What’s New

The governor announced the expansion of coronavirus vaccine eligibility to all Illinois residents over 16 — except at Chicago sites — starting April 12, and set thresholds for vaccinations and new COVID-19 caseloads for the state to return to normal.

Nearly a year after he issued his first stay-at-home order, Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Thursday announced his plan to reopen the state, employing a “bridge” phase that will include increasing capacity limits at museums, zoos and other places.

The governor also announced the expansion of coronavirus vaccine eligibility to all Illinois residents over 16 — except at Chicago sites — starting April 12, and set thresholds for vaccinations and new COVID-19 caseloads for the state to return to normal.

“Although we still are in the midst of a global pandemic, the end seems truly to be in sight,” Pritzker said.

The state can enter that 28-day “bridge” phase to a full reopening when 70% of those 65 and over have received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Pritzker expressed optimism about the state being able to return to more normal operations and pointed to the 58% first-dose vaccination rate for seniors, as of Thursday morning.

The state must also maintain a 20% or lower intensive-care-unit bed availability rate and hold steady on COVID-19 and COVID-like illness hospital admissions, mortality rate, and case rate over a 28-day monitoring period.

In the intermediate stage between Phases 4 and 5, museums will see their capacity limitations increase from 25% to 60%. The same limitations will apply to zoos.

Amusement parks will be able to increase capacity from the 25% restriction in Phase 4 to 60% in the intermediate stage. Festivals and general admission outdoor, spectator events can seat 30 people per 1,000 square feet in the bridge phase.

Meetings, conferences and conventions will see their capacity limit increase to either 1,000 people or 60%, whichever is less. The limitations around meetings also apply to theaters and performing arts venues.

The governor said Thursday Illinois will resume normal business operations “when at least 50% of our 16 and over population has received at least one dose.” The state’s mask requirement will be lifted when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control recommends it.

Pritzker wouldn’t put a date on when the state might get to the bridge phase, but with about 1% of the state’s population receiving the vaccine per day, it could happen “expeditiously.”

“While we’re racing against a tough clock — the new, more dangerous variants that is — it is fully in our power to turn the page on this dark and devastating chapter,” Pritzker said. “These vaccines are our fastest ticket back to hugging our grandkids, eating inside restaurants without worrying about the risks, school dances, community celebrations, all the things that we miss about normal life.”

Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

Throughout the pandemic, the governor has given local governments leeway to impose tighter COVID-19 restrictions, but not looser ones, and the city often has done just that, keeping a tighter lid on indoor capacity limits at bars and restaurants.

Citing scarce supply, Chicago has stayed a step behind the state’s vaccination plan for the past month, though any Chicago residents 16 and over will be able to go to any state-supported site to receive a vaccine starting April 12, a Pritzker spokeswoman said.

The city will open appointments to people 16 and older with chronic health conditions as it enters Phase 1C March 29 — more than a month after Pritzker allowed that to happen in other regions.

Chicago Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said the city, which receives its vaccine shipments separately from the rest of the state, won’t open appointments as allowed in Pritzker’s plan.

“I would like to spend the first month of this 1C period still doing some prioritization so that people [in high-contact jobs] and people with underlying conditions are prioritized above healthy 23-year-old college students,” Arwady said during a separate online Q&A. “Assuming that the vaccine supply is there, we will for sure expand to everybody May 1. Maybe we’ll do it before that if it’s there. … Some of it is just about how much do you have vaccine supply and when.”

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times file

Pritzker said he hopes Chicago “will move expeditiously toward opening up [vaccine appointments] even more.

“I think that it will be hard for the city if people who can get vaccinated, who live just beyond the city borders, are able to get an appointment to go get vaccinated, but people who are within the city may not be able to because they haven’t opened that up,” the governor said. “But again, I think that’s up to them.”

As for business operations, city officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Mayor Lori Lightfoot will follow Pritzker’s bridge plan.

Dr. Rachel Rubin, a co-leader of the Cook County Department of Health, said the county had not yet made the decision about whether or not to follow the state in opening up its vaccine eligibility or the bridged reopening.

“We don’t know if we will go as quickly into that bridge or if we might break that bridge up into sort of different sections, the beginning, medium, and end part of that bridge, we will have to see,” Rubin said. “My inclination at this point is for us to be extremely cautious about opening up, our numbers of new cases have leveled out, they are not continuing to decrease at this moment, they have really leveled out.”

