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Sunbabe, I'm with you. I don't wanna be a whiner or a sore loser either so know I shouldn't even say anything. But IL got screwed on the calls last night. Yes, they missed way too many shots. But, as close as they came, you can't help wondering what would have happened had the calls gone the other way. As it is, I have a very broken-hearted 15 year old on my hands who is afraid that he'll never see Il in the championship game again. As he was telling me last night before the game, if they won last night, there was a chance they'd do it again in the next few years because they'd have so much more of a recruiting advantage after a win. But now they've lost that recruiting advantage. A problem NC never has had, nor never will have.

A friend and I just drove to Chapel Hill during lunch to try to get a Daily Tar Heel, but even with two printings no luck. Did get a Chapel Hill paper anyway. My News and Observer just isn't close enough.

JJ5 - Sorry about the confusion between White Sox and Cubs. You are right about the White Sox getting little attention. Personally, I think Illinois relied too much on the three last night, and Carolina did a good job of switching defenses to keep Felton out of serious foul trouble early and to guard the perimeter. Illinois also had to work a lot for each shot down the stretch and ran a lot of time off the clock. The Illini did miss some open shots, but if they hadn't been hot in the middle parts of the second half they wouldn't have been in the game anyway. No disrespect to Illinois or their ability to comeback, but Carolina has been a second half team for the past month, and I expected them to go for the knockout punch early in the second half like they did against MSU. I think they tried, but Illinois is better than MSU and put up a gallant fight.

Should have added that he's been a Cubs fan all of his life. So he's no stranger to heartbreak!

CAPH52,

Tell your son the team will recruit good players. The team is hungry, and the coaches will say something to the best recruits "With you on our team, we would win, you would be the MVP, all we need is you on our team" Coming in second is great for recruiting. Coming in last in RPI rankings isn't good for recruiting.

It's obvious Illinois has a great coach, and he'll keep the team going strong. Your team will be in the Final Four for years to come.

The thing that amazed me about the last three weeks of this season was that in my Michigan home, and listening to several East Coast stations, you would think that there were three teams in the Final Four. In the intro to the Sunday game, they didn't even have the profile for Illinois, and gave Louieville and Michigan State about 20 minutes "analyzing" talk each.

And it is senseless, like arguing strikes or balls, but if those threes would have been falling, instead of ins/outs as they were- and if they didn't have at least 2 traveling occasions totally missed on NC's behalf-it would have been a different story.
Everything you noted is also true, yet this would have meant far more to Illinois and that school's economy and sports programs than it will ever mean to NC.

And Go Travel, please. You say "GO" to your team BEFORE you play, not after you won. Tres gauche'

ncgrrl, I sure do hope you're right! Sadly, IL usually seems to have a hard time recruiting even the good Chicago area players. (I know that for at least two of the current players, IL wasn't their first choice.) It's nice to think that this past season might change that.

Personally, I was thrilled to have SIU (which I attended) in the tournament and would love to see them get farther next year. But, as dim as my hopes are for U of I right now, I know they have a better chance than SIU.

Yes,CAPH52, dim hopes. In fact this team was FROM Illinois. Augustine was from Mokena, in my own school district. We had one player from Texas (Williams???)Anyway, we are from the Midwest, and as such we are realists. SIU, NIU, UofI- aren't likely to be shipping in ringers any time soon.

CAPH52, I didn't know you were a Saluki!
I was down there in '64 & '65 and my son went there as well. Been to any Haloween parties?? LOL!

Swalter518, I did not say ALL the media was pro-Illinois. I was talking about the majority of the analysts on ESPN and at Sportsillustrated.com, i.e., who did indeed pick Illinois over Carolina to win it all, in the last week leading up to the championship game.

For the record, I think Illinois is a really great team, and I can understand your tremendous pride in them, all you Illini fans. But Sean May and Raymond Felton really showed up last night, and there's not much you can do about that! :-)

I do not agree that Illinois got bad calls last night. I think both teams got some good calls and bad calls, and that's as it usually goes. Most of the ACC fans that I know can barely stand Billy Packer, who seems to bend over backwards to avoid saying anything good about the ACC teams, especially UNC. (Many ACC fans feel his is the first voice you hear when you arrive in Hell, as some witty sports reporter stated last year! :-d )

It was a fabulous game....... the top two teams in the country .... all that it should have been!

OK, so we've established that Big 10 and ACC fans (maybe with the exception of Wake) don't like Billy Packer so why the H@#@ is he still on?! I think we've found common ground-get rid of Billy Packer-what do all you Carolina fans say?!

Swalter518, we Carolina fans would LOVE it if he moved to Mars!!! Some of my family has met him socially and were quite UNDERwhelmed! :-) I will even choose Dick Vitale over listening to Billy! Vitale has the world's biggest mouth BUT he strikes me as a real nice guy............ and he does know his stuff!

Bonniebroad, I'll agree with you there on Vitale and at least he's fired up! Packer contradicts himself and doesn't even pretend to be familiar with most teams, i.e. mispronouncing names of starting players in the championship game!

Did any of you Chicagoans hear Boors and Bernsteins interview with Billy Packer last Friday on the SCORE (WSCR)? Wow, did he ever come across as a first class jerk!

Meant to say "last Thursday" (and should have put an apostrophe on Bernstein! Sorry about that. But, bottom line, Billy Packer was a real jerk!

Yeah, I have always thought Vitale seems like a genuinely nice guy who has his head in the right place (annoying, yes, but still ok). Packer has his head somewhere else most of the time. I bet the refs really love Packer because he constantly criticizes calls. Then he turns around and says something completely crazy.

Yeah, I have always thought Vitale seems like a genuinely nice guy who has his head in the right place (annoying, yes, but still ok). Packer has his head somewhere else most of the time. I bet the refs really love Packer because he constantly criticizes calls. Then he turns around and says something completely crazy.

Now talk about conflicting sentiments. My friend's fiancee attended the game with us. She is an NC State grad, so as a right of passage, she doesn't care much for UNC, and she was originally from Illinois, not far from Urbana-Champaign. Her parents are huge Illini fans. She pulled for UNC for her fiancee's sake, but I think the evening really got to her after a while.

Even Wake fans would like to see Billy head on to his next job, Greeter in Hell.

Notes from Chapped Heel:
1. Daily Tar Heels disappeared from newsstands almost immediately and an investigation is beginning -- seems suddenly eBay is flooded with issues of the paper for sale. Since it's supposed to be free to the community, at NC tax expense (more or less), resale may be deemed a crime. In any case, it was very hard to come by a copy.

No one here is a tenth as sore a loser as someone who wrote a letter from Chicago to the Chapel Hill News:

http://www.chapelhillnews.com/opinio...-8665753c.html

YIPE!

Well, bless her heart, Cassandra!!! ;;) Isn't she a good sport! :p