Category: Illinois Fighting Illini

Frequent Flyer Miles Instead of a Bus Trip for the Illini This Year and Other NCAA Tournament Bracket Tidbits

On By Frank the TankIn Big East, Big Ten, College Basketball, Illinois Fighting Illini, SportsLeave a comment

After receiving a bus trip for the ages last year with a Road to the Final Four that ran through Indianapolis, Chicago, and St. Louis, Illinois faces the prospect of going from coast-to-coast in this season’s NCAA Tournament. The Illini loss to Michigan State on Friday night surely dropped us from a potential #2 seed all the way to a #4 seed by Selection Sunday. I would have preferred a #3 seed, but we can’t really argue against many of the teams that were put ahead of us.

The biggest problem with the drop to a #4 seed is that we get sent out to San Diego, which would be a great trip for spring breakers from Champaign, yet won’t give us the home-court feel that we would have received in Auburn Hills or Dayton. Greg Couch of the Chicago Sun-Times argues that this might actually be a good thing to get away from the Midwest. If we survive the first weekend (Air Force shouldn’t be a problem, but the Sweet Sixteen is not a given with a possible matchup with Washington in the second round), we get shipped across the country to Washington, DC, where the UConn Huskies likely await. Pretty much every expert across the country has Connecticut locked into the Final Four spot out of the Washington Regional, which shouldn’t surprise anyone. UConn is the most talented team in the country and will win the National Championship if they play up to par.

Really, the best hope for the Illini to make the Final Four is that Dee Brown finds his shot again and UConn comes out as sluggish as they did against Syracuse in the Big East Tournament last week. At the beginning of this year, I said that the Sweet Sixteen is a reasonable goal for this Illini team. Considering that we drew UConn in our bracket, that’s still a very reasonable goal. I’d be ecstatic if we get farther than that.

Other NCAA Tournament Bracket Tidbits:

1) Balk at All Chalk – You’ll probably see the majority of brackets filled out across the country have a Duke – UConn matchup penciled in for the final. Notwithstanding last season’s Illinois – North Carolina tilt, however, the two best teams in the tournament pretty much never both make it to the championship game. Chances are that either Duke or UConn is going to stumble somewhere along the line. Duke’s bracket in the Atlanta Regional looks a lot tougher with an extremely talented Texas team looming as a #2 seed along with the Big Ten tourney champ Iowa, the Big East tourney champ Syracuse, and last but not least, potential second round opponent George Washington, who was ranked #6 in the country in the final AP poll yet dropped to a #8 seed because of the health of junior star Pops Mensah-Bonsu. UConn’s road isn’t exactly as easy as a lot of experts seem to believe, but the potholes Duke is going to encounter make the Blue Devils more susceptible to an earlier than expected exit.

2) Teams to Watch – My Big Ten bias is coming through here: look out for Michigan State and Indiana. Plenty of people are aware that the Spartans are extremely dangerous as a #6 seed based on Tom Izzo’s previous successes in the postseason (with the added bonus of getting virtual home games in Dayton for the first two rounds). However, a lot of others also believe that Indiana is primed for a first round upset against San Diego State. I personally can’t stand the Hoosiers, but the national media has forgotten that this is a pretty good team when all of their cylinders are running. I wouldn’t call Indiana a Final Four team, but I firmly believe that potential second round opponent Gonzaga is overrated by the media and the Oakland bracket is the most wide-open of the regions. That spells a possible deep tourney run by Indiana for Mike Davis’ last stand.

Speaking of Gonzaga, the Bulldogs can’t afford to look past their first round opponent in Xavier. I watched Xavier take Illinois down to the wire in front of a hostile United Center crowd back in December and they beat a pretty good Cincinnati team, so the Muskateers are certainly capable of an upset. Also, out in the Atlanta region, be careful of getting too caught up in #5 seed Syracuse’s performance last week in the Big East Tournament – Texas A&M is the best #12 seed out there (the Aggies beat Texas at the end of the regular season), and we all know that a #12 upsets a #5 every year. Georgetown is a scary #7 seed (previous wins against Duke, Pittsburgh, and Syracuse) lurking in the Minneapolis region for top 4 seeds Villanova, Ohio State, Florida, and Boston College.

