I made it a point to wait until today to comment much on the game, but here are some thoughts of mine:
1) Thank GOD Ayo and Kofi chose to come here and especially to return for this season. Nothing against our other players (the gratitude we owe to Frazier's YEARS of contribution or Williams' defense, for example, can't be overstated), but those decisions catapulted us back into the status we enjoyed for most of this program's modern history. I don't need to spell out just what Ayo meant during crunch time last night, obviously, but the announcers pointed out several times some great moves that Kofi made to make those drives possible. It goes against our romantic ideas of things like the movie Hoosiers, but at the end of the day ... it's imperative that you have more talent than the other team. You can work on the other stuff.
2) Yes, we had another slow start and I was as frustrated as anyone else. However, Nebraska is not the perpetual doormat their record indicates, and they have some players. Don't get me wrong, we should have won comfortably and in regulation, but we are going to get everyone's best shot when we have #6 next to our names, and Nebraska gave us their best performance of the year on their home court in a game where we were off. And we won. Let's not pretend like this hasn't happened before to plenty of teams we look back on with rose-tinted glasses, guys:
2001
#7 Illinois W 55-51 at Michigan (finished 10-18 and 4-12 in B1G)
2002
#9 Illinois L 84-74 at Purdue (finished 13-18 and 5-11 in B1G)
2004
#25 Illinois L 70-60 at Northwestern (finished 14-15 and 8-8 in B1G)
Illinois W 51-49 at Indiana (finished 14-15 and 7-9 in B1G)
#18 Illinois W 81-79 (in OT) at Purdue (finished 17-14 and 7-9 in B1G)
2005
#1 Illinois W 57-51 at Michigan (finished 13-18 and 4-12 in B1G)
Every single one of those teams not only won the Big Ten Championship but also made it to at least the Sweet Sixteen (with 2001 going to the Elite Eight and 2005 all the way to the Championship Game, obviously). As long as we pull these out and still show up for big games like Wisconsin with the energy that we do, I mean ... I can only complain so much!