S7 Ep16: The Illini in March w/ Will Leitch

Each year, Tyler and I record a postseason therapy session to discuss our latest NCAA Tournament loss. This year, after making the Elite Eight, there's not much "therapy" needed. It's more of a... celebration. 

I asked for questions on Twitter and Slack and then answered those questions as I drove to Omaha for the 1st & 2nd Round of the NCAA Tournament. I got to every single question, which is why this is 2 hours and 40 minutes long. 

It's March. There's a Big Ten Tournament and then an NCAA Tournament ahead for the Illini. So Will and I sat down to discuss the Illini in March, past and present. 

John Gasaway is writing his Bubble Watch columns again (the original and the best), so that's my signal each year to bring him on the podcast to talk Illini basketball. Thankfully, it's not the "do the Illini have a chance to make it to the right side of the bubble?" discussion it would have been in the 2010's.

I asked for questions on Twitter and then pressed record as I was driving from Columbus to Champaign in my (totally not stolen) rental car. I say "totally not stolen" because, well, just listen to the first five minutes. 

You might have seen Mitch Gilfillan offering legal clarifications regarding the Terrence Shannon case on Twitter. With the news today that Shannon has been granted his TRO against the University, returning him to the roster and the rotation, I spoke to Mitch this evening to ask maybe a dozen legal questions. This was very helpful for me - I hope it's helpful for you as well. 

I asked for questions on Twitter and Slack and then answered those questions live on the air. And then Carmen called me while I was recording so his phone call went in this pod as well. Also, I finished by playing some Richard Wagner through the car speakers and recording it with my laptop. As always, this is the finest podcast audio possible. 

I had noticed him the first half. A guy wearing an Ayo jersey in the front row of the Illinois section getting his entire section to stand up and make noise. I tweeted about it, and then I tweeted about it some more, and then, after the win, I went over to talk to him. That's this conversation. After that conversation, I wander through the arena back to my seat while rambling on and on about how good we might be. 

I waited 45 minutes to see if I even wanted to publish it. It's 22 minutes long. I went to the spot where I recorded the audio during Covid and I just kept talking and talking.  So this is a warning. I think this the most painful loss of my lifetime (not with the most on the line, just the most pain I can experience), and people immediately reacted to that statement negatively on Twitter, and so I talked about all of that. There's no game analysis here. Just feelings analysis. You have been warned.  I decided to publish because of the promise I made 14 years ago. From The Stands = my raw emotions the moment a game is over. These are those emotions. 

What can I say? We were all thinking it, and then what we were thinking happened. And for me, he happened inside a giddy Iowa pressbox. I went to find an empty room to record this... and I ended up right next to an Iowa celebration in the booth next door.  That kind of day.