Confidence

It's such an infectious thing. One player elevates his game and pushes his team forward, and then another player catches fire, and suddenly the entire team believes that something great is about to happen. And so do the coaches. And so do the fans

From The Seats - Jimmy V Classic

That empty section you saw behind the Illinois bench wasn't the Illinois section. That was the UConn section (for the second game). The Illinois section was directly across the court from the Illinois bench. It's the NCAA Tournament rules. Each game

A Basketball I-N-I

For the last three years, I've compiled what I call the "IlliniBoard NERDstat Index" during the football season. I'd take ESPN's FPI, Bill Connelly's SP+, Brian Fremeau's FEI, and Kelley Ford's K-Ford Ratings and I'd combine them into one ranking. I

Chicken Soup

It's been a long week. My greatest fear for any Illini football season -- the number 5 followed by the number 7 -- played out right in front of me. And this time, I had to watch it end with a missed two-point conversion. I spent a lot of time Monday

What Happened?

Patient's name: 2023 Illini Football Date Of Birth: September 2, 2023 Date Patient Expired: November 25, 2023 Cause of death: To Be Determined Date Autopsy Performed: Pretty much the entire week of November 27, 2023 Autopsy performed by: Dr

2024 Depth Chart

I've been working on an autopsy of the 2023 season but I'm not ready to declare the cause of death yet. So while I continue to work on that, let's do a quick depth chart for next season. Not a three-deep, a depth chart. These are the players expected

Postscript, Northwestern

My wife is suddenly a football fan. Well, not exactly. I should say, my wife is showing interest in football for the first time in her 37 years on earth. It's happened, like it's happened for a lot of non-football fans, because of Travis Kelce. It's

We Love No Other

I walked home. My tailgate crew was long gone by the time I left the pressbox, and I had driven to the game with them, so I walked home. My wife offered to come get me, but I told her that a walk would do me good. I needed to do some processing. Walks

From The Stands - Northwestern 2023

In this From The Stands, I tried to explain my tweet. After the game, I tweeted that this was the most painful loss I can remember. I still stand by that. Everyone believes it to be recency bias but I 100% believe this to be true. I'm not saying it's

Lockdown Squad

Brad Underwood arrived at Illinois seven seasons ago with a reputation as an offensive whiz. He was coming off his one season as head coach at Oklahoma State during which his Cowboys were the number one ranked offense in all of college basketball (per

SOC - Northwestern

I'm just dreading every moment of this. I don't want to write this SOC. I don't want to attend the game tomorrow. Honestly - and I know this revokes my fan card - the best scenario for me tomorrow would be to accidentally sleep in until 6:00 pm and

What Happened To All The Turnovers?

I've hesitated to write about this because the season isn't over yet. As I've learned over the years, writing that the defensive line has really turned around the sack numbers from the start of the year means that the defense will get zero sacks in the

Those Were The Days - Northwestern

I actually remembered to publish it this year. The TWTD for the Northwestern game always comes out on Black Friday and I'm always out of town doing some kind of Thanksgiving thing and I forget to publish it. But here I am, 10:30 on Friday morning,

Craig Has The Scout - Northwestern 2023

We had this good long run where Craig's login was working. But now it's not working again. So here I am, writing an intro for Craig Has The Scout. The final CHTS of the year, believe it or not. Well, until we beat Northwestern and make a bowl game,

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