The governor’s new plan appears to allow for fans to attend Bulls and Blackhawks games at the United Center, and also opens the door to conventions — potentially offering a boon to a hospitality industry that has been decimated by the pandemic.

But that’ll be up to Lightfoot’s office.

“McCormick Place’s commitment throughout this pandemic has been to act in the best interest of public health and we will continue to do so as we await further information regarding re-opening guidelines for the city of Chicago,” a spokeswoman for the lakeside hall said in a statement. “We stand ready to re-open as soon as public health conditions allow.”

Illinois Restaurant Association President Sam Toia, who previously butted heads with the administration in expanding indoor service, called it “an important step towards recovery.”

“We have urged Gov. Pritzker to set a path to allow for expanded events with extensive safety measures in place, and this pragmatic approach to loosening restrictions will greatly enhance business opportunities for restaurants, event companies, conventions, and culinary tourism — all of which are critical to Illinois’ economic engine,” Toia said in a statement.

Illinois Retail Merchants Association president Rob Karr said it presents “a clear path forward to a full re-opening” — one that businesses hope “will be a short one,” he said in a statement.

Chicago Federation of Labor president Bob Reiter, a member of the Sun-Times board of directors, said “having a pathway toward reopening helps both workers and their employer plan a more defined path forward. To continue on this pathway to reopening, the health and safety of workers remains an absolute priority.”

Read Gov. Pritzker’s full “bridge phase” reopening plan:

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Chicago Bears Rumors: Akiem Hicks is on the trade block by Ryan Heckman

It is the end of an error. The Chicago Bears no longer have to have Mitchell Trubisky playing quarterback for them. No matter whose fault it is, he never developed as well as he should have. Matt Nagy wasn’t able to coach him because he was so committed to his offensive scheme. He thought he was in Kansas City the whole time and that never allowed Trubiksy to reach his ceiling. It is a shame that it worked out that way but it is what it is.

The Chicago Bears’ decision to draft Mitchell Trubisky is still a disaster.

The Chicago Bears traded up from pick three to pick to in order to select Mitchell Trubiksy in the 2017 NFL Draft. In doing that, they left both Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson on the board for other teams to take. Now, both Mahomes and Watson are both on Hall of Fame trajectories.

Now, Trubisky is gone as he has signed on to be John Allen’s Buffalo Bills backup. He is probably going to go there and be a solid backup because that organization all of the sudden looks like a competent one. If he can go there and be a good solid backup, no one should be surprised. He was a terrible starter here in Chicago but the organization deserves a lot of blame for that.

Meanwhile in Chicago, they are fresh off an Andy Dalton signing. Do you mean to tell me Andy Dalton is going to be more effective than Mitchell Trubisky? At least number ten was able to scramble and use his legs. He also got closer to winning a playoff game in one try than Dalton ever did. Nick Foles is still there too and we know how the Foles/Trubisky battle worked out in 2020.

Related Story: The Chicago Bears should be ashamed of themselves

This franchise should be looking at the Mitchell Trubisky era as a complete failure. Everyone involved, including Mitch, deserves blame for this. The fact that this colossal failure didn’t result in both Nagy and Pace being fired is another mystery but that is beside the point. The decision to draft Trubisky will cause negative effects on the team for the next 20 years but he is gone now. Hopefully, enough change will be on the horizon where they can finally get this position right.

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The Chicago Bears are being linked to another quarterback just a day after they signed Andy Dalton.

The post Would Chicago Bears be a suitor for Gardner Minshew?! first appeared on CHI CITY SPORTS l Chicago Sports Blog – News – Forum – Fans – Rumors.Read More

“You bring people together and something will always happen. . . . The how is pretty easy, but the why is more important to me.”

Alejandro Ayala, 42, is a Chicago event organizer and record collector who DJs as King Hippo.…Read More

Chicago hardcore five-piece Porcupine use society’s fetid underbelly like a renewable energy source—they must know they’ll never run out of cruelty to drive their outrage. Their new album, The Sibyl (New Morality Zine), opens with “Pederasty,” sung from the point of view of an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse who’s still haunted by trauma; its nonstop barrage of vicious drumming and guttural riffs sharpens the plainspoken anger and grief in the desperate lyrics.…Read More

Executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas might not be able to repair this roster by next week’s trade deadline, but he better be ready to by the summer. As Wednesday was a reminder of, there’s an all-too familiar “M.O.” and it’s not pretty.

