Y-Basketball: Bulls 28, Suns 18

Tobin's 10 points in the paint carried the Bulls to a 28-18 victory from the Suns this morning in YMCA Youth Basketball at the Champaign County YMCA.

Tobin got things going early in his breakout game for the Bulls, positioning himself in the paint and taking advantage of a porous Suns interior defense. At the other end of the court, the Bulls played another typically strong defensive game and coasted with comfortable leads throughout the first three quarters, leading 26-10 after three periods were complete.

But poor ball handling and some rushed shooting by the Bulls in the fourth quarter allowed the Suns to cut into the lead with an 8-2 run.

Henry had another strong game in the paint, adding 6 points for the Bulls. George and Joe each had 4, and Michael and Nathan each hit a basket for 2 points apiece to round out the scoring for the good guys, who improve to 5-1 with the victory. Henry, Tobin, George, Joe and Michael did a solid job rebounding in the game. And Nathan and Joe provided excellent ballhandling skills throughout their three quarters of action.

Next up for the Bulls: the final game of the league season against the Spurs at 9 AM this Saturday at the Champaign County YMCA.

Crimson and sour cream: Indiana heads for a fall

For Indiana basketball, there have been a few moments of glory during this decade. There was the remarkable win over Duke in the 2002 NCAA Tournament. There was the overtime win against Maryland in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge the following season. There was Tuesday’s home victory over Purdue to put the Hoosiers within striking distance of the 2008 Big Ten title and send Kelvin Sampson into “retirement” as a winner.

OK, so it’s not a long, long list.

It’ll have to do.

There will not be many more moments to cherish with Indiana basketball for a long time. The descent has only begun. The challenges will become greater, the solutions less accessible. It may be years before we again recognize this program, even if the Hoosiers stick to those candy-stripe warmup pants.

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Whoever becomes coach probably will encounter a program nearly as empty as Cincinnati was a couple of springs ago. Players willing to consider walking out on a season will not hesitate to consider transferring when that season is done. The two best players, D.J. White and Eric Gordon, will be gone regardless. And IU can forget about the recruiting class promised last fall. Those guys will be asking for releases.

It will be years before we recognize Indiana basketball as the power with five national champions. If you think about it, maybe offering the job to Bob Knight wouldn’t be such an awful idea. He might be the only qualified coach willing to take it.

Crimson and sour cream: Indiana heads for a fall

Sampson out at Indiana; Hoosiers head to Northwestern with Dakich as coach

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP)—The long legacy of Indiana basketball began a new chapter Saturday.

One day after coach Kelvin Sampson accepted a $750,000 buyout and jilted players threatened a boycott, interim coach Dan Dakich found a pleasant surprise at Assembly Hall: Every player, including senior captain D.J. White, was on board the team bus.

The smattering of fans who showed up, shook hands with players and coaches, wishing them well for Saturday night’s game at Northwestern. All hoped to move beyond the embarrassment created by Sampson’s alleged NCAA violations.

Sampson out at Indiana; Hoosiers head to Northwestern with Dakich as coach

Illinois Memorial Stadium Rededication Set for Sept. 6

Feb. 13, 2008

The University of Illinois Division of Intercollegiate Athletics has announced plans for the rededication of Memorial Stadium to take place on Sept. 6 in the home opener against Eastern Illinois. The Fighting Illini will wear throwback jerseys honoring the Dick Butkus era. Also, the DIA will honor the greatest Illinois gridders that played at Memorial Stadium during eight timeouts throughout the game.

"This is a must see, once-in-a-lifetime event for Fighting Illini football fans," said Assistant Director of Athletics Chris Hanna. "We believe fans will get chills seeing many of the history makers, who made Memorial Stadium such a revered venue, standing side-by-side at one timeout after another. This is an event that will be talked about for years to come."

A fan vote will be held on fightingillini.com/CoachRonZook.com that establishes the top 10 players at the following positions: quarterback, running back, receiver, offensive line, defensive line, linebacker, defensive back, and specialist. Fan voting will begin on Monday, March 10 and conclude on Thursday, Apr. 10. The results of the fan balloting will be announced soon thereafter.

Players will appear on the ballot if they earned first or second team All Big Ten honors or if they played at least four years in the NFL. Harold ³Red² Grange, Dick Butkus, Tony Eason, Jeff George, Howard Griffith, Kevin Hardy, Dana Howard, Ray Nitschke, Rashard Mendenhall, and J Leman will be among the names fans can support for this tremendous distinction. Illinois will make every effort to have as many living members of this elite group as possible appear on the field Sept. 6.

The Butkus Era throwback jerseys will provide another special touch. The jersey will be very similar in look to the Fighting Illini jerseys of that time--blue with orange numbers. The helmets will also be made to resemble the Butkus style, featuring bold player numbers.

"Nike creates very few throwback jerseys each college football season," Hanna said. "We are excited Nike chose to create the Butkus Era jersey for us to both honor one of our great legends and make the Rededication Game that much more special."

Illinois Memorial Stadium Rededication Set for Sept. 6: Illini legends, throwback jerseys create special event

Indiana gets list of alleged violations related to phone calls

Well, well, well... I guess former Hoosier basketball greats Kent Benson and Ted Kitchell were justified in returning their Hoosier season basketball tickets after all.

