Last weekend the University of Illinois men’s basketball team was chased out of Assembly Hall in Champaign by the state high school wrestling tournament, only to butt up against the Public League boys’ basketball finals in the United Center. The Fighting Illini took on Northwestern University at 1 PM; then the orange-clad Illini rooters–who greatly outnumbered NU fans–were shooed from the stadium so it could be tidied up for the freshman-sophomore title game at six and the varsity championship at eight. As Mike North later said on Channel 11, the UC floor probably hadn’t seen so much good basketball in five years. All six teams played with relentless motion, intelligence, and high spirits, not only shooting well but making their free throws. A fan could almost see the snorting Bulls logo at center court bowing its head in shame.
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This was basketball with a minimum of adornment, shorn of the ridiculous distractions the Bulls offer up to keep fans from thinking or talking about the actual game during breaks in play, and it felt good. Sure, the Illini offered the usual college pageantry–a band, cheerleaders, pom-pom girls, even a baton twirler–and there were a couple of dismal scoreboard-screen time wasters making light of characters on the team. But for the most part this was simply basketball–and that seemed to be how the Illini alumni liked it. They packed the UC to halfway up the upper balcony. There were 15,429 people in all, a crowd slightly enhanced by NU rooters–who were easy to spot because they tended to be such a colorless bunch. Actually, a little less color on the part of the Illini alums might have been a good thing: the current generation needs to be told that a fanny pack and blue and orange horizontal stripes don’t go well with a middle-age paunch. (Alums back in my undergraduate days were oblivious to the fashion negatives of orange plaid golf slacks.) Yet never has so much crowd color distracted so little from the game. Illini fans don’t pride themselves on their verbal wit, like Duke rooters do, and they don’t try to emulate the endless “Let’s go Blue!” chest-beating rites of Michigan. They sat down after the opening tip, cheered for their team, chided and entreated the players through rough patches, and watched a good game.
The Illini have all the pieces–size, speed, quickness, depth, a determined big man in Cook and a flashy point guard in Brown–which made their more than occasional lapses so frustrating this season. Crane High School has many of the same tools, but they put them to use game in and game out, entering the state playoffs undefeated at 25-0 after winning the city championship Saturday night. Crane starts five seniors–a group that suffered through an upset loss in the city title game two years ago–but this time there was no denying them. The Cougars’ marquee players are big men Lorenzo Thompson, a bull-necked but surprisingly lithe center, and forward Florentino Valencia, who on Saturday displayed the keen look, intelligence, and determination of a bull terrier. Ergo, the city final against Julian was supposed to be a battle of inside strength versus outside shooting and agility. Julian, which entered the game 19-9, had all but run vaunted Whitney Young off the court in the quarterfinals the week before, though in the end it had to hang on to win a close one after a Young second-half rally. The mark of a truly great team, however, is the ability to alter its tactics to suit the opponent, and that’s exactly what Crane did. Rather than sit back and try to contain Julian guards James Watson and Terrance Gray, the Cougars took it right to them. Crane guard Tremel Gilot opened by hitting a pair of threes, and then Crane pounded it down low to Thompson and Valencia, scoring ten points before Julian got on the board. Thompson popped out to hit a three to make it 13-2, and again a rout appeared to be on. When Julian scrambled back into it, Crane brought out its secret weapon, freshman guard Sherron Collins, a skilled dribbler with a rare court sense. (In Crane’s quarterfinal game he went end to end with a rebound, spinning out of a crowd on the dribble, at one point putting his free hand on the ground for balance in the manner of Walter Payton, and finishing by going behind his back for a layup.) Crane coach Anthony Longstreet showed his faith in the freshman by putting the ball in his hands at the end of almost every period. Collins finished the first quarter by faking a back-door pass then calmly hitting the shot to put Crane ahead 19-13. In the second quarter the Cougars again came out bombing–and hitting–from the outside, this time with Jamale Tidwell hitting a pair of threes to make it 27-17. Julian clawed back, but Crane roused itself when Gilot led a two-on-one fast break and gave the ball up to Valencia for a crushing slam dunk that stretched the lead to 29-21. Crane worked the lead back to ten, and again Longstreet put the ball in Collins’s hands on the final possession, this time spreading the floor and letting him deal. Crane didn’t score, but it ran out the clock holding a 38-28 lead.
