I-L-L...

So the Illini lost last night to UNC. At the time I was watching, it was infuriating that they couldn't grab a forking rebound. But by now, I'm over it already. It was close enough down to the end, where it could have gone either way, and on the road against a good team, you probably don't expect to win them all. Overall, I think this team is gonna have a great year. I don't think it matters a whole lot that they lose this early in the season, it's better than being overconfident and playing too cocky for their own good later on.

Anyways, watching the game made me think about the experiences in college when we "normal" college students had random encounters with the basketball players. I don't have a lot of stories myself, but between all the people I know, there's a good amount of stuff to list:

- My sister had some class with Nick Smith, and she says he just sits in the corner and nobody ever talks to him. Poor guy. Also, there's the the time when she met Dee Brown at the Union (I posted a picture of this a few weeks ago). According to her, he was very quiet and polite.

- Rod had class with a bunch of the players throughout his college years, and probably the most contact with them out of all of us. I think he said Lucas Johnson was a clown in his Rhet 105 class. And I vaguely remember some story about Marcus Griffin randomly asking him on the street if he knew where to get some weed.

- I don't think I ever had class with any of the basketball players. The closest thing would be when me and P took summer school, and there were these two girls basketball players in our Leisure Studies 100 class. As for the guys, the most that ever happened was near the end of that same summer, when a bunch of them showed up at Kam's. On my way to the bathroom, I bumped into Frankie Williams and I was like "sup man, thanks for staying one more year", and then shook his hand. I wanted to berate him for costing us all those games with his wild shooting when he was a freshman, but he seemed like a nice guy so I didn't. Also, he made up for it with lots of good plays later on so I guess it's all good.

- Other reports include: Damir Krupalija was a ladies man, and Luther Head is dumb as rocks. I'm sure there's other stuff I'm forgetting, but I can't think right now.

One of my favorite memories is of freshman year, when we would "finger" the players on UNIX. We knew all their account names from PH-ing them, like "ldjohnson" or "rarchiba". We'd usually find them logged on at CRH or IMPE, and Chras or P would send them a banner message like "FINAL FOUR 2000" or something. Yes, all of this borders on stalking, but it was fun. Too bad they changed the UNIX accounts to not accept those after freshman year. Maybe it was because of people like us?

These stories are all the kind of reasons why college basketball is so much more entertaining and meaningful to me than pro ball. As a sport, I don't really think basketball is that fun to watch compared to baseball or football. It's like you play 3.5 quarters which don't really matter that much, and then it just comes down to a couple bounces of the ball either way, or a couple critical calls by the ref and free throw shooting in the end. Especially after the Bulls dynasty ended, and the NBA started being filled with all these cocky 19 year olds, I really lost interest in that league. But then when you can watch the Illini on TV or live at the stadium, and be able to identify with the individual players like "hey, I go to school with these guys" and have stories that relate to them as ordinary people, it's that much better.

Go Illini... and please try not to steal any more PS2's, guys.