41 Comments - Biscuit Head - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 1:41 pm: “No one wants to see Illinois schools in the NCAA tournament more than me - but implementing term limits and workman’s comp reform is what really gets the Committee excited.” -FakeBruceRauner - Oswego Willy - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 1:50 pm: When you look at the “Top 4″ NIT Seeds; ISU, Syracuse, Cal, and Iowa, the “First 4 Out” of the NCAA, only Illinois State can make the real case for the snub. If you compare USC versus ISU, (last in last out) it’s difficult to look at the Trojans as more worthy that the Redbirds, but here is where the ISU case falls apart versus USC; The MVC (Mussouri Valley) had such a down year, if you look at Conference play, Witchita State and Illinois State both went 17-1, and the rest of the conference lacked a conference foil to add to the discussion to help either the Shockers or Redbirds, whomever lost the MVC Tournament championship USC, within the PAC 12, has UCLA, Oregon, and #1 Seed in the West, Arizona, and USC had a winning record in the PAC 12. It’s grossly unfair that ISU got snubbed, but it wasn’t solely because ISU is a mid-major, it’s due in part the MVC wasn’t as strong within its own conference that sunk ISU. The lone snub was the Redbirds. Now… How about this? Illinois State is #1 Seed, the Fighting Illini #2 Seed in the Illinois State Bracket. Can you imagine the insanity of Illinois playing at Redbird Arena w/a trip to NYC at stake? That’s going to be epic if it happens. Save me a seat for that! - Honeybear - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 1:50 pm: Go NU Wildcats! Please guys just win one game. - anon. - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 1:52 pm: NCAA is only all about MONEY. Only the major schools and conferences that attract eyeballs for tv rating and advertising dollars need apply. - East Central Illinois - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 1:54 pm: If/when ISU plays U of I in that NIT game, please, please, please, somebody get Chance the Rapper to sing the National Anthem. - wordslinger - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 1:55 pm: Wildcats beat Vandy, lose to Gonzos in second round. FF: Duke, AZ, Kansas, UK. UK over AZ for title. - Decaf Coffee Party - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 1:59 pm: ISU’s resume was not what the committee was looking for in part because the rest of the Valley outside of Wichita State and ISU was so weak. So the other 16 conference games were against teams with bad RPI ratings. To ISU’s credit, they beat all of those teams — but they also lost 2 of 3 against Wichita State, the only top 100 team they played. The tweet was clever. And it made a good point. But Valley teams normally are not going to get a home-and-home from Power 5 conference schools. They have to go on the road. SIU, for example, played at Louisville, Minnesota and Arkansas this past season, so it’s not like those teams won’t play a team like ISU. They just won’t come to Normal to play them. Until the rest of the Valley improves, the MVC looks like a one-bid league unless good teams like ISU go on the road to play Power 5 teams. - Henry Francis - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 2:01 pm: You would’ve figured that ISU would have gotten some sympathy from the committee considering it’s the school’s final year and all. - Oswego Willy - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 2:01 pm: Go ‘Cats! Illinois’ lone NCAA team. Adopt them, love them. Unite around the ‘Cats. Final Four? Villanova, Arizona, Kansas, Kentucky… Kansas beating Villanova… Rock Chalk, Jayhawk. Bill Self - former Illini coach. Just sayin’ - Scamp640 - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 2:01 pm: Exciting to see WIU in the Women’s NCAA Tournament. - East Central Illinois - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 2:02 pm: ISU Coach Muller has a legitimate gripe. Not very many of the majors want to schedule a solid mid-major team such as ISU. There is no benefit in doing so for the majors. NCAA needs to come up with some other data point to allow for situations like this to come into play. Especially in these years of teams jumping in and out of conferences all over the place, the brackets need adjusted. - Ducky LaMoore - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 2:03 pm: Vil, Gonz, UCLA, Oregon. Gonz over UCLA in final. - illini - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 2:12 pm: @Willy - you beat me to it - Illinois State is #1 Seed, the Fighting Illini #2 Seed in the Illinois State Bracket. Can you imagine the insanity of Illinois playing at Redbird Arena w/a trip