In his second meeting with the players he inherited from Bill Self, Bruce Weber set a goal for the Illinois basketball team.
He indicated that the group was fully capable of reaching the Final Four, a feat last accomplished by the Illini in 1989.
Some in the audience were offended.
The problem was that the city Weber targeted was St. Louis, site of the 2005 NCAA Final Four. But in the spring of 2003, that struck the players as an unnecessary delay in their development and gratification.
“We were taken aback by that,” said Deron Williams, who had just led the Big Ten in assists as a freshman. “We felt we had a good enough team to win the championship last year.”
Said Weber: “They were mad at me. One raised his hand and said, `Why not San Antonio? You skipped a year.”‘
It was just one of several misunderstandings that had to be overcome before Weber and his team achieved a common purpose. As they came to understand, he was being candid rather than telling them what they wanted to hear.
“He didn’t think we were ready,” senior guard Luther Head said last week. “Everything had happened so suddenly. He didn’t know us, and we didn’t know him. We didn’t know his offense, and he didn’t think we had enough chemistry.”
What they did have was talent, and it was sufficient to carry the Illini to victories in their final 10 regular-season games, to the school’s first outright Big Ten title in 52 years and to the round of 16 in the NCAA tournament.
But Weber was right. They didn’t have the complete package or the maturity to qualify for San Antonio.
St. Louis is another matter. The only undefeated Division I team, the Illini (24-0, 10-0) can take a major step toward a second consecutive conference title and a top seed on Selection Sunday when they host Wisconsin (16-5, 7-3) on Saturday.
To Weber, the overall record and No. 1 ranking are the gift wrap and bow on a small package. What matters is the content.
“I want to win; I want to be No. 1,” he said. “But right now, I’m more concerned with winning the Big Ten.
“You don’t get a ring for being No. 1. Even if it’s for nine weeks, 10 weeks, it doesn’t matter. You get a ring for the Big Ten championship, a ring for the national championship.
“If it’s Duke, if it’s Carolina, if it’s Kansas, they’ve always been there. It’s new for Illinois. It’s added up to a lot of positive publicity.”
The players have thrived on the attention since they routed then-top-ranked Wake Forest on Dec. 1 in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge.
“When you see the way we push each other in practice, how we go after it every single day, you’d have to say it was a very unusual group,” center Nick Smith said. “Guys are pretty level-headed considering they’ve spent two months at No. 1 and are talking about an undefeated season.”
The Big Ten might have only three NCAA-worthy teams, but Illinois’ non-conference schedule included Gonzaga, Georgetown and Cincinnati as well as Wake, and the closest any of those opponents came was 15 points.
Williams says they haven’t even thought about what lies beyond the Big Ten season, haven’t watched Self’s new team at Kansas, or North Carolina or Duke with the idea of measuring themselves for March.
“It’s not relevant now,” he said.
Said Weber: “I don’t have time to keep up with all those teams. I know one of my assistants was talking about Louisville the other day. He said they were the hot team and weren’t going to lose another game. So I tuned in to the ticker [Wednesday night] and they lost by 25 at home.”
He shrugged like a coach who has yet to lose.
