Closer than it should have been

Posted In: Herald & Review Mark Tupper Illini
Date: Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Illinois’ victory at Iowa Wednesday night went about as expected, about like all of these games have gone – closer than it ought to be.
Illinois was up by 11 in the second half and I was thinking, ‘OK, this is where you extend this lead to 15 or 18.’ But, noooooo, because this team likes to make it interesting. And when Demetri McCamey tried a long, difficult pass that misfired to Bill Cole with 58 seconds left in the game, Iowa trailed by 3 and had the ball.
Fortunately, Iowa is so offensively challenged Illinois was able to dig in and dodge a couple of bullets. And while not pretty, the 57-49 victory was important and keeps Illinois in a second-place tie in the Big Ten heading into Saturday night’s game against league leader Michigan State.
Illinois needs to be careful not to make too much of the injury to Michigan State point guard Kalin Lucas, who sprained his ankle at Wisconsin on Tuesday. Even if Lucas doesn’t play, Michigan State is good enough to beat anyone in the league and after the Iowa game, the Illini players were claiming they understood that.
After the game, an Illini fan from Quincy stopped by press row and said that ugly second-half stretch made him feel like he’d been strapped into the dentist’s chair. Yeah, with the drill buried in the side of his head.
Now, on to football, because Wednesday was signing day.
I hope Illini football coach Ron Zook doesn’t make an issue of implying “negativity” by the media, as he calls it, is to blame for their recruiting difficulties. He has done that twice lately and while I understand that this has been a rough period, that’s the wrong place to direct blame.
The negativity comes when a football program goes from 9-3 to 5-7 to 3-9.
Pretty hard to write about that decline in a way that is glowing in its “positivity.”
What many coaches don’t understand is how very much most media members would love to see the team they cover experience great success.
I would like nothing more than to experience covering a 12-0 Illini football season capped off by a national championship bowl victory.
Are you kidding me? That would be amazing.
The excitement created by that in Central Illinois would be overwhelming. The people we deal with regularly – coaches, players, administrators – would be in a spectacular mood. You couldn’t get them to stop smiling and you couldn’t get them to shut up about their team.
And from a selfish standpoint that is pure business, we’d sell a hell of a lot of newspapers. People couldn’t get enough. This blog would be crazy with all the comments, optimism and fun. People would be nice to each other (OK, maybe not).
I’m told our sister newspaper in St. Louis, the Post-Dispatch, may have lost as much as $3 million on potential sales and income when the Cardinals bombed out in the first round of the National League playoffs. And if you know anything about a Cardinal fan and their appetite for Redbird news, you can easily believe that.
Best of all, we would not have job speculation to deal with and we would not have the gutting of a coaching staff to document. Our jobs would be fantastic.
And in February we’d get to keep track of the 4-star and 5-star recruits that would be drawn to that program.
I always feel coaches think we’re rooting for their demise when – most of the time – that’s just not true.
Anyhow, I just can’t get that excited about football recruiting.
This year we’re reminded that the inexact art of college football recruiting can play for or against a school.
It sounds great on signing day when a school receives letters of intent from a number of highly rated prospects. But history tells us some of those celebrated prospects never pan out. Some are overrated to begin with and others falter medically, academically or socially.
The flip side of that coin could end up helping Illinois this time. While the majority of players signed Wednesday are not highly rated, they may turn out to be more motivated, more loyal, more reliable and more coachable.
A two-star recruit with the right attitude and potential could easily out-perform a four-star recruit who lacks a similar drive.
Illinois has done well with recruits who were not of the four-star and five-star pedigree. Linebacker J Leman was unheralded nationally but became one of the Big Ten’s top tacklers. Offensive lineman Jon Asamoah, who recently returned from the Senior Bowl, has a future in the NFL.
I hope this class turns out to be surprising in its quality.

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