to NYC at stake? That’s going to be epic if it happens. Save me a seat for that! - OurMagician - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 2:15 pm: Illinois St could play a better non con schedule but Mueller insists on home and homes rather than 2 for 1’s or a 1 off road game or something else creative. Gonzaga played Illinois home and home a few years ago but also played “neutral” games in Chicago and Seattle. They also had a chance to beat Wichita St for the automatic bid and not worry about a selection committee and lost by 20 points to what turned out to be a #10 seed. - Sports - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 2:15 pm: We could expand the field to 128 teams, and the 129th team would gripe. Good luck to Northwestern in the men’s tournament and DePaul and Western in the women’s tournament. - A guy - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 2:16 pm: As long as those Majors call all the shots, there will be biases toward their conference teams, Consciously or not. ISU absolutely earned their way in. Some of these automatic “bunny” conferences with automatic byes should have to play their way in against one another. That might free up 2-4 spots. It happens every year to a few teams. I’m sad for ISU. I was pulling for them. - A guy - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 2:18 pm: Teams with “Dakota” in their names have more representation than Chicago/Illinois. That is a travesty. - Oswego Willy - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 2:22 pm: === Some of these automatic “bunny” conferences with automatic byes should have to play their way in against one another=== No Way! That’s the whole point of the Automatic Bids. You win your conference tourney (not that the last two holdouts, B1G and the Ivy League have tournies and that auto-bid) you go. That’s the beauty of the Dance. You get your Bid by being the biggest fish in your Pond, then you go in the big pond and see how you swim. The Redbirds were the only, and I mean, only snub. That’s not the fault of Middle Tennessee State or UNC-Wilmington. Bath, baby water… Go ‘Birds, earn the trip to the Big Apple. - 47th Ward - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 2:22 pm: I’m an ISU alum and a big fan of the program. Muller is doing a great job, but there’s only so much he can do. There was a time when beating Indiana State counted as a quality win. Unfortunately, that was a long time ago when Larry Bird was wearing the short shorts. Loyola replaced Crieghton, Tulsa left, and now the Missouri Valley ain’t what it used to be (hello Bradley!!!). It’s tough, but you have to win the conference tournament. ISU got smoked. On national TV, by a good but not great Wichita State team. That beating, and the pathetic, flat performance by the Redbirds made it very easy, too easy, for the selection committee to snub my beloved Birds. I know what he’s trying to do, but no way is Muller going to get home/home deals with big time schools. He’ll just have to win a few of those on the road, get into some better pre-conference tournaments and keep battling. Now he needs to shut up, win the NIT and prove all of the critics wrong. Whining ain’t winning. - Montrose - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 2:24 pm: His tweet is a legitimate gripe of teams like ISU. They are good enough that power conferences don’t want to schedule them, but can’t build a resume without power conferences scheduling them. If the rumor comes true that Wichita State is going to the American conference, the Missouri Valley will be an even tougher platform to get to the tournament from. That being said, I don’t know that they were snubbed. They just have the deck stacked against them. We can all agree on anyone but Duke, right? - Jake From Elwood - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 2:27 pm: Good season for the Redbirds. I would have loved for them to make the NCAA Tournament, but they can make a legitimate run in the NIT, so hopefully they give it their all. - SouthernDawg1 - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 2:33 pm: I’m a Saluki. March used to be so much fun. Please fire Barry Hinson. - Michael James - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 2:34 pm: - Anonymous - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 2:36 pm: ==Illinois State is #1 Seed, the Fighting Illini #2 Seed in the Illinois State Bracket. Can you imagine the insanity of Illinois playing at Redbird Arena w/a trip to NYC at stake? That’s going to be epic if it happens== One problem with that: nobody cares about the NIT. Illinois cared so little about it they fired their head coach before it started. - Oswego Willy - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 2:39 pm: ===One problem with that: nobody cares…=== You think no one will care about Illinois visiting Illinois State… in a game that actually matters? Are you from this state? lol - A guy - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 2:41 pm: ==No Way!