Herald and Review from Decatur, Illinois • Page 17

Heraldview i 1 i as. I -Jar MARX TUPPER have Rose sideC2 Bloomington stopped atstateC7 Sunday, November 30, 2003 Williams put wheels in motion wu c-ts Raptors on their OTD Williams keys 11-0 rim; Brown, Powell keep it up By MARX TUPPER Executive Sports Editor PHILADELPHIA Before Saturday's tipoff at The Palestra, Temple's basketball team waited like a trap. Here loomed an uncertain team playing an uncomfortable style in an unconventional building. Could the outcome for confident and 12th-ranked Illinois be unexpected, too? No, not with Deron Williams setting a decisive tone from the outset and Roger Powell putting forth his second straight double-double Williams erupted for eight points as Illinois sprinted to a bold 11-0 lead, erasing any doubt early en route to a 75-60 victory over Temple. Powell added 19 points and 10 SEVENTH PLACE Eisenhower Mount Zion 01 71 Springfield 50 MacArthur 'This is a veiy well-oiled machine.

That could be one of the tougher teams we'll see all John Chaney, Temple coach, on Illinois rebounds, and Dee Brown scored 18 as the Illini (3-0) got the Owls down early and never let up. In its first road game of the season, Illinois made a believer of Temple coach John Chaney and elevated its own confidence heading to Greensboro, N.C. for Tuesday night's ACCBig Ten Challenge showdown with No. 9 North Carolina. "That is a very, very impressive team," Chaney said.

"I think they will probably get better as a result of this game, in my opinion. They have raid! stop such big boys who are agile, mobile. They can look over the top of us. "This is a very well-oiled machine. They have a right to be (ranked No.

12), and I wouldn't be surprised if they were something (higher). That could be one of the tougher teams we'll see all year." Illinois was in command virtually every minute of the game, quickly building an 23-5 lead and holding Temple to just one basket for almost the first eight minutes of the game. Temple did cut the lead to 12 at the half, but Illinois quickly stretched it back to 17 points at 46-29 three-and-a-half minutes into the second half, keeping a crowd of 6,194 from ever getting too energized about a comeback effort. "I thought the start was very crucial for us," Illini coach Bruce Weber said. "For us to come on the ILLINIC9 CHAMPIONSHIP 68 Peoria Central 53 Rockford Jefferson Illini over Associated Press sophomore James Augustine works underneath during Saturday's 75-60 win Temple.

Decatur Turkey Tournament THIRD' PLACE 56 Bartonville Limestone 46 Joliet Furry pi ncm ir i if rLMLC Lanphier 73 45 to size Defense can 't stop Peoria Notre Dame By TROY HAYES Staff Writer MOUNT ZION It's a tactic Don Steers and his Mount Zion girls' basketball team will have to counter throughout the season. This season's taller opponents and there will be many will continually try to take advantage of the Braves lack of height under the basket. Mount Zion had maneuvered around the strategy in starting the season 4-0. They beat Springfield Sacred which sports two starters that go 6-foot-l and another that is 5-11, Championship Peoria Notre Dame 53, Mount Zion 44 Third place Springfield SHG51, Springfield 48 Fifth place Olney 67, Tuscola 34 Seventh place Eisenhower 65, MacArthur 55 PHILADELPHIA So here we are, the dominoes having fallen, the addresses having changed, the color of the neckties switched to match school colors. Just after Kansas lost in the national championship game to Syracuse last year, those coaching dominoes were lined up in dramatic style, every one of them ready to topple.

All it would take was a nod from Roy Williams, who was being wooed from Kansas to North Carolina, and those dominoes would crash like they'd been kicked over by a runaway kid. I remember giving a speech last spring to the Golden K's and talking about those dominoes, saying how if Williams said "yes" to North Carolina, a whole bundle of them would fall one after another. The significance, of course, was that the University of Illinois was one of those dominoes because if the Kansas job opened, Bill Self was a prime candidate to fill it. Without focusing on it at the time, somewhere in Car-bondale a guy named Bruce Weber saw his face on one of those dominoes, too. SO ON TUESDAY, when Illinois squares off against North Carolina in the ACCBig Ten Challenge, the coaches will shake hands and share a common bond, knowing full well how fate flung them into this matchup, how Williams' nod to Carolina got it all started and changed both of their lives forever.

After his team dismantled Temple 75-60 on Saturday, Weber who replaced Self at Illinois said the significance of Tuesday's showdown was not lost on him or his coaching staff. "I don't think the players think about it," Weber said. "The fans would and the media would and we as a staff did. It's kind of ironic that ends up being the matchup. "When (the pairing) happened, the assistant coaches and I all laughed about it.

We're getting to play them, and Roy is the one who started all the dominoes falling. They were going down and I was the last one" Weber winced the first time he heard ESPN planned to pair Illinois and North Carolina. "It's a great TV matchup," Weber said. "I know the kids wanted to play them, but I was asking the Big Ten to give us a little bit of a break because of the way our schedule falls with Temple and Arkansas and all. "I SAID something to the kids and they said, 'No, coach, we want to play Now I'm happy we're playing them because we're 3-0 and feeling good about ourselves.

