ChicagoSports.com – Illini this year’s St. Joe’s, only better:
“THE VIEW FROM PENN STATE
BY GORDIE JONES.
Gordie Jones is a sports columnist for the Allentown Morning Call, a Tribune newspaper
“STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — If top-ranked Illinois was going to be ambushed, it wasn’t going to happen in a place where the program has been in full retreat for years.
“If college basketball’s version of a 5-by-94-foot relay was going to get knocked off stride, it wasn’t going to be by a Penn State squad that is, as usual, stumbling along.
“Your final Wednesday night in the Bryce Jordan Center was 83-63. And it was as clinical as it was predictable.
“‘Everybody can shoot,’ Nittany Lions coach Ed DeChellis said of the 26-0 Fighting Illini. ‘Everybody can score. Everybody can do everything.’
“Including share the ball.
“And run. Especially that.
“Speed-wise, Penn State point guard Mike Walker said, ‘They’re at a different level than any other team in the Big Ten. . . . They have you on your heels the whole game.’ …”