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Singles give you a nice and realistic chance of making money. Accumulators with multiple options bring you the chance to win big. Doubles are just in between these two. They have the best of both singles and multiple-option accumulators. The answer is simple. It is a combination of two bets put together into one. Your detectives will make sure to post them on a daily basis.

We will track the progress and success here as well as on our Twitter channel. There are several strategies you can use with doubles. We will focus on two that have made us love this type of betting so much. The first is literally doing what the name says. I have a wide variety of nationalities on my team and I love that. I think that it makes us more united and an inspiration to many sports around the country.

This feature and additional photos also can be viewed at FightingIllini. When securing scholarships, high school student-athletes across the country have worried that the coronavirus pandemic has left their prospective college futures in a state of uncertainty. But for young athletes from the state of Illinois and beyond state borders, fear not! Armed with the finest and most advanced tools of technology and a slate full of creativity, the coaches at the University of Illinois feverishly worked to figure out who they are and where they live.

And, in some ways, through the magic of online platforms like Zoom, Rayfield says that in many cases she's probably nurtured even better relationships with prospective athletes than she had in the past. Prior to the pandemic, you may have talked on the phone a couple of times and then they come to visit campus for 48 hours.

For the athletes that we're going to recruit in the years ahead, we've been able to have more conversations with them. My job is to give them an idea of what their experience would be like or what their role would be like and how they would impact our program. Of course, the biggest drawback is that Rayfield and her staff have had significantly fewer opportunities to evaluate them as athletes.

New Illini football coach Bret Bielema has dedicated a special space for his own personal "Zoom room. We'll do a Zoom attack where we'll introduce our coaches and then we'll go on a virtual tour through the building. Even though we're in this time of Covid, they can still visit our facility. It's a very impressive building and I love showing it off.

We'll walk through the lobby, then we'll walk them through the locker room where they'll see a bowling alley, a pool table and a bunch of really cool stuff on a daily basis. You can just see the way people react; it has an effect. Maybe it's not ideal, but that's the world we're living in right now.

And until we can start going to see them and they can start seeing us, it's the best option we've got. The Illini coaches are especially diligent when it comes to recruiting high school athletes from the state of Illinois. Growing up in Kansas, I watched Big Eight basketball. Your tendency was to go to the schools you're more familiar with.

Nationally televised games, now, have opened all that up. One of the things that's changed in the state of Illinois is that we've seen a different influx of prep schools and other kinds of schools opening up all over the place. Kids are leaving their states—not just Illinois, but Ohio or wherever—to go play in some of these basketball schools, so to speak.

And when it fits our puzzle, I want those pieces. It is special to play here. If you ask Ayo Dosunmu about his experience here, he will tell you how great it is. You talk about Brandon Lieb, who we haven't seen on the court yet, but he is a young man who just loves this university and being a part of it and his dream to play here. That value is there and I appreciate that a great deal. Recruiting in-state kids is always going to be at the heart and soul of our recruiting.

We take great pride in our young athletes. I'm just glad they're back playing again. I find that sometimes people from other parts of the country almost have a better understanding of just how good the education is here at the University of Illinois … sometimes more than their in-state peers. UI's African American Pioneers. Illinois's African American Pioneers. They are two men who were instrumental in changing the course of intercollegiate athletics at the University of Illinois.

In , more than a century ago, Wheeler and Young broke the color barrier at the Urbana-Champaign campus, integrating varsity rosters that had previously only included white men. They came on the scene at Illinois about 14 years after the first known African American collegiate football players—W. Jackson and W. Lewis—arrived at Amherst College in Massachusetts. Wheeler and Young are but two of the pioneering black athletes who altered the face of the program's African American make-up.

Wheeler, born Nov. He lettered in as a sprinter for rookie coach Harry Gill in In a dual meet with Purdue on May 13, , Wheeler became the first African American to win a track event by winning the yard dash A resident of Urbana after attending university as an agriculture major, Wheeler was employed by his alma mater as a clerk in the UI's agriculture department. In early October of , Wheeler was home in Urbana with his wife and four children on a three-week furlough and was scheduled to depart for France in the capacity as an Army secretary.

Unfortunately, he was a victim of the Spanish influenza pandemic and died at his home on West Clark Street just shy of his 37th birthday. He is buried at Champaign's Woodlawn Cemetery. Young, who was born on April 27, in Springfield, lettered twice as a tackle for the Illini football team. His squad compiled an impressive record and registered a mark the following season. Young also became a minister in Evanston.

Like Wheeler, Young died tragically. His obituary indicated that he was struck as a pedestrian by an automobile in Gary, Ind. A third African American Illini, George Kyle, competed as a non-letter-winning sprinter in track and field on the and '25 teams. Kyle was the first black athlete to acquire his bachelor's degree Liberal Arts and Sciences in , then a master's degree psychology in In tennis, during the late s, a man named Douglas Turner became the first African American to play the sport at Illinois.

Turner took second place in Western Conference Big Ten singles competition, then a few weeks later won the national championship among black men at the American Tennis Association tournament. Turner earned both bachelor's and master's degrees at Illinois. Turner died in Chicago at age It wasn't until two decades later that another African American athlete lettered in tennis.

Albert Grange, a transfer student from George Williams College, won a varsity monogram in Wheeler, Young, Kyle and Turner were the only four African American athletes who competed at Illinois between and Hines also competed briefly on the track team as a junior in , the same year he served as President of UI's junior class.

After acquiring his BS in physical education and master's in sociology from the U of I, Hines secured a PhD in anthropology and sociology from the University of Coppenhagen in Denmark Hines died in at the age of While Mannie Jackson and Govoner Vaughn are most widely recognized as Illini men's basketball's African American pioneers in the late s, it was Walt Moore who initially integrated Illinois hoops in Moore had teamed with fellow Illini Max Hooper at Mt.

Moore's Illini career, interrupted by three years of service in the United State Army, lasted only one year, as a freshman in He eventually became the head coach at Western Illinois University, the school where he earned small college All-America honors in Moore died in at age Though he didn't letter, the color barrier in fencing at the University of Illinois was initially broken by Richard Younge in John Cameron competed in sabre for Coach Maxwell Garret and lettered for Illinois's undefeated teams and Big Ten champions in and ' Cameron captured the conference title in sabre in and became UI varsity athletics' first African American captain.

Wrestling at pounds, McCullum, who hailed from Joliet, lettered from through ' He received his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering in It wasn't until that a black man played baseball at Illinois. Trenton Jackson, from Rochester, N. Jackson finished eighth in the maters at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo. Jackson hit. He received his BS in physical education in In the sport of gymnastics, former Illini star Charles Lakes accomplished firsts more than once.

Not only was he Coach Yoshi Hayasaki's first African American athlete, lettering from , Lakes departed the U of I in to become one of the first black American gymnasts to compete in the Olympics. Will Clopton, who played in the mid-late s, is believed to be the first African American to be a member of Illinois's golf team. When women's varsity athletics debuted at the University of Illinois in , black female athletes were present, though sparse in numbers. Some of the most prominent in the early days of Illini women's athletics were track and field's Bev Washington and basketball's Kendra Gantt.

Terry Hite, who directed UI's volleyball program from , was the university's first black head coach. In , about 30 per cent of the athletes comprising UI women's 10 varsity programs are of African American decent. Wrestling's Braunagel Twins. Over the years, the Fighting Illini wrestling program has featured some incredibly successful brother acts. From the Sapora brothers in the s and '30s to the Tirapelle trio in the s and s, sibling DNA has led to exemplary leadership and exceptional results.

The current era of Illini wrestling features a pair of feisty identical twins from southern Illinois: Danny and Zac Braunagel. Early in the Fall of , little more than a month after their 19th birthday, UI head coach Jim Heffernan confidently bestowed the title of co-captains to his then redshirt freshman phenoms. Tons of discipline … diet … obviously, work habits … dedication.

Danny and Zac came in and impressed me so much. Their work ethic and the example they set made it a pretty easy choice. This is what we're looking for. To be a high caliber team, you need everybody moving in the same direction. So, No. That's what we need. If we're going to be challenging at the highest level, nationally, we need this attitude in our room.

We need this desire and work ethic and will to win in our room. Alex Tirapelle was a great leader. Emory Parker was a good leader as he grew into the role. Isaiah Martinez was another one and naming him a captain is probably something we could have as a freshman.

For Danny and Zac, I think it was a good chance for them to kind of exhibit their leadership and work habits. Needless to say, the Braunagel boys were surprised at their coach's decision to name them co-captains. In little league sports or in high school, I've always thought of myself as a leader. I've always tried to inspire others on the team. Being named a captain was a big confidence boost for me, for sure.

Danny indicated that he'd gotten a hint of Heffernan's plans while the twins were competing at the Pan-Am Junior Championships in Guatemala. When we got back to training again with the team, Heff just sat everybody down after practice and mentioned to the team that he wanted Zac and me to be captains. I was expecting we would be as seniors, so I was kind of surprised.

Once he did that, it almost felt like a responsibility to be more of a leader than I already was trying to be. I'm big on leading by example. My training and focus and mentality have really stepped up, even outside of the wrestling room. I decided that I had to live like a captain. I started reaching out to guys more, voicing my opinion more, and stepping it up in the practice room. Zac and Danny, products of Belleville's Althoff High School, are now redshirt sophomores for Heffernan, helping lead the Illini to a perfect start in While successful in terms of individual records for Danny and for Zac , the Braunagels regarded their freshman season in as largely unfulfilling, especially when the season came to a screeching halt in mid-March as the COVID pandemic invaded the United States.

That day we were doing individual practices, so there were guys literally warming up for the practices when they were told to go home. Nobody knew how to react. When they were sent home, the Braunagels took a week off to heal their tired and bruised bodies. Then Danny and his brother went right back to work. The Braunagels credit their dad, Joe Sr.

He always was looking up workouts for us, but he wasn't like a crazy dad at all. Around sixth or seventh grade, we told Dad that wrestling was huge for us. We'd had some success, so we wanted to continue to get better. From that point on, he's been like a trainer for us. He taken us to camps and tournaments so that we could get experience.

He once asked a coach what we could do training-wise to get better, and the coach said that pull-ups were good. So, Dad installed a pull-up bar for us. Danny got one-and-a-half and I got maybe a half a pull-up. We worked on those every other day, then push-ups and sit-ups on top of everything else we did the following day.

By the time we had finished our seventh-grade season, Danny could do 52 pull-ups and I did The twins originally imagined themselves to be budding football stars, but then they were bitten by the wrestling bug. Me and Zac didn't really take to wrestling as quickly as Jarrid. We were these short, little, tubby kids, so wrestling was a little bit harder for us to learn. We were super immature about it. We didn't want to go through the drills. Then, during my eighth-grade season, I made it to the state finals but lost.

I was super bummed out, but I quickly realized how much I loved the sport of wrestling because I had never gotten that upset when I lost in football. Shortly after that, we quit football and focused on wrestling. We told him maybe Illinois isn't that, maybe somewhere else is. Wisconsin, Indiana, Navy were really recruiting him hard, but we were really excited when he decided to choose Illinois.

The Bielema Family. Bret Bielema: Illinois Home Grown. It's not necessarily ironic that the third grader who once wrote a school paper about one day playing middle linebacker for the Fighting Illini now occupies an office on the same campus block as a statue of the University of Illinois's greatest defender. And though Bret Bielema's hopes of playing for his home-state university's team were never realized, it was his inimitable work ethic, dedication and desire that gave him the opportunity to return "home" to become the head football coach for his state's flagship institution.

Bret, the son of Arnie and Marilyn Bielema—weighing 11 pounds at birth—was introduced by doctors on Jan. Bret's mother remembers that day well. Bielema recalled. When Bret was born, he had chicken pox. Of course, he couldn't be in the nursery with the other children, so I had him in the crib in my room.

The doctors and nurses would knock on my door and ask 'Can we come in and see the pound baby with chicken pox? There, the Bielemas owned sows and, with the assistance of sons Bret, Bart and Barry and sisters Betsy and Brandy, eventually marketed between 3, and 4, pigs annually. It was a never-ending, days-a-year job. When they weren't working in the hog barns, the Bielema boys participated in football and wrestling and ran track. During the summer months, they'd play Pony League baseball.

They inherited their love of sports from their dad, who in his younger days was a basketball and baseball player and track man. In fact, Arnie was talented enough on the diamond to try out for Coach Lee Eilbracht's Illini baseball team in the Fall of when he enrolled as an engineering student. Deane Frary, a Prophetstown native and s Illini track letterman, opened the door for Arnie's audition. Unfortunately, the ultra-challenging U of I engineering curriculum proved to be a bit more than Arnie could handle and he dropped out of classes just prior to December finals.

As for Bret, sports captivated his interest from a very young age. Jeff Tuisl, Bielema's childhood friend and playmate from kindergarten through their freshman year at Prophetstown High School, admired his buddy's grit and determination. He's got this work ethic of growing up on a farm. Detra concurred that Bret Bielema has always displayed qualities of determination and leadership. Bret is honest and he treats people right. He never takes any shortcuts.

It does not surprise me one bit that he's been as successful in life as he has. Absolutely, I could have predicted that. While Bielema didn't receive any "love" from the home-state Illini football staff as a small-town athlete, it was Arnie's side job as a sports equipment salesman in eastern Iowa that ultimately opened the door for Bret getting a walk-on offer from the Hawkeyes. Bret went to camps at Iowa for football and wrestling with my encouragement because I knew the coaches at Iowa.

Then, in January, Bret got a call one night from Iowa assistant coach Donnie Patterson and he was invited to walk on. Later on, we drove over and talked to Coach Fry, and, as they say, the rest is history. Bret's mother says her son exhibited his compassion for people as a very young child. My mother Bret's grandmother had a relative at the local nursing home who wasn't capable of feeding herself, so my mother would drive over and help her during the lunch hour.

Bret tagged along every day with her to the nursing home and he made friends of a lot of the older gentlemen there. While Mom was feeding her relative, Bret would go down and push some of the men in wheelchairs down to the dining hall so that they could have their lunch. I think that really made an impression on him. He's always been so caring to older adults.

He's so aware that people want attention and that everyone has something to give. And he does it. I remember Bret stopping to talk with every single person that was there. We were the last ones to leave the facility and as we were walking down the hallway, he stopped at the kitchen door and called in to thank the cooks for the wonderful meal. I thought to myself, 'You're going to do okay, kid.

When the married couple of 60 years got confirmation from their son that he had landed the Illini job, Arnie knew that it would be a popular announcement in Prophetstown and the surrounding communities. Echoed Detra, "It wouldn't surprise me at all if there are already some Illinois flags flying in Prophetstown.

