CMC is pretty much like every other coach in the Tourney crowd positioning his team to be extended a Dance card. And, I think this great OT win seals the deal as UCLA's SOS rating on a number of the computer rankings has now climbed ahead of its NET rating to add credibility to its Dance bid.
Rotations shrink as the final games are played and the NCAA Dance card (which always contains some black box controversy) is progressively filled out.
Ill is still ranked @2 in the B10, with the 2nd best road record behind MI. Their 36 point destruction of $cum was no fluke. And, neither was Cronin's allocation of playing mins. We essentially won in extended overtime, with 6 & only 6 players, as Book represented almost all of our bench productivity. What is chilling, is that our 6-man rotation somehow held the mothership together DESPITE TWO OF OUR STARTERS FOULING OUT!..............yet, it wound up being mathematically possible for the few mins it persisted so help me a scoreless Jamar Brown (who did chip in a great baseline save late in the game).
If there was a vote for Player of the Game, each and every one of our 5 starters would get votes. A great team victory in OT, against a primetime opponent who has played great on the road.
I just hope that going forward CMC turns them loose on O. Yes, we got slaughtered on the boards 27-43. But our exhausted 6-man roster won the game in the paint, 38-30! That's something Team Perimeter Weave is not known for.............ditto doubly so for the Illini losing a game-within-a-game by almost double digit pts in the paint.