Illini fans angry at Hoosiers' Gordon cross line
Mind you, nobody on either side of the aisle has been showing any understanding at all. At Indiana, they think Illinois fans and coach Bruce Weber, who has complained ad nauseam, are whining babies. At Illinois, they think Sampson is a cheater and they think Gordon is, among other things that were chanted at him, a liar and a traitor and a sellout.
That's why this game felt like a piece of March Madness. Television cameras staked out the Indiana team bus earlier Thursday to get a glimpse of Gordon as he stepped inside. Illinois students arrived at Assembly Hall an hour before tip-off to boo him during warm-ups. In the small Hoosiers cheering section, several fans wore Indiana jerseys with Gordon's No. 23 while others wore shirts that asked on one side, "Got Gordon?" On the other side came the answer: "We do."
Sampson also received tons of Illinois ire thanks to his recruitment of Gordon and also to his status as a known offender of NCAA telephone rules. One Illinois fan dressed as a giant cell phone, while hundreds of students waved their cell phones at him. When Sampson turned to his wife behind the bench and gave her a thumb's up, Illinois fans who spotted the gesture chanted, "Don't call us ... we'll call you."
The crowd clearly rattled Gordon, who tripped all over himself on his first two possessions of the game and finished 3-for-13 from the floor, inadvertently banking in one of those baskets from about 25 feet for Indiana's final basket of regulation. He had seven turnovers. He wasn't terribly good. But even a bad Gordon is a good college player, and he finished with team highs of 19 points and four assists.
"We told the kids he's going to keep coming at you," Weber said. "It's tough to defend him. He gets to the basket so well. He's so athletic. Our kids really respect (Gordon) and how good he is. He's a really special player, about as good a freshman as I've seen in my 20 years in the Big Ten."
Gordon wasn't treated as anything special. He was treated as someone despicable, and given all that has happened, I understand. I even understand the chant directed at him by Illinois fans who wondered, over and over, "Where's your conscience?"
I also wonder if one of those chanting fans was the guy who hit Gordon's mother with ice water.