Billy Donovan has done what he’s can with this roster.

The offensive efficiency has improved, the rebounding is stronger, they’re mentally tougher, and the Bulls are five games better in the standings than they were at this time last season.

But there’s only so much make-up the coach can splash on this pig.

The loss to San Antonio on Wednesday was not only a reminder of how much more work Donovan and his staff have with this group, but more importantly another message to the front office that while there are a few pieces in place for this retooling, there’s not nearly enough.

Not if the postseason is the immediate goal.

The major concerns with this roster back in Week 1 of the regular season were the turnovers and the fouling, and the concerns coming out of the meltdown to the Spurs? Little has changed.

The Bulls entered Thursday’s off day last in the league in ball security, averaging 15.2 turnovers per game, and 12^th worst in fouling with 20 per game.

The fouling is likely fixable. Young players learn the league, learn tendencies, and self-correct in that process. But the turnovers and the way this roster’s ball-handlers can easily blink when put in conflict? That’s innate with this personnel.

Tomas Satoransky is a combo guard who sees the floor really well, but isn’t breaking ankles. Second-year point guard Coby White has great north-south speed, but gets careless with the ball, doesn’t always see the floor well, and doesn’t have a lot of shake in his handles. And Zach LaVine is an improved decision maker, an above average ball-handler for an off guard, but there’s the problem, he’s an off guard.

The blueprint for the opposition has been on display for all to see when playing the Bulls, but the Spurs took the glitch to another level.

Down 23 at one point, San Antonio went to an attack-pressure defense in the second half, not only leading to careless turnovers, but more importantly, getting the offense completely out of sync.

“That’s just been our M.O.,’’ LaVine said of the collapse. “We had a pretty substantial lead. They just kept cutting it down. When they put the pressure on us, some of us handled it well. And then they played the shot clock against us, so when we finally got it over we were running our offense late. And then they were making us take some tough shots where we didn’t even get a shot off. That’s what’s going to happen when you can’t execute.’’

So is this: The Spurs shot 22-for-30 from the free throw line, while the home team was just 8-for-9. The Spurs committed nine turnovers, the Bulls had 17.

“I do think that your habits and things like that get exposed under the most pressurized situations,’’ Donovan said.

Game, set and match.

And unfortunately, it falls on executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas to now start the repairs. Just because a player has improved his ball handling under Donovan, it doesn’t make him a ball-handler. Just because there’s improvement in play-making, it doesn’t mean the roster has play-makers.

Not this Bulls roster at least.

While the Mar. 25 trade deadline chessboard may not have fully revealed itself yet, the evaluation process for Karnisovas & Co of this roster should have. There’s a reason White is no longer the starting point guard, and 32-year-old Thad Young has been moved into the starting center role.

Because this roster is severely flawed and needs fixing, if not by next week, definitely this summer.

While there is still an ongoing honeymoon period between Karnisovas and the fan base, the cab has pulled up in front of the resort and it’s definitely heading to the airport.

Wednesday was a reminder of that.

The “M.O.’’ has to change.

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Nantz seemed to give the Illini the edge over the team nearest and dearest to his heart, Nantz’s alma mater and second-seeded Houston.

Illinois fans tend to be sensitive to perceived slights, but they should pay no heed to the CBS/Turner announcing assignments.

The top-seeded Illini’s first-round game Friday against Drexel (12:15 p.m., TBS) will be called by the great Kevin Harlan, who will be joined by analyst Dan Bonner and reporter Dana Jacobson. Afterward, the top crew of Jim Nantz, Bill Raftery and Tracy Wolfson will call Loyola’s game against Georgia Tech (3 p.m., TBS).

Deep breaths, Illini Nation.

Nantz’s crew isn’t calling any of the No. 1 seeds’ first-round games, and Harlan’s crew is one of the four that will call regional semifinal and final games. If the Illini last long enough, they’ll see Nantz and Co. eventually.

Besides, Nantz and Raftery had nothing but praise for Illinois in a Zoom conference with reporters this week. In fact, Nantz seemed to give the Illini the edge over the team nearest and dearest to his heart, Nantz’s alma mater and second-seeded Houston.

“I probably wouldn’t be as fortunate as I’ve been to be in broadcasting if it wasn’t for the University of Houston basketball program,” said Nantz, who graduated in 1981. “Coach Guy Lewis asked me to be the public-address announcer [1979-82] and the host of his television show, and that was my entry into working with a microphone.

