball game with Indiana." It was exciting, and we had hope, and we leapt across the room with Jeffrey Jordan hit ...

Kentucky Fans Are Having Anger Displacement Issues
In the "holy cow, fans can be scary" file, the frustrated fans at Kentucky, suffering through a 9-9 season, have taken a lot of their ire out on recent transfer (to Illinois! Woo!) Alex Legion. (He of the soothsaying mother.)...

Not Even Zook Can Help The Illini
Jonah Keri writes the college basketball closer (more or less) daily. E-mail your questions, comments or Clarence Ceasar-related memories to [email protected]....

The Rose Bowl In The Twilight Zone
The question we've been discussing with fellow Illini fans over the last 12 hours or so; was it really worth it? Was it worth watching our Illini be absolutely destroyed in the Rose Bowl yesterday? Wouldn't we all have been better off if Illinois had a more competitive, fun, matchup against Florida ...

Woe Is The Illini
The Tennessee State Tigers are 4-8, with losses to Belmont, Akron, Colorado State and Southeast Missouri State. It was once known as the Tennessee State Agricultural and Industrial State Normal School for Negroes. Oprah Winfrey went there. And yesterday, they beat our Illini at the Assembly Hall in ...

Ron Zook, Somewhat Less Intense This Week
We will say this: It is unlikely this photo above is going to replace Ron Zook Pisses Intensity Photo....

The Chief Simply Will Not Go Away
For all the excitement about next Tuesday's Rose Bowl game between our Illini and those suddenly hateable USC Trojans, it has one major downside: Everybody's talking about the damned Chief again....

Alex Legion Gets His Exodus After All
In our ongoing coverage of the dogmatic inevitability that Alex Legion will lead Kentucky to the Final Four, a tranquil atmosphere casts over the tumultuous world of college basketball....