Learning experiences should last a bit longer. Next year’s champion should not be losing to a lower-seeded team in the second round of this year’s NCAA tournament, not playing its worst basketball game of the year, not exposing all the weaknesses at the end that were there at the beginning, even if a whole summer now looms ahead to work on Illinois’ more obvious flaws.
How much better for Illinois–and it would have made no difference to Florida–to lose on a buzzer-beater as Butler did, or even to brain lock and collapse at the end as DePaul did.
There is no exhilaration in humiliation, no salvation in such complete and obliging surrender, no defiance to be squeezed from the pulp of capitulation.
Already Florida was vowing to carry the lesson of its Sweet 16, tip-in loss last year to Gonzaga into the next round against Duke, the pain still fresh enough to be used as a weapon of redemption.
How little such domination meant even to the dominators. Not only could Illinois not help itself, it couldn’t do anything for Florida either. “Our guys gave it an effort,” coach Lon Kruger said, “but Florida just wouldn’t give us a crack.”
Maybe Illinois might work on doing the cracking.
Better to blame the officials, or bum luck, or bad bounces, or the angle of the moon than to have to accept being the footwipe to a team of no greater ability or skill. And then getting the worst kind of empty compliment from the winning coach.
“Illinois can play with any team in the country,” Florida coach Billy Donovan said. “They have great personnel. They can play halfcourt, full court, any style.”
This may very well be true. And that makes the opinion all the more insulting. It means Florida’s 93-76 poleaxing of the Illini is not to be considered as simple as the thumb meeting the hammer, when, of course, it was just that. Never mind the backhanded jeer at the Illinois coach, the implication being Kruger got little out of such great players. Better for Illinois to have been breathless from heartbreak than from chasing Florida up and down the floor. The lesson in this for Illinois wasobscured by the weight of the failure.
“We’re not frustrated as much as we’re just not pleased,” Cory Bradford said. “We could have done a lot of things better.”
General opinion in the Big Ten, as well as my own, is that Illinois has most of the best talent returning and will be the favored team next season. But trying to project success out of such a shabby finish requires blind faith.
“Everyone wants the goal to be next year,” Kruger said. “This is an easy time to say that. Every team in the country wants to get better.
“We had so many things to work on this year, and you’ve got to prioritize. We wanted to play better defense. Maybe we can work on pressing more next year. Sometimes you can’t do everything you’d like to do. But this team made progress.”
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Kruger would know whether Illinois got what it could for its season, and it seems as if it did. Illinois was in the NCAA tournament again, it came close to winning the Big Ten tournament again, and of the 10 games lost, only one against Michigan State and the last one were entirely awful.
“We’re excited about next year,” Sergio McClain said. “We’ve got a great team coming back, and the sky’s the limit for us.”
The limit was considerably lower this day, somewhere down around freshman guard Frank Williams’ ankles.
“In Frankie’s defense,” said Donovan, taking on the odd responsibility of endorsing his opponents’ failure, “he’s a great player and very talented. It was just one of those nights.”
Isn’t this where Williams came in, playing point guard as if he were renting the position? And Bradford, taking it all on himself to win, while his teammates not only allowed him to do it but depended on it happening as well? Or either center, freshman Brian Cook or junior transfer Marcus Griffin, having to check his number to see if he was in the game?
“Griffin is as skilled as any frontcourt player in the land,” Donovan said. “McClain is a fierce and aggressive rebounder, and Cook is so great, it’s a joke. It’s amazing that we got so many easy baskets against the skill and size of Illinois. They’ve got some big-time players.”
After listening to Donovan rave on about how great Illinois is, you come away not convinced but wondering if maybe DePaul could borrow Donovan’s tongue to lick its wounds too.