Sports continue, some how; Illinois stuns Michigan

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Sports seasons continually overlap each year. This year we need a scorecard to keep the seasons straight, regardless of the sport.

A few college football games, played by teams which did not play in the Fall, started last weekend. On the Division III level, Aurora University and Benedictine University, members of the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference (NACC) were eligible to start practice Wednesday this week and will begin playing a limited number of games later this month

The College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin (CCIW), with nine teams will start playing games March 20, however, without two teams, North Central College in Naperville and Wheaton College, which chose not to play in the Spring in deference to athletes in the Spring who participate in Spring sports, especially track and field. North Central has built championship teams in track and field.

Coincidentally, Northern Illinois University issued its 12-game football schedule for the Fall. There will be eight Mid-American Conference games. The special non-conference games will be at Georgia Tech at home to Wyoming, at the University of Michigan, and at home to Maine. See page 12 for the full schedule of opponents and dates, without the times which will be announced later.

The big-time college men’s basketball tournaments are close at hand, in their usual slots. See the listing on this page in the Sports Lineup. Women’s tournaments will be played. All teams will complete regular-season games Sunday, March 14 and later in the day the Selection Sunday show will reveal teams for the Division I March Madness tournaments. All games this year, because of the ravaging by COVID-19 will be played n the Indianapolis area with fewer games than the 68-game field.

The traditional NIT (National Invitational Tournament) will cut back to 16 teams from 32 teams and will move the final four games from New York City’s Madison Square Garden to Dallas, Texas.

The Big Ten Conference teams have their sites set on the big tournament. There is no certainty how many teams will be selected, eight, nine, 10….

The University of Illinois men’s basketball team made a strong case for one of the top four seeds in the March 14 selection process, with a stunning victory over the University of Michigan Tuesday this week, in Ann Arbor, Mich., 76-53. Illinois was ranked No. 4 by the Associated Press earlier this week and Michigan moved to No. 2, one slot ahead of Baylor University which lost for the first time Saturday. Illinois will conclude its regular season at No. 7 Ohio State Saturday and prepare for the Big 10 tournament.

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