EAST LANSING, Mich. – The survivor of today's Breslin Center brouhaha will have first place in the Big Ten all to itself.

For at least a good two hours.

   EAST LANSING, Mich.  Last week, Lon Kruger''s Illini had more fun on the road than Dale Earnhardt, Willie Nelson and Thelma and Louise.

   Keep it up, and they could be on the road to something special.

With 12 Big Ten games to go, an 11-6 Illini basketball team has five senior starters healthy and optimistic and a bench that is improving.

In the wake of Sam Okey's walk-out at Wisconsin, consider how other Big Ten teams have been impacted.

   CHAMPAIGN  At midnight, Gary McQuay and his Purdue teammates prefer to be in bed, not on a basketball court.

   That, the Boilermakers say, is incentive enough to play hard whenever their coach is looking.

   The crystal ball reported the Fighting Illini without a center or point guard as they entered this basketball season, and that''s a partly accurate summation.

   Regarding the latter, there''s no all-seeing Richard Keene dishing out laser feeds, no Kiwane Garris wilting the defense with tenacious dribble penetration.

CHAMPAIGN – They've been around long enough to remember when the football team was going to bowl games and women's basketball was going nowhere.

But there are some sights that Jarrod Gee, Matt Heldman, Jerry Hester, Brian Johnson and Kevin Turner still haven't gotten a chance to see on the University of Illinois campus.

   CHAMPAIGN  On Saturday night, Jarrod Gee went to town against last season''s All-Big Ten center.

   So anyone who''d followed the Illinois center''s roller coaster ride of a career had to know what was coming next.

   URBANA  Illini basketball coach Theresa Grentz earns a fourth as much as her male counterpart, Lon Kruger, but she could soon make up some ground.