3) Grouchy Nantz and Packer – My wife and I weren’t the only ones that noticed the pounding Jim Nantz and Billy Packer laid on NCAA Tournament Selection Committee Chairman Craig Littlepage during the Selection Show yesterday. Teddy Greenstein of the Chicago Tribune reported that the duo continued their rant during a subsequent conference call on how the smaller conferences grabbed more than their rightful share of bids from the BCS power conferences. Look, I’ve got as much of a bias toward the major conferences as anyone. However, the Selection Committee is supposed to examine and pick the best at-large teams without respect to conference affiliation. While we know that they can’t operate fully in this vaccum and are surely cognizant of how many bids are allocated to each conference, it’s not fair for individual teams with strong profiles from, say, the Missouri Valley Conference to lose out just because there’s a virtual quota of bids that needs to be met for the power conferences.

I’ll have much, much more on the NCAA Tournament all this week. Thursday can’t get here fast enough!

Illini – Spartan Clash III and More Big Ten Tournament Thoughts

On By Frank the TankIn Big Ten, College Basketball, Illinois Fighting Illini, SportsLeave a comment

Well, 1 out of 3 on my predictions from yesterday would be a good baseball batting average.  Anyway, Illinois is playing Michigan State for the third time this season.  I don’t like the prospect of playing the Spartans again.  Regardless of what we’ve seen from Michigan State so far this season, I’ve always felt that Tom Izzo is able to flip a switch on his teams in the postseason better than anyone else in college basketball today.  Plenty of people penciled in the Spartans as a victim of the 12-seed over 5-seed upset last year, yet they ended up going to Izzo’s fourth Final Four.  This team still has a plethora of talent with the skills to make a deep tourney run.

That said, Bruce Weber has shown that he can get the most of his team, as well.  He mentioned yesterday that if anyone had told him at the beginning of the year that Illinois would be 25-5 at this point, he would have taken that in a heartbeat.  I think most rational Illini fans would have been pretty ecstatic with that, too.  The bottom line for us is that we’re going to go as far as our perimeter shooters are going to take us.  James Augustine and Shaun Pruitt have been doing a great job inside over the second half of the Big Ten season to give us a great base of points.  The difference between the Illini making deep runs or early exits in the Big Ten and NCAA Tourneys, however, will be whether Dee Brown, Rich McBride, and Jamar Smith are able to drain shots from the outside.  If they continue to shoot they way they have been over the last 3 games, we are as good as any team in the country.  Having all three of those guys going cold, though, would be cause for an early-round exit.

My belief is that not winning the Big Ten regular season title has left a bad taste in the mouths of the Illini and will be motivated to prove that they’re truly the best team in the conference.  This parallels the feeling in 2003 where Illinois ran the table in the Big Ten Tournament after losing out on the regular season championship to Wisconsin.  I truly believe we’re going to end up winning the necessary 3 games in a row this weekend.

The team to watch out for on the other side of the bracket is Indiana.  The Hoosiers have a virtual home court advantage in Indianapolis and are on a 4-game winning streak.  Look for them to beat Wisconsin tonight, upset Ohio State tomorrow, and roll into a final with Illinois on Sunday.  The Hoosier magic is going to end there against the Illini, though.  Illinois ultimately has the firepower and momentum to win its third Big Ten Tournament title.

Have a great weekend and GO ILLINI!

Frank the Tank’s 2006 Chicago Illini League NCAA Tournament Pool

On By Frank the TankIn Big Ten, Illinois Fighting Illini, SportsLeave a comment

Selection Sunday is this weekend, which means the greatest gambling stretch of the year is upon us.  If you haven’t received an invite yet and are interested in participating, email me and I’ll send you the details.  Good luck and GO ILLINI!

2006 Big Ten Tournament First Round Predictions

On By Frank the TankIn Big Ten, College Basketball, Illinois Fighting Illini, Sports1 Comment

The 2006 Big Ten Tournament tips off today at the Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.  Even though I wish the event was back in Chicago for the weekend, the depth of the conference this season means it’s going to be unpredictable and exciting starting from the first game.  There’s no locks anywhere this year.  Here are my predictions for the first round:

Game 1: #8 Penn State vs. #9 Northwestern – The Wildcats, who lost to the Nittany Lions in their 2 previous meetings this year, are going to get over the hump this time around.  Vedran Vukusic is going to lead Northwestern’s Princeton-style offense to victory and slow down Penn State’s outside shooting.  Predicted Winner: Northwestern

