Lon Kruger was going to allow them to finish it off, the five seniors who already had done more than they should have, a group that had earned a Big Ten title and Big Ten respect, had gone to the second round of the NCAA tournament.
Whatever else was going to happen to this Illinois basketball team, it would happen to Kevin Turner, to Jerry Hester, to Jarrod Gee, to Matt Heldman and to Brian Johnson.
“I’m awfully proud of these guys,” Kruger said.
College basketball these days scorns seniors, conventional wisdom being if they were any good, they already would have turned pro. Great players are recruited for two years, good players for three and every one else for an education.
Two seniors on any team are at least one too many, and here was Illinois with a whole fist full of them.
“We never thought about losing, not for a second,” Heldman would say later.
Illinois had managed to hang around a better Maryland team, a team that uses a different part of the gymnasium. Maryland plays from the rim up and Illinois from the bottom of the backboard down.
Maybe if Maryland had been a better team, one of the elite, it might have done what Arizona did when Illinois State dared to tie it early in the second half: punish the audacity.
But Maryland could never really shake the Illini, getting no more than a 12-point lead. And for the last seven minutes of the second half, Illinois had the game dead even, had even taken the lead for one possession.
“You knew Illinois was not going to crack,” Maryland coach Gary Williams said. “They are the type of team that never makes it easy.”
A type of team? Sure. What had South Alabama called them? Scrappy. Hard-working. That type.
Illinois under Kruger may not yet have earned an individual identity, may have to be a type of a team until results are better and later, but if a team has to be a type, scrappy is better than quitter, and some Illinois teams would have to confess to that type.
Talented would be better. Talented and scrappy. The raw truth is that this Illinois team made it no further in the tournament than last year’s team.
Taking the next step for Illinois may require some actual brilliance, a few players of exceptional skill rather than exceptional grit.
Still, here they were, inside a half-minute to play. Illinois needed to tie Maryland again, for the sixth time down the floor, Maryland a team of superior height, speed, talent and, most likely, ambition.
“We never gave up, never stopped believing,” Heldman said. “We worked hard to get back into the game and then there we were. It was there for the taking.”
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Turner had been largely invisible all game, as if he had joined the witness protection program. He had missed his first seven shots. But Turner had hit the three that gave Illinois its first and only lead, and his were the hands the ball should have been in.
That’s how it was all year, that’s how it had to be this day. Turner with the ball. Turner to save the game.
Turner rolled to the key, took a pass from Johnson, rose with the ball for a soft jumper. The ball scampered off the back of the rim, off Gee’s hands to the floor. Heldman dived for the ball, pushed it toward Hester, whose fingers were just not quite long enough nor in sufficient numbers to control it.
It would be the last, best chance for the Illini, but so typical of this Illinois team. By the time Maryland’s Matt Holvik snatched the ball up, it had every Illinois senior’s fingerprints on it.
“We did some great things this year, things we weren’t expected to do,” Gee said. “We never thought this would be our last game, but it is.”
Illinois would become the first Big Ten team to lose a tournament game, the first Illinois team of the day to lose a tournament game. Illinois State would follow with a loss to Arizona.
“This team is very disappointed right now,” Kruger said, “but when they look back in a few weeks, they will be proud of what they did.”
Should not have to take that long.