This is the year that balances out the craziness of last year. Anyone making inferences based on a single elimination tournament just wants easy data points to draw conclusions. It’s lazy, but probably expected in today’s Twitter world.
Besides Clemson and NC State who exceeded expectations, everyone else is just kind of doing their things. Besides U Conn and Purdue should be on the top (somebody might even argue against Purdue), it’s crap shooting ranking the 16.
Unless you're UK or Mizzou or KU or Duke or UNC or any team coached by Sampson or Pearl. It's okay to laugh at them losing in round 1.
It’s been weird for me especially since the last time we made the S16 I was only 7 years old. I don’t remember much of that season unfortunately, so this was a huge deal for me especially after the dark days we had last decade. I’m soaking up every little moment as much as I can this season. It’s been a heck of a ride that I hope keeps going!
Well, there is that.
I have a very different but similarly depressing story, haha. The VERY first Illini game I can really remember was our 2001 Elite Eight loss to Arizona, which I watched with my dad as a third grader in Iowa City as one of the only Illini fans!
It was a shocking fall from grace for someone my age who'd never known anything but winning, haha.Click on the page symbol to the right of the URL
Haha I remember in High School just being excited to be in the tournament, some of my greatest memories were watching BP3 and DJ (hence my profile pic) in some great games. Beating #1 Indiana in particular was such a huge deal for me, as well as almost beating Miami in ‘13 barring a terrible call. It’s been a great joy to watch this team turn into the team to beat as opposed to the other way around. Hopefully my kids will experience the same excitement we’ve had over the past few years!I have a very different but similarly depressing story, haha. The VERY first Illini game I can really remember was our 2001 Elite Eight loss to Arizona, which I watched with my dad as a third grader in Iowa City as one of the only Illini fans!
So, the first five Illini basketball seasons of my fandom saw 1 Final Four, 2 Elite Eights, 4 Sweet Sixteens, 4 Big Ten championships, 2 BTT championships and 2 #1 seeds, haha. The next FIFTEEN saw zero of any of those.
Now, the last four years have given us at least a Sweet Sixteen, another #1 seed, 4 NCAA Tournaments, a Big Ten championship and two BTT championships. It feels VERY good to be back, but it is a nice reminder that a program with our history, fan support, facilities, recruiting footprint, NIL money, etc. should NEVER experience such shocking bad results as we saw from ~2007 to ~2019. It now boggles the mind that there were some back then who said our expectations were unrealistic and tried to downplay just how consistently good Illini basketball was before that period (and now after!).
What I mean is, for a lot of people what makes those first two rounds of the NCAA tourney so exciting is upsets.
The first round was pretty great in terms of getting some big and fun upsets, it's the second round that was extraordinarily chalky.
Some people still have this mindset. One of my Illinois petpeves and something I'll always argue when it comes up. We aren't a "just be happy to be there" or "just be competitive" school. We're a top 15 program both today and historically. We should expect our team to earn some accolades on a semi regular basis. No reason to shy away from those expectations besides what I assume to be an attempt to protect one's own ego.
I kind of wonder if the combo of portal/NIL is pushing the “mid majors “ out a bit. Essentially they lose their best upperclassmen and that sucks. End of the day, teams with more NIL will win more often.
agree
Plus even if there weren't as many upsets, as someone who tried to watch as many games as possible, I thought there were plenty of good games!
Me neither. Tried incognito and still no go. Oh well...still plenty of good stuff to read on here.
Thanks for trying to help, but I don't see a "page symbol" or anything else (except for the bookmark icon) next to the URL in my browser. Using Chrome.
Ah, okay. I use Firefox. That Reader View icon doesn't work for some sites, but most of the time it works like a champ. I just get a plain text read and no media, but I'm cool with that. Here is what it looks like....
I was finally able to get it to work by popping out the side panel in Chrome and selecting 'Reading Mode." Then, navigating to the page allowed me to see the text in the side panel. Your suggestion of Firefox's Reader View was what got me there. Thanks for the help.
Another way is once you've clicked on the link, open your browser's menu and select download. You should then be able to open an offline copy of the article.
IDKWESPNI
Probably too late as it looks as if enough solutions have already been offered but click on the link and before the pop up window appears do a "Select all", copy, and then paste into a text application. Unfortunately, everything will be there but one can pretty easily wade through it to find the actual article.
