Illinois thrashing Wake Forest
 

FYI on ESPN. Illini up 76-49 with 9 minutes to go.

Good screw the ACC and East Coast ESPN loving schools.

Gonna be funny when Illinois leapfrogs Kansas to get to the top spot. :p

Try being a Mizzou fan and hating both of them.

Yes, screw the ACC but don't damn the whole east coast.

Naw, that shouldn't happen. KU has just thrashed 2 teams that were NCAA tourney participants last year. Not that early season rankings mean a whole lot. But I just don't see KU as anything but #1 right now.

Yeah, last year's pretty key. You don't get credit for beating St. Joe's and Nevada in your home building when they aren't one tenth the team they were the year before. Illinois'll take the top spot, and rightfully so. Especially since they just came off demolishing a top 25 Gonzaga team the other day, who's miles better than St. Joe's or Nevada.

Yeah, I'm sure that will play a part in the voting. But we'll see if it's enough. Like I said before, I don't care if they're 1 or 2 at this point. And frankly, you saying they aren't one tenth of what they were last year shows your ignorance. Sure, they are lesser teams but not that much.

It appears that Wake the #1 laid a #2 tonight :D

Illinois is going to be a force, I love Williams and Brown, maybe the best 1-2 guard combo in the nation. They could ride those two guys all the way to a title....

i fully expect the #3 team who beats the shit out of the #1 team to then become #1... KU stays at #2... Wake Bumps down to about 5-6

I like watching Self's recruits dominate.

Next year: Chalmers, Downs, Wright, RR.....oh yeah

Illinois is going to be very tuff this year.

I hope they are # 1, I don't want it this early in the year.

There is no doubt Illinois will get #1. They just owned the #1 team in the country.

It was those other four players for Wake Forest that made them lose. If they would just let Chris Paul take on everyone by himself, he could be the number one team in the country. :rolleyes:

I agree, Illinois deserves the number one slot for now. They'll lose to someone piddly later though, as I'm sure KU, Wake, Syracuse, Duke, etc (See UNC) will. The conference season is especially tough to go through without the occasional lapse in focus.

This was a typical home game against a highly ranked opponent where you blow your wad. They are no doubt very good, and I think any team in the top ten has just as good a chance at the title. There is not one dominant team.

I was watching the game at a restaurant, from a distance, so I wasn't sure, but was the venue almost empty?

I graduated from Illinois in '98 and was a 4-year season ticket holder while there and last night was by far the best game I've seen them play. They didn't let up until the last 5 minutes when Illinois's scrubs were playing against mostly Wake starters. Williams and Brown are the best guard tandem in the country (regardless of what the ACCSPN fugtards say) but the guy playing the best right now is Luther Head. He's always been a great athlete that can jump out of the gym but this year he's developed a very reliable jumpshot and his ballhandling is a lot better. Also, Roger Powell was unstoppable last night. He's an undersized power forward but his arms are about 8 feet long and he's got a great touch all the way out to three-point land.

Now that they're running Bruce Weber's motion offense almost perfectly, they can get good shots against almost any defense. Wake changed defenses about every five minutes and ran three different zones but the Illini beat every one. When Self was the coach and they ran the high post offense, they would go into huge droughts when teams would change defenses because that offense is difficult to adapt to changing zone defenses.

Congrats to the Illini.

I always expected to lose this game . . . along with a handful of road games in the ACC this season. Heck, I wouldn't be shocked if we lost at Temple, Cincy, or New Mexico this season.

IMO, there aren't any teams in the country that are dominant enough to go on the road and routinely beat top 20 teams in a hostile environment.

Wake will regroup--and Justin Gray likely won't ever shoot that poorly again. I'll see them beat Richmond this weekend and likely Texas later this month.

I still like our chances this year as much as anyone else. Meet me in St. Louis?

--Infidel Goat

Even though the Illini dominated, I could still tell that Wake has a very good team. I was really impressed with Williams in the post and you can tell the guards are really good, they just shot badly (the Illini guards are known for great defense, esp. Deron Williams). I'll be rooting for Wake in the ACC this year because Wake is a much more likeable team than Duke or UNC.

A meeting in St. Louis wouldn't surprise me. If the Illini can get the #1 seed in the Midwest, assuming they go to the Final Four their games will be in Indianapolis, Chicago, and St. Louis. That means they'd never be more than 3 hours from campus during the entire tourney, not too bad.

Let me tell you something about being close to campus in the tourney. It helped my boys alot! Congrats on your win.