Your Home of the Oregon ILLINI. Oskee Wa Wa!

Love those pre-season tourneys during 'Feast Week'. I know it's a bit early to fall in love with basketball before Thanksgiving, but these gatherings gives coaches and teams a chance to evaluate themelves out of conference - and that's priceless heading into league play come first of the year. If lucky, a little bit of March tourney madness may even sneak into the game.

This just in, it's never a bad loss when you lose to Duke, especially in Hawaii where they've never lost under Coach 'K'. Might as well send the EA SPORTS Invitational trophy to Durham right after they get invited. Henderson and Nelson will carry the Dukies deep into the ACC and NCAA tournaments come March. With Singler and a few other good looking freshmen, Duke will be a tough out for anyone and should contend for another championship. They may not be big, but they are very atheletic, skilled, and discipled - as are most teams under Coach 'K'.

As for my club, we're a work in progress right now - blending young talent and seasoned vets in different offensive and defensive schemes. We also have some atheletes and can go deep into the bench, but need to figure out how to score consistently for 40 minutes. Our depth and speed will keep us in many games we probably have no business of winning, but unless a few guys can step up and provide the scoring leadership needed to stay in and finish contests, it's going to be another disappointing season of hardwood action in Champaign. Clearly, we're not quite ready to shine - yet.

The way I see it, we need Randle and Pruitt to average 15 points / game and 10 boards each. Alexander should provide a nice spark and might be our 3rd option - a very prolfic scorer at times. Frazier needs to run the offense, with Meachem occasionally stepping in to fill the void. Neither one will light it up night after night, but each can stroke it for 15-20 points on occasion - especially bombing it away from behind the arc. Brock brings more athelticism and scrappiness to the attack, but needs to learn to play within himself, avoiding the highs and lows of a game. I also like some of the young talent we're folding into the lineup with Tisdale, Cole, and Holdren.

But with a New Year's Bowl appearance on tap for my club, basketball will have to take a back seat to the girdders for the next five or six weeks. The Chief hasn't had the opportunity to look forward to that in quite some time. Whether it's the Capital-One Bowl or a BCS game, we have more mountains to climb and one more game to win.