Game 2: #7 Michigan vs. #10 Minnesota – Two of the most inconsistent teams in the conference.  Michigan had a great first half of the Big Ten season, while Minnesota had a great second half.  Daniel Horton and Wolverines, however, are going to be hungrier since they need notch the win so that they can rest easy on Selection Sunday.  Michigan ought to be in the NCAA Tournament at this point, but they can’t afford a first round loss here.  My guess is that they’ll be fired up just as they were in their game against the Illini a couple of weeks ago and roll over the Gophers.  Predicted Winner: Michigan

Game 3: #6 Michigan State vs. #11 Purdue – The consensus around the Big Ten is that the Spartans were a disappointment this year.  Certainly, with the nucleus of last year’s Final Four team back this season, Michigan State was predicted to be one of the top 5 teams in the nation.  Instead, they didn’t even crack the top 5 of the Big Ten.  However, Illini Wonk pointed out how the unbalanced schedule of the Big Ten stacked the deck against the Spartans this season.  He noted that Michigan State had to play all of the top 5 teams in the conference twice for a total of 10 games.  In contrast, Big Ten champion Ohio State only had to play 5 games against the top 5 (the only team of that group they played twice was Wisconsin).  What does this mean?  While the Spartans underachieved on a number of fronts this year, they’re still a whole lot better team than their record indicates.  Remember this when you’re filling out your NCAA Tournament bracket next week.  Anyway, Michigan State is going to kill Purdue in this game to set up a Friday nightcap with Illinois.  Trying to win a third game against the Spartans in the same season scares me a little bit, but I’ll approach that subject tomorrow if my prediction for today turns out to be correct.  Predicted Winner: Michigan State

Enjoy the games today!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

On By Frank the TankIn Big Ten, College Basketball, Illinois Fighting Illini, SportsLeave a comment

Although Ohio State took care of its business yesterday against Purdue to win the Big Ten championship outright, I’m pretty happy with how the Illini have been playing.  Dee Brown looked great against Michigan State on Saturday and we look like we’re peaking heading into the Big Ten and NCAA Tournaments.  Heck, even Frank the Tank nemesis Dick Vitale took some time during ESPN’s fifty-network coverage of the Duke-UNC game (I completely understand the need to televise this game, but was it really necessary to show it on every single ESPN outlet using different camera angles?) to say that Illinois was the team to watch out for in the NCAA Tournament.  Plus, the Illini represented at the Academy Awards last night: University of Illinois graduate Ang Lee won the Oscar for Best Director for “Brokeback Mountain.”  That’s got to be a good sign.

Anyway, my favorite stretch of the sports year starts this week.  The Big Ten Tournament, the NCAA Tournament, Opening Day for baseball, and the Masters all come right after the other in rapid succession.  Some Illini success on top of all of that would make it even sweeter.

The Madness Has Started Early

On By Frank the TankIn Big Ten, College Basketball, Illinois Fighting Illini, SportsLeave a comment

Great sports and TV day yesterday – spring training baseball games began, new episodes of American Idol and Lost were on, and most importantly, there were three great college basketball games with important implications that all came down to the final seconds with wacky and bizarre endings.  A quick recap of the early start of March Madness:

1) Ohio State 56, Northwestern 53 – This was the game that all of Illini Nation was watching last night.  The Wildcats blew the game in the last minute, which in turn eradicated their chances for an NIT bid along with all but shutting the door on Illinois grabbing its third straight Big Ten title.  That last sequence by Northwestern at the conclusion where they took about ten minutes worth of timeouts to set up a play with 1.3 seconds left, only to throw the ball out of bounds on the inbounding pass, was maddening.  Illinois can just forget about the Big Ten regular season championship and set its sights on the Big Ten Tournament and the NCAA Tournament since there’s no way that Ohio State is going to lose to Purdue on Sunday.  Lesson learned: never trust your rival to ever help you in any shape or form.

