VIDEO: Illini Now/SI Morning Update With Matthew Stevens - July 6, 2020
Illini Now/Sports Illustrated publisher/editor Matthew Stevens talks about the coaching and recruiting job of House Of Paign from former Illinois walk-on Mike LaTulip that culminated in a dominating 76-53 victory over War Tampa in the first round of The Basketball Tournament Saturday night.
House Of Paign, which had only been able to practice together for the last five days but had prepared sets and a philosophy of play for months thanks to organized Zoom video conferences by LaTulip, led this matchup from start to finish and showcased a chemistry-laden defensive effort that limited War Tampa to just 3 of 23 from three-point range.
“Illinois fans that watched us may be thinking of these guys who didn’t play at Illinois ‘Who are these guys?’, but they’re high character guys,” House Of Paign head coach Mike LaTulip said in the post-game media conference. “It takes a lot. It takes a village. Obviously when we put this team together, we had a template. When we did that, we thought we’d have guys that liked being around each other.”
- One other note: The Illini Now/Sports Illustrated site will monitoring the commitment announcement of three-star Florida defensive back DD Snyder. Snyder announced on Twitter that he'll be verbally committing to a program at 2 p.m. CST on social media. Snyder’s older brother (T.J. Harrell) played in the Big Ten at Michigan State from 2015-18 and the idea is Snyder has the speed to handle receivers in Power Five Conference football. Last week, Snyder, a 6-foot athlete from Tampa Catholic High School announced his top selections (Illinois, Louisville, Indiana and UCF) and his commitment of date of July 6. Illinois was among his final selections suggesting the Illini have still made an impact since offering the prospect in late March shortly after COVID-19 shut down all in-person recruiting.