Tuisl said that, as Bielema did in his introductory Illini press conference, "Bret will wear his emotions on his sleeve. You know exactly what you're getting from him. Bret takes things personally and he takes everything to heart. It's because he wants to help his guys grow and win. Kevin Hardy. The ninth day of December marks an especially noteworthy date in University of Illinois football history, particularly for linebackers.

Not only is it the birth date of one of its greatest players—Dick Butkus—it's the date the legendary University of Illinois linebacker got the opportunity to give his namesake prize—the Butkus Award—to two other Fighting Illini stars. Like his former teammate Dana Howard, newly selected Illini Hall of Famer Kevin Hardy fondly recalls the details that surrounded that memorable night 25 years ago—Dec. I rehearsed it a few times, but I had convinced myself that I probably wasn't going to win.

Just in case, I had my notes with me. I'm wondering whether maybe they put the winner closer to the stage. There were so many things that were going through my mind. I was convinced that 'There's no way you're going to win this thing.

I was just as stunned as anyone. All season long, I just never saw myself like that. I was just happy to be there as a finalist. At the awards banquet that night, the crowd was shown some video that Hardy, Lewis and Thomas had pre-taped with an interviewer earlier in the day.

It wasn't really something I thought about when I was saying it. He mentioned that it was two years in a row that the winner had come from his alma mater. Who knows? Maybe you will be the best ever from Illinois. I look back now and it's a great story to be able to tell people. As a member of Illinois's famed s linebacker quartet that included Dana Howard, John Holecek, and Simeon Rice, Hardy admits that he didn't feel as highly regarded as his former teammates.

It did, however, inspire him to raise his game. To me, they were the original 'H Boys. I used that as motivation because I didn't want to be considered the weakest link or the fourth guy. I remember hanging that press release on my wall, right next to my bed. It was one of those things that I saw every day and I used it as motivation to prove that I could be on the first-team the following year.

In , Kevin Hardy's hard work paid off and he was rewarded with consensus first-team all-conference accolades alongside Howard and Rice. The following season, of course, he was able duplicate his teammate and personal hero's most notable achievement. He was the same type of guy off the field. People just gravitate to his personality.

When I was being recruited and I came up to Illinois for a visit, the team was practicing in the bubble. They were doing a nine-on-seven drill and he hit the running back. In the bubble, when those shoulder pads would pop, that sound would echo. That hit echoed so loud that it got me all fired up. When they told me that Dana was just a freshman and that I'd get to play with him, that was one of those things that I never forgot.

Years later, having experienced being on the field with him and seeing the work that he put in really helped motivate me and propelled me to work hard and be on the same level as him. Earlier this year, Hardy got word that another honor was coming his way from his alma mater. When they finally established it, I felt that I had a decent shot of getting in there one day. So when athletic director Josh Whitman called and told me, I was definitely excited. I don't care at what age or at what stage of your life you are, you always appreciate recognition for work that you've done.

Obviously, Illinois did a lot for me, giving me an opportunity to get an education and play football. I feel like I worked hard while I was there and worked hard to help the team win and, on a personal level, to be the best football player that I could be. When you get that kind of recognition, it ties everything together. It brings a sense of accomplishment. There are a lot of people that are responsible for helping me get there, so my thanks goes to all of them.

Andre Curbelo and Adam Miller. With an abundance of talented guards on his roster, Fighting Illini men's basketball coach Brad Underwood may be tempted to utilize hockey's unique concept of line changes, shuttling in players to match-up the needs of any particular moment in time. Led by pre-season All-American Ayo Dosunmu, Underwood's roster includes a bevy of capable backcourt candidates who possess a variety of physical attributes and skills. Components of size, quickness, speed, toughness, experience, shooting ability and defensive tenacity provide Underwood with a Rubik Cube's worth of combinations.

Perhaps at no other time in University of Illinois basketball history has a coach had so many options. That has been the joy of preseason so far, watching those guys go at it. It's so competitive. Two of Underwood's most intriguing choices for playing time come in the form of highly recruited freshmen Adam Miller and Andre Curbelo. The rookies' resumes are as impressive as any in recent memory. He earned Illinois Mr.

Basketball honors this past season. A third-team All-American, he was considered to be the top-ranked player in the Empire State by Sports. The freshman roommates have become good friends and mutually admire the other's game. Says Miller about Curbelo, "He lives up to the hype. Everything they say about him is true. His passing game is just as good as they say it is. He makes great reads. His jump shot is improving and he's getting stronger.

With him being such a great shooter and my ability to drive and play with the screens and look for my shooters and my bigs, I think me and him are going to play a big role on the team this year. Thanks to strength and conditioning coach Adam Fletcher, each player's physical frame is rapidly evolving. Miller tipped the scales at when he arrived and now weighs It's always been good vibes. It comes second nature to me because I like being in there. Great things happen in there just like great things happen in the gym.

Putting in the effort in the weight room has really changed my body. I'm not done yet. Nineteen-year-old Curbelo, who checked in at pounds when he got to Champaign-Urbana and now weighs , admits that he used to be "a really, really lazy guy back home". The numbers are there and I'm really happy where I'm at right now. Being a little less strong than the older guys, I'm now able to bump into them with my chest.

I'm in love with the weight room nowadays. For me, gaining weight is going to be really key because of how physical the Big Ten is. Both Illini freshmen say they've learned a lot since formal practices began on October 14th. Obviously, I'm a freshman, so I'm trying to learn.

As a point guard, I've got to be very observative. I'm trying to learn the little things. I'm think I'm doing pretty well, but I've got to continue to work hard and keep learning and listening. Curbelo says he's not only been a pupil of the head coach, but also of his son, Tyler Underwood. He's always looking out for me. Same thing with Giorgi Bezhanishvili and Kofi Cockburn. But my relationship with Tyler is different. I'm always talking with him when I'm not on a drill or getting reps, what I'm doing wrong or what I can do better.

They're taking us by the hand and walking us along so that we can be the best freshmen that we can be. We know how each other works. We're going to push each other. The bond brothers have is 'I've got your back and you've got mine. He's going to teach me. It's good to have him helping me out. I always give thanks to Da'Monte. Without him, I wouldn't be as successful as I am today. Where they're at in terms of learning and understanding is way ahead of any group we've had. Fighting Illini basketball has produced some iconic guard units over the last years.

Here are this year's Illini guard group with some of the most memorable in its history:. Doug Dieken. Fifty years have passed since Doug Dieken last wore a Fighting Illini uniform, but time has not diminished the memories and honors he's garnered over the last half century. A charter member of the Streator Bulldogs Hall of Fame, Dieken inherited his physical attributes from parents Charles 6-feet-6 inches tall and Lorraine 6-feet tall.

At , Doug figured he'd be a basketball player. Then, we had our regular practice after school. Our hair couldn't be any longer than half an inch. And while Dieken was an all-star forward who received some small-school offers and an outstanding baseball pitcher, his greatest acclaim came on the gridiron as a sure-handed receiver.

It certainly didn't hurt that his mom and dad were both UI graduates. Though not swift afoot, Dieken became a reliable wide receiver for second-year Illini coach Jim Valek, catching 21 passes for yards. In his self-deprecating style, he recalled a game in when Illinois played at sixth-ranked Notre Dame.

We got beat I'm still trying to figure out why we went for two. I guess we were pretty optimistic. Dieken earned team Most Valuable Player honors as a junior and senior, then exploded with 39 catches for yards in his final season, earning first-team All-Big Ten acclaim. He faced a particularly difficult personal challenge as the Illini captain in when Illini boosters called for his coach to resign in mid-season.

Assistant coach Ellis Rainsberger told me that Valek was going to be fired. So, after the game, we went into the locker room and I just asked the coaches if they'd all leave. I said, 'Guys, if Coach isn't going to be here tomorrow, I'm not going to be here. Who's with me? Afterwards, a few of us went over to the coach's house. We drew up a letter and sent it to the Athletic Board. We told them that we thought it was unfair and that if he wasn't allowed to stay for the remainder of the season, we weren't going to play.

You might say, we had some leverage. Dieken played in a pair of post-season all-star games and it was there where he'd see he first appearance as an offensive lineman. I said, 'Any chance that I can try out for tight end? As a Browns rookie, Dieken initially played behind veteran Dick Schafrath.

The Browns actually waived Dieken near the end of camp, hoping he'd clear so that they could put him on their practice squad. He did eventually find a roster spot, playing on Cleveland's special teams. I did well enough that a couple of weeks they made me the starter. From that point on—Nov. For consecutive games—despite three knee operations, two broken thumbs, a broken hand, cracked ribs, and five concussions—the streak continued.

Dieken reluctantly retired following the campaign, but the team hired him as their radio network's color analyst the following season. Similar to his durability as a player, he's only missed broadcasting two Browns games, one in when his mother died his father died 10 days later and one when Cleveland played in London and Dieken was advised by a doctor not to make the lengthy flight because of a health issue.

In , he began a Foundation to honor his mentally challenged younger brother, Paul. I was passing out medals, so I couldn't keep track of him for the most part. Afterwards, we went to a root beer stand and the owner came out to say hello. My brother opened up his jacket and showed her these four ribbons that he had won in the Special Olympics. It was probably the proudest day I've ever had in athletics. The good Lord gave me some talent, but unfortunately Paul didn't get the same.

With the Browns in playoff contention, Dieken is cautiously optimistic that the team can break a year playoff-game drought. He was privileged to cover playoff teams during his first five seasons behind the microphone through '89 , but none since then. Dieken has described the performance of numerous all-star type players, but says that Joe Thomas—his replacement and the player that inherited his jersey No.

He walked over and said 'I hope you don't mind that I took your number. I don't mind, but I've got to tell you that I've used up all of the holding penalties. Isaiah Williams rambles for some of his record-setting yards against Rutgers. A redshirt freshman who wears jersey number one got his first start on Saturday, scored his first career touchdown, led his team to season victory number one, and, in the process, placed his name in the number one position on the University of Illinois's all-time single-game rushing list for a quarterback.

No doubt about it, Saturday's victory at Rutgers was one memorable day for quarterback Isaiah Williams. Thirty-one times the redshirt freshman from St. Louis's Trinity Catholic High School used his feet to rush for yards, including individual gainers of 26, 25, 22 and 19 yards. That broke A.

Bush's previous high rushing mark by an Illini QB yards at Nebraska in Williams' most decisive drive of the afternoon came on the heels of Nate Hobbs' crucial interception with just more than a minute left in the game and the contest tied at Taking over at the Illinois yard line, Williams completed a pair of yard passes to teammate Casey Washington, and set the stage for James McCourt's game-winning yard field goal with just three seconds left.

Coach Lovie Smith wasn't at all surprised by Williams' yard rushing and yard passing performance. For me, today was about moving the football, whether it be run or pass. In an ideal world for a first-time quarterback, you don't want to be in a lot of tough passing situations.

When you have a guy who can move the chains with his legs, that's just tough on a defense. Coach Rod Smith and the offensive staff did a good job of getting Isaiah ready. He needed to make some plays and he did that all day. Even in the passing game, when we really needed to throw it, I thought he was able to do it.

It's tough duty for a defense when you have a quarterback who can run like that. Isaiah, for his first start, set a record today and we've had a few good ones who could run the football. And, did we mention that Williams, who'd been quarantined for more than two weeks due to COVID tracing protocol, learned only one day in advance that he'd be getting his big break?

By the Thursday practice, I wasn't sure, but I had a feeling that he would start because I was getting more one reps. I knew, for sure, on Friday. Coach Lovie told me. He called me up and said 'You're going to get your shot. You had a great camp, now it's time to show the world.

Williams was quick to hand out credit to his teammates, including his offensive line and sophomore running back Chase Brown, who rushed for a career-best yards on just 17 carries. We got a lot of explosive plays from him. He came up big. He's a dawg. I know he's got my back. It's a connection that we have. Williams also acknowledged his Illini defensive teammates that picked off three Rutgers passes.

They were in crucial moments. They make the offense's job easier when they do that. When they get a turnover, we've got to get a first down. On third down, he went out there and got that third-down conversion a lot of times. He helped the defense out a lot. He put the team on his back and just went to work. I saw an attitude out of our quarterback that I really want. He showed that, no matter what, he's going to keep battling. And I love that. Noting that senior starter Brandon Peters was due to come off the COVID list next week when the Illini travel to Nebraska, a reporter asked Lovie if the team now had a "quarterback situation".

A sly smile broke out on the veteran head coach's face. What Isaiah did today is give us a lot of options. The goal of every coaching staff is to put the guys and the team in the best place to be successful. We'll do that this week. It's been an eventful, albeit forgettable year for Americans everywhere, but the past 15 months have been doubly Earth-shaking for former Fighting Illini basketball star Meyers Leonard and his wife, Elle.

Since July of when he was traded from the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers to the Miami Heat … to 49 consecutive starting assignments … to a debilitating injury … to his controversial decision concerning the National Anthem at the NBA's "bubble" … to seeing his Heat advance all the way to the NBA Finals … among numerous other events … Leonard's world has kept revolving and evolving. And along for the ride has been Meyers' bride of five years, Elle pronounced EL-ee.

They met each other through mutual acquaintances in the Fall of , as freshmen on the University of Illinois campus. On a desperation fourth try, Elle finally relented, suggesting that she and Meyers hang out at the Ubben Practice Facility. Maybe I can impress her this time. I had no clue how competitive she was and that she could shoot a basketball. He challenged her to a shooting contest, going first and converting a "pretty solid" 22 of I knew at that point that I had a pretty special gal on my hands.

Then I think I won her heart a little bit when we talked afterwards about our hometowns, other interests, our friends … those kinds of things. I think she was able to see that I was a good guy with a good heart. An "official" first date didn't come until July of Four years later, they were married.

The seven-foot center got nine starts in 69 games in his rookie season. Over the next six seasons, Leonard missed 56 games due to injury and illness, only rarely meeting the expectations he had set for himself. He remembers his fifth year—the season—being particularly miserable. I was so distraught and in a bad place. There were ups and downs. Just pulling up to the arena, I got really bad anxiety. It was a negative place for me sometimes.

Elle wrote about her personal heartache it in a poignant story she titled "A Dry Goodbye. Sitting in that arena felt like absolute torture. Each opportunity seemed to be coupled with an injury or heartache. Each game, it was like I had a front-row season to watch my husband's paint on public display.

Ironically, Meyers' best game with Portland came in his very last game as a Blazer—May 20, —scoring a career-best 30 points. The Moda Center crowd chanted his name. During that final game, I was crying tears of joy, hearing them chant his name, yet two years prior they were booing him and I couldn't go to games.

