College basketball

No. 1 Illinois tiptoes toward perfection

Five since 1975 have entered the NCAA tourney undefeated. Only one left with a title.

By BRIAN LANDMAN
Published February 19, 2005

Illinois coach Bruce Weber's phone just won't stop ringing. Friends, both in the business and out, and friends of friends - virtual strangers, in other words - have an opinion and aren't shy about sharing it.

"I get calls and (they) say, "You should lose,' but then they say, "Don't lose to this team. Don't lose to that team,' " he said. "Then other people say, "There's no good in losing and you don't want losing to become a habit.' "

Forgive his weariness and wariness.

This is new territory for Weber and his Fighting Illini. As it would be for most coaches and teams.

The top-ranked Illini are the last undefeated team in major-college basketball, 26-0 entering today's Big Ten showdown at Iowa, and are vying to become the first team to finish a season with a perfect record since Indiana in 1976.

"Sometimes you might get a team that's not in one of the top conferences that might just have great talent and would go through its conference pretty easily," Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "(Illinois) is in an outstanding conference, so that makes it more difficult and makes what (it's) doing amazing."

Others have come close since 1976, including:

Indiana State and Larry Bird entered the NCAA Tournament undefeated but lost in the final to Michigan State and Magic Johnson and settled for a 33-1 mark.

In 1991, defending national champion UNLV seemed unstoppable but lost to Duke in the Final Four, a team it beat by 30 points in the title game in 1990, and finished 34-1.

Last year, Saint Joseph's was perfect (27-0) until a loss to Xavier in the Atlantic 10 tournament quarterfinals. It closed with a loss to Oklahoma State in the Elite Eight.

"We're not worried about the streak," Weber said. "We're worried about winning a Big Ten championship. We get that thing, then we'll set our next goal."

The schedule, at least in the regular season, is favorable to at least think about what's next: Iowa (16-8) is missing its top player, Pierre Pierce, who has been dismissed, and has been struggling. Northwestern (12-12) comes to Champaign on Wednesday, Purdue (7-15) follows on March 3 and then the Illini go to Ohio State (18-8) on March 6.

Not exactly Murderers' Row, but not sure things. Nor is beating history. There are reasons why teams have flirted with perfection during the past few decades only to come up short. Or at least opinions.

Trust us. Weber's phone is ringing.

Most will say that a team making a run at perfection has probably been lucky in regard to injury and foul trouble.

In 1975, the Hoosiers were unbeaten entering the tournament, but star forward Scott May was coming back from a broken arm and wasn't the same. They lost in the Elite Eight to Kentucky.

Remember in '91, UNLV point guard Greg Anthony fouled out with 3:51 left and Duke closed the game on an 8-3 run to eke out a 79-77 win. Anthony hadn't fouled out in any collegiate game.

"Any time you have to play six consecutive games (in the NCAA Tournament), you're going to have a stretch in there where you don't play as well as you're capable of playing," said Anthony, now a NBA analyst. "Depending on how you respond, the pressure in that game could ultimately lead to your demise."

Whether it does or not often comes down to a team's mental makeup.

"You have to have a real degree of toughness because you're going on the road; that's the hardest thing in college basketball," Saint Joseph's coach Phil Martelli said. "I don't care what league you're in. I don't care what your record is. When you go on the road and you don't have that home crowd to give you that bounce, that juice, the whistle's a little different on the road."

The Hawks loss last year in the A-10 tournament came in Dayton, a virtual homecourt for Xavier. In that setting, the crowd can embolden an opponent looking to etch its name in history.

"Every time you win a game, the bull's-eye gets bigger so that allows a team to really come into the game and not have anything to lose," said former Hawks point guard Jameer Nelson, the national player of the year and now a rookie with the Orlando Magic. "We had everything to lose."

You need an unflappable group to hold up to that and that usually requires upperclassmen. Then there's the increasing attention to deal with, something that overwhelm even a veteran bunch.

That can be a distraction.

"Every day, you had people trying to get quotes from us about it (the streak)," Nelson said.

Last year, Martelli tried to block out all the streak talk by telling his players they weren't pursuing perfection; their goal was excellence.

So far, Weber insists his players have kept their eye squarely on the next day. Have they? Well, they haven't been as dominating of late as they had been for much of the season. They needed overtime to beat Iowa Jan. 20 in Champaign and, facing a slow-down game at Michigan on Feb. 8, they might have lost had guard Dee Brown not taken over defensively to help his team pull out a 57-51 win.

"We've had some chances to learn some lessons, to be humbled a little bit even in victory," Weber said, adding that's got to help, if for no other reason than he won't have trouble keeping his players' attention and keeping them motivated. "How we finish ... will determine how people remember us. I think they've bought into that at this point."

[Last modified February 19, 2005, 00:57:17]