2) Florida State 79, Duke 74 – There’s no team I hate in all of sports more than Duke.  I absolutely love seeing them lose.  However, last night’s game in Tallahassee was one of the most bizarre endings to a game I’ve seen in a while.  The “Free Shoe U” students rushed the floor prematurely with 1.7 seconds left in the game.  The officials had to clear all of the people off the floor and awarded two technical foul shots to Duke.  Luckily for the Seminoles, those technical foul shots didn’t change the outcome of the game.  After the game officially ended, the FSU students of course rushed the floor again.  This wasn’t just a game against the #1 team in America for FSU; the Seminoles were also playing for their NCAA Tournament lives.  They were fortunate that they weren’t screwed because of their idiot fans. 

3) Texas A&M 46, Texas 43 – P.J. Tucker of Texas dribbled around at the end of regulation intending to allow the tied game to go into overtime.  The problem was that there was a 5.9 second difference between the game clock and the shot clock and he didn’t realize it for some reason.  As a result of the Longhorns’ shot-clock violation, the Aggies got the ball and subsequently nailed a three-pointer at the buzzer to win a game over its arch-rivals and possibly clinch an at-large berth in the NCAA Tournament.  Acie Law, the A&M player that hit the game-winner, is going to remember that shot for the rest of his life.

What’s even better is that this was just an appetizer for college hoops fans.  I seriously cannot wait for Selection Sunday to get here.

Mucking Fichigan! Illini Downed by Threes Again

On By Frank the TankIn Big Ten, College Basketball, Illinois Fighting Illini, SportsLeave a comment

A few thoughts on the 72-64 Illinois loss to Michigan last night:

1) Michigan Needed It and Wanted It More – I was worried that Michigan would come into the game more fired up than the Illini since they were playing for their NCAA Tournament lives and that proved to be correct.  The Wolverines played with a sense of urgency while we looked like we were looking past this game toward Saturday’s tilt against Iowa.  The way the Big Ten season has played out, no one can take any game for granted, especially on the road.  Coach Bruce Weber had this to say about his team’s performance: “I told them after the game that we haven’t grown as a team. And we have to grow pretty soon or the season’s going to be history.”  Ouch!  That’s true, though.

2) Opponents Continue to Rain Threes – After shutting down Indiana on Sunday, Illinois reverted back to its disturbing trend of allowing its opponents to get hot behind the three-point arc.  Last night, it was Daniel Horton’s turn to have the game of his life with 39 points and going 5-for-7 from three-point range.  The Illini strength from the first part of the season on holding down opponents’ field goal percentage has taken a serious hit in the last 5 games.  This team needs to get back to form on its perimeter defense now.

3) Big Ten Title Still in Reach for the Illini – I almost wish that last night’s loss was truly the death knell for our chances of winning the Big Ten title so I can stop worrying about it and just concentrate how we’ll perform in March.  However, despite Illinois’ best efforts to give away the championship, we’re still more than alive.

The Illini have a tough final stretch of the regular season with Iowa at home, at Minnesota, and finishing at Michigan State.  If we can win those three games (and that’s a substantial but not implausible “if”), consider the schedules of the teams ahead of us in the standings.  Iowa will need to play us at the Assembly Hall, so if we beat them, the Hawkeyes are back in a tie with us.  Wisconsin has to play at Michigan State and then at Iowa to finish the season (not to mention a trap game tomorrow night at Northwestern).  Ohio State has a road game tonight at Michigan State and then a home game against Michigan this weekend.

If there’s one thing we know about the Big Ten, it’s that no team has proven that it is unstoppable.  There’s a better than even chance that all three of the teams ahead of us are going to drop one more game before the end of the season.  We just need to take care of our own business in the meantime.

Hoosier Daddies? The Illini Big Men

On By Frank the TankIn Big Ten, College Basketball, Illinois Fighting Illini, SportsLeave a comment

It’s always a good feeling to beat up on Indiana, even if the Hoosiers are having a down year.  What was even better about the 70-58 Illinois victory yesterday over Indiana was that this was the most complete and consistent game that the Illini have played in quite a while.  Although the margin of victory doesn’t indicate a blowout, Illinois dominated the entire game and didn’t have any lapse where the Hoosiers could start a run.

Plus, the Illini big men stepped up with perimeter shooter Jamar Smith out serving a suspension for an undisclosed indiscretion and the rest of the team shooting only 3 of 17 from three-point range.  With James Augustine leading the charge, Illinois scored 40 points in the paint.  That’s something we need to see more of for the home stretch of the regular season and into the NCAA Tournament.  We actually have a size advantage on most teams this year (in contrast to our guard-laden team last season), so we’ve got to capitalize on all of the mismatches in our favor down low every game.

