Moline's Musings

Monday Odds and Ends

Posted by: Brian Moline

Tuesday, April 28, 2009 8:58 AM

There's a lot to catch up on today, so let's get right to it.  An outstanding weekend for the Illinois softball team saw them take both games from top-ten ranked Northwestern at Eichelberger Field.  Appropriately, it was seniors Katrina Ross and Lana Armstrong who provided walkoff homeruns in the two contests.  Ross was today named the Big Ten Player of the Week for her efforts.  The Illini are now 26-14 overall and 9-6 in the Big Ten, which is good for fifth place in the conference.  Illinois is just a half game behind Iowa (9-5) for fourth place, and one half game ahead of sixth place Purdue (9-7).  The Illini travel to West Lafayette on Wednesday for a mid-week doubleheader against the Boilermakers.

Another softball item to watch for this week on IlliniHQ is beat writer Fred Kroner's All-Decade softball team.  If you live in the Champaign-Urbana area, you can see it in today's News-Gazette, but readers from outside the area will get to see it on Wednesday morning here at IlliniHQ.  I don't want to give too much away, but I'll just say there are a few surprises.  At least, they were surprises to me.

(UPDATE: the all-decade softball team is now posted on IlliniHQ.  Take a look and tell us what you think.)

As for wrestling, I've heard through the grapevine that Illinois will announce its new wrestling coach sometime tomorrow.  We'll have the announcement here on IlliniHQ as soon as it happens.  Most of the internet gossip I'm reading today seems to point toward current assistant Jim Heffernan landing the job, but that is totally and completely unverified as of this afternoon.  The one-man search committee (Ron Guenther) is very good at holding his cards close to the vest, so I (like everyone else) will be eagerly awaiting tomorrow's announcement.

The Illinois soccer team took part in the Kicks Against Breast Cancer event yesterday at Soldier Field.  The Illini defeated Northwestern 3-0 in their first game of the day, before falling to Notre Dame in the nightcap.  The Fighting Irish advanced all the way to the NCAA Final last season before falling to North Carolina 2-1.  The Tarheels also knocked the Illini out of the tournament in the round of 16 by a 3-0 margin.  That wraps up the spring season for the Illini. 

More on the new wrestling coach tomorrow.  Thanks for reading.

bmoline@wdws.com

 

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