"I've known Roy for quite awhile. We had a chance to play them when I was at Purdue and (former Purdue assistant) Kevin Stallings was his assistant. "This (victory over Temple) relaxes us a little. I'm not saying you think you're going to win (against Carolina), but you don't have the pressure of winning one of the two road games just to keep your head above water." Actually, the domino theory goes beyond last spring. It could be argued that Illinois' unexpectedly decisive 92-65 rout of North Carolina last December in Champaign threw a match on the fire that eventually torched Carolina coach Matt Doherty.

More certainly, if North Carolina freshman Sean May didn't become injured and cripple the season, Doherty might have survived, keeping all those dominoes in place But May got hurt, Doherty was fired, Williams answered Carolina's call and Weber will have a chance to wear his orange necktie Tuesday because of it. Mark Tupper can be reached at or 421-7983. rM tT? J) b-li a acn Central puts Rockford, title away early By TODD ENGLE Staff Writer DECATUR Forty-nine seconds. That's all it took for defending Class AA champ Peoria Central to win the championship game of the Team Soy Capital Decatur Turkey Tournament. It was the one game the Lions haven't won since 1999, the one game they didn't win en route to the state title last year.

In 49 seconds, the Lions got two turnovers and six quick points against Rockford Jefferson. Peoria (3-0) cruised to a 73-45 victory on Saturday. "I was reminded we hadn't won one in the (21st) century, OK?" Peoria coach Chuck Buescher said. "This has been a good tournament with good teams, and this has been a good field." After getting a scare from Joliet on Friday night, the Lions wasted no time putting Jefferson (2-1) away. Duke recruit and tournament MVP Shaun Livingston scored seven points as Peoria opened with a 17-4 run.

Jefferson coach Mike Winters was forced to burn half of his timeouts in the first quarter, in an attempt to kill Peoria's momentum. "We were good defensively tonight. We really came out ready," Buescher said. "We just came out tonight, and played like we should. We got a little complacent in the middle of the game, but we had it going defensively.

When we took it from them, we finished." After building a 17-point first-quarter lead, Peoria didn't allow a J-Hawks field goal until 50 seconds remained in ft -ri -A I Jrr If title the of Herald ReviewChase Agnello-Dean Peoria Central standout Shaun Livingston flips a pass back behind his shoulder during Saturday's game of the Decatur Turkey Tournament. Livingston earned MVP honors after scoring 22 points, including seven in a opening-minute salvo that put Rockford Jefferson away. Brandon Lee provided the perfect complement to Livingston. He poured in 23 points and was dangerous enough to draw much of the attention away from Livingston. STUFFINGC6 second quarter.

Livingston finished with 22 points, scored in all variety manners. Two points came from an alley-oop dunk from Jacob Motteler's pass. Two more came after a series of moves capped with a pull-up jumper from 16 feet. And he drained a 3-pointer for good measure. Even Livingston's gaffes turned into gold.

He air-balled a 3-point shot in the fourth quarter, only to watch a teammate grab it and lay it in. Friday to reach the finals with tenacity and quickness while guarding the tall girls in the middle They denied passing lanes and showed all of that defensive spunk in Saturday's 53-44 loss to Peoria Notre Dame, unfortunately for Mount Zion (4-1), it was only for three quarters. "We relaxed a bit in the second and third quarter," Steers said. "We let them have some runs and we couldn't quite make up for them." The Braves, who led 13-4 at one time in the first quarter, were still up 19-18 at halftime, but the feeling was it was just a matter of time before the Irish (5-0) figured out how to get the ball down low. Notre Dame scored 29 points in the final 11 minutes of the game, including 16 from 5-10 junior forward Casey Coker.

The Braves managed just 18 points in that same span, and six of those came in the last minute on three-pointers by Amy Watson and Andi Zellars. "(Coker) did a great job of sealing off the defender and finishing in the second half," Steers said. "We couldn't deny any passes in the second half." The Irish went to Coker time after time after the break, and she responded. Coker had one bucket in four attempts in the first quarter but didn't miss after. She has a streak of 10-straight baskets going.

"We try to control the (opponent's) offense with our whole team collapsing on the big girls inside," said guard Kelly Steers, who led the Braves with 21 points. "We didn't do a very good job of that tonight." The game may have hinged on the Braves having played BRAVESC6 Teams gain perspective Eisenhower nets win; MacArthur humbled By TODD ENGLE Staff Writer looked dominant in a 71-50 dismantling of Mount Zion in the seventh-place game. MacArthur looked sluggish, losing 56-46 to Springfield Lanphier in the fifth-place game. The lesson: don't read too much into season openers. "Our team wasn't as bad as we showed against two of the best teams in the state (the loss to Limestone and a four-point loss to Lanphier)," Eisenhower coach Jeremy Moore said.

"We got those first games out of the way, and if we keep putting pressure in the backcourt, we're going to be tough to beat." TEAMSC6 DECATUR Eisenhower came out flatter than Central Illinois in its season opener, a 29-point loss to Bartonville Limestone. MacArthur looked like picked up where it left off in its first game of the season, and a 40-second mind lapse was all that kept it from beating Joliet. The two teams wrapped up their portion of the Team Soy Capital Decatur Turkey Tournament on Saturday. Eisenhower Herald ReviewCarlos T. Miranda Lanphier's Tyler Klunick drives against MacArthur's Corinthian Carson during Saturday's consolation championship.

Lanphier won 56-46..