We experienced complete polar opposites. You have to go through hard times to appreciate the good. It would turn out to be a positive event for the Leonards. Throughout training camp, I was really playing well. Spoe Heat coach Erik Spoelstra had seen Bam Adebayo and I play on the same team and, although we were both centers of sorts, he's so dynamic that it made sense that I could guard the five, take on the physical demand every night, and let Bam road on the defensive end.

And on the other end, I spaced the floor and he played at the rim. It was like a perfect match. Leonard started the first 49 games of the season, averaging six points and five rebounds per game in about 20 minutes of action. Game 49 saw him score 18 points and grab 14 rebounds. Midway through Game 50, his season came to a screeching halt. It would have been better for me to just fracture my leg. I've only seen the video of it once.

I just know what it felt like. Then the NBA announced we were going into the 'bubble' and that we were going to resume the season. I loved my starting job so much and I just didn't want to say anything to anybody. You really need to have grace during this time because of the injury that you had. Just keep working with our staff and keep getting healthy. But you're going to be out of the starting lineup and we'll figure out the rotation later.

That was really, really difficult. The three things that were hardest in the bubble were having that conversation with Spoe. Second was being away from Elle and our dog Koko. It was hard. I'd never been away from my wife for that long. I count on her and our relationship and just being a normal human being. I didn't have that. I just kept going back to the same hotel room every day, knowing I was still not healthy and knowing that I wasn't going to play.

Lastly, of course, was the Anthem. Conversations in the Disney "bubble" was so much more than just basketball. Meyers and his Miami Heat teammates were but one of the 22 teams who had been shuttled to three hotel complexes inside Walt Disney World in early July of Not only had the players been dealing with the COVID pandemic the previous four months, they had witnessed tremendous social unrest due to the unnecessarily brutal deaths of African-Americans Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and others at the hands of police officers.

The Black Lives Matter movement dominated the news, especially for the roughly 80 percent of the players who were either black or of a mixed race. Said LeBron James to a reporter, "When you're black, it's not a movement. It's a lifestyle, a walk of life. Numerous other phrases were featured on the players uniforms. The athletes and coaches were expected to gather around the center circle and take a knee.

Everyone wondered what Leonard, the year-old seven-footer from Robinson, Ill. After Elle, I talked to my brother, Bailey. Leonard's older brother by 22 months is a U. Marine who served in Afghanistan. He's been in service since August of And then I had some other conversations with other members of the military. Let's just say that they are some of the baddest men to ever walk this planet, including Navy Seal Team Six operators who have been on some very classified missions and such. He's a very, very mature individual, and he was very understanding.

Coming from a guy who'd been with the Miami Heat for 17 straight years, who's African-American, and who has the utmost respect of anyone around the entire NBA, knowing that I had his support was big. Then I went to Jimmy Butler and he felt the same way. Basically, he said that if you don't stand for something, you stand for nothing. You have to do what you feel is right. We've got your back. They said, 'Meyers, we know your heart. No doubt about it, we know who you are.

If we didn't, we could have seen it coming a mile away. Some of my former teammates with Portland told me that you have to be ready for what could come if you stand. I can— per cent—feel a certain way every time I hear that song and every time I see that flag," Leonard continued.

Talking about that, right now, the hair on my arms is standing up. For me, personally, my main initiative off the floor is giving back to the military. There comes a certain real-life emotion and real-life experience that are tied to that. Though I come from a blue-collar, primarily white community, I can relate because of my basketball experience on the AAU circuit and then at the University of Illinois and, of course, around the NBA.

I have heard stories that were difficult to listen to, but that I needed to hear. They can relate to George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. That is their real-life experience and real-life emotion. I know, in my head, how difficult of a situation this was for me. But, in my heart, I knew that I needed to stand.

It was a very, very, very difficult three-to-four days. I was sleeping two-to-three hours per night because I was so conflicted in this decision. Ultimately, I did what my heart told me to do, and that was to stand. My teammates supported me and so did many on social media. But there were also people who didn't support that decision. But I'm okay with that because I know the man that I am and I know where my heart is. A few hours before the game, Bailey texted Meyers: "Stay true to you.

Stay the course. I love you. Your family loves you. Your community loves you. Said Haslem to reporters, "His being out there with us, as our brother, it's still showing strength, it's still showing unity, it's still showing that we're coming together for a common cause. People will question, 'Why isn't he doing it their way? He's supporting us. He's with us. And though Miami lost the championship to the Lakers , under the extreme circumstances it had to be considered a successful season.

They frequently share social media posts, including Elle's basketball trick shots. Are there luxuries to be able to play in the NBA? It would be a lie to say that there aren't. But we also just try to normalize ourselves because we're just normal people. It's important to us for people to feel comfortable enough to reach out to us and also for us to share our lives. Being open to people is just who we are. We have no shame in who we are. We feel we can relate and that people can relate to us.

It's that we know that we can impact lives. That's the main thing. There are two things that I won't ever let anyone question about me and that's my character and my work ethic. Off the floor, it's only about impacting people in a positive way. That's it. He and Elle also have donated thousands of dollars to a fund that helps pay the fees Floridians leaving jails or prisons must settle before they can have their voting rights restored. Many of the Leonards' off-court hours are devoted to their business: Level Protein Bars.

It all began during their fifth season in Portland. I've always been lean and able to eat whatever I wanted. We met our good buddy now—Dr. Philip Goglia—who has his doctorate from Duke in nutrition.

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Angers v Rennes — Draw 3. There are a lot of sports betting professionals and value is one of the most common words they use in vocabulary. If you are a beginner in the world of sports betting, this term is used to determine if the given odds are worth the risk you are taking.

This is probably one of the toughest questions to answer. Experience is probably going to play a key role in finding good value bets. The main goal here is recognizing that bookmakers are offering a lot better odds than a realistic probability of that outcome is. The easiest example to use to describe this is a coin toss.

So your goal here is to skip the bookmaker which is offering 1. You should apply this to football matches and bet on teams which have a higher chance of winning than the odds might suggest. Your tendency was to go to the schools you're more familiar with. Nationally televised games, now, have opened all that up.

One of the things that's changed in the state of Illinois is that we've seen a different influx of prep schools and other kinds of schools opening up all over the place. Kids are leaving their states—not just Illinois, but Ohio or wherever—to go play in some of these basketball schools, so to speak. And when it fits our puzzle, I want those pieces. It is special to play here. If you ask Ayo Dosunmu about his experience here, he will tell you how great it is.

You talk about Brandon Lieb, who we haven't seen on the court yet, but he is a young man who just loves this university and being a part of it and his dream to play here. That value is there and I appreciate that a great deal.

Recruiting in-state kids is always going to be at the heart and soul of our recruiting. We take great pride in our young athletes. I'm just glad they're back playing again. I find that sometimes people from other parts of the country almost have a better understanding of just how good the education is here at the University of Illinois … sometimes more than their in-state peers.

UI's African American Pioneers. Illinois's African American Pioneers. They are two men who were instrumental in changing the course of intercollegiate athletics at the University of Illinois. In , more than a century ago, Wheeler and Young broke the color barrier at the Urbana-Champaign campus, integrating varsity rosters that had previously only included white men.

They came on the scene at Illinois about 14 years after the first known African American collegiate football players—W. Jackson and W. Lewis—arrived at Amherst College in Massachusetts. Wheeler and Young are but two of the pioneering black athletes who altered the face of the program's African American make-up. Wheeler, born Nov. He lettered in as a sprinter for rookie coach Harry Gill in In a dual meet with Purdue on May 13, , Wheeler became the first African American to win a track event by winning the yard dash A resident of Urbana after attending university as an agriculture major, Wheeler was employed by his alma mater as a clerk in the UI's agriculture department.

In early October of , Wheeler was home in Urbana with his wife and four children on a three-week furlough and was scheduled to depart for France in the capacity as an Army secretary. Unfortunately, he was a victim of the Spanish influenza pandemic and died at his home on West Clark Street just shy of his 37th birthday. He is buried at Champaign's Woodlawn Cemetery.

Young, who was born on April 27, in Springfield, lettered twice as a tackle for the Illini football team. His squad compiled an impressive record and registered a mark the following season. Young also became a minister in Evanston. Like Wheeler, Young died tragically. His obituary indicated that he was struck as a pedestrian by an automobile in Gary, Ind. A third African American Illini, George Kyle, competed as a non-letter-winning sprinter in track and field on the and '25 teams.

Kyle was the first black athlete to acquire his bachelor's degree Liberal Arts and Sciences in , then a master's degree psychology in In tennis, during the late s, a man named Douglas Turner became the first African American to play the sport at Illinois. Turner took second place in Western Conference Big Ten singles competition, then a few weeks later won the national championship among black men at the American Tennis Association tournament. Turner earned both bachelor's and master's degrees at Illinois.

Turner died in Chicago at age It wasn't until two decades later that another African American athlete lettered in tennis. Albert Grange, a transfer student from George Williams College, won a varsity monogram in Wheeler, Young, Kyle and Turner were the only four African American athletes who competed at Illinois between and Hines also competed briefly on the track team as a junior in , the same year he served as President of UI's junior class.

After acquiring his BS in physical education and master's in sociology from the U of I, Hines secured a PhD in anthropology and sociology from the University of Coppenhagen in Denmark Hines died in at the age of While Mannie Jackson and Govoner Vaughn are most widely recognized as Illini men's basketball's African American pioneers in the late s, it was Walt Moore who initially integrated Illinois hoops in Moore had teamed with fellow Illini Max Hooper at Mt.

Moore's Illini career, interrupted by three years of service in the United State Army, lasted only one year, as a freshman in He eventually became the head coach at Western Illinois University, the school where he earned small college All-America honors in Moore died in at age Though he didn't letter, the color barrier in fencing at the University of Illinois was initially broken by Richard Younge in John Cameron competed in sabre for Coach Maxwell Garret and lettered for Illinois's undefeated teams and Big Ten champions in and ' Cameron captured the conference title in sabre in and became UI varsity athletics' first African American captain.

Wrestling at pounds, McCullum, who hailed from Joliet, lettered from through ' He received his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering in It wasn't until that a black man played baseball at Illinois. Trenton Jackson, from Rochester, N. Jackson finished eighth in the maters at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

Jackson hit. He received his BS in physical education in In the sport of gymnastics, former Illini star Charles Lakes accomplished firsts more than once. Not only was he Coach Yoshi Hayasaki's first African American athlete, lettering from , Lakes departed the U of I in to become one of the first black American gymnasts to compete in the Olympics. Will Clopton, who played in the mid-late s, is believed to be the first African American to be a member of Illinois's golf team.

When women's varsity athletics debuted at the University of Illinois in , black female athletes were present, though sparse in numbers. Some of the most prominent in the early days of Illini women's athletics were track and field's Bev Washington and basketball's Kendra Gantt. Terry Hite, who directed UI's volleyball program from , was the university's first black head coach. In , about 30 per cent of the athletes comprising UI women's 10 varsity programs are of African American decent.

Wrestling's Braunagel Twins. Over the years, the Fighting Illini wrestling program has featured some incredibly successful brother acts. From the Sapora brothers in the s and '30s to the Tirapelle trio in the s and s, sibling DNA has led to exemplary leadership and exceptional results. The current era of Illini wrestling features a pair of feisty identical twins from southern Illinois: Danny and Zac Braunagel. Early in the Fall of , little more than a month after their 19th birthday, UI head coach Jim Heffernan confidently bestowed the title of co-captains to his then redshirt freshman phenoms.

Tons of discipline … diet … obviously, work habits … dedication. Danny and Zac came in and impressed me so much. Their work ethic and the example they set made it a pretty easy choice. This is what we're looking for. To be a high caliber team, you need everybody moving in the same direction.

So, No. That's what we need. If we're going to be challenging at the highest level, nationally, we need this attitude in our room. We need this desire and work ethic and will to win in our room. Alex Tirapelle was a great leader. Emory Parker was a good leader as he grew into the role. Isaiah Martinez was another one and naming him a captain is probably something we could have as a freshman.

For Danny and Zac, I think it was a good chance for them to kind of exhibit their leadership and work habits. Needless to say, the Braunagel boys were surprised at their coach's decision to name them co-captains. In little league sports or in high school, I've always thought of myself as a leader. I've always tried to inspire others on the team. Being named a captain was a big confidence boost for me, for sure.

Danny indicated that he'd gotten a hint of Heffernan's plans while the twins were competing at the Pan-Am Junior Championships in Guatemala. When we got back to training again with the team, Heff just sat everybody down after practice and mentioned to the team that he wanted Zac and me to be captains.

I was expecting we would be as seniors, so I was kind of surprised. Once he did that, it almost felt like a responsibility to be more of a leader than I already was trying to be. I'm big on leading by example. My training and focus and mentality have really stepped up, even outside of the wrestling room. I decided that I had to live like a captain. I started reaching out to guys more, voicing my opinion more, and stepping it up in the practice room.

Zac and Danny, products of Belleville's Althoff High School, are now redshirt sophomores for Heffernan, helping lead the Illini to a perfect start in While successful in terms of individual records for Danny and for Zac , the Braunagels regarded their freshman season in as largely unfulfilling, especially when the season came to a screeching halt in mid-March as the COVID pandemic invaded the United States.

That day we were doing individual practices, so there were guys literally warming up for the practices when they were told to go home. Nobody knew how to react. When they were sent home, the Braunagels took a week off to heal their tired and bruised bodies. Then Danny and his brother went right back to work.

The Braunagels credit their dad, Joe Sr. He always was looking up workouts for us, but he wasn't like a crazy dad at all. Around sixth or seventh grade, we told Dad that wrestling was huge for us. We'd had some success, so we wanted to continue to get better. From that point on, he's been like a trainer for us. He taken us to camps and tournaments so that we could get experience.

He once asked a coach what we could do training-wise to get better, and the coach said that pull-ups were good. So, Dad installed a pull-up bar for us. Danny got one-and-a-half and I got maybe a half a pull-up. We worked on those every other day, then push-ups and sit-ups on top of everything else we did the following day. By the time we had finished our seventh-grade season, Danny could do 52 pull-ups and I did The twins originally imagined themselves to be budding football stars, but then they were bitten by the wrestling bug.

Me and Zac didn't really take to wrestling as quickly as Jarrid. We were these short, little, tubby kids, so wrestling was a little bit harder for us to learn. We were super immature about it. We didn't want to go through the drills. Then, during my eighth-grade season, I made it to the state finals but lost. I was super bummed out, but I quickly realized how much I loved the sport of wrestling because I had never gotten that upset when I lost in football.

