The following post was written by deputy sports editor Stuart Lieberman.

At the end of March the women’s basketball team’s orange jerseys looked
like fireflies driving to the hoop. The players pushed their way to the Big Ten
Championship game with victories against Wisconsin, Michigan State and
Purdue along the way. The Illini were on the verge of a possible NCAA
Tournament bid before they lost to Purdue in the championship game.

Illinois failed to receive a bid, however it advanced to the third round of the
WNIT, where it lost to Marquette, the eventual tournament winners. But from
there, the fireflies started dropping and everything went up in question.

Junior guard Lori Bjork quit the team. Five days later, freshman guard
Chelsea Buher quit as well. Bjork will receive her bachelor’s degree in political
science this May and pursue graduate studies at another university.

Meanwhile, for the five days between the two announcements, Buher may
have been the top starting guard for the team. Now, with the two departing and
senior guard Rebecca Harris graduating, the team will struggle to find a solid
backcourt before next season.

If you would like to put it this way, the team is now just about all Jenna
Smith’s, the honorable mention All-American. Junior Chelsea Gordon and
sophomore Lacey Simpson will be Smith’s two deputies, but other than that
everything else right now is a hole waiting to be filled.

Head coach Jolette Law signed four student-athletes to letters of intent last
week, and one must hope they are as good on a college court as they look on
paper.

But for now, maybe Smith donning No. 13 on her jersey is not such a smart
idea after all.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 25th, 2008 at 9:52 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.