Illini upset No. 9 Michigan State

I'll admit that Blackhawks-Canucks was the only thing on my "sports to watch" list last night.

It wasn't until the first intermission of the hockey game that I checked in on Illinois on Twitter. I guess you have to be ranked to really grab my attention when it's still January, and the Fighting Illini are not. Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Illini had upset ninth-ranked Michigan State. My first reaction was to be upset that I hadn't bothered to watch the game.

When I realized that the final score was 42-41, and that the Spartans had made less than 25 percent of their field goals (the Illini, at 32.6 percent, were hardly sharpshooters themseleves), I felt a lot less regret that I'd missed out.

Entertaining/pretty or not, the Illini can use all of the wins like Tuesday's that they can get as they continue to build their NCAA Tournament resume. It was hardly the first big-time win for the Illini this year; they'd already beaten Gonzaga and Ohio State. Yet they're not a cinch for a high tournament seed, nor are they ranked today (though I bet they are by next week), because of a recent three-game losing streak that included games against Penn State and Minnesota.

That schizophrenia makes it almost impossible to know what to think of the Illini as the Big Ten and NCAA Tournaments approach. They've proven they can beat anybody in the first, and teams that will be top-3 seeds in the second, suggesting deep runs in either tournament are possible. On the other hand, you're hardly immune to being upset early in either tournament if you can't handle Penn State. It's hardly reassuring when your leading scorer misses the front end of two crunch-time 1-and-1s, as Brandon Paul did Tuesday.

Nine games still remain on Illinois' regular-season docket, including five against ranked foes. That should be enough time to learn which Illinois team is the fraud — the one that could claim a pair of signature wins before January had ended, or the one that couldn't top the Gophers and the Nittany Lions in the span of nine days.