Shortly after that, we quit football and focused on wrestling. We told him maybe Illinois isn't that, maybe somewhere else is. Wisconsin, Indiana, Navy were really recruiting him hard, but we were really excited when he decided to choose Illinois. The Bielema Family. Bret Bielema: Illinois Home Grown. It's not necessarily ironic that the third grader who once wrote a school paper about one day playing middle linebacker for the Fighting Illini now occupies an office on the same campus block as a statue of the University of Illinois's greatest defender.

And though Bret Bielema's hopes of playing for his home-state university's team were never realized, it was his inimitable work ethic, dedication and desire that gave him the opportunity to return "home" to become the head football coach for his state's flagship institution. Bret, the son of Arnie and Marilyn Bielema—weighing 11 pounds at birth—was introduced by doctors on Jan. Bret's mother remembers that day well. Bielema recalled. When Bret was born, he had chicken pox.

Of course, he couldn't be in the nursery with the other children, so I had him in the crib in my room. The doctors and nurses would knock on my door and ask 'Can we come in and see the pound baby with chicken pox? There, the Bielemas owned sows and, with the assistance of sons Bret, Bart and Barry and sisters Betsy and Brandy, eventually marketed between 3, and 4, pigs annually.

It was a never-ending, days-a-year job. When they weren't working in the hog barns, the Bielema boys participated in football and wrestling and ran track. During the summer months, they'd play Pony League baseball. They inherited their love of sports from their dad, who in his younger days was a basketball and baseball player and track man.

In fact, Arnie was talented enough on the diamond to try out for Coach Lee Eilbracht's Illini baseball team in the Fall of when he enrolled as an engineering student. Deane Frary, a Prophetstown native and s Illini track letterman, opened the door for Arnie's audition.

Unfortunately, the ultra-challenging U of I engineering curriculum proved to be a bit more than Arnie could handle and he dropped out of classes just prior to December finals. As for Bret, sports captivated his interest from a very young age. Jeff Tuisl, Bielema's childhood friend and playmate from kindergarten through their freshman year at Prophetstown High School, admired his buddy's grit and determination.

He's got this work ethic of growing up on a farm. Detra concurred that Bret Bielema has always displayed qualities of determination and leadership. Bret is honest and he treats people right. He never takes any shortcuts. It does not surprise me one bit that he's been as successful in life as he has.

Absolutely, I could have predicted that. While Bielema didn't receive any "love" from the home-state Illini football staff as a small-town athlete, it was Arnie's side job as a sports equipment salesman in eastern Iowa that ultimately opened the door for Bret getting a walk-on offer from the Hawkeyes. Bret went to camps at Iowa for football and wrestling with my encouragement because I knew the coaches at Iowa.

Then, in January, Bret got a call one night from Iowa assistant coach Donnie Patterson and he was invited to walk on. Later on, we drove over and talked to Coach Fry, and, as they say, the rest is history. Bret's mother says her son exhibited his compassion for people as a very young child. My mother Bret's grandmother had a relative at the local nursing home who wasn't capable of feeding herself, so my mother would drive over and help her during the lunch hour.

Bret tagged along every day with her to the nursing home and he made friends of a lot of the older gentlemen there. While Mom was feeding her relative, Bret would go down and push some of the men in wheelchairs down to the dining hall so that they could have their lunch. I think that really made an impression on him.

He's always been so caring to older adults. He's so aware that people want attention and that everyone has something to give. And he does it. I remember Bret stopping to talk with every single person that was there. We were the last ones to leave the facility and as we were walking down the hallway, he stopped at the kitchen door and called in to thank the cooks for the wonderful meal.

I thought to myself, 'You're going to do okay, kid. When the married couple of 60 years got confirmation from their son that he had landed the Illini job, Arnie knew that it would be a popular announcement in Prophetstown and the surrounding communities. Echoed Detra, "It wouldn't surprise me at all if there are already some Illinois flags flying in Prophetstown. Tuisl said that, as Bielema did in his introductory Illini press conference, "Bret will wear his emotions on his sleeve.

You know exactly what you're getting from him. Bret takes things personally and he takes everything to heart. It's because he wants to help his guys grow and win. Kevin Hardy. The ninth day of December marks an especially noteworthy date in University of Illinois football history, particularly for linebackers.

Not only is it the birth date of one of its greatest players—Dick Butkus—it's the date the legendary University of Illinois linebacker got the opportunity to give his namesake prize—the Butkus Award—to two other Fighting Illini stars.

Like his former teammate Dana Howard, newly selected Illini Hall of Famer Kevin Hardy fondly recalls the details that surrounded that memorable night 25 years ago—Dec. I rehearsed it a few times, but I had convinced myself that I probably wasn't going to win. Just in case, I had my notes with me. I'm wondering whether maybe they put the winner closer to the stage.

There were so many things that were going through my mind. I was convinced that 'There's no way you're going to win this thing. I was just as stunned as anyone. All season long, I just never saw myself like that. I was just happy to be there as a finalist. At the awards banquet that night, the crowd was shown some video that Hardy, Lewis and Thomas had pre-taped with an interviewer earlier in the day.

It wasn't really something I thought about when I was saying it. He mentioned that it was two years in a row that the winner had come from his alma mater. Who knows? Maybe you will be the best ever from Illinois. I look back now and it's a great story to be able to tell people. As a member of Illinois's famed s linebacker quartet that included Dana Howard, John Holecek, and Simeon Rice, Hardy admits that he didn't feel as highly regarded as his former teammates.

It did, however, inspire him to raise his game. To me, they were the original 'H Boys. I used that as motivation because I didn't want to be considered the weakest link or the fourth guy. I remember hanging that press release on my wall, right next to my bed. It was one of those things that I saw every day and I used it as motivation to prove that I could be on the first-team the following year.

In , Kevin Hardy's hard work paid off and he was rewarded with consensus first-team all-conference accolades alongside Howard and Rice. The following season, of course, he was able duplicate his teammate and personal hero's most notable achievement. He was the same type of guy off the field. People just gravitate to his personality.

When I was being recruited and I came up to Illinois for a visit, the team was practicing in the bubble. They were doing a nine-on-seven drill and he hit the running back. In the bubble, when those shoulder pads would pop, that sound would echo. That hit echoed so loud that it got me all fired up. When they told me that Dana was just a freshman and that I'd get to play with him, that was one of those things that I never forgot.

Years later, having experienced being on the field with him and seeing the work that he put in really helped motivate me and propelled me to work hard and be on the same level as him. Earlier this year, Hardy got word that another honor was coming his way from his alma mater. When they finally established it, I felt that I had a decent shot of getting in there one day.

So when athletic director Josh Whitman called and told me, I was definitely excited. I don't care at what age or at what stage of your life you are, you always appreciate recognition for work that you've done. Obviously, Illinois did a lot for me, giving me an opportunity to get an education and play football. I feel like I worked hard while I was there and worked hard to help the team win and, on a personal level, to be the best football player that I could be.

When you get that kind of recognition, it ties everything together. It brings a sense of accomplishment. There are a lot of people that are responsible for helping me get there, so my thanks goes to all of them. Andre Curbelo and Adam Miller. With an abundance of talented guards on his roster, Fighting Illini men's basketball coach Brad Underwood may be tempted to utilize hockey's unique concept of line changes, shuttling in players to match-up the needs of any particular moment in time.

Led by pre-season All-American Ayo Dosunmu, Underwood's roster includes a bevy of capable backcourt candidates who possess a variety of physical attributes and skills. Components of size, quickness, speed, toughness, experience, shooting ability and defensive tenacity provide Underwood with a Rubik Cube's worth of combinations. Perhaps at no other time in University of Illinois basketball history has a coach had so many options.

That has been the joy of preseason so far, watching those guys go at it. It's so competitive. Two of Underwood's most intriguing choices for playing time come in the form of highly recruited freshmen Adam Miller and Andre Curbelo. The rookies' resumes are as impressive as any in recent memory. He earned Illinois Mr. Basketball honors this past season. A third-team All-American, he was considered to be the top-ranked player in the Empire State by Sports. The freshman roommates have become good friends and mutually admire the other's game.

Says Miller about Curbelo, "He lives up to the hype. Everything they say about him is true. His passing game is just as good as they say it is. He makes great reads. His jump shot is improving and he's getting stronger. With him being such a great shooter and my ability to drive and play with the screens and look for my shooters and my bigs, I think me and him are going to play a big role on the team this year.

Thanks to strength and conditioning coach Adam Fletcher, each player's physical frame is rapidly evolving. Miller tipped the scales at when he arrived and now weighs It's always been good vibes. It comes second nature to me because I like being in there. Great things happen in there just like great things happen in the gym.

Putting in the effort in the weight room has really changed my body. I'm not done yet. Nineteen-year-old Curbelo, who checked in at pounds when he got to Champaign-Urbana and now weighs , admits that he used to be "a really, really lazy guy back home".

The numbers are there and I'm really happy where I'm at right now. Being a little less strong than the older guys, I'm now able to bump into them with my chest. I'm in love with the weight room nowadays. For me, gaining weight is going to be really key because of how physical the Big Ten is. Both Illini freshmen say they've learned a lot since formal practices began on October 14th. Obviously, I'm a freshman, so I'm trying to learn.

As a point guard, I've got to be very observative. I'm trying to learn the little things. I'm think I'm doing pretty well, but I've got to continue to work hard and keep learning and listening. Curbelo says he's not only been a pupil of the head coach, but also of his son, Tyler Underwood.

He's always looking out for me. Same thing with Giorgi Bezhanishvili and Kofi Cockburn. But my relationship with Tyler is different. I'm always talking with him when I'm not on a drill or getting reps, what I'm doing wrong or what I can do better. They're taking us by the hand and walking us along so that we can be the best freshmen that we can be.

We know how each other works. We're going to push each other. The bond brothers have is 'I've got your back and you've got mine. He's going to teach me. It's good to have him helping me out. I always give thanks to Da'Monte. Without him, I wouldn't be as successful as I am today. Where they're at in terms of learning and understanding is way ahead of any group we've had. Fighting Illini basketball has produced some iconic guard units over the last years.

Here are this year's Illini guard group with some of the most memorable in its history:. Doug Dieken. Fifty years have passed since Doug Dieken last wore a Fighting Illini uniform, but time has not diminished the memories and honors he's garnered over the last half century. A charter member of the Streator Bulldogs Hall of Fame, Dieken inherited his physical attributes from parents Charles 6-feet-6 inches tall and Lorraine 6-feet tall. At , Doug figured he'd be a basketball player.

Then, we had our regular practice after school. Our hair couldn't be any longer than half an inch. And while Dieken was an all-star forward who received some small-school offers and an outstanding baseball pitcher, his greatest acclaim came on the gridiron as a sure-handed receiver. It certainly didn't hurt that his mom and dad were both UI graduates. Though not swift afoot, Dieken became a reliable wide receiver for second-year Illini coach Jim Valek, catching 21 passes for yards.

In his self-deprecating style, he recalled a game in when Illinois played at sixth-ranked Notre Dame. We got beat I'm still trying to figure out why we went for two. I guess we were pretty optimistic. Dieken earned team Most Valuable Player honors as a junior and senior, then exploded with 39 catches for yards in his final season, earning first-team All-Big Ten acclaim.

He faced a particularly difficult personal challenge as the Illini captain in when Illini boosters called for his coach to resign in mid-season. Assistant coach Ellis Rainsberger told me that Valek was going to be fired. So, after the game, we went into the locker room and I just asked the coaches if they'd all leave. I said, 'Guys, if Coach isn't going to be here tomorrow, I'm not going to be here.

Who's with me? Afterwards, a few of us went over to the coach's house. We drew up a letter and sent it to the Athletic Board. We told them that we thought it was unfair and that if he wasn't allowed to stay for the remainder of the season, we weren't going to play.

You might say, we had some leverage. Dieken played in a pair of post-season all-star games and it was there where he'd see he first appearance as an offensive lineman. I said, 'Any chance that I can try out for tight end? As a Browns rookie, Dieken initially played behind veteran Dick Schafrath. The Browns actually waived Dieken near the end of camp, hoping he'd clear so that they could put him on their practice squad.

He did eventually find a roster spot, playing on Cleveland's special teams. I did well enough that a couple of weeks they made me the starter. From that point on—Nov. For consecutive games—despite three knee operations, two broken thumbs, a broken hand, cracked ribs, and five concussions—the streak continued.

Dieken reluctantly retired following the campaign, but the team hired him as their radio network's color analyst the following season. Similar to his durability as a player, he's only missed broadcasting two Browns games, one in when his mother died his father died 10 days later and one when Cleveland played in London and Dieken was advised by a doctor not to make the lengthy flight because of a health issue. In , he began a Foundation to honor his mentally challenged younger brother, Paul.

I was passing out medals, so I couldn't keep track of him for the most part. Afterwards, we went to a root beer stand and the owner came out to say hello. My brother opened up his jacket and showed her these four ribbons that he had won in the Special Olympics. It was probably the proudest day I've ever had in athletics. The good Lord gave me some talent, but unfortunately Paul didn't get the same.

With the Browns in playoff contention, Dieken is cautiously optimistic that the team can break a year playoff-game drought. He was privileged to cover playoff teams during his first five seasons behind the microphone through '89 , but none since then. Dieken has described the performance of numerous all-star type players, but says that Joe Thomas—his replacement and the player that inherited his jersey No.

He walked over and said 'I hope you don't mind that I took your number. I don't mind, but I've got to tell you that I've used up all of the holding penalties. Isaiah Williams rambles for some of his record-setting yards against Rutgers. A redshirt freshman who wears jersey number one got his first start on Saturday, scored his first career touchdown, led his team to season victory number one, and, in the process, placed his name in the number one position on the University of Illinois's all-time single-game rushing list for a quarterback.

No doubt about it, Saturday's victory at Rutgers was one memorable day for quarterback Isaiah Williams. Thirty-one times the redshirt freshman from St. Louis's Trinity Catholic High School used his feet to rush for yards, including individual gainers of 26, 25, 22 and 19 yards. That broke A. Bush's previous high rushing mark by an Illini QB yards at Nebraska in Williams' most decisive drive of the afternoon came on the heels of Nate Hobbs' crucial interception with just more than a minute left in the game and the contest tied at Taking over at the Illinois yard line, Williams completed a pair of yard passes to teammate Casey Washington, and set the stage for James McCourt's game-winning yard field goal with just three seconds left.

Coach Lovie Smith wasn't at all surprised by Williams' yard rushing and yard passing performance. For me, today was about moving the football, whether it be run or pass. In an ideal world for a first-time quarterback, you don't want to be in a lot of tough passing situations. When you have a guy who can move the chains with his legs, that's just tough on a defense.

