CHAMPAIGN – Tom O'Connor was unable to watch the Illinois-Wisconsin game Thursday night.
He seemed to lament that fact, saying "unfortunately not." For O'Connor, chairman of the 2008 NCAA tournament selection committee, missing an ESPN-televised game has been the exception, not the rule.
Since the 2007-08 season opened Nov. 5, he's been glued to scores from Providence to Pullman.
"I've seen 41 teams play in person," O'Connor said Friday, "and 59 different teams on TV."
But there are other priorities on O'Connor's docket this weekend, and they concern many of the teams he has evaluated. For the first time leading up to Selection Sunday, the selection committee is gathered together, to start the process of configuring the 65-team bracket to be unveiled March 16.
"Each of the 10 committee members has had a conference to monitor," O'Connor said between committee meetings in Nashville, Tenn. "We'll go over what each has learned. And there is still a long way to go."
Sixty-two days, to be exact. For Illinois, which takes an unflattering postseason resume to No. 10 Indiana today (3:30, CBS), that includes 15 regular season games and at least one in the Big Ten tournament.
One of the program's signature streaks is in great peril; Illinois hasn't missed the NCAA tournament since the 1998-99 season, a streak outdone by only nine programs (Arizona, Kansas, Kentucky, Duke, Michigan State, Florida, Gonzaga, Texas and Wisconsin). Unfortunately for the Illini (8-8, 0-3), while a string of eight consecutive NCAA tournament appearances is catchy fodder for recruiting letters, it won't be a benefit on Selection Sunday.
"We don't look at history; we look at what has happened that particular year," said O'Connor, the George Mason athletic director in his first year as selection committee chairman. "To look at history that would be an injustice to some teams, but also to other teams in the tournament."
The prospect of watching the CBS selection show – and waiting, in vain, for your team's seed – is an unsettling scenario experienced by the proudest programs and their fans. That includes the Illini, though it's been a while.
Shortly after New Year's Day in 1999, coach Lon Kruger addressed his third Illinois squad, offering the cautionary tale that winning is hardly an Illini birthright.
"I'll never forget Coach Kruger in a meeting that year," said Sergio McClain, a sophomore on the 1998-99 team, the most recent Illinois squad to miss the NCAA tournament. "He was telling us, 'You guys aren't that good. Ya'll could finish 3-13 in the Big Ten if you don't watch out.'
"I remember guys looking at him and making faces and saying, 'Yeah, right.' You look around and see all the talent in the room and you figure it's just a matter of time. You think it's just going to happen because it always has."
True to Kruger's prophecy, the Illini finished 3-13 in the Big Ten, 14-18 overall and without a postseason berth.
Illinois' 27 NCAA tournament appearances trail only Indiana (34) among Big Team programs. According to McClain, the 1998-99 team watched the previous team share the Big Ten title and figured an NCAA berth was a foregone conclusion.
"Just because you wear it on your chest doesn't mean you're going to win," McClain said. "How's that saying go? It isn't how the car looks, it's the person who drives it."
The similarities between the last Illinois team to miss the NCAA tournament and the current squad extend down to the team's record after three Big Ten games. The 1998-99 team was 8-7 on Jan. 9, 1999. So were the current Illini on Wednesday, before a loss to Wisconsin dumped them to 8-8.
There were strategic similarities as well. In the same way Bruce Weber used a zone defense for only the fourth time in five-plus years as Illinois coach, Kruger adjusted his approach on offense, searching for the right formula.
"We were more structured on offense at the beginning of the year," McClain said. "After a while, Kruger just opened the floor and told us to make plays."
The leadership void evident in the 1998-99 collective is apparent in the current outfit. Since the departure of Dee Brown after the 2005-06 season, Weber has called for a leader to emerge.
Same for Kruger after he lost five senior starters from the 1997-98 team. It wasn't until an unlikely suspect – non-scholarship guard Nate Mast – stepped forward that Illinois closed an otherwise-dreary campaign with three wins in the 1999 Big Ten tournament.
"Everybody was looking at Nate like, You're a walk-on. But he was the vocal guy, and we needed that," McClain said. "That was at the end of the year. At the beginning of that year, there was a lot of distrust. There was a lot of distrust with the players. There was a lot of distrust with the coaches. At the end of the year we started trusting each other. The good thing for them (the current team) is, there's still, what (15) Big Ten games left? There's still time to make it right."
Just as March is maddening, the cyclical tendencies of college sports unload grim turns on its marquee programs.
Teams with histories that dwarf Illinois' have trudged through their share of tough times. There was UCLA's slide in 2001-02, when the Bruins missed the NCAA tournament for the first time in 13 years. To a lesser extent there was Duke's forgotten season in 1994-95, four months of mediocrity that snapped a streak of 11 straight NCAA berths.
