Remembering 2004-05: Big Ten opener's a blast

Remembering 2004-05: Illini braggin' but draggin'

Remembering 2004-05: Chicago gets taste of No. 1

Remembering 2004-05: UI climbs to No. 1

Remembering 2004-05: UI 91, Wake Forest 73

Remembering 2004-05: UI 89, Gonzaga 72

Remembering 2004-05: UI 87, Delaware State 67

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 2004-05 Illini, Bruce Weber's dear friend, Gene Keady, had his Boilermakers riled at Mackey Arena, giving the nation's No. 1 team a tussle.

Headline: Looking out for No. 1 — Illini protect poll position

Date: Jan. 8, 2005

By BRETT DAWSON

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – So this is life at No. 1.

Your opponent plays over its head. Its fans scream at the top of their lungs. Every road game is a lesson in the importance of adrenaline.

It isn't always smooth at the top.

But Deron Williams wants to stay here forever.

Williams and his Illinois basketball teammates will keep the top spot for at least another week after rallying to a 68-59 win Saturday against Purdue at an orange-tinged Mackey Arena.

And after the way the Illini (16-0) responded to Purdue's early spurt, Williams figures they might take out a longer lease in the nation's No. 1 poll position.

"We don't want to lose," Williams said. "We're going to try to keep winning as long as we can. We're going to try to stay No. 1, stay at the top of the food chain. We want people to come after us."

Purdue (4-7) showed Saturday that everyone intends to.

And some folks figure a setback wouldn't be such a bad thing, that the lessons learned from a loss might better equip Illinois for a national championship run.

None of those folks are on the Illini roster.

"Fans think we need to lose to learn, to keep us humble," said Dee Brown, who scored all 14 of his points in the second half Saturday to key Illinois' comeback. "But this is a humble team."

The Boilermakers almost made it a humbled one.

In the first half Saturday, Purdue hit shots "they hadn't made all year," Brown said, and stormed to a lead as wide as nine points (four more than Illinois' deepest deficit in its first 15 games).

The Boilermakers led at halftime, the first team able to boast that against the Illini all season.

And for a while, as Purdue scored and its crowd roared, it seemed as though Illinois might get the lesson those naysayers figure it needs.

Then halftime happened.

"We knew we had to play great the second half," Purdue coach Gene Keady said. "Basketball is 40 minutes, not 20 minutes."

And that gave Bruce Weber some time.

His team trailing 39-33, Weber (who tried and failed to crack a clipboard in first-half frustration) calmed down, choosing silence over violence in an impassioned halftime speech.

Well, relative silence.

"He's loud all the time," Brown said. "But he wasn't yelling."

No shouting. No pouting.

"I just told 'em to play like you're No. 1," Weber said. "I said, 'Somebody step up and make plays. Play with some heart and see what your character's about.' "

It's the kind of lesson Weber taught after losses last season.

When Purdue came to the Assembly Hall last January and hit the Illini with an uppercut, Weber dared his team to get off the mat and fight again. Shocked at Northwestern and rocked at Wisconsin, Illinois had its manhood challenged time and again by its coach.

Eventually, Weber's Big Ten champs responded.

But what took losses last season seemed Saturday to take only one good halftime talking-to.

"Coach challenged us, and we knew that if we were going to turn things around, that was the time," said guard Luther Head, who scored a team-high 15 points. "We didn't want to lose, and you saw how we came out fired up in the second half."

Purdue couldn't put out that fire.

Illinois shot 54.5 percent in the second half (up from 37.9 in the first) and held Purdue to 33.3 percent after halftime (down from 57.1 before). The Illini ripped off a 23-4 run to open the half, and the Boilermakers never threatened.

"It shows we have a little bit of character," Weber said. "We had to turn around a lot of stuff - we weren't very efficient offensively, we didn't guard and we didn't rebound - and we were able to do that."

It was the first turnaround Illinois has needed all season.

Sure, Missouri made the Braggin' Rights game close and Ohio State jumped to an early lead, but Illinois wasn't seriously threatened the way it was Saturday.

The Illini had let opponents hang around before, but they hadn't taken a punch to the gut.

"I'm not saying it's been that easy, but there's times when they need challenges and see if they can get up, and they did that today," Weber said. "Now, (they have to) learn something from it."

Learn? Without losing? What a concept.

"Some teams get big heads and think their stuff doesn't stink," Williams said. "A loss might help (a team like that). But we've been through this. We know if you get like that, you'll get beat. So we're going to try to play every game like we're playing the No. 2 team in the country."

If they do that, Williams figures, they'll stay No. 1. And that, make no mistake, is the goal.

Forget losses as a teaching tool. The Illini prefer perfection as an incentive.

"I don't think you need a loss," Brown said. "Look, we know it's going to be hard to go perfect. Nobody's perfect. But we're going to try to go undefeated. And if we do lose, we're going to go down fighting."