Coach Rod Smith and the offensive staff did a good job of getting Isaiah ready. He needed to make some plays and he did that all day. Even in the passing game, when we really needed to throw it, I thought he was able to do it. It's tough duty for a defense when you have a quarterback who can run like that.

Isaiah, for his first start, set a record today and we've had a few good ones who could run the football. And, did we mention that Williams, who'd been quarantined for more than two weeks due to COVID tracing protocol, learned only one day in advance that he'd be getting his big break?

By the Thursday practice, I wasn't sure, but I had a feeling that he would start because I was getting more one reps. I knew, for sure, on Friday. Coach Lovie told me. He called me up and said 'You're going to get your shot. You had a great camp, now it's time to show the world. Williams was quick to hand out credit to his teammates, including his offensive line and sophomore running back Chase Brown, who rushed for a career-best yards on just 17 carries.

We got a lot of explosive plays from him. He came up big. He's a dawg. I know he's got my back. It's a connection that we have. Williams also acknowledged his Illini defensive teammates that picked off three Rutgers passes. They were in crucial moments. They make the offense's job easier when they do that. When they get a turnover, we've got to get a first down. On third down, he went out there and got that third-down conversion a lot of times.

He helped the defense out a lot. He put the team on his back and just went to work. I saw an attitude out of our quarterback that I really want. He showed that, no matter what, he's going to keep battling. And I love that. Noting that senior starter Brandon Peters was due to come off the COVID list next week when the Illini travel to Nebraska, a reporter asked Lovie if the team now had a "quarterback situation".

A sly smile broke out on the veteran head coach's face. What Isaiah did today is give us a lot of options. The goal of every coaching staff is to put the guys and the team in the best place to be successful. We'll do that this week. It's been an eventful, albeit forgettable year for Americans everywhere, but the past 15 months have been doubly Earth-shaking for former Fighting Illini basketball star Meyers Leonard and his wife, Elle. Since July of when he was traded from the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers to the Miami Heat … to 49 consecutive starting assignments … to a debilitating injury … to his controversial decision concerning the National Anthem at the NBA's "bubble" … to seeing his Heat advance all the way to the NBA Finals … among numerous other events … Leonard's world has kept revolving and evolving.

And along for the ride has been Meyers' bride of five years, Elle pronounced EL-ee. They met each other through mutual acquaintances in the Fall of , as freshmen on the University of Illinois campus. On a desperation fourth try, Elle finally relented, suggesting that she and Meyers hang out at the Ubben Practice Facility.

Maybe I can impress her this time. I had no clue how competitive she was and that she could shoot a basketball. He challenged her to a shooting contest, going first and converting a "pretty solid" 22 of I knew at that point that I had a pretty special gal on my hands.

Then I think I won her heart a little bit when we talked afterwards about our hometowns, other interests, our friends … those kinds of things. I think she was able to see that I was a good guy with a good heart. An "official" first date didn't come until July of Four years later, they were married. The seven-foot center got nine starts in 69 games in his rookie season. Over the next six seasons, Leonard missed 56 games due to injury and illness, only rarely meeting the expectations he had set for himself.

He remembers his fifth year—the season—being particularly miserable. I was so distraught and in a bad place. There were ups and downs. Just pulling up to the arena, I got really bad anxiety. It was a negative place for me sometimes. Elle wrote about her personal heartache it in a poignant story she titled "A Dry Goodbye.

Sitting in that arena felt like absolute torture. Each opportunity seemed to be coupled with an injury or heartache. Each game, it was like I had a front-row season to watch my husband's paint on public display. Ironically, Meyers' best game with Portland came in his very last game as a Blazer—May 20, —scoring a career-best 30 points. The Moda Center crowd chanted his name. During that final game, I was crying tears of joy, hearing them chant his name, yet two years prior they were booing him and I couldn't go to games.

We experienced complete polar opposites. You have to go through hard times to appreciate the good. It would turn out to be a positive event for the Leonards. Throughout training camp, I was really playing well. Spoe Heat coach Erik Spoelstra had seen Bam Adebayo and I play on the same team and, although we were both centers of sorts, he's so dynamic that it made sense that I could guard the five, take on the physical demand every night, and let Bam road on the defensive end.

And on the other end, I spaced the floor and he played at the rim. It was like a perfect match. Leonard started the first 49 games of the season, averaging six points and five rebounds per game in about 20 minutes of action. Game 49 saw him score 18 points and grab 14 rebounds. Midway through Game 50, his season came to a screeching halt. It would have been better for me to just fracture my leg. I've only seen the video of it once. I just know what it felt like. Then the NBA announced we were going into the 'bubble' and that we were going to resume the season.

I loved my starting job so much and I just didn't want to say anything to anybody. You really need to have grace during this time because of the injury that you had. Just keep working with our staff and keep getting healthy. But you're going to be out of the starting lineup and we'll figure out the rotation later. That was really, really difficult.

The three things that were hardest in the bubble were having that conversation with Spoe. Second was being away from Elle and our dog Koko. It was hard. I'd never been away from my wife for that long. I count on her and our relationship and just being a normal human being. I didn't have that. I just kept going back to the same hotel room every day, knowing I was still not healthy and knowing that I wasn't going to play.

Lastly, of course, was the Anthem. Conversations in the Disney "bubble" was so much more than just basketball. Meyers and his Miami Heat teammates were but one of the 22 teams who had been shuttled to three hotel complexes inside Walt Disney World in early July of Not only had the players been dealing with the COVID pandemic the previous four months, they had witnessed tremendous social unrest due to the unnecessarily brutal deaths of African-Americans Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and others at the hands of police officers.

The Black Lives Matter movement dominated the news, especially for the roughly 80 percent of the players who were either black or of a mixed race. Said LeBron James to a reporter, "When you're black, it's not a movement. It's a lifestyle, a walk of life. Numerous other phrases were featured on the players uniforms.

The athletes and coaches were expected to gather around the center circle and take a knee. Everyone wondered what Leonard, the year-old seven-footer from Robinson, Ill. After Elle, I talked to my brother, Bailey. Leonard's older brother by 22 months is a U. Marine who served in Afghanistan. He's been in service since August of And then I had some other conversations with other members of the military. Let's just say that they are some of the baddest men to ever walk this planet, including Navy Seal Team Six operators who have been on some very classified missions and such.

He's a very, very mature individual, and he was very understanding. Coming from a guy who'd been with the Miami Heat for 17 straight years, who's African-American, and who has the utmost respect of anyone around the entire NBA, knowing that I had his support was big. Then I went to Jimmy Butler and he felt the same way. Basically, he said that if you don't stand for something, you stand for nothing.

You have to do what you feel is right. We've got your back. They said, 'Meyers, we know your heart. No doubt about it, we know who you are. If we didn't, we could have seen it coming a mile away. Some of my former teammates with Portland told me that you have to be ready for what could come if you stand. I can— per cent—feel a certain way every time I hear that song and every time I see that flag," Leonard continued. Talking about that, right now, the hair on my arms is standing up.

For me, personally, my main initiative off the floor is giving back to the military. There comes a certain real-life emotion and real-life experience that are tied to that. Though I come from a blue-collar, primarily white community, I can relate because of my basketball experience on the AAU circuit and then at the University of Illinois and, of course, around the NBA. I have heard stories that were difficult to listen to, but that I needed to hear.

They can relate to George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. That is their real-life experience and real-life emotion. I know, in my head, how difficult of a situation this was for me. But, in my heart, I knew that I needed to stand.

It was a very, very, very difficult three-to-four days. I was sleeping two-to-three hours per night because I was so conflicted in this decision. Ultimately, I did what my heart told me to do, and that was to stand. My teammates supported me and so did many on social media. But there were also people who didn't support that decision. But I'm okay with that because I know the man that I am and I know where my heart is.

A few hours before the game, Bailey texted Meyers: "Stay true to you. Stay the course. I love you. Your family loves you. Your community loves you. Said Haslem to reporters, "His being out there with us, as our brother, it's still showing strength, it's still showing unity, it's still showing that we're coming together for a common cause. People will question, 'Why isn't he doing it their way? He's supporting us. He's with us. And though Miami lost the championship to the Lakers , under the extreme circumstances it had to be considered a successful season.

They frequently share social media posts, including Elle's basketball trick shots. Are there luxuries to be able to play in the NBA? It would be a lie to say that there aren't. But we also just try to normalize ourselves because we're just normal people. It's important to us for people to feel comfortable enough to reach out to us and also for us to share our lives. Being open to people is just who we are. We have no shame in who we are. We feel we can relate and that people can relate to us.

It's that we know that we can impact lives. That's the main thing. There are two things that I won't ever let anyone question about me and that's my character and my work ethic. Off the floor, it's only about impacting people in a positive way.

That's it. He and Elle also have donated thousands of dollars to a fund that helps pay the fees Floridians leaving jails or prisons must settle before they can have their voting rights restored. Many of the Leonards' off-court hours are devoted to their business: Level Protein Bars. It all began during their fifth season in Portland. I've always been lean and able to eat whatever I wanted. We met our good buddy now—Dr. Philip Goglia—who has his doctorate from Duke in nutrition.

He told me to eliminate gluten, dairy and processed sugars. I cleaned up my diet, I was feeling better, sleeping better, recovering better, and performing better. However, the snacks that I was bringing home from the facility were protein bars weren't the best.

There's gluten in this one. She took it as a challenge. Elle, though a self-described non-cook, appointed herself to create a protein bar that both met her husband's dietary restrictions and his high-level taste restrictions. So, I got all of the base ingredients and began mixing them up in the bowl, determining the right ratio to make it form. I knew the proteins to include, I knew the ingredients-ish.

Also, I knew a little bit of the macro-profile I wanted. I knew that Meyers' downfall was caramel. Elle figured out a way to make coconut taste like caramel. Meyers began sharing Elle's bars with his friends. Honestly, I could not keep up with the consumption.

I was very hesitant because I didn't know what it took to make them shelf stable or the testing needed to get FDA approval. In Portland, there was a food innovation center downtown. There you could work with a food scientist in the kitchen and learn about it yourself. I believe in sweat equity. You have to put in your time. I just wanted to know my product backwards and forwards. I wanted to know my recipe, I wanted to know the why.

We were fortunate to learn and work with a food scientist.

BINARY OPTIONS TRADING APPS

The captain is often the most experienced player in the team, certainly the most tactically astute, and can possess any of the main skillsets as a batsman , a bowler or a wicket-keeper. Within the Laws, the captain has certain responsibilities in terms of nominating his players to the umpires before the match and ensuring that his players conduct themselves "within the spirit and traditions of the game as well as within the Laws".

The wicket-keeper sometimes called simply the "keeper" is a specialist fielder subject to various rules within the Laws about his equipment and demeanour. He is the only member of the fielding side who can effect a stumping and is the only one permitted to wear gloves and external leg guards.

Generally, a team will include five or six specialist batsmen and four or five specialist bowlers, plus the wicket-keeper. The game on the field is regulated by the two umpires , one of whom stands behind the wicket at the bowler's end, the other in a position called "square leg" which is about 15—20 metres away from the batsman on strike and in line with the popping crease on which he is taking guard.

The umpires have several responsibilities including adjudication on whether a ball has been correctly bowled i. The umpires are authorised to interrupt or even abandon a match due to circumstances likely to endanger the players, such as a damp pitch or deterioration of the light. Off the field in televised matches, there is usually a third umpire who can make decisions on certain incidents with the aid of video evidence.

The third umpire is mandatory under the playing conditions for Test and Limited Overs International matches played between two ICC full member countries. These matches also have a match referee whose job is to ensure that play is within the Laws and the spirit of the game. The match details, including runs and dismissals, are recorded by two official scorers , one representing each team.

The scorers are directed by the hand signals of an umpire see image, right. For example, the umpire raises a forefinger to signal that the batsman is out has been dismissed ; he raises both arms above his head if the batsman has hit the ball for six runs. The scorers are required by the Laws to record all runs scored, wickets taken and overs bowled; in practice, they also note significant amounts of additional data relating to the game.

A match's statistics are summarised on a scorecard. Prior to the popularisation of scorecards, most scoring was done by men sitting on vantage points cuttings notches on tally sticks and runs were originally called notches. Pratt of Sevenoaks and soon came into general use. Besides observing the Laws, cricketers must respect the "Spirit of Cricket," which is the "Preamble to the Laws," first published in the code, and updated in , and now opens with this statement: [].

The Preamble is a short statement that emphasises the "Positive behaviours that make cricket an exciting game that encourages leadership, friendship, and teamwork. The major responsibility for ensuring fair play is placed firmly on the captains, but extends to all players, umpires, teachers, coaches, and parents involved.

The umpires are the sole judges of fair and unfair play. They are required under the Laws to intervene in case of dangerous or unfair play or in cases of unacceptable conduct by a player. Previous versions of the Spirit identified actions that were deemed contrary for example, appealing knowing that the batsman is not out but all specifics are now covered in the Laws of Cricket, the relevant governing playing regulations and disciplinary codes, or left to the judgement of the umpires, captains, their clubs and governing bodies.

The terse expression of the Spirit of Cricket now avoids the diversity of cultural conventions that exist in the detail of sportsmanship — or its absence. Women's cricket was first recorded in Surrey in It was founded as the Imperial Cricket Conference in by representatives from England, Australia and South Africa, renamed the International Cricket Conference in and took up its current name in It also appoints the umpires and referees that officiate at all sanctioned Test matches, Limited Overs Internationals and Twenty20 Internationals.

Each member nation has a national cricket board which regulates cricket matches played in its country, selects the national squad, and organises home and away tours for the national team. The table below lists the ICC full members and their national cricket boards: []. Cricket is a multi-faceted sport with multiple formats that can effectively be divided into first-class cricket , limited overs cricket and, historically, single wicket cricket. The highest standard is Test cricket always written with a capital "T" which is in effect the international version of first-class cricket and is restricted to teams representing the twelve countries that are full members of the ICC see above.

Although the term "Test match" was not coined until much later, Test cricket is deemed to have begun with two matches between Australia and England in the —77 Australian season ; since , most Test series between England and Australia have been played for a trophy known as The Ashes. The term "first-class", in general usage, is applied to top-level domestic cricket. Test matches are played over five days and first-class over three to four days; in all of these matches, the teams are allotted two innings each and the draw is a valid result.

Limited overs cricket is always scheduled for completion in a single day, and the teams are allotted one innings each. There are two types: List A which normally allows fifty overs per team; and Twenty20 in which the teams have twenty overs each. List A was introduced in England in the season as a knockout cup contested by the first-class county clubs.

