Welcome to “Good Morning, Illini Nation,” your daily dose of Illini college basketball news, AP Top 25 writer and voter Scott Richey. He will offer ideas every morning about Brad Underwood’s team (or a former Illini):
The Saturday night ESPN broadcast of House of ‘Paign’s 23-point win against War Tampa in the Basketball Tournament featured the appearance of a surprise guest in the first half (via Zoom) of the former guard of Illinois Dee Brown. While Brown said he was more than happy with his turn to train (he’s an assistant at Illinois-Chicago) and didn’t think about joining Illini’s alumni team, he did weigh on Brad Underwood’s team and the fact that basketball it was actually happening.
Here is what he had to say about the Illini:
“I think they have a great pool of top talent there, and Brad does a great job of making those guys play hard. If (Ayo Dosunmu and Kofi Cockburn) come back, we will be a top 10 team in the country.”
And by watching basketball again:
“Sport brings unity, man. It brings together people from different walks of life. They have something to support, something to observe and something to entertain them. It is a difficult time in the current climate in the United States, but one thing is sport always it brings people together. It’s good to see competitive basketball come back to television.
“I know that people are sitting around social distancing and they keep their security and they watch this game and they are really excited about the first phase of having places on television again. It is definitely necessary in our country because of the unity aspect of it – brings so many different walks of life together, but I just encourage everyone to do it safely and do it with the understanding that this is real and this is serous. “
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