This is the first in a series of previews about the Big Ten men’s basketball teams.
Basketball coaches use various methods to inspire their teams.
Some offer rewards for maximum effort, while others believe in military-style discipline.
New Illinois head coach Bill Self came to practice early this fall wearing army fatigues, with a T-shirt reading “War” and war paint on his face.
It was the last day of a two-week preseason training session that Self dubbed “Boot Camp,” a name the former Tulsa coach said was inspired by one of his assistants.
“I was trying to loosen them up and show our team that we need to have fun doing whatever we’re doing,” Self said of the “suicide” drills the Fighting Illini were performing.
Illini players said they couldn’t imagine former coach Lon Kruger dressing in army duds.
“That was crazy,” said Illinois forward and emotional leader Sergio McClain. “When he did that I knew he was special.”
Some players were more than a little shocked by the way Self was dressed that day.
“That (outfit) loosened up the tension in the room, because everybody was stressed about running all those suicides,” said center Marcus Griffin, who averaged 10.7 points and a team-leading five rebounds per game last year after transferring from a Lincoln, Ill. junior college.
A “suicide” is an endurance-building drill in which players run various lengths of the basketball court.
Griffin added that Self has a give and take relationship with his players.
“He jokes around with us all the time and we can joke around with him back,” Griffin said. “Not all coaches are like that.”
Self and the Illini have a lot of reasons to be jubilant heading into the 2000-2001 season. They return nine of 11 players from a team that was 21-9 overall and 11-5 in the Big Ten last year.
Expectations are running high in Champaign, Ill., and Griffin believes anything less than a Final Four appearance would be a disappointment.
Illinois was picked to finish first in the conference by the media, and second by the coaches at the annual Big Ten Basketball Media Day in Chicago on Sunday. The Illini will likely be ranked in the top 10 when the first Associated Press poll is released Nov. 6.
Guard Cory Bradford, the consensus preseason Big Ten Player of the Year who led Illinois in scoring last year with 15.3 points per game, teams with guard Frank Williams, combining for one of the most talented backcourts in the nation.
As a freshman last season, the 6-foot-3 Williams showed inexperience with his poor assist-to-turnover ratio of 133 to 90.
But Williams also showed flashes of brilliance, which made him Illinois’ Mr. Basketball among high school players in 1999.
The 6-foot-3 Bradford believes Williams is ready to be a full-fledged point guard.
“Frank has been doing great,” the Memphis, Tenn. native said. “He’s getting better and he has learned a lot from last season.”
The Fighting Illini are also talented in the frontcourt. Joining Griffin is 6-foot-10 forward Brian Cook, who played on the USA Junior Select team this summer, 6-foot-9 forward Damir Krupalija and 6-foot-11 forward Robert Archibald.
When Kruger left abruptly in May to coach the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks, many wondered how the talented Illini would respond to a new coach.
But in merely a few months, the team appears ready to make a run at a 2001 Final Four berth in Minneapolis. The last time the Illinois reached the Final Four was in 1989, when they lost to Michigan in the semifinals.