In , a national league competition was established. The concept was gradually introduced to the other leading cricket countries and the first limited overs international was played in In , the first Cricket World Cup took place in England. Twenty20 is a new variant of limited overs itself with the purpose being to complete the match within about three hours, usually in an evening session.

The first Twenty20 World Championship was held in Limited overs matches cannot be drawn, although a tie is possible and an unfinished match is a "no result". Single wicket was popular in the 18th and 19th centuries and its matches were generally considered top-class.

In this form, although each team may have from one to six players, there is only one batsman in at a time and he must face every delivery bowled while his innings lasts. Single wicket has rarely been played since limited overs cricket began.

Matches tended to have two innings per team like a full first-class one and they could end in a draw. Cricket is played at both the international and domestic level. There is one major international championship per format, and top-level domestic competitions mirror the three main international formats. There are now a number of T20 leagues , which have spawned a "T20 freelancer" phenomenon.

Most international matches are played as parts of 'tours', when one nation travels to another for a number of weeks or months, and plays a number of matches of various sorts against the host nation. Sometimes a perpetual trophy is awarded to the winner of the Test series, the most famous of which is The Ashes. A league competition for Test matches played as part of normal tours, the ICC World Test Championship , had been proposed several times, and its first instance began in First-class cricket in England is played for the most part by the 18 county clubs which contest the County Championship.

The concept of a champion county has existed since the 18th century but the official competition was not established until Australia established its national first-class championship in —93 when the Sheffield Shield was introduced. In Australia, the first-class teams represent the various states.

The world's earliest known cricket match was a village cricket meeting in Kent which has been deduced from a court case recording a "cricketing" of "the Weald and the Upland" versus "the Chalk Hill" at Chevening "about thirty years since" i. Inter-parish contests became popular in the first half of the 17th century and continued to develop through the 18th with the first local leagues being founded in the second half of the 19th.

At the grassroots level, local club cricket is essentially an amateur pastime for those involved but still usually involves teams playing in competitions at weekends or in the evening. Schools cricket , first known in southern England in the 17th century, has a similar scenario and both are widely played in the countries where cricket is popular. Cricket has had a broad impact on popular culture, both in the Commonwealth of Nations and elsewhere.

It has, for example, influenced the lexicon of these nations, especially the English language, with various phrases such as "that's not cricket" that's unfair , "had a good innings " lived a long life and " sticky wicket ". It originated as a term for difficult batting conditions in cricket, caused by a damp and soft pitch. James , is often named the best book on any sport ever written. In the visual arts, notable cricket paintings include Albert Chevallier Tayler 's Kent vs Lancashire at Canterbury and Russell Drysdale 's The Cricketers , which has been called "possibly the most famous Australian painting of the 20th century.

Cricket has close historical ties with Australian rules football and many players have competed at top levels in both sports. The Melbourne Football Club was founded the following year, and Wills and three other members codified the first laws of the game. In England, a number of association football clubs owe their origins to cricketers who sought to play football as a means of keeping fit during the winter months.

Derby County was founded as a branch of the Derbyshire County Cricket Club in ; [] Aston Villa and Everton were both founded by members of church cricket teams. In the late 19th century, a former cricketer, English-born Henry Chadwick of Brooklyn , New York, was credited with devising the baseball box score [] which he adapted from the cricket scorecard for reporting game events.

The first box score appeared in an issue of the Clipper. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Team sport played with bats and balls. This article is about the sport. For the insect, see Cricket insect. For other uses, see Cricket disambiguation and Cricketer disambiguation. Forms of cricket. History of cricket. History of cricket to History of cricket — Fast bowling. Seam Swing.

Spin bowling. Finger off spin left-arm orthodox Wrist leg spin left-arm unorthodox. Fast bowler deliveries. Spin bowler deliveries. Main article: History of cricket. Main article: History of cricket to Main article: Laws of Cricket. Main articles: Cricket field , Cricket pitch , Crease cricket , and Wicket. Main articles: Innings and Result cricket. Main article: Innings. Main article: Over cricket. Main article: Cricket clothing and equipment.

Main articles: Cricket bat and Cricket ball. Two types of cricket ball , both of the same size: i A used white ball. Red balls are used in Test cricket , first-class cricket and some other forms of cricket right. Main article: Fielding cricket. Main articles: Bowling cricket and Dismissal cricket. Main articles: Batting cricket , Run cricket , and Extra cricket. Main articles: Captain cricket and Wicket-keeper. Main articles: Umpire cricket , Scoring cricket , and Cricket statistics.

Main article: Women's cricket. Main article: International Cricket Council. Main article: Forms of cricket. Main article: International cricket. See also: Category:Domestic cricket competitions. Main article: List of current first-class cricket teams. Main articles: List of domestic Twenty20 cricket competitions and T10 leagues.

Main articles: Village cricket , Club cricket , and Schools cricket. Main page: Category:Cricket culture. See also: Cricket in fiction , Cricket in film and television , and Cricket poetry. Cricket portal. Many amateurs in first-class cricket were full-time players during the cricket season. Some of the game's greatest players, including W. Grace , held amateur status. Retrieved 5 September The Sports Historian, No. Archived from the original PDF on 27 November Retrieved 2 May Cricket: A Weekly Record of the Game.

Cardiff: ACS. Archived from the original on 8 September Retrieved 8 September London: Sporting Handbooks Ltd. Retrieved 3 July The Golden Age of Cricket: — Guildford: Lutterworth Press. Retrieved 9 March National Museum of Australia. Retrieved 30 December Events That Shaped Australia. New Holland. Wisden Cricketers' Almanack online. Retrieved 2 July BBC Sport. Laws of Cricket. Retrieved 4 July Retrieved 1 July Archived from the original on 3 July Archived from the original on 2 July Retrieved 5 January Archived from the original on 15 January Retrieved 7 July Lords the Home of Cricket.

Archived from the original PDF on 27 June Retrieved 4 May Guinness World Records. Retrieved 23 June Retrieved 6 July Retrieved 18 July Retrieved 12 October Archived from the original on 16 April Retrieved 10 September Cricket West Indies. International Cricket Council. Retrieved 9 February Dictionary of Cricket. Retrieved 17 October Retrieved 8 July Retrieved 9 September Marshall, Ian ed.

London: Headline. Dictionary of Jargon. John Benjamins Publishing. World English: From Aloha to Zed. Retrieved 12 March Urbane Revolutionary: C. James and the Struggle for a New Society. Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 31 August BBC News. Retrieved 11 June Bletchley Park Post Office. March Black Inc. Author of the first rule-book Chairman of rules committee in first nationwide baseball organization. By the Numbers: Computer technology has deepened fans' passion with the game's statistics.

Memories and Dreams Vol. National Baseball Hall of Fame official magazine. National Public Radio. Retrieved 8 March The New York Times. Retrieved 8 November Altham, H. A History of Cricket, Volume 1 to Ashley-Cooper, F. At the Sign of the Wicket: Cricket — London: Cricket Magazine. Barclays Swanton, E. Barclays World of Cricket.

London: Willow Books. Birley, Derek A Social History of English Cricket. London: Aurum Press Ltd. Bowen, Rowland Cricket: A History of its Growth and Development. Goldstein, Dan The Rough Guide to English Football — London: Rough Guides. Harte, Chris A History of Australian Cricket. London: Andre Deutsch. You really need to have grace during this time because of the injury that you had.

Just keep working with our staff and keep getting healthy. But you're going to be out of the starting lineup and we'll figure out the rotation later. That was really, really difficult. The three things that were hardest in the bubble were having that conversation with Spoe. Second was being away from Elle and our dog Koko. It was hard. I'd never been away from my wife for that long.

I count on her and our relationship and just being a normal human being. I didn't have that. I just kept going back to the same hotel room every day, knowing I was still not healthy and knowing that I wasn't going to play. Lastly, of course, was the Anthem. Conversations in the Disney "bubble" was so much more than just basketball. Meyers and his Miami Heat teammates were but one of the 22 teams who had been shuttled to three hotel complexes inside Walt Disney World in early July of Not only had the players been dealing with the COVID pandemic the previous four months, they had witnessed tremendous social unrest due to the unnecessarily brutal deaths of African-Americans Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and others at the hands of police officers.

The Black Lives Matter movement dominated the news, especially for the roughly 80 percent of the players who were either black or of a mixed race. Said LeBron James to a reporter, "When you're black, it's not a movement. It's a lifestyle, a walk of life. Numerous other phrases were featured on the players uniforms. The athletes and coaches were expected to gather around the center circle and take a knee. Everyone wondered what Leonard, the year-old seven-footer from Robinson, Ill.

After Elle, I talked to my brother, Bailey. Leonard's older brother by 22 months is a U. Marine who served in Afghanistan. He's been in service since August of And then I had some other conversations with other members of the military. Let's just say that they are some of the baddest men to ever walk this planet, including Navy Seal Team Six operators who have been on some very classified missions and such.

He's a very, very mature individual, and he was very understanding. Coming from a guy who'd been with the Miami Heat for 17 straight years, who's African-American, and who has the utmost respect of anyone around the entire NBA, knowing that I had his support was big. Then I went to Jimmy Butler and he felt the same way. Basically, he said that if you don't stand for something, you stand for nothing.

You have to do what you feel is right. We've got your back. They said, 'Meyers, we know your heart. No doubt about it, we know who you are. If we didn't, we could have seen it coming a mile away. Some of my former teammates with Portland told me that you have to be ready for what could come if you stand. I can— per cent—feel a certain way every time I hear that song and every time I see that flag," Leonard continued. Talking about that, right now, the hair on my arms is standing up.

For me, personally, my main initiative off the floor is giving back to the military. There comes a certain real-life emotion and real-life experience that are tied to that. Though I come from a blue-collar, primarily white community, I can relate because of my basketball experience on the AAU circuit and then at the University of Illinois and, of course, around the NBA.

I have heard stories that were difficult to listen to, but that I needed to hear. They can relate to George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. That is their real-life experience and real-life emotion. I know, in my head, how difficult of a situation this was for me. But, in my heart, I knew that I needed to stand.

It was a very, very, very difficult three-to-four days. I was sleeping two-to-three hours per night because I was so conflicted in this decision. Ultimately, I did what my heart told me to do, and that was to stand. My teammates supported me and so did many on social media. But there were also people who didn't support that decision.

But I'm okay with that because I know the man that I am and I know where my heart is. A few hours before the game, Bailey texted Meyers: "Stay true to you. Stay the course. I love you. Your family loves you. Your community loves you. Said Haslem to reporters, "His being out there with us, as our brother, it's still showing strength, it's still showing unity, it's still showing that we're coming together for a common cause.

People will question, 'Why isn't he doing it their way? He's supporting us. He's with us. And though Miami lost the championship to the Lakers , under the extreme circumstances it had to be considered a successful season.

They frequently share social media posts, including Elle's basketball trick shots. Are there luxuries to be able to play in the NBA? It would be a lie to say that there aren't. But we also just try to normalize ourselves because we're just normal people. It's important to us for people to feel comfortable enough to reach out to us and also for us to share our lives. Being open to people is just who we are. We have no shame in who we are.

We feel we can relate and that people can relate to us. It's that we know that we can impact lives. That's the main thing. There are two things that I won't ever let anyone question about me and that's my character and my work ethic. Off the floor, it's only about impacting people in a positive way. That's it. He and Elle also have donated thousands of dollars to a fund that helps pay the fees Floridians leaving jails or prisons must settle before they can have their voting rights restored.

Many of the Leonards' off-court hours are devoted to their business: Level Protein Bars. It all began during their fifth season in Portland. I've always been lean and able to eat whatever I wanted. We met our good buddy now—Dr. Philip Goglia—who has his doctorate from Duke in nutrition.

He told me to eliminate gluten, dairy and processed sugars. I cleaned up my diet, I was feeling better, sleeping better, recovering better, and performing better. However, the snacks that I was bringing home from the facility were protein bars weren't the best. There's gluten in this one. She took it as a challenge. Elle, though a self-described non-cook, appointed herself to create a protein bar that both met her husband's dietary restrictions and his high-level taste restrictions.

So, I got all of the base ingredients and began mixing them up in the bowl, determining the right ratio to make it form. I knew the proteins to include, I knew the ingredients-ish. Also, I knew a little bit of the macro-profile I wanted. I knew that Meyers' downfall was caramel. Elle figured out a way to make coconut taste like caramel. Meyers began sharing Elle's bars with his friends. Honestly, I could not keep up with the consumption. I was very hesitant because I didn't know what it took to make them shelf stable or the testing needed to get FDA approval.

In Portland, there was a food innovation center downtown. There you could work with a food scientist in the kitchen and learn about it yourself. I believe in sweat equity. You have to put in your time. I just wanted to know my product backwards and forwards. I wanted to know my recipe, I wanted to know the why. We were fortunate to learn and work with a food scientist. Their minimums are extreme and their availability is scarce," Elle said.

Once of the manufacturers backed out after six months of working together. One email set us back six months. As a new business, you just have to roll with the punches. When the Leonards launched their product in October of , it was a smashing success. Since then, Elle said the business is "like you're on a spinning ride at the carnival. We're also considering some smaller retailers. I'm extremely excited for And while he awaits his next professional stop, Meyers also intends to keep a close eye on his alma mater's team.

The combination of proven players like Ayo Dosunmu and Kofi Cockburn and the young guns who are coming in this year makes this team incredibly talented. You get a sense about a team, even prior to a season This feels like a year when the Fighting Illini can really make a deep tournament run. Craig Virgin and his first paid of Nike shoes. In part two of this series about Nike's year association with the University of Illinois, Kit Morris helps tells Nike's history, how the company's famed swoosh design was created, and its dealings with an Illini legend more than two decades before his official association with the University of Illinois.

What may sound like a tease for an investigative report on "60 Minutes" is actually part of the legend that culminated with the eventual collaboration 25 years ago between Nike and University of Illinois athletics. At the time, Bowerman was the head track and field coach at the University of Oregon, while Knight was an Oregon and Stanford grad who was beginning his career in accounting and business. Bowerman's ultimate goal for BRS was to design and manufacture his own shoes, and distribute the product under his own brand.

He had first begun tinkering with custom fit running shoes in the s, combining a soft sponge midsole that would absorb road shot in the ball and heel area with a high-density outer sole that would provide extra miles of wear. Bowerman's "Tiger Cortez" shoes debuted in and became a big seller. It would be just the first of his several celebrated shoe creations. In the Spring of , it came the time to name a brand for the entire line of shoes.

