Just got back from the game.
From the get go, it was amazing with the amount to fans that Illinois had packed in the Schott. Most were pretty cool, but you had patches of cocky ass students, that is to be expected.
Illinois jumped out to their lead early, you heard "here we go again" grumblings in the crowd. But somehow, although they played pretty lousy in the first half, and had some poor officiating, OSU hung around. They chipped at the lead in the 2nd half, you could feel the electricity build in the sold out Schott. We kept hitting big buckets, Illinois answered. Finally we got it down the two, and made a couple of nice defensive stands. Then, Matt Sylvester stamped his seal on one of the greatest upsets in OSU basketball history by hitting a totally unexpected three. It's kind of funny, I was talking to a guy in behind me during the timeout, and said "do you think they have the balls to go for 3?", we both figured that OSU would play for overtime since they had Brown and a few others in foul trouble.
I have not witnessed an atmosphere like that at a basketball game, I've seen it a few times in football (NC State 2003, Marshall 2004, Michigan 2004 of recent). This is truely something for Matta and the program to build off of, and is a huge stepping stone going into next year, a season that I feel will have higher expectations.
I took great joy watching the same cocky Illinois fans walk out of the Schott with the heads down, grumbling what went wrong? Talking about how their coaching staff will be ripping ass. I say this in defense to Illinois, I think a loss at this time in the season probably helped them more than hurt them. I'm an Illinois fan come tourney time. Unbelieveable game today, finally OSU makes the national headlines for something they did on the playing field. Stick it in your ass ESPN, I bet you'll hate to have to lead into Sportscenter with the OSU upset.
Woohoo, it's great to be a Buckeye!