“But if it’s a 1-2 regional final, I’d love to see it, I’d love to have the chance to call it and I would call it right down the middle, as I’m required to do. It wouldn’t surprise me to see Illinois win a national championship.”

After watching the Illini win the Big Ten Tournament, Raftery came away impressed with their depth and versatility. But he sounded most impressed with their camaraderie, which could be important during their isolation as part of COVID-19 protocols.

“The way they get along is something special,” Raftery said. “Not that all teams don’t get along, but they have a lot of juice and life, and they’re having a ball.

“I think the coach that’s gonna win this championship is either gonna be the best entertainer or band leader, and the reason I say that [is] there’s so much time that [the players are] gonna be alone. We talked with the staff of Illinois, they played poker, they brought their Pelotons, they did a little bit of everything to entertain themselves. I think that’s really gonna be the key to keeping them fresh, enjoying themselves, bonding together. That’s gonna be as big a challenge as game preparation.”

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Loyola grabs the top spot. The Ramblers will host No. 2 Mount Carmel in Week 2.

Loyola has finished the season in the Class 8A state title game in six of the past nine years. The Ramblers won the state title in 2015-16 and 2018-19.

That isn’t news to any football fan, but is worth keeping in mind considering the next statement. This season the Ramblers have the most returning starters in coach John Holecek’s 15-year tenure.

That’s a scary thought for opponents, especially considering that several of Loyola’s top players are college-level talents, which isn’t always the case.

All that experience made the Ramblers an easy choice for the top spot in the Sun-Times’ preseason Super 25 football rankings.

Loyola has about 15 starters back, including quarterback JT Thomas (Denison) and running back Vaughn Pemberton (Ball State).

“That’s definitely a lot of experience back but nothing is perfect,” Pemberton, who rushed for 16 touchdowns last season, said. “There are definitely things we need to work on but I’m feeling pretty confident. Especially on defense, which is where most of the returning guys are.”

The Ramblers will be without offensive lineman Josh Kreutz this season. The Illinois recruit injured his knee and will miss all six games. But Pemberton has been especially impressed with one of his blockers in the first few weeks of practice, senior John Michael Talanges.

“I can’t wait to get back on the field Friday,” Pemberton said. “I’m so grateful we have a season. I just want to play with my friends and enjoy it.”

Loyola opens the season at St. Rita. Pemberton, a starter on the basketball team, says he hasn’t had any trouble making the transition between sports. But he isn’t sure what to expect after such a long layoff between football seasons.

“I think I’m faster,” Pemberton said. “But it’s hard to say what will happen in games. I just don’t know what my instincts will be like because it has been so long. Games are a lot different than practice.”

No. 2 Mount Carmel

Kirsten Stickney/For the Sun-Times

There’s a ton of talent back for the defending Class 7A champs, including quarterback Justin Lynch (Temple) and running back/linebacker Kenenna Odeluga (Illinois). The Caravan are 25-2 in Jordan Lynch’s two seasons as coach and could easily have grabbed the top spot in the rankings. They will have a chance to grab that honor when the travel to Wilmette to face Loyola in Week 2.

No. 3 Lincoln-Way East

Allen Cunningham/For the Sun-Times

The perennial power just reloads. There isn’t much experience at quarterback but the Griffins have running back Jamal Johnson (Bowling Green) and receiver Mason Pierre-Antoine (NIU) to lean on offensively. The offensive line is experienced and Matt Kordas (Bowling Green) will lead the defensive backfield.

No. 4 Batavia

Allen Cunningham/For the Sun-Times

The Bulldogs have lost to JJ McCarthy and Nazareth in the playoffs the last two seasons, but that won’t be a concern this year. Coach Dennis Piron has a stable of talented players, including linebacker Matt Weerts (Arizona), receiver Trey Urwiler (NIU), offensive linemen Jackson Heeringa (Northern Iowa) and Breyden Ford (Valparaiso) and tight end Jack Valente (EIU). The linebacker group, led by Weerts, is very experienced overall.

No. 5 Brother Rice

Quinn Harris/For the Sun-Times

Running back Willie Shaw (Toledo) is one of the area’s top talents and he’s surrounded by 15 other returning starters, including quarterback Jack Lausch.