Knight preferred name the brand "Dimension Six. Yet another administrator urged that the name should have no more than two syllables and at least one exotic letter or sound in them with a Z, X or K. Facing a factory deadline to put a name on the shoe box, Knight grudgingly went with the four-letter word that none of the shoes' initial purchasers knew exactly how to pronounce. The box also sported a quirky yet unique logo that Bowerman and Knight hoped consumers would easily remember.

Kit Morris, Nike's Director of College Sports Marketing and UI's primary representative for most of the last 25 years, told the story of how the company's famed "swoosh" was born. I understand that she was trying to save up money for a prom dress at the time. The wing design was a notion of Nike, the goddess of winged victory.

There's a statue in the louvre that embodies that, that we use as a model. When Phil first saw the design, he said to Carolyn, 'Well, I don't love it, but maybe it will grow on me. Knight gave Carolyn somewhere around a thousand shares or so of Nike stock. Ten years or so ago, Phil told me that she had never sold a share of it.

As for the "asterisk" part of the story—you know, that tiny star-shaped symbol that's often used to call attention to a footnote? Explains Morris, "The asterisk next to the word 'athlete' pertains to a statement by Bill Bowerman. Bill believed that if you have a body, you're an athlete. Curiously, one of the very first high-profile athletes to wear Nike shoes—and the very first to wear Nike spikes in international competition—was an Illini … though not at the time.

Louis—was invited to compete for a U. On Virgin's feet that day were handmade spikes, provided to him by Nike's first promotions man, Geoff Hollister. Sporting green soles, the white nylon uppers were adorned with a black swoosh mark. A photographer at that meet corroborated the story further by snapping a shot of Virgin leading two Russian runners. That photo provided the scene for Nike's first-ever poster, distributed by the company a month later.

Four years later, at the U. Louis Post-Dispatch. Bowerman asked if his parents were present. Upon learning they weren't, Bowerman said, 'Come with me. I'll treat you to a phone call. Call them and tell them you made the Olympic team. It was an act of kindness Craig never forgot. Illini O-Line. From Chicago and Peoria … Mount Prospect, Hinsdale and Rockford … the edition of Fighting Illini football's starting offensive line is an exclusively homegrown bunch.

Three seniors, a junior and a sophomore—all products from the State of Illinois—got the starting nod Friday night from head coach Lovie Smith and offensive coordinator Rod Smith. It's the first time since that the orange and blue started an all-Illinois O-line.

Illinois high school produce excellent football players. Echoed Rod Smith, "With all five of them from Illinois, that's something a little unique for us. Senior right tackle Alex Palczewski exudes an especially distinct level of state pride. It shows that this school really cares about our in-state ties.

There are dudes from everywhere else, but this starting five is from Illinois. That just means a lot, that we're homegrown. I've said it a bunch before. That definitely drives me. You want to represent your state well. The fact that you're able to have your family and everyone come to games adds to it, for sure. When asked what makes his starters special, McClain didn't hesitate at all.

I tell them all the time that they make my job fun because I'm around good people. You know what you're going to get on a daily basis, you know what kind of work ethic you're going to get, and you know what kind of leadership you're going to get.

When you incorporate all of that, that's what makes them good players. There are a lot of players throughout the country that have talent, but they never reach the highest level they can be as players because those other parts aren't in place. Character, work ethic, leadership.

That's what really separates these guys. McClain says that his upperclassmen serve as unofficial assistant coaches for Illinois' younger players. They really help bring the young kids along in a good way. I'll be out there coaching and I'll hear them in the back coaching up the young ones and mentoring them in the right way.

Obviously, they were both from Illinois. They showed us that nothing is guaranteed. The guy that teammates call "Palcho" says wide receiver and good friend Mikey Dudek gave him especially good advice. He told me to stop smiling so much. Every time I saw him I would have to flick him off and say some bad words … something along those lines. Nicky, Christian and Mikey really helped develop me into who I am today. We learned a lot from him, on and off the field.

We'd watch him every day and kind of just follow him around and do the same things that he did. From a mentality side, he brought a lot to the game that we still carry with us … toughness and grit. He's the all-around package.

He's made himself into a really good football player by the way he carries himself. He often comes to me after practice and says 'Coach, can you work with me on this? None of us ever are, but not many of us acknowledge that. He wants to perfect his fundamentals and technique, and he wants to take that next step.

Palco is a great leader for this entire football program. I call him the quarterback of our O-line. He's very intelligent and puts us on the right guys up front. He's very athletic, he tough, he's hard-nosed and he's a phenomenal leader. He's everything you want in a center, especially in our system.

Doug brings everything to the table. If we were going to write up what we want for a center in our offense, he would definitely be that. Vederian is playing his best football right now. Honestly, he's on a different level. He's starting to realize that his ceiling is really, really high. That light has come on for him, knowing that he can be as good as he wants to be.

I've always been on him about consistency with his fundamentals. He's very, very athletic. I've told him that if he learns to be consistent, he's going to be pretty special. He's just a different player right now. He's really zoned in. He used to be kind of a quiet guy, but he's really standing out now as a vocal leader.

What makes him unique is that he's got the athleticism and flexibility to go with that strength. I talk to Kendrick about playing with leverage and body control. He's really bought into that and it's taken his game to the next level. In our system, you've got to be able to move and he's done a good job of accomplishing that.

Verdis has really taken to the coaching and the fundamentals, and toward being a more physical player. Red Grange's shoes left are a bit different than those used by Illini running backs. The University of Illinois football team's schedule is comprised entirely of Big Ten opponents.

Today, we recall UI's season, the last time the Fighting Illini only played conference foes. Though World War I was in the rearview mirror, American life in seemed anything but peaceful or secure. The deadly Spanish Flu pandemic continued from the previous year with a third brutal wave in the Spring, bringing America's death toll to more than , A weeklong race riot in July on the south side of Chicago headlined more than 25 civil disturbances across the country.

In September, thousands of steel workers went on what would ultimately become to be a four-month strike. And in early October, President Woodrow Wilson suffered a massive stroke, leaving him incapacitated for the rest of his term. About the only positive news of was Congress's approval in June of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote.

At the University of Illinois, bolstered by a number of returning war veterans, 3, students enrolled for Fall term classes under acting President David Kinley. On the north side of campus at legendary Illinois Field, Coach Bob Zuppke's seventh Fighting Illini football team prepared to defend its conference title. Due to the return of talented veterans from overseas battle and the addition of several gifted newcomers, Zup was cautiously optimistic that this could be one of his most successful clubs.

Among the 19 men who would eventually letter that season, 11 were returning veterans from the champs. Still, it would be a bumpy road ahead, particularly because the schedule was comprised entirely of Western Conference Big Ten opponents. UI's heftier Illini line, featuring center John Depler, guard Applegran and tackle Milt Olander, consistently opened holes for junior halfback Ralph Fletcher who scored twice in Illinois's victory.

Game two saw Zuppke's troops host a talented Iowa squad the following week, a team that starred the fabulous Duke Slater and one that had blanked Nebraska in week one. An eager Illinois student body made up more than half of the 6, fans that turned out that day. In unheard of double duty, former University of Chicago football star Walter Eckersall, who refereed the Illini-Hawkeye battle, also compiled the game story for the Chicago Tribune.

Wrote Eckersall in his lede, "Resurrection of the onside kick, one of the most dangerous plays in football, gave Illinois a victory over Iowa today on Illinois Field, 9 to 7, in one of the cleanest and hardest fought contests ever played on the historic gridiron.

The ball at the time was on the Hawkeyes' yard line. Illinois's Albert Mohr had been instructed to kick high. On a set signal, Lawrence Walquist, the Illini halfback, started for his goal. At the same instant Mohr signaled for the ball. As the kicker stepped forward and Walquist backward, the Illinois back was behind the oval when it was kicked. Quarterback Bill Kelly of Iowa permitted the ball to strike the ground and Walquist picked it up as it was bounding and ran over the goal line.

The Hawkeyes made no efforts to stop him because they thought he was an offside player and that the ball would go to Iowa at the point where it was touched by Illinois. The tables were surprisingly turned on Zup's Illini in game three when undefeated Wisconsin came from 10 points behind to win the game in the fourth quarter, It would turn out to be the only time all year that Illinois would taste defeat.

Chicago hadn't been challenged in its first three games, outscoring Great Lakes, Purdue and Northwestern by a cumulative score of Sixteen thousand fans packed the stands at Illinois Field and thrilled to the almost flawless play by their favorites.

Ralph Fletcher, with brother Bob holding, gave Illinois a lead with a yard field goal in the second quarter, then scored a touchdown in the third period to provide UI with its final margin. The scene shifted to Minnesota's Northrop Field for game five and, for most of three quarters, the record crowd of 25, roared.

After a Gopher touchdown midway through the third period gave the hosts a lead, Zup's troops finally responded with a drive of their own. A yard pass play from Walquist to sophomore receiver Chuck Carney started the flurry. Thirty-two more yards were gobbled up when Walquist connected with Bob Fletcher. Ralph added a yard field goal in the fourth quarter, allowing the Illini to survive with a victory. Coach Fielding Yost's mighty Michigan Wolverines provided Illinois with its sixth test, traveling to Urbana for the first time in 14 years.

However, on this particular November afternoon, the Illini totally outclassed the boys from Ann Arbor. Wrote one article, "If Zuppke had not been merciful and kept in his regulars, there is no telling what the score would have been. That victory set up a season-ending showdown in Columbus between the once-beaten Illini and unbeaten Ohio State. OSU ticket officials estimated that it could have sold in excess of 55, tickets, 40, more than the capacity of Ohio Field.

Not only had the Buckeyes won every one of their six games, only one field goal had kept them from being perfect defensively. In succession, OSU had shut out Ohio Wesleyan , Cincinnati and Kentucky , yielded but three points in a point victory at Michigan, then blanked Purdue and Wisconsin What made matters worse for Illinois was that, due to injuries, Zuppke was minus four of his regulars.

Still, Buckeye coach John Wilce implored his team that victory would result only if it could mount a nearly perfect effort. No Ohio State team has ever faced a harder battle. Illinois got on the scoreboard on its fourth offensive possession when Sternaman rambled 50 yards for a touchdown, lifting UI to a halftime advantage. Trailing by a single point and with only two minutes remaining, Zuppke's club mounted one final drive from its own yard line.

He instructed his players to begin airing the football, consequently gaining chunks of 16, 24 and 14 yards. With the clock running and only seconds left, Zup desperately called on Bob Fletcher to sub-in for injured brother Ralph and attempt his first-ever field goal. The kick successfully sailed through from 30 yards and Illinois escaped with a victory and the Big Ten championship. Days later, several media organizations awarded the Illini with the mythical national title.

I looked at the guy and said 'Hey, I'll sell you my whole suit for that much. It's a healthy "marriage", the two parties say, and one they expect to last well beyond the 25 years they'll celebrate this year. It's really been an uplifting relationship for us through the years. This has been something that has been relationship driven. It's been a labor of love for us. Though the original deal wasn't officially finalized until several months later, the collaboration between Illini and Nike initially began in with then-director Ron Guenther and his assistants, Bill Yonan and Warren Hood.

Hood, UI's current Deputy Director of Athletics, recalled the details of those early meetings a quarter of a century ago. In the s, the DIA, its coaches and the equipment staff dealt with a plethora of different companies, according to then equipment manager Andy Dixon. When he first joined Marion Brownfield's crew as an assistant in , Dixon said that Illini teams inventoried a wide variety of different brands on their shelves.

There were Asics shoes for some, Pumas and adidas for others, Converse for yet another. They were asked not to, but they did anyway. So every Monday morning, ol' Andy got a phone call from the athletic director's office. Finally, then A. Neale Stoner swung a deal for the football and basketball teams to exclusively wear Converse shoes.

That continued through the balance of White's time at Illinois, through all of the John Mackovic era, and for a tiny portion of Lou Tepper's stint as head coach. So, in the Spring of , Nike made its pitch and the Illini football team began using football shoes featuring the famous "swoosh" logo for the '92 season. They continued to wear Champion uniforms through the season. On May 31, , following weeks of negotiations, the Chicago Tribune announced that Illinois and Nike had agreed in principle to a multimillion-dollar deal that covered the entire Illini sports program, placing the school among about a dozen universities—including Michigan, Florida State, Southern California and Penn State—that had struck such far-reaching arrangements.

This year marks Raven's 25th season of employment with the DIA. I got a crash course from Johnny B Birdsell on how to operate a sewing machine. We jumped into the deep end and got right to it. Finally, on Dec. It gave Nike the exclusive right to sell authentic Fighting Illini apparel and to market itself as the school's exclusive supplier.

Marty Kaufmann, Senior Associate Director of Athletics for External Relations, was the primary negotiator for a third year contract that was signed with Nike in December of However, the intrinsic value of being associated with the Nike brand is much greater than the actual compensation. Because of Nike's loyalty to us and our loyalty to them, we are able to fund everything in terms of apparel and footwear needs.

When COVID first impacted America's collective conscience last March, little was known about how it would come to affect the future of intercollegiate athletics, its student-athletes, and the dedicated men and women who directly support it.

Financially, it decimated the athletic department budgets, causing athletic directors to ponder seismic changes. The challenges ahead were going to require tough decisions, sacrifice and selflessness from an Athletics staff of more than Many in the industry have suffered furloughs and massive layoffs. Whitman admits that it wasn't an easy request. Our message was that if we can share this challenge relatively evenly across a certain subset of our group, then no one person has to bear an inordinate portion of that.

That really seemed to resonate with people. However, that was just the beginning of the selfless sacrifice that has taken place over the past six months. It is no secret that the University of Illinois has undertaken ambitious testing and contract tracing protocols in order to maintain a robust campus experience for the 50,plus student body.

When bodies were needed to develop and execute the plans, Athletics was the first in line to assist. He now helps to oversee the 17 sites across campus and the staff members including 40 DIA colleagues who are involved with administering the undertaking. Approximately 10, individuals per day, more than 60, per week, go through the testing process. Students are required to test twice weekly, while UI faculty and staff are asked to do so once a week. They then deposit their tube into a bin at the check-out station, then they're on their way.

All of this happens within a matter of two minutes or less. The testing operation has been the one thing that's allowed our campus to re-open. Because of Acton's expertise in coordinating large-scale events, such as Illini football and basketball games, he was recruited by university officials to help oversee and schedule DIA staffers who are in supervisory roles with the campus's Wellness Support Associates WSA.

This group ensures those who are entering campus buildings have been tested and are cleared for access. It has been very applicable to our current campus climate. And while Whitman is immensely proud of the sacrifices and efforts that his staff members have made for the betterment of campus, it was equally important to take care of Illini student-athletes. The pandemic has drastically changed the roles that the Illinois sports medicine and nutrition staff have taken on.

