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player ready...Ron Lange could hardly contain himself.
With the final seconds ticking away Saturday on the Illini’s 72-57 victory over Louisville, the 33-year-old Chicagoan grabbed an Illinois banner and paraded it around the upper deck of the rollicking Edward Jones Dome.
“This is history right here,” Lange proclaimed, his voice hoarse from yelling. “I probably will cry. How can you not?”
From St. Louis to Champaign and up to Chicago, Illini fans shed tears of joy as their team charged into their first national championship game. In Champaign, thousands of students poured out of campus-area bars as the game ended and ran toward 6th and Green Streets, stopping traffic as they cheered. Fireworks exploded overhead.
“This is what it’s all about,” said Tricia Tamala, 19, of Joliet, as she stood on the fringe of the crowd. “It really makes me proud to go to Illinois.”
After half an hour, the students marched en masse several blocks to the Quad, where about two dozen of them climbed atop the university’s Alma Mater statue.
As the crowd gathered around them, several of the students jumped down into the sea of people, then were passed along, their bodies seemingly floating above the crowd.
“It’s absolutely, completely, 100 percent insane,” said Jessica Merner, 24, a U. of I. alumnus who had traveled to Champaign to celebrate with her sister, a student.
Sitting inside Kam’s, a bar on East Daniel Street, Bernardo Figueiredo, 21, of Geneva screamed at the thought of seeing his beloved Illini so close to a national title (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
“I never thought this would happen, but it just did happen,” he said. “We’re going to the championship!”
Many students showed up at campus-area bars hours before tipoff. By midafternoon, lines at some taverns stretched nearly 200 people long–long strings of humanity covered head-to-toe in orange and blue.
Others gathered at the student union, where the game was displayed on projection televisions and non-alcoholic drinks and snacks were offered.
Some saw the basketball game as a unifying event.
“It does not feel like a large university anymore,” said Angela Kinsella, 20, from Manhattan, Ill. “It feels very small. People are talking about it everywhere–it’s been a common bond.”
Champaign police were hopeful the new-found unity would not turn into an out-of-control mob, and as of late Saturday only two students had been arrested, both for disorderly conduct, police said.
Officials had prepared for the massive turnout by emptying area trash bins so students would have nothing to ignite or throw, and alcohol sales were restricted.
There was a heavy police presence in both Champaign and St. Louis, while Illinois State Troopers patrolled the interstates between the two cities on the lookout for any drunken drivers who decided to journey home after the game.
In St. Louis, Illini fans jammed the streets and bars around the stadium for hours leading up to the game, donning orange wigs, blue face paint and Mardi Gras-style beads.
Inside the dome, the cheers for the Illini were at times deafening.
“Unbelievable,” said Karen Lyle, 51, as she repeatedly slapped high-fives with Ginger Powden, both of Lawrenceville, Ill. The pair paid $735 a piece for their upper deck, behind-the-basket seats. Both insisted it was worth every penny.
Some, like Rakesh Khanna, 32, of Chicago, looked for a deeper meaning in the victory.
“I never thought I’d see this, especially coming from Chicago,” he said as pandemonium ensued around him at the stadium. “We have a history of losing. Maybe this will change that.”
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