I find it really interesting how much less specific and analytical my thoughts are about a game when I attend in person, haha. Part of it certainly could be the beers, but I also think getting caught up in the gameday atmosphere when you're there in person causes you to nitpick less than you would while watching on TV, and thus I view the game as more of an event to be thought about at a higher level. With that said, here are some random things I thought about after that game.
1. Related to my point about less specific analysis, I was pretty unaware of who had X points or Y rebounds or anything like that. Instead, I came away from that game SO thankful that we have Boswell. His intangibles and energy are so valuable and probably don't get enough praise here.
2. It's kind of hilarious to see how different fan bases are, lol. Obviously, any Power Conference fan base involves tens of thousands (and even millions) of people, all with different backgrounds, temperaments, perspectives, etc. However, you can still draw general conclusions about stereotypes, and they are pretty funny. My wife and I laughed so hard that every time we were in the concourse, we'd see like five Northwestern fans who all looked so proper and soft spoken or whatever, and every Illini fan had a beer in hand and was visiting with his/her friends in a much more festive manner.
3. That arena really is a great place to watch a game. Don't get me wrong, it drives me nuts that I have to pay that much for a ticket because of their tiny capacity, added on to beers that are too expensive and two pricey Ubers there and back. However, there is not a bad seat in the house. We sat in 216, and IIRC we sat in 217 last year ... those are SUPER good seats, and they were actually a lot less expensive than some of the options in the upper decks on either side.
4. Lastly, props to Illini fans! I have posted before that we have attended a few Illini games there, and my rough estimates of the Illini/NU crowd split were about 45/55 in 2019, an incredible 70/30 in 2020, 55/45 in 2022 and close to 50/50 last year. I think we got close to that 70/30 split last night. When you would scan the crowd, you would subconsciously think, "Wow, that is a lot of orange ... maybe over 50% of the crowd!" However, if you just trained your eye on a given row, you would notice that MAYBE 50% of Illini fans were wearing orange, with a ton wearing navy, white or gray. In fact, we picked a random row as a super small sample size, and I think there were like 3 Northwestern fans and 13 Illini fans, with like 6 of the Illini fans wearing orange. Once you took that into account ... yikes, there were WAY more Illini fans there than Northwestern fans. My only complaint is I was actually a little surprised our fan contingent wasn't more rowdy ... watching the YouTube highlights this morning, we also never sounded that loud on TV. We still cheered and supported the boys, but it felt quite subdued compared to the folks who were at the United Center. Once again, I remain fascinated how different of vibes you can get from an Illini crowd contingent from venue to venue, haha.
5. With that said on the crowd, I still wanted to end on a positive of once again thanking Illini fans for turning out in such great numbers! It would have been even cooler if we all wore orange and created an even more embarrassing visual for Northwestern, but without further ado, I give you ... the Welsh Ryan Arena WHITE OUT!
View attachment 46540
I-L-L!