Director of Sports Nutrition Brittany Perry now has the massive responsibility of feeding more than varsity athletes in dramatically different ways, due to state-imposed social distancing. When Illini athletes began returning to Champaign-Urbana in June to begin their training regimen, she had to make sure that they were getting three well-balanced, nutritious meals per day, plus hydration, supplements, and snacks.

With the valuable assistance of local caterer Dish Passionate Cuisine, directed by head chef Colleen Hatton, Perry and her nutrition staff took daily delivery of anywhere from to meal bags, which they stored overnight at the Varsity Room's walk-in refrigerator. Athletes who were not isolated in quarantine came to the south end of Memorial Stadium to pick up their meals, but for athletes that were isolated in local hotels and apartments, delivery of the individual meals traveled to them.

We'd give them the addresses they needed to be delivered to and off they went. Really, the entire athletic department has pitched in with this. Staff members are also serving as door attendants at four major facilities to take wellness vitals — temperature and pulse ox — for everyone entering the building, freeing up athletic trainers to concentrate on caring for the student-athletes.

There isn't one faction of the department that hasn't been forced to adapt and redefine their value to the DIA. Whitman is convinced that several "silver linings" have revealed themselves during this challenging period. Difficult circumstances draw folks close and it forms a unique bond unlike anything I've seen in other elements of business or society.

We've really had to differentiate between what's a true need and what's a want. And when the Illini football team kicks off against Wisconsin on Oct. Certainly, what's happened over the last seven months isn't something that we ever would have wished for, but as anything else I think you have to find the good in the face of the bad. I feel like our people here—those student-athletes and staff members—have stepped up and done that.

National Hispanic Heritage Month from Sept. This is the third in a series of articles about current Fighting Illini staff members of Hispanic descent. He played well and the offers started rolling in … Georgia, LSU and others. However, Dalmagro faced a couple of underlying problems. He'd been earning a small bit of money as a professional, a no-no in those days according to NCAA rules and regulations.

Consequently, eligibility-wise, he'd be forced to sit out his first year. I would gather my thoughts and translate it to English. In Spanish, you sometimes say things the opposite way, so it was confusing. I was thrown into the lion's den. But that made me better because I had no other choice than to learn quicker than I would back home. Nothing can compare to going to a place where you want to learn the language.

English was the only thing I read or heard or saw, so that helped me a ton. What helped me the most was just speaking with my teammates. It was hard, but it was also fun. I've always enjoyed a challenge. You can't be afraid to make mistakes, otherwise you would never speak it. He was the national champ at No.

Like many other Argentinians, the Dalmagro family's roots are of European descent. His mother's family came to South America from Spain, while his father's family migrated from Italy. In fact, the original spelling of his surname was Dal Magro. His maternal grandfather established a successful Napa Valley-like vineyard near the Andes Mountains in Mendoza.

That's where young German and his family lived for many years. By the age of nine, Dalmagro was obsessed with sports, participating not only in tennis, but also in soccer, swimming, basketball and rugby. His parents now live in Paraguay, where his dad, Alberto Dalmagro, continues to serve as a coach. He eventually moved on to Lincoln, Nebraska where he helped the Nebraska Cornhuskers earn a top ranking each of the five years he was there, including No.

Dalmagro became Evan Clark's associate head coach at the University of Illinois in July of and successful results followed immediately. The Illini roster features a pair of international players in Japanese star Asuka Kawai and India's Shivani Ingle, and Dalmagro is an especially supportive mentor to them both.

That usually makes them feel a little more secure and safe and helps them navigate through their ups and downs. Sometimes our international students have much better grades that American-born students. Our academic advisors say that that success comes because of their discipline. They don't want to fail. They want to take advantage of their opportunity and do their very best. Dalmagro, a member of the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics' diversity and inclusivity committee, explained why it's important to know about Hispanic culture.

It's deep in the roots of the United States. I always say that it's better to be more diverse than to be close minded. It's always good to learn about other cultures, other foods, other languages and other behaviors. It's always best to be open-minded. Sometimes, when you're used to only one thing, that's what you like and what you do and what you say and how you think. But the more you're around other people around the world, it opens up your mind and your thoughts and your heart.

I think that's how you become more tolerant, more compassionate, more well-rounded. It takes acceptance to know what other people are about. Kyle Hudson. Considering the COVID pandemic and the resulting impacts of unemployment and forced social distancing, most people would agree that the calendar year has been less than ideal. However,Fighting Illini baseball and football alumnus Kyle Hudson would beg to differ a bit, particularly when it concerns his current employer, the Cleveland Indians.

Since receiving a life-changing call on Valentine's Day from Indians President Chris Antonetti and general manager Mike Chernoff that offered him the opportunity to become a Major League coaching assistant, Hudson has played a major role in helping Cleveland secure a spot in the playoffs. His team won nine of its last 11 games during the regular season and finished just one game behind American League Central Division champ Minnesota.

The Indians will open baseball's team playoffs on Tuesday Sept. Wild Card Series at Progressive Field. Wearing Indians jersey No. And with manager Terry Francona being sidelined with an illness for most of the season, the former Mattoon Green Wave star's job description has been expanded even beyond his additional role as an advance scout.

They just wanted to ease some of that pressure off him pregame and in-game. What a great opportunity it is for me to learn from the outstanding staff that we have here … a Hall of Fame manager and all the experience with Millsy, Sandy Alomar Jr. I'm so blessed to be in this position. Though Francona has been largely absent in , Hudson has taken advantage of the few personal opportunities he's had with his manager.

I just want to pick that guy's brain. I want to know everything he knows. I want to hear his stories, I want to hear his experiences, I want to hear everything he says about the game. His ability to develop a culture within a team and an organization is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. The players love playing for him.

Hudson learned many tricks of the coaching trade during his time as an Illini football player under then head coach Ron Zook and in baseball under Dan Hartleb. We practiced one way and that was hard all the time. He helped develop me as a person. In , he gave me an opportunity to come back and start my coaching career.

That was just an unbelievable opportunity. I don't know that you can have a better face of a program than Coach Hartleb because of the way he's done it. I have so much respect for the way he's run that program and what he does for the university and in the community. When I left, I told him 'I want to be like you. Hudson, who had a game big league career with the Baltimore Orioles in , feels as though he has a unique bond with Illini Hall of Famer Lou Boudreau, a hero with the Indians in the s, '40s and '50s.

I always talk about Lou Boudreau and how he's an Illini. Kevin doesn't know much about Lou because it was a long time ago. On my walk from my apartment to the stadium, I pass by his statue. Maybe the first or second day I walked by it, I snapped a picture and sent it to Coach Hartleb.

My message said 'What a small world it is that I get to walk by this statue every single day. Every time I walk out into the stadium, I see his name plastered on the upper deck. It's pretty neat. With the football season now just a few weeks away from beginning, Hudson is anxious to check out Coach Lovie Smith's Fighting Illini.

Hudson also has a keen interest in Illinois's recently announced plans to enhance its baseball facilities. A lot of recruiting is based off the facilities. That's what kids and parents are looking at. What the current coaching staff has done for the baseball team without those facilities is an amazing thing. That speaks volumes to what that staff has done. I'm excited for them to get the kind of facility that they deserve.

When the baseball season ends, hopefully not too soon, Hudson will be eager to rejoin his wife, Shaela, and their month-old daughter, Hadley, at their home in Peoria. Marcos Asse. This is the first in a series of articles about current Fighting Illini staff members of Hispanic descent. Suffice it to say that it's a wee bit more complicated than that. His family, persecuted in its homeland, fled to Spain, then ultimately to Cuba when Carlos was a young boy.

His grandmother—Ana Fernandez Quiles, known to Marcos as "Abuela Anita" until her death at age this past January—and her family, originally of Spanish descent, also took flight to the Caribbean Island. The family operated a general store in Jibacoa hee-ba-coa , a two-hour car ride from Havana. When Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro came into power in , the country was converted into a one-party, socialist state under Communist Party rule. In , the Castro's government seized control of Marcos' grandparents' store.

The family decided to flee to the United States, but just three days before their plane was to depart they were robbed of most of the money they had saved. Now, only enough remained for two family members to escape: Marcos' then year-old father and his then year-old uncle. The teenagers stayed for a short time with a cousin in Miami, but soon found jobs as busboys at a famous Jewish delicatessen called Wolfie's.

Within a few months, Marcos' dad, who spoke very little English, enrolled in what amounted to adult high school classes at Miami Dade Community College. Described by Marcos as a "straight A student", Carlos eventually transferred to the University of Florida in Gainesville to pursue a degree in architecture. And while Carlos was a brilliant scholar, his first love was theater. Says Marcos, "Dad credits his passion for movies, theater, and plays to first seeing the animated Disney film 'Snow White' as a kid back in Cuba.

Just shy of beginning work on his architecture thesis at UF, Carlos got a job in downtown Gainesville as a set designer at the Hippodrome State Theater. Referred to by city residents as "the Hipp", the theater served not only as an entertainment center, but also provided classes, camps, in-school programs and workshops for all ages. It was there where Carlos' eye was caught by an attractive brunette named Marilyn Wall, one of the Hippodrome's six founding members.

Her specialties were make-up and costume design. Born in Iowa, Marilyn's father was a career military pilot, so the "Navy brat" lived all over the world, including a year-and-a-half in Guantanamo, Cuba at the same time her future husband was in Jibacoa. Another understatement would be to describe his parents' success at their professions.

Among their many awards, they've collectively won three Emmy awards, two by Carlos for his set design on a puppets show called "Salsa" and one by Marilyn for costume design. As pre-teens, the Hippodrome became a second home for Marcos, his older brother Juan-Carlos—known as "Carly"—and his younger brother, Miguel.

My brothers and I were in more plays than you can imagine. We'd always be in plays and shows, but our parents never pushed us. It was kind of like 'Do you want to hang here and do nothing or do you want to be in the play? Then, the Asse boys discovered sports. Marcos was 11 when he started playing tennis. Almost literally, he never quit playing. My parents would drop us both off at the courts and we would just play all day long.

I remember that I just wanted to beat my older brother … that's all! He beat me the first four years of our tennis life. Marcos' younger brother, Miguel, also served as a manager for the Gators squad. Growing up in Florida was huge; there were tournaments all over the state in the '90s. I would not have survived in today's tennis world.

Tennis has become a rich man's game. Tennis just kind of caught us at the right time. Marcos took a long route towards earning his way onto the University of Florida tennis team. I'd hang out on the court and in the locker room; nothing that would be legal now. But because I was just a fun, happy kid, they didn't mind us hanging around.

Marcos wrote a letter to one of the coaches and found out about walk-on tryouts. The coach let me work out with the team during the summer, then gave me a two-week tryout period. At the end of the two weeks, Marcos received good news. So I go into the trailer where Lee Corso was in there with my mom. I was like, 'Mom, I made it! So Lee Corso is there and he's exactly like who you see on TV.

So it's me, my mom and Lee Corso all jumping up and down and hugging each other. Marcos eventually became a key contributor and was a member of Florida's SEC championship team, posting 21 wins in doubles. He joined Brad Dancer's Fighting Illini staff for the season and has experienced nothing but success in Champaign-Urbana. Illinois has earned 11 consecutive NCAA berths, including six Sweet Sixteen appearances and one trip to the national quarterfinals.

That was one of the best college matches I've ever been a part of, either as a player or a coach. On paper, against Ohio State in the finals for the Big Ten title, we were completely looked to be toast. Everyone thought we had no chance, but we ended up winning. Asse is super enthused about the Illini as well. Our senior leadership with Vuk Budic and Noe Khlif, they're two of the most role model guys that you'd want your daughter to bring home.

Alex Brown is one of the most talented players in the country, too. And then we've got some new guys who are really going to be fun players to watch. Asse says it's "fantastic" to be of Hispanic heritage and working in intercollegiate athletics. I've never felt discriminated against. For me, it's always been a celebration. Asse is married to fellow Florida graduate Nikki. The couple has two daughters, Stella and Ana.

Catching up on Marcos' family. His father is now 77 years old and just took a new job as artistic director of the Bay Street Players in Eustis, Fla. His mother will soon turn 70 and lives fulltime with brother Carly in Gainesville, Fla. Carly runs a personal training studio and is a documentarian, including films "Unsupersize Me" and "Unsupersize Me in Cuba: Shaping a Dream". Leron Black. Having spent much of the last two years traveling internationally, Leron Black's hopeful future profession as a high school world geography teacher is now more attainable than ever.

Two years after last being enrolled at the University of Illinois, the former Fighting Illini basketball star will begin course work this coming week to finish his master's degree in education. Thanks to a generous gift from a pair of Illinois basketball alumni, the captain and three-time letter winner will be taking classes tuition-free.

Black says he's "blessed" to be the beneficiary of this free education. Even though I left a little early, I've still been able to stay in contact and get help from the University and the people at the U of I. Black can thank former Illini players Larry Lubin and Steve Lanter for this chance to complete his advanced degree.

Lubin was Henson's first-ever recruit some 45 years ago, while Lanter was a member of the former Illinois coach's celebrated second recruiting class. The ball got rolling late last year when longtime Illini trainer Rod Cardinal forwarded a holiday letter from the Hensons to UI's basketball alums. They set the example for success in life through their love for each other, the importance of hard work every day, and toughness to get through adversity and selflessness for our team, our University, community and families.

Steve said to me, 'Larry, we've got to do something in Coach and Mary's honor. Lou was so good to me and my memories are so strong about him and Mary. I hope other people can reflect on their time at Illinois under Lou and just think back on the great memories like I have. I'm hoping that other players have the heart to join Larry and me.

We'd like to build this thing up to where this thing goes on and on. Mary Henson, who lost her beloved husband of more than six decades last month, said she's been overwhelmed by well wishes from the community and the college basketball family. Mary and Lou were especially moved upon learning about Lubin and Lanter's plan for a scholarship in their honor.

Lou was the son of a poor sharecropper from Oklahoma. The only way he would have ever been able to get a college education was to get a basketball scholarship. We know how important assistance like that is. Education is a priority and we just have to support that idea. Years later, many of our former players decide that the time is right to go back to school, but they need assistance. We're thrilled that we can use those donations in that way.

It's a wonderful honor to have such a thing for Lou and me. Leron Black received his bachelor's degree in December of and was in the midst of beginning work on his master's in January of , during his final three months wearing the Orange and Blue. But instead of coming back for one more year of college ball, Black decided to opt for a chance at playing professionally.

Basketball doesn't last forever. Black began his pro career with a team in Israel, then got drafted by the Toronto Raptors G-League team and played in Canada for a short while.

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