Heroes of March The ’00s

Few outside the Illinois fan base or Allstate Arena would have begrudged the 2004-05 Fighting Illini if they had laid down and failed to respond to the pain Arizona was inflicting on them in the Elite Eight.

The Wildcats held just a slim two-point lead at halftime, but it ballooned in the second half before a partisan orange-clad crowd hoping to see the Illini advance to the Final Four for the first time since 1989: First, to nine points, matching the largest lead any team had taken on Bruce Weber’s bunch all season, then to 13, and eventually to 15. The Illini, led by a cerberus of dogged guards — Dee Brown, Luther Head, and future perennial NBA All-Star Deron Williams — and effective post players Roger Powell, Jr. and James Augustine, had no answers for Arizona’s Channing Frye, who would finish the game with 24 points on just 14 shots, 12 rebounds, and six blocks, and few for Hassan Adams, who stepped up and scored 21 points during a cold outing by Salim Stoudamire (nine points on 13 shots).

Yet Illinois, which had lost just one game all season, and played just six decided by single digits, decided that the best way to play what looked like its final four minutes of the 2004-05 season in the fashion that made the Illini a No. 1 seed and a favorite to win it all that year: Fearlessly, and together, and through their larcenous, three-happy guards.

That sniping style of gameplay wasn’t without criticism. “Illinois has relied way too much on the three in this game,” then-CBS analyst Jay Bilas admonished, seconds after the Illini went down by 14 with just under three and a half minutes to play, and despite the last Illinois bucket being a made Williams three. “Half of their shots have been from behind the arc: 26 of their 52 shots have been threes. That is not a balanced offense.”

Over the last 3:19 of play, Illinois would attempt four more threes — and make three. By adding points off turnovers and locking down Arizona, the Illini also totally erased the Wildcats’ lead, sending the game to overtime.

Brown, Head, and Williams combined to score the Illini’s final 20 points of regulation, and 28 of 42 Illinois points in the second half. Head had two threes and a breakaway layup off a steal, Brown — whose listed height of 6’0 seemed like college basketball’s best wink-and-a-nod fib — had a putback after Head clanked a three and made a twisting layup on another steal, and Williams drove for one bucket and stepped up to hit a game-tying three with about 30 seconds to go. Even after a season of co-operative play that made Weber’s three-guard lineup even more than the sum of its formidable parts, this was unexpected, perhaps even heroic.

It wasn’t all the Illinois guards. Center Jack Ingram, who didn’t always start, tipped an inbounds pass for a steal, then set a solid — if perhaps illegal — screen to clear space for Williams’s game-tying triple.

But it was mostly the Illinois guards — and if one stood out as the hero, it was Williams. Those 20 points in the final 3:50 of play? All of them came from the field, none from free throws, and the only bucket that Williams neither scored for himself nor assisted was Head’s steal-and-score layup.

This was a well-played game throughout that turned legendary when three orange-clad heroes decided to take over a game in front of a raucous Chicago crowd. The overtime couldn’t quite match the intensity of that desperate push for survival — what could? — but it featured even more heroics, with Williams sinking two more threes to get to 22 points for the game and Head getting another steal that led to a layup. Arizona shaved a six-point Illini lead to just one point in the final minute, but couldn’t get a three to fall at the buzzer, allowing Illinois to advance to its first Final Four in 16 years in front of a rapturous crowd.

The Illini wouldn’t finish the year on top of college basketball, thanks to a cold night against a North Carolina team built to brutalize the Illinois frontcourt with lumbering Sean May. Still, their moment of glory lives on — testament to the truth that how you play the game sometimes lingers longer than what team becomes champion.