(Let me ease into this.)
It occurred to me this week that there’s quite a bit of intra-IL College Basketball going on.
Loyola’s played Western, Bradley (who’ll be good this year), and will play Lake Forest (which might be an exhibition game) this Saturday, besides the conference games with UIC. (You could even include Purdue in here.)
UIC’s played (and lost!) to Chicago State, beaten Northwestern, and has a game versus NIU this Saturday. Both Horizon schools played Exhibition games versus Robert Morris as well.
In addition to UIC, NIUs also played Aurora University (how did I miss THAT) and DePaul. Depaul’s also played Bradley, who’ve also found a way to squeeze Chicago State into their schedule.
Illinois plays…uh, no one. Right. (Same thing with SIU.)
It used to be (if I’m recalling right) that these schools – especially ‘big-time’ NU, Illinois and DePaul – would rather step in vomit than play each other and especially play the smaller schools. You could see the logic; they’re fighting for the same kids, they don’t want other schools to point out negative head to head records; Illinois beating Loyola is meaningless for UofI, but Loyola beating UofI is tangible proof something can be built there.
As a fan, it’s much neater to see area teams play each other – not that I bother to go, but you can quickly figure out who’s actually got something this year. I