=== Only because I can’t resist. WAY - Peters Post - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 2:54 pm: Henry Francis you should tweet that line at Eric Zorn for his tweet of the week. - Kippax Blue - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 3:14 pm: I understand Ole Miss answered the Muller call–I hope they can work a home and home. Big time get for a troll post, if true! - Anonymous - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 3:17 pm: ==in a game that actually matters?== It’s the NIT. It isn’t a game that matters. - filmmaker prof - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 3:23 pm: The coaches don’t get paid enough. - Oswego Willy - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 3:24 pm: ===It’s the NIT. It isn’t a game that matters.=== This is why you must not be from this state. Illinois - Illinois State… basketball. Doug Collins, after getting “turned down”, as the legend goes, for the Illini, wanted to play at ISU in part to “troll” Illinois just up the road. It’s not about the NIT, it’s about two fan bases. Illinois would love, “without” a coach, crush ISU. The Redbirds would love to crush the Orange Crush for recruiting purposes, and beating Illinois and going to NYC… that’ll help. - A Guy - “WAY”? What about “One Shining Moment”? You need Cinderella for the montage! - Anonymous - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 3:42 pm: ==This is why you must not be from this state. Illinois - Illinois State… basketball.== I’m from Illinois, am an Illini fan, and don’t give two rips abot ISU or the NIT. While ISU fans may want to still play, most Illini fans want this disaster of a season done with. Including the Administration, who didn’t even want Groce around to play in whatever loser bracket tournament they ended up in. - Oswego Willy - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 3:48 pm: ===…most Illini fans want this disaster of a season done with.=== That’s “probably” true, but losing to ISU isn’t going to help things in Champaign, and losing before that game sure won’t help either. - iltplt - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 4:15 pm: While the Salukis aren’t where they should be I think Barry Hinson has made strides with the team. He took over a pretty poor program, it had fallen far from their heyday. - Michelle Flaherty - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 4:57 pm: If you watched the MVC championship you came away with a very low opinion of ISU. Blown out by Wichita State and total loss of composure. String of player technicals and an ejection. Not exactly a good way to make a good first impression with a national audience or the committee deciding whether to invite you to the party. - ArchPundit - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 5:46 pm: ==Can you imagine the insanity of Illinois playing at Redbird Arena w/a trip to NYC at stake? Only hope I can get it on TV up here. - DuPage Dave - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 6:30 pm: ISU was snubbed big time with a record of 27-6. It had a higher RPI than Wake Forest (13 losses) or Vanderbilt (15 losses) and they both made the tournament. It’s a big bleep you to the Valley conference. Also sorry to disagree with M Flaherty but if ISU had lost by 1 point to Wichita they would still be out of the tournament. They played WSU three times, won one and lost two. - Arthur Andersen - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 7:59 pm: OW, “hold” Friday night on your calendar. I think ISU is on spring break, so tickets may be easier to get. I’ll bring the Cannoli. - blue dog dem - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 8:09 pm: I think the Illinois State Cardinals would have been a nice fit for the big dance. - Vote Quimby! - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 9:28 pm: ==blue dog dem== They are the Redbirds. As a Cubs fan and almost-ISU grad there is a HUGE difference. Of course the MVC was snubbed…and not just ISU. Wichita was “given” a 10-seed and happen to be a 6-point favorite over #7 Dayton. Vegas knows basketball better than the selection committee… - tunes - Tuesday, Mar 14, 17 @ 11:11 pm: ISU should’ve been in the big dance!..and yes it will be humiliating for the U of I to lose to the Redbirds in Normal! If you follow college basketball in Illinois and are breathing you would know that…;) Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.