Orange
It hurts.
You tell yourself not to get too intense tonight, coming into the game. 100 years of Illini basketball and this is their first trip to the championship game. Just relax and enjoy the show, you tell yourself.
But you can't. You're a nervous wreck, twitching and fidgeting and sweating. Your heart won't stop pounding.
The game is intense. A 15 point North Carolina lead feels like 30. A 3 point North Carolina lead feels like 10. But then they somehow tie the game up, 70-70, and you're thinking that destiny is really going to be fulfilled.
You think about what your buddy Dave said during halftime when they trailed by 13: "A lead like this makes you tempted to just go home." With two and a half minutes left and the game tied, you can't wait to give Dave shit for being such a pessimist. You can't wait to jump around and high-five complete strangers and bang beer mugs with your buddies and cry tears of joy.
Then the Illini lose the game. The movie ends with the wrong script. And it's a weird and confusing feeling.
Years from now if you ever see Bruce Weber at midcourt hugging a new batch of selfless players after winning their first national championship, you won't care. You wanted this team to win.
I wanted this team to win.
It just is not going to be the same anymore.
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5 Comments
I still think they were evenly matched with the Illini being a slighly better team overall. I don't think critics would have called it an upset regardless what the outcome was. UNC just came out on top this game. Illinois didn't shoot their best. They had several open looks, but couldn't follow through. If it were best of 10 games, the illini would come out on top. Regardless, you have to be proud of these guys for everything they accomplished.
Yeah this sucks ... What went wrong?
Sometimes all it takes to win a game, besides toughness and discipline, is a little luck. Luck is an ingredient to the winning formula, and unfortunately the Illini didn't have it last night. A few 3pt shots rattled in and out.
Like Rick Morrissey said today: "the easy thing to say is that Illinois needs to be remembered for the body of its work this season, and it does. But the Illini also need to be remembered for Monday night, for the way they looked at a 15-point deficit in the second half and shrugged in the face of it."
They came back and erased that lead and gave themselves an opportunity to win it, and that's all you can ask for.
As Bruce Weber said: if you don't feel happy for them then I feel very sorry for you, because life ain't getting any better.
When I was coming home last night from my friends' apartment where I watched the game, there was a guy that had climbed the stoplight on the corner near my apartment. He was standing on top of the "walk" signal, and leading the orange crowd in a "FUCK UNC" chant. Then he got arrested. Haha.
Yeah, we're all heartbroken. But we still love our guys. They gave us a great season to watch and support.
yea, like i stated on my site, only if they could get one of those three's at the end