Michael O’Brien’s preseason Super 25 high school football rankings

1. Loyola
2. Mount Carmel
3. Lincoln-Way East
4. Batavia
5. Brother Rice
6. Glenbard West
7. Marist
8. Homewood-Flosssmoor
9. St. Rita
10. Naperville Central
11. Warren
12. Bolingbrook
13. Nazareth
14. Maine South
15. Prairie Ridge
16. Hinsdale Central
17. Wheaton Warrenville South
18. Joliet Catholic
19. Cary-Grove
20. Montini
21. Oswego
22. Neuqua Valley
23. Phillips
24. Fremd
25. Huntley

Contributing: Mike Clark

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To give you some idea, my personal Road to the Final Four, as the TV announcers call it, began in junior high. My buddy Don and I were apprentice basketball junkies, shooting buckets and getting into pickup games every afternoon. New Jersey kids, we became obsessed with the great Jerry West — “Zeke from Cabin Creek,” they called him — and his West Virginia Mountaineers.

There wasn’t much college basketball on TV back then, but we followed West’s exploits from WWVA radio in Wheeling, which came booming in after dark. West Virginia was to us a remote and fabled land. We reveled in tales of West’s carefree backwoods childhood, so different from our own. (Basically a fantasy, too: West had a troubled family and has struggled with depression all his life.)

After the games, WWVA played country music. I became probably the only kid in school to own three Hank Williams albums, not to mention Jim and Jesse and the Virginia Boys. By day, I listened to blues musicians like B.B. King and Bobby “Blue” Bland on WNJR in Newark. This led indirectly to my enrolling at the University of Virginia, to marrying an Arkansas coach’s daughter, and eventually following her home from school. Speaking of remote and fabled lands.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. West’s Mountaineers made it to the 1959 championship game, losing by one point to California. My own fascination with what’s now called March Madness, however, was only beginning. To me, the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament is the nation’s premier sporting event, and I’m so glad it’s back.

For sheer Americana, nothing tops it. I still feel great gusts of Woody Guthrie-style patriotism just reading the first-round matchups. The Creighton Bluejays vs. the Gauchos of Cal Santa Barbara: an Omaha Jesuit school playing an elite public university with its own beach. Or how about Iona College (New York) vs. Alabama (Tuscaloosa)? Oregon vs. Virginia Commonwealth? I could go on.

As somebody whose imagination has always functioned geographically, one of my favorite rituals is the pregame player introductions. I mean, how often does Muscatine, Iowa, see its favorite son (Joe Wieskamp, Iowa Hawkeyes) featured on national TV? He has three teammates from Cedar Rapids, one from the Bronx and another from London, England. “This land is your land, this land is my land … “

For no particular reason, I’ve always pulled for the Hawkeyes. Also the Kansas Jayhawks, Oklahoma Sooners, Rutgers and Virginia. For reasons I probably needn’t explain, I’ve always enjoyed watching Duke lose. By now I guess it’s clear that I watch more college basketball on TV than is entirely consistent with sanity. Always have. The good news is that the coach’s daughter thinks this is relatively normal behavior. It beats a lot of bad habits men are prone to develop.

For that matter, Razorback basketball did more than anything else to make me an Arkansas patriot. Back when we first moved to her hometown, I felt like a stranger on the sports page. It was all football, all the time. Twelve games a year, 353 days of talking about it. Snore. I wasn’t sure I could hack it living here.

Then coach Eddie Sutton arrived from, yes, Creighton University, and the local sporting culture has never been the same. He recruited three wondrously talented black Arkansas kids: Sidney Moncrief, Ron Brewer and Marvin Delph — the so-called “Triplets.” They soon made the cover of Sports Illustrated, and everything changed. And not just on the sports page. The basketball Hogs became the national team of Arkansas; I became a local patriot. Nobody here will ever forget U.S. Reed’s 1981 miraculous half-court buzzer-beater defeating defending national champion Louisville. Reed’s feat led to the diverting spectacle of Texas coach Abe Lemons — the sardonic Will Rogers of college basketball — “calling the Hogs” on national TV.

Nearly every serious fan of March Madness has similar memories. Here in Arkansas, of course, we still savor the 1994 national championship, all the sweeter for defeating Duke in the title game. I’d written a profile of Nolan Richardson for a local magazine, predicting big things for the then-embattled second-year coach whose first Arkansas team had struggled with players unsuited to his full-court style.My reasoning was simple: Having attended many basketball practices in my day, I found his well-organized and uniquely challenging. His physical presence and personal charisma made his players fear and love him. He knew talent when he saw it. Not everybody does. He’d won big everywhere else; he’d win big at Arkansas. Simple as that.

