Illini healthy for Rose Bowl
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. --USC could be without its most experienced receiver for today's 94th Rose Bowl.
Six-foot-5 junior wideout Patrick Turner, a season-long starter who caught 48 passes for 569 yards and 3 touchdowns, will play little, if any, today due to a deep thigh bruise suffered in practice.
"We're not going to count on him," said Trojans coach Pete Carroll.
Turner will be replaced by David Ausberry and Ronald Johnson, a pair of freshmen who combined for 29 catches, 307 yards and 2 scores.
Illinois coach Ron Zook, on the other hand, reports his team hasn't been this healthy all season.
"We're as good as we possibly could be," Zook said.
Fullback Russ Weil, who missed most of the Ohio State win and all of the Northwestern regular-season finale with a bad knee, should be in the starting lineup.
Zook said freshman receiver Arrelious Benn, a game-breaking punt returner in high school, might return some punts for the first time all year.
His chronic right shoulder injury, a dislocation that occurred in a preseason scrimmage and will require surgery shortly after the Rose Bowl, hasn't been much of an issue lately.
"He's caught an awful lot of punts this week," Zook said. "He feels good about that. But we'll start with DaJuan (Warren) back there."
The mighty underdog: Las Vegas must have done a terrific job sizing up the Rose Bowl.
When the BCS pairings were revealed a month ago, Illinois started as a 13½-point underdog and the line barely wavered.
Just don't talk to USC tight end Fred Davis, the Mackey Award winner, about being a big favorite.
"We lost to Stanford," Davis said, "so you can't really look at the underdog and look at all the hype."
Stanford was getting 41 points on the betting line before it stunned USC 24-23 at the Coliseum on Oct. 6.
"You've got to definitely be humble and just play every team like it's the national championship," Davis said. "This, to us, is our national championship."
Monday's excitement: For security reasons, Rose Bowl officials don't allow access to the stadium until the last possible moment.
When Illinois and USC did their walkthroughs at the Rose Bowl on Monday afternoon, it served as the teams' only opportunity to inspect the stadium prior to today's game.
"It's like a little boy looking forward to Christmas the night before Christmas," Ron Zook said. "Obviously this is an exciting time."
Zook, a notoriously light sleeper, claimed he'd have no problem snoozing the night before the biggest game of his coaching career.
"It's the night after the game that sometimes I have trouble sleeping," Zook said with a smile.
Today's plans: Illinois will board its buses at 11 a.m. Pacific time -- three hours before the game -- and receive a police escort for the 30-mile trip to the Rose Bowl.
The police escorts have been one of the more fascinating parts of Illinois' week-long stay here.
Anywhere from five to nine California Highway Patrol officers have accompanied the Illini virtually everywhere.
Whenever their buses want to change lanes, the cops pull ahead on their motorcycles and virtually push other traffic out of the way.
Los Angeles' fabled traffic problems haven't been bad during this holiday week, which made the escorts less necessary than anticipated.
That should change today when more than 1 million people descend upon hard-to-access Pasadena for the Rose Parade and the Bowl game.