Illness forced Illinois coach Theresa Grentz to miss practice time prior to last weekend’s victory at home over Penn State.
Grentz really must have been sick because, speaking of her work ethic, she said, “as a player, I would play with a broken arm . . . which I once did.”
However, Grentz downplayed the idea that her presence was needed for team success. “I am useful, not necessary,” she said. “The nuns taught me that a long time ago.”
Like Vince Lombardi when he coached the Packers, Grentz prefers athletes who perform despite aches and illness. She would have liked 6-foot-3-inch center Alicia Sheeler to have played against Penn State, instead of missing the game because of pneumonia.
When Sheeler’s backups, Casey Leonhardt and Nicole Vasey had excellent games against Penn State, Grentz cracked, “I think when Sheeler saw that, her pneumonia improved to a bad cold.”
Sheeler also missed Monday’s loss at Indiana, the first Big Ten defeat of the year for the Illini. She could be back in the lineup Friday night when the Illini play host to Northwestern. “Indiana was better than we were,” Grentz said. “They made shots. We didn’t. There are nights like that. You move on.”
Tough slate: Illinois and Iowa are exhibits 1 and 1-A for the argument that playing a tough preconference schedule, even if it produces losses, benefits a team once its league season begins.
The Illini and Hawkeyes are ranked 1-2 in the Big Ten. Illinois fashioned a 3-4 record against perennial NCAA tournament teams Old Dominion, Duke, Marquette, Southwest Missouri, Tennessee, Stanford and DePaul. Iowa had an 0-5 record against Arkansas, Connecticut, Washington, Louisiana Tech and Vanderbilt.
Hayden Fry, take note.
Hot hand: Iowa’s 6-4 Tangela Smith from Chicago’s Washington High School was named Big Ten player of the week for averaging 25.5 points and 12.5 rebounds in victories over Northwestern and Purdue.
Ray of light: Speaking of Northwestern, despite a 1-6 Big 10 record, the Wildcats have the No. 1 scorer in the Big 10, Kristina Divjak with a 22-point average, and the league’s No. 1 playmaker, Amber DeWall, averaging 6.3 assists a game.
The Cats demonstrated in their rout over Minnesota on Sunday that Divjak, DeWall and Megan Chawansky can help them to act as spoilers and knock off contenders in games down the stretch.
“Minnesota played close against some teams that beat us badly,” said Cats coach Don Perrelli. “We can play well if we control tempo as we did against Minnesota.”
Perrelli said senior point guard DeWall “has 90 percent control over our tempo when the ball is in her hands.” DeWall tied a career high by handing out 12 assists against the Gophers.
DeWall was a two-time All-Stater and an 18-point scorer at St. Louis Park, Minn., but she developed her point guard mentality on her AAU team where she dished the ball to current Georgia star Tracy Henderson and to Angie Iverson, the Gophers’ leading scorer.
More Top Picks Epson Workforce Es 400
At NU, DeWall said she has learned to look for her team’s leading scorer: Maureen “Mo” Holohan her freshman year; Michele Ratay the next two years; and Divjak this season.
“I’m definitely very conscious of where Div is on the floor,” DeWall said. “Same way with Ratay before. I’m like radar tracking them.”
Pointing: As helpful as it is to have a point guard who distributes the ball, this does not guarantee a winning season. Exhibits A and B are Northwestern and Northern Illinois. Like DeWall, Huskies junior Amanda Reese leads the Mid-American Conference in assists with a 5.1 average. But NIU has a 2-12 record overall and is 1-7 in the MAC.