Just off of Route 41 entering Terre Haute is a large cemetery, with tombstone after tombstone honoring those who have passed. It seemed fitting Saturday morning given Illinois State’s recent lack of basketball success against the hometown Indiana State Sycamores.
For nearly a decade this had been where Redbird victories came to die. They had perished in a variety of ways, some in overtime, some when leads got away, others when rallies fell short.
After one, a former Redbird told me it was because his team had come out too “laxative.” Indeed, the past nine years had been messy for the visiting ISU at Hulman Center.