Frazier finally gets to play close to home

While the rest of his teammates were frothing at the mouth two weeks ago over their impending trip to Hawaii, Chester Frazier had his eyes set on a different prize.

Today's ACC/Big Ten Challenge game at Maryland, which serves Illinois' first visit to his home state.

"I need like 60 tickets," Frazier said on Nov. 13. "I've already been asking everyone. It's going to be hard to get them, though."

This figures to be the junior guard's only collegiate chance to play within an easy drive of Baltimore, where he was born and raised and much of his family still resides.

"He's very fired up," said Illini coach Bruce Weber. "He's talked about this game since the schedule came out. It's a big game for him and he's going to have a lot of people there. I hope he can have some emotional control with himself, which he has a tendency to get going too fast."

There'll be another reason Frazier will need to gather his emotions today. His father, Chester Sr., died of lung cancer on April 3 without ever getting to see his namesake play for Illinois.

He had planned to drive to Penn State on Feb. 24 to catch the Illini, but his aggressive cancer was discovered just a few weeks before.

The disease's sudden strike and Frazier's attachment to his father were manifest in his actions immediately after his dad passed.

As Frazier told the Champaign News-Gazette, he stayed with his father's body for four hours and begged for him to come back.

It would be simple to say Frazier has channeled his grief into ferocious play during Illinois' first five games, but he's merely playing the same way he always has.

Though just 6-feet-2, Frazier ranks second on the team in rebounding (6.2 rpg). He's also third in scoring (8.4 ppg), second in assists (2.8) and shooting a much-improved 41.2 percent from 3-point range.

"As far as the trip went, he pretty much won the game at Hawaii," Weber said. "He had 19 points and 9 rebounds. They had him down for 1 assist, but just watching the tape I know there were 3 assists right at the beginning of the game that he had.

"He led us on the play-hard chart, on the Matto Chart. He just plays very hard. I thought he got so exhausted after the Duke game and just kind of was punch-drunk in the Oklahoma State game and made some bad decisions.

"I was a little disappointed, but nobody else was playing in the Hawaii game and he had to play 39 minutes.

"It just kind of took a toll on him. Once the games were over, he just sat in the hotel and slept basically, he was so exhausted."

Illinois (4-1) at Maryland (4-2)

When: 6:30 p.m. at Comcast Center

TV: ESPN2

Radio: WIND 560-AM

The skinny: This is a revenge game for the Illini, who saw their national-best streaks for nonconference home wins (51) and regular-season nonconference wins (40) go up in smoke when the Terps won 72-66 at Assembly Hall last November. Illinois expects to have senior forward Brian Randle available. The bruised nerve in his leg seems healthy enough to go. If not, look for junior sparkplug Calvin Brock to move to small forward as the Illini need athletes to hang with Maryland. Sophomore guard Greivis Vasquez, who killed the Illini last year, is back and leading the Terps with 17.7 points per game. They've played a tough early slate that includes a 12-point loss to No. 2 UCLA and a 14-point defeat to Missouri.

-- Lindsey Willhite