Tuesday night at Northern Illinois University, the basketball contest itself meant very little compared to the pregame moment of silence. Tuesday night’s game against Western Michigan was Northern’s first basketball game since the tragedy on February 14. Though NIU lost 56-49, sports took a backseat.

To many of us on the University of Illinois campus, the tragedy that struck DeKalb hit a little too close to home. A good portion of students on our campus are from the Chicago metropolitan area, and even if you aren’t, you may have friends who attend Northern. Spending my Thursday afternoon waiting for a friend from Northern to call me back was not a good time – not to mention the scary fact that the very shooter was a student at our own University.

Frankly, the thought of a basketball game less than two weeks after the Valentine’s Day tragedy originally made me think: sports just aren’t really that important.

And truly they aren’t.

The Huskies are 6-18 this year. They were playing Western Michigan, the leader of the MAC-West division. Though WMU was certainly playing for a possible berth in NCAA tournament, this game probably wouldn’t have been important regardless of the situation.

But even if this was the NCAA men’s championship or the Rose Bowl, you just get the feeling after such tragic events that it’s all just a game. It has nothing to do with the meaningful things in life, like family, friends, etc.

Both coaches that night seemed to understand this well.

“OK, we won the game,” Western Michigan head coach Steve Hawkins told reporters after the game. “Who cares? I’m happy that we could help NIU return to some sort of normalcy.”

“To me, this is still about the families,” Northern Illinois head coach Ricardo Patton said. “It’s not about the team. My heart goes out to the parents and the loved ones that they lost. That’s what’s most difficult.”

So as unimportant as the actual game may have been Tuesday night, sports are in fact very important. Not the outcomes, but the community that sports creates.

Here at the University of Illinois, there are definitely times when people disagree with one another – the Chief, Inclusive Illinois, Global Campus.

But I’ll tell you, there is not a more chilling time than when all 16,618 fans in The Assembly Hall are cheering for the Orange and Blue as one. That togetherness of the community is what it is all about.

On Tuesday night at the Convocation Center in DeKalb, the game began with a moment of silence. Both teams got together at midcourt. They joined hands and sat in silence, and according to Northern Illinois’ student newspaper, the Northern Star, “Even after the PA announcer broke the silence, it took a staff member to break the two teams apart.”

“The emotions built up behind everything that has happened,” NIU guard Jarvis Nichols said. “It kind of left us in a daze of ‘what do we do next?’ We’ve never locked up like that at the Huskie head.”

In addition to the moment of silence, many of the Northern Illinois players, coaches and fans wore ribbons, and Western Michigan players wore NIU patches.

The 56-49 win may have been great for Western Michigan – another win in a season of many for WMU and another loss in a season of many for NIU – but while the score will quickly be forgotten, every person in attendance Tuesday night will remember how sports brought them together.

Free throws

The song remains the same for the men’s basketball team. Free throws were a non factor in the Wisconsin loss last week, but one wonders what would have happened if the free-throw percentages in the game against Michigan were switched. Overall, last week Illinois shot 24-of-37 which is just under 65 percent. In the Big Ten, Illinois continues to rank dead last in free throws.

Our shooter this week is a spry Gregory McGovern who is a senior in LAS. His goal: make 7-of-10 and win $10 and the opportunity to say, “I’m better at free throws than the Illini.” He got to 6-for-9. If he made his last shot, he’d go down in DI glory. If he missed, he’d be a goat.

With the contest on the line, much like our very own men’s basketball team, McGovern air-balled his last shot and lost.

If you’d like a chance to beat our men’s basketball team, e-mail me at [email protected].

Kevin Spitz is a senior in Engineering. He can be reached at [email protected].