CHAMPAIGN – It took 10 wins and almost two months of the season.

Finally, the Lon Kruger's first University of Illinois men's basketball bunch has found a couple of opponents that can provide it with what it craves, what has become the cry of '90s athletes.

Regardless of what you may have heard over the Champaign-Urbana clothesline, there are a whole bunch of deep-throated, raucous and emotional Illini basketball fans out there.

I know because I saw about 15,000 of them Dec. 21 in Chicago, and an even more boisterous – if smaller – clan of Orange and Blue fanatics in that Missouri record crowd of 22,371 on Saturday night in balmy St. Louis.

  ST. LOUIS  They''d love to tell you this is what they had in mind all along, but none of them could do it with a straight face.

   A 16-point win over the 1995 national champs? Followed by a 16-point win in the Border War? Giving the Illini a six-game winning streak heading into the Big Ten season?

   Come on. Get real.

  ST. LOUIS  Missouri''s raged Tigers handled the Illinois pressure with all the aplomb of an airport baggage handler.

   A tipsy airport baggage handler.

   Wearing boxing gloves.

  ST. LOUIS  He looked like something out of a "Rocky" flick, but it was going to take more that a puffy eye to keep Brian Johnson out of Saturday night''s Border War.

  ST. LOUIS  It''s really happening.

   Dr. Jekyll has become nasty old Mr. Hyde. He likes the beard and the fangs, and he isn''t changing back.

   In the course of two months and 12 games, Illinois has made the long-awaited transition to a thieving, marauding, full-court team.

   CHAMPAIGN  No need to consult your friendly neighborhood bookie or one of Dionne Warwick''s psychic friends to find out who should win Saturday''s Border War  or the 18 Illinois basketball games after that.

   In most cases, Illini coach Lon Kruger says, the smart money will be on the other guys.

  Norm Stewart is your old-style, fire-eating coach. Jut-jawed and scowling, he wheels around like a caged tiger in front of his bench while carrying on a running debate with three stripe-shirted zebras.

   He''s been called Stormin'' Norman for a reason.