More recently there was the 2007 NCAA tournament played without Connecticut, which had been a postseason participant since Jim Calhoun's first season as coach in 1986-87.
"I think it can be a shock to a fan base, but there are usually signs that it might be coming," said Neill Ostrout, the Connecticut Post's UConn beat writer since 1999. "There's been slight down years before. The fact that it was such a down year, and kept them out of the postseason for the first time in 20 years, that's what was kind of a shock."
The same reasoning used to attract elite talent – Come to UConn, we produce NBA draft picks! – hastened the Huskies' slide. A mass exodus saw five UConn players, including three non-seniors, drafted in 2006, leaving Calhoun with a cupboard as bare as it was once rich.
"You can't really see it as a terrible year because of what they lost, and that's difficult to plan for," Ostrout said.
UConn returned last season with nine newcomers and suffered accordingly with a 17-14 record. Likewise, the five starters on Illinois' 2005 national runner-up were on NBA rosters at some point during the 2006-07 season. One season after their fall, the Huskies appear to be on the way up with an 11-4 record; Illinois appears to be on its way down, even as five orally committed prospects in the 2009 and 2010 recruiting classes promise riches in a future that seems far away.
"(NCAA tournament streaks) say a lot, most obviously that there is a level of consistency unmatched by most," said Gary Parrish, senior college basketball writer for CBSSportsline.com. "I mean, how many schools can really avoid bad years for eight straight years? The list is short.
"But the one thing most likely to snap an NCAA tournament streak at any given time is when you look up and there are no longer high-level players on the roster relative to the league in which a team plays. When that happens, the streak is probably done."
The task of navigating the road to recovery rests squarely on Weber's shoulders. He's traveled this road before.
Heading into Weber's ninth season as a Purdue assistant – the 1988-89 campaign – the Boilermakers were coming off back-to-back Big Ten titles and had reached six consecutive NCAA tournaments, two shy of Purdue's longest streak. (Illinois' current streak of eight appearances is tied with the 1983-90 stretch as the program's longest.)
"It was actually one of the better runs in (Purdue's) history," Weber said.
But the 1987-88 season, in which Purdue tied a school record with 29 wins, also was the final season for captains Todd Mitchell, Everette Stephens and Troy Lewis, the team's leading scorer during his junior and senior seasons.
The dip that followed was somewhat expected, if relatively disastrous. Purdue went 15-16 in 1988-89, and Weber compared the issues faced by that team to the problems encountered by his current team at Illinois.
"We had some seniors that had good careers, but when they became the main focal point maybe didn't step up as you would have hoped. It's another thing to be the guy," Weber said. "Then we had a bunch of young guys that probably didn't get it at the beginning."
Just as the 1998-99 Illinois team closed a disappointing season with three wins in the Big Ten tournament, the 1987-88 Purdue squad won the final three games of the regular season.
"We can't look at what's happened already (this season)," Illinois senior Brian Randle said. "We have to look at what we want to happen the rest of the way."
Still, this is foreign territory for the Illini, spreading doubt through the locker room. Weber is in the midst of his first four-game losing skid as a head coach. The successes of previous teams are being worn like 40-pound ankle weights.
"I think sometimes kids get lulled into the fact we're going to win, we're going to win at home, we've always won," Weber said. "But I don't know if they knew what it takes to win at that level."
An NCAA tournament without Illinois? Not since Demetri McCamey was in the fourth grade and Weber was a first-year head coach at Southern Illinois.
"One could reasonably argue that we've just witnessed the worst 10 days for Illinois basketball since their last losing season – and NCAA miss – in 1998-99," said Joe Lunardi, who projects the NCAA tournament field for ESPN.com's Bracketology.
Illinois still can earn an automatic berth in the NCAA tournament by winning the Big Ten tournament March 13-16 in Indianapolis. That will take four wins if the Illini continue on their pace to a 6-11 seed. Lunardi said Illinois is not only in danger of missing the NCAA tournament. The NIT is also in doubt, "given that a .500 record is probably no better than a 50/50 proposition at this point," he said.
"The first order or business is somehow finishing above .500 in the league."
Over the remainder of the Big Ten schedule, Lunardi said, Illinois would be wise to go 5-3 on the road and 5-2 at home, without a bad loss and with at least one win against Indiana, Michigan State and Wisconsin. That would place Illinois at 18-13 overall and 10-8 in the Big Ten.
"That, plus one more neutral-court scalp in the Big Ten tournament, would probably do it because of the strong finish accompanying it," Lunardi said. "I'd place the odds at about 90/10 against."
With 16 games down – and at least 16 to go – Illinois' NCAA tournament streak is on a slippery slope to history.
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