The Big Ten race continues to be wild, as pointed out by Skip Myslenski of the Chicago Tribune, and the coaching situation caused by Mike Davis’ decision to resign from Indiana at the conclusion of the season is adding the proverbial fuel to the fire.  Considering some of the names being thrown around by Indiana fans as head coaching candidates, it seems as though Hoosier basketball fans are as delusional as Notre Dame football fans.  I’ve already said that Steve Alford would be nuts to take the job, but Thad Matta of Ohio State???  Matta has one of the greatest recruiting classes in the history of college basketball coming to Columbus next season.  Of course, there’s a segment of the wacky Indiana fan base that probably truly believes that Matta would jump at the chance to move to Bloomington and bring in Phil Jackson and Pat Riley as his assistant coaches.  To Hoosier fans: get over yourselves – your glory years ended two decades ago, so your rich history will only go so far in attracting the best coaches and players today.

Enough with the past of Indiana; let’s look at the present and future of Big Ten basketball with Illinois.  All games until the end of the season are going to be big with such a close conference race, but this is going to be a pivotal week in particular for the Fighting Illini.  The Super Tuesday game at Michigan is a must-win for both teams – for Illinois in order to keep pace for a shot at the Big Ten title and for Michigan to keep its NCAA Tournament hopes alive.  Muck Fichigan is going to come in fire-up in front of their home crowd, so this is a dangerous game for the Illini.  If we can get past the Wolverines, that would set up a showdown for first place with Iowa at the Assembly Hall on Saturday for the biggest game of the regular season to date.  With only two more games after that (tough road games at Minnesota and Michigan), whether Illinois can win its third straight Big Ten championship is likely going to be decided this week.

Zook Has a Happy National Signing Day

On By Frank the TankIn Big Ten, College Football, Illinois Fighting Illini, Sports3 Comments

Coach Ron Zook lived up to his reputation as a top-notch recruiter and worked some miracles with his first true recruiting class (last year he was merely wrapping up the Ron Turner regime).  Scout.com rated the 2006 Illini recruiting class at #28 in the nation, Rivals.com put us at #30, while both agreed that we were #4 in the Big Ten behind the traditional heavyweights of Penn State, Ohio State, and Michigan.

Considering that Illinois had a 1-23 record in Big Ten games over the last three seasons, the fact that we’re getting a better recruiting class than Wisconsin, Iowa, and Michigan State this year is indicative of how good Zook is at the recruiting game.  Particularly promising is Isiah Williams out of Chicago Vocational (the high school alma mater of Illini and Bears legend Dick Butkus) who is ranked as the #5 quarterback in the national class of 2006.  He looks like a mobile quarterback in the mold of Michael Vick and Vince Young, which would be an incredible development for the Illinois offense.

I’ve always felt that with a high quality home recruiting base of Chicago and St. Louis, the Illinois football program ought to be able to field at least a top 25 team every year and compete for the Big Ten title on a consistent basis.  However, we’ve been losing hometown players like Williams over the past five years to schools such as Iowa and Wisconsin, much less the monster programs of Notre Dame, Michigan, and Ohio State.

Hopefully, Zook’s success this year is a sign that the tide is turning on the recruiting front.  I’d like to see some top 10 recruiting classes within the next few years.  Of course, that will only happen if Zook excels at the other and much more important aspect of his job: winning football games.

Big Ben Wins the Beard Bowl and Other Weekend Sports Tidbits

On By Frank the TankIn Big East, Big Ten, College Basketball, DePaul Blue Demons, Illinois Fighting Illini, NBA Basketball, NFL Football, SportsLeave a comment

Despite the worst two conference championship games in recent memory (although I at least didn’t repeat the debacle known as my divisional playoff predictions), there was a lot going on in the world of sports this past weekend, particularly on the basketball court:

1) AFC Championship Game: Beard Bowl is a Big Ben Beatdown – The Steelers are the gold standard of where the Bears want to be.  Pittsburgh has a stifling defense coupled with a powerful running game, much like the Bears did this past season.  However, as Rick Morrissey aptly pointed out in today’s Chicago Tribune, the biggest reason why the Steelers are heading to Motown while the Bears are staying home is that Ben Roethlisberger can do a whole lot more than just “manage” a game – he brings a ton to the quarterback position in terms of passing accuracy, mobility, and poise.  Plus, Bill Cowher has completely shocked everyone by turning his QB loose and stretching the field out with aggressive passing plays over the last two games.  The Steelers have been completely in rythm on offense.

