Improbable? Sure.
Impossible? Obviously not.
Impressive? Kinda.

The harsh light of dawn exposed a lot of holes in the Illini’s first outright Big Ten men’s basketball championship in 52 years. They won a reeling league with a great performance, that unfortunately, nearly ended 14 minutes too soon.

The t-shirts say Illinois Fighting Illini Big Ten Champs 2004. The trophy has no “co-” on it for the first time in a half century.

They may have won it in near “fall back from ahead” fashion against a middling Big Ten foe, but they won it. So, Illini fans, enjoy it. And don’t let anybody give you any crap.

If the Big Ten was so freakin’ easy to win this year, how come only Illinois was up to the task?

Ten straight Big Ten wins. Six straight Big Ten road wins. Three titles in four years (plus a Big Ten tournament title last year). That’s impressive enough for me.

Mix in a few more years of this kind of success with a few runs to and past the elite eight, and Illinois might just finally get recognized for what it is. One of the best basketball programs in the nation.

You just know there are nights when Bill Self wakes up, reaches for the nightstand to see if his hair is still perched atop it’s little mannequin head and wonders, “Just why was I in such a hurry to leave that place?”

Kansas has a fine team, and they proved it again yesterday with a wild win in the final home game ever to be played at Mizzou’s old gym. But you just know there are times when Self catches himself in the realization that left Illinois for Kansas because that’s what a basketball coach is “supposed” to do. Kansas has a better program than Illinois, so if the Kansas job opens and you see that your mailing address has either a Champaign or an Urbana in it, you leave for Lawrence. Self probably has just a few regrets. But nonetheless, you know he has a few.

Just like Bruce Weber had to be wondering in January why he left the marijuana haze of Carbondale for bi-weekly tractor pulls and monster truck rallies in Champaign. The Salukis (every bit as much Weber’s as these Illini are Self’s) ran off with the Missouri Valley regular season title, while Weber was stuck in crisis du jour at Illinois. Granted, a few of them were of his own making, but still.

In the end, things worked out pretty well for everybody.

-Roy Williams got to listen to the Duke fans chant “Rock, Chalk, Jayhawk” at him during another UNC loss at Cameron.
-Self has a team that will get a top three seed in the NCAAs.
-Weber has a nice big gold trophy to use as a doorstop in the basketball office.
-Matt Painter has one, too.

In the end, maybe the afterthoughts–Weber and Painter–made out best of all?

What likely clouds our view of the 2004 Big Ten Champions is the fact that they struggled so much in December and January that we forgot what they really were. They were, and are, the most talented team in the Big Ten. They were, and are, one of the most talented teams in all the land. They just weren’t playing like it.

But after throwing away any margin for error with a home loss to Purdue (bad, not awful), and road losses to Wisconsin (bad–in margin anyway) and Northwestern (downright tragic), they did the only thing they could. They ran the table. When the going got tough, Deron Williams put the Illini on his back and carried them. Then Deron started to wilt under the weight of it and Dee Brown reminded us all why he was the Big Ten preseason player of the year. And in the end, Luther Head shook off a season’s worth of missteps and misadventures and put his undeniable athletic gifts to good use.

And so, the Illini enter the Big Ten Tournament, and more importantly, the NCAA Tournament with two things you need to do some damage. They’ve got guards you can’t stop and enough momentum to give them dreams of being this year’s Marquette.

Then again, so does everybody else.

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Yes, the song of the day is a Barry Manilow song. It’s from one of my favorite movies of all time, “Foul Play”, and it’s in honor of the moronic drive that Brandon Fuss-Cheatham made into the middle of the Illini defense as time expired. After getting hosed on a similar call last year in the Kohl Center, Illinois gladly took a no call this time. As for Fuss-Cheatham’s Don Quixote’s impression? We’re not impressed.

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Greg Maddux pitched for the Cubs yesterday. I’m giddy just typing it.

My favorite part of the tales of yesterday’s game is Maddux’s quote about the fact that he didn’t know that Dusty Baker had invited my all-time favorite Cub, Shawon Dunston, to camp for a few days as a “guest coach.” Dunston was coaching first when Maddux came up to bat in the second inning and Greg didn’t know that the guy yelling at him was his former teammate. “I thought it was just some drunk fan,” Greggie said.

Really, would it kill Dusty to fire Wendell Kim right now and just let Shawon stay and coach third? The fact that Shawon was one of the worst baserunners in baseball history just proves what a lousy coach The Pineapple is. We could actually upgrade with Shawon.