Anyway, it’s been years since the coach’s daughter and I have missed watching a Razorback game together. We even watched Arkansas win the 2000 SEC Tournament in a Manhattan hotel room, arriving fashionably late to my own book party. And if your team loses? Pick another. There are 68 of them, from sea to shining sea.

Send letters to [email protected].

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The last time I spoke with Illinois basketball radio analyst Deon Thomas, the Illini were preparing for the 2020 Big Ten Tournament. We talked about how coach Brad Underwood had rebuilt a team that went from losing 21 games to winning 21, how guard Ayo Dosunmu and center Kofi Cockburn had taken their games to another level, how the Illini were days away from their first NCAA Tournament bid since 2013.

I had a story written and ready to go March 12. But the coronavirus pandemic took hold, and the sports world stopped.

“After speaking with you, I was in my car heading to Indianapolis,” Thomas said this week. “And [radio producer Ed Bond called], ‘You can turn around and go back home.’ And I’m like, ‘Why?’ And he said, ‘The Big Ten just canceled the tournament.’

“I was like, ‘OK, this is for real. This is not gonna be good.’ “

It wasn’t. The next day, the NCAA Tournament was canceled, and with it went Illinois’ dreams – not to mention my story.

But losing that jumble of words paled in comparison to what the Illini lost. Fortunately, they’re getting another chance. On Friday, as the top seed in the Midwest Region, they begin what many believe will be a long run in the NCAA Tournament with a first-round game against Drexel (12:15 p.m., TBS, 890-AM).

So it seemed appropriate to speak with Thomas again for a story that would see the light of day.

Thomas, who played at Illinois in 1990-94 and is the school’s all-time leading scorer, has watched the program rebuild from the ground up. His first season as the radio analyst was former coach John Groce’s last, in 2016-17. He watched Underwood’s first two teams finish 11^th and 10^th in the conference before the third team was the charm, finishing fourth.

Thomas credits Underwood for the turnaround after the coach saw his pressure defense get dissected and his motion offense flounder, prompting him to go back to the grease board.

“The sign of a good coach is you make adjustments. The sign of a great coach is you make changes,” Thomas said. “And coach Underwood made a complete change of how he coached. He’s completely opened the floor [on offense].

“You look at the development of the players. Kofi, from one year to the next, he’s not even the same player. Ayo was a great player when he came in as a freshman; look where he is now. Trent [Frazier] was the scorer for us his freshman year, but you get guys to believe in the mission and they change. Now this puzzle has been put together beautifully, and those guys are playing together.”

Thomas marvels at the Illini’s depth, which he calls the best in school history. That includes his X-factor, Giorgi Bezhanishvili. Like Frazier deferring to Dosunmu, Bezhanishvili gave way to Cockburn. But that hasn’t diminished his value to the team.

“When Giorgi hits his stride, as you saw in that Ohio State game [for the Big Ten Tournament title], for a five-, seven-minute span, he took over offensively, defensively, on the glass and from an energy standpoint. He lifted that team. He has the ability to do that.”

Illinois also could get a lift from partisan crowds in Indianapolis, though not quite as reminiscent of the 2005 Illini Invitational, in which the team played its NCAA Tournament games in Indy, Chicago and St. Louis. But even with limited tickets available, Illinois fans figure to make the trip. Of the 8,000 in attendance for the Big Ten title game, Thomas estimated the crowd was 90/10 for the Illini.

After broadcasting regular-season games alongside play-by-play voice Brian Barnhart without fans, any crowd would please Thomas. He said it felt “eerie” calling games in empty stadiums, but he became so conditioned to the silence that actual crowd noise during the Big Ten Tournament was jarring.

“Brian and I talked about that before we went on the air,” Thomas said. “[During] the Purdue-Ohio State game, I was off in the media room grabbing coffee. And there was this roar that went out from the crowd, and I almost dropped my coffee.

“When I got back in there, I told Brian, ‘Man, isn’t it good to hear the roar of a crowd, to hear hands clap, to hear people cheer?’ The things we take for granted. You begin to sit back and look, like, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is amazing.’ “

And this year, the show will go on.

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