ILLINI BREAK HOME WIN STREAK OF TARHEELS

What a great win for the Illini at the deandome. With all the powderblue in the background. And sluman and vitale on hand. Actually I should and would have mentioned dickie v. first but he got all excited about the mets and their two free agent signings. To give him his due, he is at least lukewarm to the illini. In fact, the Flying Illini of '89 has a special place in his heart.

How good it was to beat that smug roy williams. Especially touching was how he helped his first half star and only leftover from last season to his feet after he had rolled on his back about ten yards. Of course, no traveling was called against him. It was in chapel hill after all.

Yet another sidebar: when williams was the jayhawks coach, he was jogging one morning when Scott's cousin, Lori knocked him to the ground. She was joggin, too, and turned a corner and flattened him. That's why she's my favorite neice. Even when she and her friends do that rock, sock, jayhawk annoying cheer.

But back to Illinois. I really like the team. Sure, Dee didn't shoot or even run the team especially well last night, but as sluman kept calling him, "the one-man fast break" did stir stuff up. And James A. is just James. Inconsistent, but a battler, albeit head sometimes in a lower body location. Randall looked really good, Arnold and Pruitt will help bang. Good three-point shooting from the shooters. Jamar looks like the real deal, but we know another Jamar that looked good on the hoof and sporadically had good games. So time will tell on him. Chester was there and then he wasn't. Overall, the rooks looked very good.

I love having three lefty big men. I like Weber, too. Not when he first coached Kent. Not when Illinois first hired him. Not when he talks in that scratchy voice (I know he can't help it.) But I think he's a terrific coach.

"By the end of the year Illinois will be in the upper ethelon of the Big Ten," according to dickie. In fact he said it at least 3 times. I think he's right, but I hope he is underestimating them, too.