Memory Lane: 2004-05 Illini start off slow

Remembering 2004-05: UI 92, Lewis 61

Remembering 2004-05: UI 78, Southern Illinois-Edwardsville 58

Remembering 2004-05: N-G front pages

Remembering 2004-05: Midnight Madness

Remembering 2004-05: Orange & Blue Scrimmage

EACH WEEK, WE'LL TAKE A LOOK BACK AT A MEMORABLE MOMENT IN ILLINI HISTORY, THANKS TO THE WORDS OF THE NEWS-GAZETTE

This week: In our continuing series on the five-year anniversary of the 2004-05 Final Four Illini, a look at the team's season opener, a rout of Delaware State that did little to ease the pain of Bruce Weber.

Date: Nov. 19, 2004

Headline: Few stops in Illini's start

BY BRETT DAWSON

CHAMPAIGN – He's still sedated. He wanted to stay seated. You can't blame Bruce Weber.

Heading into Friday's centennial season opener, the Illinois coach was still only four days removed from an appendectomy.

"I was hoping I didn't have to yell so much tonight and get mad," Weber said after Illinois routed Delaware State 87-67.

No such luck.

The Illini swatted the Hornets in the end, but the postgame buzz on the Illini's defense was hardly positive.

"Mediocre," Dee Brown called his team's defensive performance, and it was hard to argue.

Offensively, the Illini sizzled, shooting 63.6 percent. Defensively, they fizzled, allowing 57.1 percent shooting. It added up to a collective 60.8 percent for the two teams, the highest number of any game in Illinois'100-year basketball history.

Nice for the history books.

Not so good on Weber's voice.

"(Defense) was definitely the first thing I talked about," Weber said. "We backed off a couple of times, and I was disappointed that we had to do that. Our guard defense has to get better. They've got to get cut in in practice. Maybe this will wake them up a little bit."

Weber hopes so, anyway.

"I hope it doesn't take a loss against a great team to wake them up," he said.

Fortunately for Weber, he has a week before he has to worry about that. Illinois'' first test comes a week from today against Gonzaga.

In between, the Illini get the chance to iron out the pressing issue of their perimeter defense against Florida A&M on Sunday and Oakland on Wednesday. It certainly was flat Friday against a Delaware State team that used no player taller than 6-foot-7. The Hornets played small ball, spreading the floor, making Illinois chase them around the perimeter and using penetration to set up open looks outside.

"The frontcourt did a good job defensively for what they had out there, guarding little guards," said Brown, who took care of the offense with 17 points on 5-of-6 shooting. "It's just the guards that didn''t contain, and when we play against good teams like Wake Forest and Gonzaga, we're going to have to be on point defensively."

That's the point Weber will stress in practice today. A lot. And though the Illinois coach looked tired Friday night, and though he wasn't happy with a defensive performance that allowed Delaware State to lead as late as the 7-minute mark of the first half, he hardly worked to contain his postgame smile.

Friday's game, if nothing else, gives the coach a teaching tool.

"If we won by 40 today and we got all layups, it probably wouldn't do us any good," Weber said. "This did us some good."

Specifically, it provides Weber chalkboard and film-room ammunition. It helps drive home the point he's been making repeatedly in recent practices – that Illinois is an offensive-minded team that needs to be more open-minded to defense.

"Offense is gonna come," Brown said. "If you look at our roster, we don't need offense right now."

They certainly had enough to spare Friday. Brown's 17 points topped four Illini in double figures, and Illinois built a 50-37 halftime lead – just the second 50-point half of Weber's tenure – despite Delaware State's 65.2 percent first-half shooting.

"We play good defense sometimes," said senior Luther Head, whose 15-point night marked the first time in his career that he'd scored in an Illinois season opener.

"Tonight, we had a bad defensive game, but it's hard when the other team has five guys that can penetrate and we've got 6-10 and 7-2 (guys) out there."

But the size mismatch, Weber said, was only part of the problem. The larger issue, he said, was his guards' lack of defensive discipline and their tendency to gamble – a habit they've picked up by picking on inexperienced players like freshman Calvin Brock.

"Now you gamble and cheat (in a game), and this guy knows how to play and he goes by you," Weber said. "Maybe the respect (for Delaware State's guards) wasn't there at the beginning. When they went by 'em a couple of times, they got their attention."

Weber's hoping he has it, too. Brown said the message came through loud and clear, noting that when Illinois plays with the same confidence and intensity on defense as on offense, "we're going to be a great team."

"We didn't play good defensively, but we still won the game by 20," Brown said. "If we'd played great 'D,' we probably would have won by 40 or 50."

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