Tar Big Ten March

I got a chance to see the last two hurdles in last year championship, Illinois and Michigan State, open up Big Ten play tonight in a room full of Illini alumni. Some quick thoughts:

First the obvious: Dee Brown played some incredible basketball. Sure, there were more forced shots than Illini fans should be comfortable with, but the damn things went in. His athleticism and the team's defense - Randle shut down MSU's Ager without getting much credit for it from the commentators - aren't enough to return the team to the Final Four, but they'll take them pretty far. Anyone who's thinking of Redick as the Player of the Year needs a tape of this game, because Brown put on a superior performance to anything I've seen out of Durham's backcourt.

(For that matter, anyone infatuated with J.J. needs to come back to reality and learn he's not the best player on that team.)

Paul Davis should also be higher on PotY lists than he is currently, but you wouldn't know it from tonight's game. Augustine and company did a good job of keeping him out of a majority of the plays. Still, when your center has the only three pointer of the first half, it reveals your offensive performance to be, well, offensive.

Michigan State will bounce back though, and Illinois will survive a couple of stumbles themselves as the season goes on. They're a pretty interesting corollary to this weekend's Carolina-State matchup, though. A highly-ranked state school with not much of a non-conference schedule starts a brutal opening conference stretch (Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio State up north and UNC, Boston College, Duke, and Wake Forest* for the brick-loving folks down the road) against a greatly depleted Final Four team performing above expectations. The I-40 matchup should have a similarly low score, and hopefully a familiar final outcome.

Oh, and how long has Hubert Davis been doing commentary for ESPN, and why wasn't I aware of it before?

* Yes, I skipped Georgia Tech on the schedule. Do not trust the blogger.