The Waiting
Two games to immortality.
Last weekend, it was REO Speedwagon. This week it’s Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers with “The Waiting.”
As the lyrics go, “The waiting is the hardest part.”
It has two meanings for me. Waiting for Illinois to get to another Final Four and waiting for the game this evening to start. In my waiting, I think back to the previous seasons of the modern era that made it to the Final Four: 1989 and 2005.
I wasn’t following college basketball that closely in 1989, but Illinois had made six straight NCAA Tournaments before making the Final Four. In 2005, they’d made five straight. I’m not sure about after 1989, but after 2005, the feeling in Champaign was that it was the start of Illinois Basketball having great teams year after year.
That did not happen, and Illinois remains the best program never to win a title. Sigh.
Things worked out about as perfectly as possible for Illinois in the tournament this year. As nice as it would’ve been to be in the Midwest region, the path the team ended up with was the most ideal and, honestly, may have been a blessing in disguise, as the squad plays better in road environments.
Illinois was in the South Region as a #3 seed and the bracket broke favorably:
Penn without Ethan Roberts and TJ Power coming off sickness.
VCU upsetting North Carolina, then starter Nyk Lewis went down in the first minute.
The matchup against a Houston defense that hadn’t beaten a top 15 NET or KenPom opponent all season.
Iowa upsetting Florida and Nebraska.
UConn upsetting Duke and allowing for a rematch.
And now Illinois is favored by sports prognosticators to beat UConn and reach the championship game.
Even better, the path involved beating Fran McCaffery, Kelvin Sampson, and Iowa. Now there’s a revenge game with Dan Hurley and UConn, and potentially a revenge game with Michigan. All while Bruce Pearl has to sit in the studio and talk about this great Illini team.
This upcoming weekend could settle all family business. I can’t wait. (Dan Hurley is Carlo Rizzi in this scenario.)
Maybe, just maybe, it’s the start of something big.
. . .
Getting to the Final Four requires things to go right for weeks. The bracket is designed to break you. You can be the best team in the country and lose because a college kid made a bad pass and another college kid made a three from practically half-court. It happens every year. I watched Iowa do it to three different teams. Nothing in this tournament is given, so I was anxious before the Elite Eight game.
Illinois started off horribly against Iowa, and I was stressing out. Our dog, Rocco, was reacting to me, a little whiny, and acting like he needed a walk. I needed a walk too. So, we headed out. During the game.
I followed a little bit via my phone, but I mostly did not see how the game was going. Rocco and I took the long way around, stopped several times to check things out, chase a few birds, say hi to some other dogs, and generally stretch our legs. We came back to the house, and I was immediately told that the team started playing better when I was not watching. Made perfect sense.
I sat down and watched a couple of plays. I watched Iowa sink a couple of three-balls, and I immediately got up, walked right out the front door, and walked around my neighborhood block a couple of times.
I came back in the middle of halftime with Illinois down by four. I settled in and hoped for another second-half explosion.
Neither team could get any separation. Finally, Tomi had a short jumper that went from front rim to front rim to front rim... in with 6:30 left. He then blocked a shot on the other end. Illinois came back down, went right back to Tomi, he scored again, and suddenly, Illinois is up five with 5:43 left.
I wasn’t sitting anymore. I was pacing and doing the whole “C’mon” under my breath. We extended the lead. Keaton Wagler had 20 plus points. Ultimately, he matched Iowa’s Bennett Stirtz nearly shot-for-shot. Andrej Stojakovic shut off Stirtz's shooting space and forced the ball out of his hands. He didn’t score for the final nine minutes of the game.
Illinois closed out the game at the free-throw line and officially dispatched Iowa to win the South Regional, with Wagler earning Most Outstanding Player honors of the South Region.
First Final Four in twenty-plus years. There may have been a few tears.
. . .
Brad Underwood’s team beat Houston in the Sweet 16 in Houston. And then they handled a hot Iowa team, 71-59, and Keaton Wagler, my best friend, played 37 minutes, scored 25, and looked like he’d been winning NCAA Tournament games his whole life.
Now it’s UConn, the two-time defending national champions. Tarris Reed Jr. is averaging nearly 22 points and 14 rebounds in this tournament, and UConn won its Elite Eight game on a shot that defied probability by every measure. Hurley and this team know how to do this. They’ve done it twice.
The game won’t be easy, but Illinois has been the best offensive team in the country all season. The defense, which was a real concern heading into March, has been unrecognizable and effective in the tournament. They’re not the same team they were in November.
Teams that figure themselves out in March are the ones you remember.
The 2005 team is my touchstone for how this can go. I’ve watched the Illinois versus Arizona Elite Eight game ending dozens of times. Deron Williams tying the game in regulation. Dee Brown going a thousand miles an hour. Roger Powell hitting a shot with his eyes closed. That team had that special something. Something you could feel through the television.
Over the course of this NCAA Tournament, this one does too.
I’m closer to 60 than I want to admit, and I’ve been watching Illinois basketball for decades. The last time they were in the Final Four, I was in the tail end of my 30s, and I thought: this is what winning it all feels like, this is what I’ll be able to tell people about. And then cheating North Carolina happened.
This year’s team is peaking at exactly the right time.
Saturday night in Indianapolis. Two games to immortality.
Be seeing you.
Yeah. I think she’s back.
The full trailer for Supergirl dropped this week, and I’ve watched it three times. The song running through it is “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted” by Jimmy Ruffin, and whoever made that choice understood the assignment completely.
Milly Alcock’s Kara is a survivor of Krypton who, unlike Clark, actually remembers what it was like there. She drinks. She leaves Earth. Apparently, Krypto gets hurt, and the plot, with Supergirl as John Wick, is not what I expected. That’s a different Supergirl than we’ve had before, and I’m here for it.
Side note, Jason Momoa was pretty much born to play Lobo, a character I normally couldn't care less about. Hopefully, he’s in it a lot.
June 26. I’ll be there.
To the Moon, Artemis II
Artemis II launched April 1 from Kennedy Space Center, carrying NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, on a free-return trajectory around the Moon. It will be the first crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972.
It is not lost on me that they chose April Fool’s Day to launch this mission.
I watched the rocket's feed from the pad at Cape Canaveral, and I felt something I didn’t expect: awe. We’ve been waiting a long time to go back.
Godspeed, Artemis II.
Bread Elastic Laces Are Not a Joke
A year or so ago, I read a review of Bread elastic shoelaces. I spent a few bucks on Amazon and put them on my everyday Nikes. I have not gone back to regular laces since. The fit is perfect every time. There’s no fussing with them when I’m half-awake heading out the door at 6 a.m. to do my YMCA workout.
These are great. That’s all.
Cardinals Baseball is Up and Running
The Cardinals opened at home this year for the first time in a while, hosting Tampa Bay at Busch Stadium last week. They took the series two games to one, putting up 22 runs in three games. The pitching was a mess, but the offense looked alive in ways I hadn’t fully expected from this group. JJ Wetherholt hit a walk-off in the series. Jordan Walker is apparently drowning out the noise and playing well. Nolan Gorman hit a home run that I watched on my phone a few times.
It’s a rebuilding year. I know that. But baseball is back, and the Cardinals won their first series, and that’s a good start.