It's called karma, IU fans. Your pathetic athletic director hired a known cheater, and now not only is coach Cellphone Sandscum's job in jeopardy, Greenspan's job is under scrutiny too.

The house of cards that is Cellphone Sandscum's IU basketball team is coming down - soon.

Too freakin' bad, Hoosiers. But enjoy the rest of your tainted season. Oh, and by the way, give EJ Gordon and his fine family our regards and well wishes as Junior moves away from all the impending trouble in Bloomington and on to the NBA next year.

We Illini fans are loving every minute of this. Oh, and so are Purdue fans, Ohio State fans, Notre Dame fans...

Sampson had been sanctioned after making impermissible phone calls while he was the coach at Oklahoma. Indiana then revealed more bad calls while Sampson was at IU. Multiple sources told ESPN.com that the NCAA was looking into whether Sampson did not tell the truth about those calls, resulting in the allegations of major violations.

This new information that helped result in a major violations tag could leave the Hoosiers' season, and Sampson's career, under a cloud of uncertainty.

ESPN.com made multiple efforts to reach Indiana athletic director Rick Greenspan over the past week and he never returned calls. Sampson didn't return a message Tuesday.

Indiana gets list of alleged violations related to phone calls

NCAA: Sampson misled IU about calls

NCAA allegations

NCAA letter to IU

New tires for our Lexus: Goodyear Eagle featuring ResponsEdge Technology

Well, kids, it's about time to install new tires on our 1999 Lexus ES 300. I narrowed my final choices down to two Goodyear tires: the Assurance featuring TripleTred Technology and the Eagle featuring ResponsEdge Technology. And after extensive research - including information on design specs and customer product reviews at TireRack.com - I have settled on purchasing the Eagle with ResponsEdge Technology for our Lexus.

Twin City Tire, one of Champaign's certified Goodyear dealers, is going to install these tires and complete a four-wheel alignment on the car, which has been handling extremely poorly for a few weeks now. At first I thought all the vibration in the steering wheel was coming from cruising the crumbling streets of Champaign-Urbana, but the vibration has only intensified and worsened in the last week. I just don't trust the old (original!) Michelin MXV4s that are currently on the car anymore - they're toast.

I'll post here again with my impressions after I have a chance to drive the Lexus with the new Eagles installed...

ISU hockey loses twice to Fighting Illini

27-0!!! GO ILLINI!!!

Feb. 4 — (UWIRE) AMES, Iowa — The Cyclone hockey team is picking up the pieces after two eerily similar losses.

The No. 11 Cyclones (24-10) gave No. 1 Illinois (27-0) all it could handle over the weekend, but came away with two identical 3-2 overtime losses.

Not only were the scores the same, but the ways the teams scored were similar. The first period ended without a single goal, then the Cyclones took off in the second, taking a 2-0 lead into the final period. In the third, the Illini were able to tie the game and win in overtime.

Overtime periods are played four-on-four, instead of the five-on-five play seen in regulation — so when the Cyclones got a penalty early in the overtime period of the first game, they were skating three-on-four when Illinois scored the winning goal. On Saturday, Illinois sophomore defender Brad Hoelzer made a nice move and a difficult shot into the upper right corner of the net for the win.

"We’ve got a lot of overtime experience, and four-on-four opens the ice up a little bit — typically that is to our advantage," said Illinois coach Chad Cassel.

He was quick to give Iowa State credit, however.

"Iowa State played great all weekend — they outplayed us and outplayed us badly at times, but we just continued to battle and, fortunately, both nights we found a way to win the game," Cassel said.

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ISU hockey loses twice to Fighting Illini

Y-Basketball: Celtics 14, Bulls 12

The one-year-plus winning streak is over.

It was great fun while it lasted, but the Bulls couldn't get the job done against the upstart Celtics this morning and took their first loss of the league season, 14-12.

Luke scored the first basket of the game for the Bulls and we took a quick 2-0 lead. But that was our only lead of the game as the Celtics scored six straight to grab a 6-2 advantage. The Bulls were forced to play catch-up for the remainder of the contest and the Celtics' biggest lead was 12-6. The Bulls made a nice run in the end, outscoring the Celtics 6-2, but it wasn't enough to gain the victory. Ironically, George made a 10-foot jumper just after the third quarter buzzer sounded that would have tied this game at 14.

We coaches decided to try teaching and running a stack offense for this game: But the Bulls players struggled mightily with this offense and ultimately, that confusion likely cost us the game. Everyone was just too mechanical out on the floor trying to run the stack, and it was clear that there was too much thinking going on and not enough intuitive playing or having fun. In fact, the Bulls got to the point of frustration, running more one-on-one than any other team offense. There were far too many long jumpers going up and clanging off the rim. The good news is that the YMCA refs are letting us play run-and-gun: This is our bread and butter as our tough defense creates easy scoring opportunities for us.

Michael and Joe paced the Bulls with four points apiece. Michael played very hard again, grabbing rebounds and loose balls and hustling on defense. Henry and Luke each added a basket to round out the scoring for the good guys.

The Bulls continue on with a 2-1 record. Next up: a game against the Heat at 9 AM at the Champaign County YMCA.