Minnesota Preview

The Illini are at Minnesota on Tuesday night to play the Golden Gophers and Tubby Smith. The Gophers seem to be a program on the rise, and the Illini have long winning streak against the Gophers on the line, 17 games to be exact. That sounds hard to believe we have taken that many from them, but I read it on Illinois Loyalty, so it must be true. Coach Weber is planning to play the freshmen more minutes to get ready for next year, so we should see more of Mike Tisdale and Mike Davis this game. And Demetri McCamey is coming off a career best game against Indiana last week.

This seems to be a much-improved Minnesota team compared to past seasons. The Gophers have lost to the top four teams in the conference (MSU, Ind., OSU and Wisc.) but played well enough to win against the other teams. Granted, it's a down year for the conference, but this is much improvement for the Minnesota program. The Illini winning streak is in jeapardy against the Gophers tonight.

Gopher Nation notes that the Illini "are playing better and this will be a very good test for us (Minnesota)." Apparently, Minnesota has lost all of its games against top 100 RPI team this season, and has won against all teams with a RPI of 101 or greater, so Gopher Nation feels this game should belong to Minnesota. It's become so hard to predict what the Illini will do each game, it's hard to argue with that reasoning.