ILLINOIS IS SPECIAL

Think they handle UCLA comfortably tonight. Fully healthy and starting to click on all cylinders. A good chance at winning the national title IMO.  I love how big and athletic their front court is. This team can do it all. A huge disadvantage in height and ILL should have a big advantage on the boards. UCLA could flip the middle finger to Cronin tonight after the recent shenanigans. The Bruins are 14-1 at home against weaker competition. It won’t matter tonight. Take the ILLINI to roll BIG!

Those Illinois kids were celebrating too much when UCLA called a timeout after the three ball that made it 33-10. I think the Illinois kids suffered a natural letdown after feeling like they’d done their job.

UCLA managed just 10 points in eleven minutes and then poured in 33 points after that, including three free throws after a foolish foul with less than one second left. 

Illinois tore out to a 23-point lead and now finds themselves ahead by only 7.

Who would dare bet on UCLA plus only a point and a half here at halftime? And yet that appears to be the play. I won’t do it because I already made the mistake of betting on UCLA +6 before the game.

@MrBator

 Some ‘mistake’. I wished I’d erred the same way

I bet UCLA based upon my line evaluation.  We’ll see if they can close it out.  Have to hold ILL to under 90 

Illinois was 10-17 from downtown at one point during the 1st half and is 1-13 since then.

Make it 1-14 since then.

Jake Davis finally sank one for Illinois and it tied the game at 69-69.

Coach Cronin told Bilodeau " what the fuck were you doing" on that last play of regulation

Scary thing about Illinois tonight is if they didn't live at the free throw line, they would have been blown out. What a choke job.

They have been a hard team to make sense of late. 

Up 33-10 with 9 min to go in 1st half and lose. ESPN had a 99% win chance at that point. Got bit by the 1%. Oh well a true choke job. 

rgiefer, they went on a 20-0 run to take that 33-10 lead, and it all seemed so easy that they thought they had the game won. They let down bigtime and let the Bruins gather some momentum that they rode for the rest of the night.