At the same time, Jesus H. Unabomber, er, I mean Jake Plummer finally showed his true colors and imploded as predicted here and elsewhere.  The interception he threw five seconds after the Broncos got decent field position for the first time all day was about as predictable as Jason going on a killing spree in a Friday the 13th movie.  Plummer’s fantastic beard couldn’t hide the fact that he just isn’t a guy you can depend on in crunch time.

2) NFC Championship Game: Holmgren Climbs Hasselback Mountain – Watching this game was essentially 3 hours of “what if” questions going through my mind, as in, “What if the Bears had double-teamed Steve Smith?”  The Panthers offense was clueless yesterday with the Seahawks draping two or more defenders over Smith the entire game.  Troy Aikman appropriately called the Bears “arrogant” for believing that they could stick to single coverage on Smith last week.  The Seahawks weren’t stupid and cocky on defense regarding the Panther wide receiver and made the needed adjustments, which is why Seattle is headed to their first Super Bowl this season while we here in Chicago continue to buy books about the ’85 Bears.

Meanwhile, Matt Hasselback has come a long way from his “We want the ball and we’re going to score” comment against the Packers after the overtime coinflip in a 2004 playoff game at Lambeau.  This guy looks like a Super Bowl quarterback.  Mike Holmgren has probably cemented his standing as the best teacher of quarterbacks in history, with Joe Montana, Steve Young, Brett Favre, and now Hasselback under his belt.

3) Two More Weeks??? – Other than the fact that the games themselves were terrible this year, the worst thing about conference championship weekend is that we all have to wait two friggin’ weeks until the Super Bowl.  The Super Bowl should actually feature a pretty good matchup this year, but I don’t know how many human-interest stories can be milked from the Pittsburgh – Seattle pairing for two whole weeks.

4) Here Comes McBride – Richard McBride, it’s a pleasure to see you again.  Hitting four three-pointers was a very good thing on Saturday.  It was an even better thing to see the Illini notch their first Big Ten road victory, even if it was against Northwestern.  In addition to McBride, Dee Brown and James Augustine got back on track in the victory.  The only thing that troubles me is that Illinois didn’t completely shut the door on the Wildcats in the second half.  Northwestern never really got back into the game, but it’s disheartening to see a 20-plus point lead dwindle to 10-points in a matter of minutes.  We still need to improve on closing out games if we want to win another Big Ten title and make a deep run in the NCAA Tournament.

5) DePaul is Done – Unfortunately, this is probably going to be the last time I write about DePaul in the near future since the Blue Demons have gone in the past week from an NCAA Tournament bubble team to a club that is unlikely to even make the Big East Conference Tournament.  After losing to Providence on Saturday, DePaul has dropped to 1-5 in Big East play and 8-9 overall.  With the toughest games of the season remaining on their schedule (i.e. Georgetown, Villanova, at St. John’s, at Louisville, and Syracuse) the Blue Demons are pretty much out of it when it comes to any type of postseason play.  DePaul freshman forward Wilson Chandler looks like a stud, but the team is at least a year away from making the NCAA Tournament.

6) Kobe’s 81 – On the one hand, Kobe Bryant’s 81-point performance on Sunday evening might be the greatest individual performance in a regular season NBA game ever.  It is certainly a whole lot tougher for a perimeter player such as Kobe to drop that many points compared to a big man like Wilt Chamberlain (whose size compared to the rest of the league was even more of a factor in the NBA of the ’60s).

On the other hand, Kobe’s career seems to be the inverse of Michael Jordan’s and that’s a very bad thing for the Lakers.  The highest individual numbers for Jordan came in the first few seasons of his career – it wasn’t until he figured out that he needed to get the rest of his team involved that he started to win championships.  Kobe found great success as a team player at the beginning of his career in winning three rings with the Lakers.  Now, as Kobe gets older, he seems to be taking more shots and getting higher individual marks even though his team gets worse.

So, as amazing as Kobe’s non-Wilt record 81-point game was last night, the trajectory of his basketball career is headed in the completely wrong direction.