Here’s the love…
Posted by Ben on February 2nd, 2005
Nice to have someone over at ESPN cheerleading for the Illini today.
It was nice to walk past the section of the office that has a lot of Michigan State alumni this morning and just smile. 
Course, Dickie V still can’t give us all props:
However, I feel that the Illini will not run the table in the regular season. They have eight games left, four at home and four on the road.
Against who, exactly? We play at Michigan, Penn State, Iowa, and Ohio State. They’re all sub-.500 teams in the Big Ten, and we already thumped the latter three. Iowa just lost their marquee player for the season, too, so count them out. Michigan just got blown out by Purdue, so they’re not much of a threat. At home, we’ve got Indiana, Wisconsin, Northwestern, and Purdue. Already beat Purdue and Wisconsin on the road (at least Wisconsin played us close). No one’s going to win who’s not wearing orange at Assembly Hall this year.
The odds don’t exactly favor Illinois running the tables (17 wins to get the national championship), so I’d like to see Illinois drop a game in the Big Ten tournament. Losing to Wisconsin or MSU there won’t prevent Illinois from getting a #1 seed in the Indianapolis/Chicago bracket. The loss will get them motivated and set to run the tables in March. 38-0 would certainly be nice, but I’ll take 37-1…just as long as win #37 is the finals in St. Louis.