SLU may have a couple (really) good recruits coming in, but they are heinously bad this year. Like worse than Mizzou by a lot. I get that they have had some good teams recently and grabbed Goodwin from us, but very strange timing for an article like this.
Pregame: Illinois vs Missouri (St. Louis), Wednesday, December 21st, 6:00pm CT, ESPNU
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SLU may have a couple (really) good recruits coming in, but they are heinously bad this year. Like worse than Mizzou by a lot. I get that they have had some good teams recently and grabbed Goodwin from us, but very strange timing for an article like this.
Pro tip:
For those who don't, look closely. Squint if you have to. It will come to you.
More like plummeted.
As bubblicious as we might be this year, they're worse. We should be able to take this one without too much difficulty. Might be a while before we have have an opponent of this caliber again.
Lol, how? Because they outbid us for 1 wing recruit? We never play each other, and they aren't even a high major school. I could not care less about SLU, and I'm sure most illini fans feel similarly.
Miznoz on the other hand...
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
Yeah, it amazes me how many writers just can't comprehend that rivalries are 99% about the fans. Most Cubs and Cardinals players over the years haven't gotten in brawls, routinely say "it's just another game," the two teams haven't battled for division titles very often, etc .... doesn't matter at all. Cubs fans hate the Cardinals, and Cardinals fans hate the Cubs. Period. There's good geographic rivalry territory, and it makes the series intense.
Illinois' three main rivals in basketball are Missouri, Indiana and Iowa, and I am willing to bet that which one an Illini fan would choose as the biggest rival would correlate HIGHLY to where they live.
TownieMatt
CU Expat
- Chicago
FWIW, Illini opened -4, but the line is up to -6.5.
12,000 is better than I expected. 11,964 Illini fans and 36 Mizzou fans?
Illinois should easily cover 7 points to many weapons for Mizzou to contend with for the Illini.
ILLINOIS 78 Mizzou 63
Thank you. Anyone who just now figured this out after your post should be embarrassed.
Go Illini, Beat MIZNOZ!
sacraig
- The desert
The Illini coverage in the Post-Dispatch is and has always been (at least for the last decade and a half) awful. The same can be said about its coverage of college sports in general for teams not named "Mizzou".
RedRocksIllini
- Morrison, CO
SLU did beat Eastern Illinois whereas Mizzou did not. Other than that weird fact, I agree with your assessment of relative heinousness. Plus, SLU has Ford as a coach so they may pull in good recruits, but they will be poorly coached for the foreseeable future.
It is entertaining to make fun of how bad Mizzou is. But as far as making the tournament and building our resume, it really sucks to have Mizzou be down.
In rivalry games rankings are thrown out the window and anything can happen. On paper, this should be an easy win and would look terrible on the resume (much worse than Winthrop) if we lose. But in reality this will probably be a tough game, like it almost always is. I would much rather have Mizzou be good so a loss wouldn't hurt the resume.
I'm not buying that it'll be close because it's a rivalry game. It's been close in the past couple years, despite poor attendance by Mizzou fans, for the same reasons we almost lost to Chicago State. We are notorious for playing down to our opponents. If we play like we have the past few games, it'll be a blow out. If this team is for real, it should not be a close game. And this team needs to be for real heading into B1G play. No more excuses to play soft. I don't expect this to be a close game but the team has surprised us all many times. Beat Mizzou, and move on to big boy college basketball.
It is fun to make fun of them and I enjoy beating them. I do wish they were better though. It is much more fun when they are pretty good, come in to the game expecting to win and we beat them anyway.
Illinithad
- Northeast Missouri
42-28 Illinois at half
76-56 Final...Illinois will win.
You saw it here first.
76-56 Final...Illinois will win.
You saw it here first.
That was fun going down memory lane as I looked through the history of results in this series. I've made about 22 of them. Back when Grimm (out of Morton) was playing for Miznoz, ironically 2 years in a row I sat right on the line dividing of their fans and ours, and I sat next to Grimm's sister. She was the only pleasant tiger fan I ever met. The triple overtime loss was the toughest but it was great 2 yrs later when we beat a ranked MO in overtime. The best years were when both teams were highly ranked. Tickets were hard to get and the game warranted respect from the media.
I think Mark Tupper does an outstanding job. StL media cannot afford to send somebody 3 1/2 hours each way for a 2 hour game.
Be remindful that the last time they played, SLU beat ILL at the dome. If you live in StL, you do care about SLU.
How long ago was that game? I honestly don't remember it.
If you live in Stl you might care about SLU but the majority of Illini fans don't care at all. The article is kind of silly to call two teams rivals when most fans can't remember the last time they played. A rival goes well beyond competing over a couple of recruits.
1997.. lol
Had to look it up. I guess we're supposed to care about a win that happened almost 20 years ago.
Kind of like how BTN tries to hype up our "rivalry" with Penn State :hurl:
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