signing day is wed. BE THERE

[orange100]

FOOTBALL signing day celebration at the HALL, wednesday evening, 7pm. admission is free. Zook will introduce coaches and staff, show highlites of recruits, krush and band to be there as well. ADMISSION IS FREE.

Get on the bandwagon now to truly appreciate our new ride.

I'll be there in orange.

[Dan]

Signing day at the Hall -- is this a new event? orange100 are you bringing your camera? :)

[orange100]

i'll be there with my camera, but it's not digital and I have no scanner yet. :mad:

[Blue & Orange]

I made my way to the "Signing Day Party" this evening at the Assembly Hall. Here's the skinny- sorry, it ended up a little long......

Things start slowly this evening running about 20 or so minutes late. The band played several favorite Illini selections and one was soon wondering why things were not rolling along. The Hall is just not use to 'down time' these days ya know! The cheerleaders gave us a nice showing for a little bit and were pumping up the crowd. Then some more pep band! They always do a great job. Finally an announcement was made that "Coach Zook is in the progress of recruiting as we speak". Lots of claps for that and then more band, nice Illini spirit brought that way. An introduction of “The Quarterback Club” and a plug to join by an elite QC member follows. To fill some more time 2 local players, Morris Virgil and J. Leman had a brief interview from Mr. Orange (Dave Johnson) the guys did a nice job for what appeared to be off the cuff, then more band. Finally, Mr. Orange started to introduce Coach Zook by telling us about the distinguished resume he carries. Coach comes out and immediately apologies for his lateness and the fact he is in the wrapping up stage of a great recruit. Coach now introduces his staff, pardoning the first man on the list who is sitting by the fax machine waiting for the "official fax" from the recruit. In the midst of introducing the rest of the staff, Coach's cell phone rings, he apologies and hands the phone to one of his ex-Florida coaches and tells us this could be very important take this, and that he normally does not take calls at times like this. A few of the wives are introduced and then the video of the recruits is shown to us above. The coaches are sitting at the away bench for this video presentation and they are intently talking to the recruit on the phone. That was pretty fun to watch. The video of the signed recruits brought several ohhh's and ahhh's from the fans as it was a nice highlight film of some of the standouts (looks to be a great class of defensive players coming our way). After the video ended, Coach came back to near center court for a Q & A session from Mr. Orange. Nice round of questions and several stall tactics used here in the answers as Coach was so hoping to introduce the newest recruit at the party. Coach kept looking to the bench of the other assistants for signals of yeah or nay. They were patiently on the phone and they were giving the sign that there was lots of conversation and not commitment just yet, possible read- stall more we about got him. Finally after the last question was answered, he got the nod that there was still no answer. Coach pretty well promised an answer by tonight of this newest Illini to sign. He was very confident he would get him on board. Coach was very complimentary with the basketball's success and enthusiasm of the fans for the program and he challenged the team to make it the same type of atmosphere across the street to get the fans over there too!

If all the people there were sitting in ‘A’ section it would have been about 3/4's full. Not as good of a turnout as what I thought might be there but still a good time. Lots of orange for the ones that were there and I saw several "Zook Em" t-shirts. I tried to get a couple pictures with my palm but they look really bad. Hopefully Orange 100 will have some shots to post once he gets them developed.

Go ILLINI!

[Dan]

Thanks for the recap O+B.