Whole

Today started off in grand fashion for me. As I exited off of I-57 on my way into Champaign I ran over some form of sharp metal object and punctured a tire. It was 11:27 AM - just 33 minutes until the start of Illinois vs Ohio State when my car limped into the Thornton’s gas station on Mattis and University. There were expletives. So many expletives.

So while I consider it a rather large win that I swapped out the flat for the mini-spare and still made it to the IlliniBoard seat on press row with 20 seconds or so to spare before tip, let’s just say I was not in the happiest of moods when I got there.

The first 24 minutes of today’s game did little to calm my angst. Even with the somewhat surprising news of Tomi Ivisic’s return to both the active roster and the starting line up, we found ourselves down to the Buckeyes 52-41 at the second half under 16 media time out. The game up to this point was shaping up in distressingly similar fashion to what we saw on Thursday against Nebraska. We were once again swimming upstream due to icy shooting (3/16 from the three point line) and poor ball security (9 turnovers). Brad Underwood wants to win the possession “game within the game” but although we were +6 on second chance points at this juncture, we were -9 on points off turnovers and -15 on points from made threes. It was making for an altogether very depressing afternoon.

We would outscore Ohio State 46-27 the rest of the way.