In other news of major import, The Franchise’s Achilles tendonitis seems to have responded to treatment. According to our Cubs’ sources the treatment has included: deep tissue massages, hours in the whirlpool, countless hours stretching and rest.

However, I have a suggestion for an exercise that would make Prior’s Achilles feel even better. Perhaps he could spend a few minutes every day kicking Chip Caray in the head with it? I mean, really, what could it hurt?

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Thanks to the wonders of DirecTV I got to watch some spring training baseball from the comfort of my couch this weekend, even if I did have to listen to Ken Singleton for most of it. (Just how bad is a guy if he makes me say things like, “Man, Michael Kay is good!”?) But yesterday was kind of fun, because only one channel apart on DirecTV were both the YES Network and NESN coverage of the Yankees-Red Sox. It was interesting, and fun to go back and forth between the Yankees and Red Sox viewpoints of the game. This only happens during the spring, because once the season starts, the road team’s coverage is blacked out if both teams are televising the game on DirecTV.

NESN had some technical difficulties and Sean McDonough said, “Well, we might as well blame these on the Yankees. We blame everything else on them.”

After Derek Jeter’s error, McDonough also said, “Hey, Jerry (Remy) let’s start piling on the Yankees for playing the better shortstop at third base. At least we can try and stir up some controversy for them.”

The NESN guys are pretty good, and I’ve always liked McDonough (who also does stuff for ESPN and used to do baseball and college hoops for CBS), and Remy pointed out that because A-Rod has such a cannon at third base, he’s able to play very deep–almost on the cut of the outfield grass–for hitters who are of little risk of bunting and the fact that he has above average range for a third baseman actually eliminates the fact that Jeter has below average range for a shortstop.

Anyway, where’s this going, you ask?

Longtime friend of Desipio Tony Carriero e-mailed last night wondering if we were going to have the third installment of the Desipio Fantasy Baseball League. The answer, is, yes. We’re going to use the free leagues at Yahoo! like we did for basketball, but I’ve learned my lesson.

The basketball league is too big. We have 16 teams with as many as 14 players on each team. That’s just too many.

So here’s the deal. We’re going to have both an AL-only and NL-only baseball league. You can play in both if you want to (I will) but if we fill we’re not going to increase the number of teams in each league. Instead, we’ll try and see if we can fill another one.

OK, so here’s our info.

The leagues are located here: http://baseball.fantasysports.yahoo.com/

The National League Only league is #238720 and is called (creatively enough) Desipio Baseball NL Only.
The American League Only league is #238734 and is Desipio Baseball AL Only.

They are free leagues, so don’t buy any of the BS Yahoo! tries to sell you about their other leagues. E-mail me for the password to either league. (I’ll also be sending it out in today’s Desipio Insider.)

There’s no way we’ll be able to find a live draft time to accomodate all of us, so we’re going to be stuck with a list draft where we rank our lists and Yahoo drafts for us. Hopefully the smaller leagues will encourage more trades (and hopefully I won’t spend the summer in last). Our leagues will draft shortly after they fill. So the sooner we get 12 teams in each league, the sooner we can get on with it.
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Another great Chevy Chase movie makes up most of the headline for this article on Greggie’s spring debut.

Mike Remlinger says he pitched in pain all last year. Kind of like the way we watched him pitch…in pain.

The Sox say their winning attitude starts in the spring. Yeah, whatever.

It may have been ugly, but the results were awfully purty.

This time the refs swallowed their whistles. Screw you, Madison!

Rick Morrissey on the Big Ten Champs.

Groucho goes around the NBA and says the Hornets are sick of Tim Floyd. That didn’t take long.

Herb Gould says, “Sorry, Wisconsin” not this year.

Mariotti put down the doughnut to watch the Illini on TV and pretend he was at the game.

John Henry Williams is dead at 35. Harry Caray’s plans on buying his frozen head and blowing it up next February.

Damon Stoudamire peed in front of a columnist. And the columnist liked it.

Peter King says something Terrell Owens isn’t going to like to hear.

B. Duane Cross thinks the Bears will draft the fresh prince.

Some Chowderhead in Seattle was the first to write the “Junior back to the Mariners?” column this year.

If you saw The Sopranos last night, you know that this pizza delivery man got off a lot easier than the waiter did.

Jim Thome’s going to give his doctor the finger.

Why is it that just because Corey Patterson is short and fast that everybody thinks he has to lead off?

John Fund wants John Kerry to pick Tom Brokaw to be his Vice President. Is John Fund really just one of Brian Williams’ pseudonyms?

Somebody might want to clean up John’s Web site, first.

America’s finest news source on the new CPR.