Emily Weber rarely reads the local newspapers.

Her family has not gotten a newspaper delivered to its house in the nine years she has lived in Champaign. Too much negativity in the papers — it can make focusing on day-to-day life difficult.

But this year is different. No matter how hard she tries, negativity cannot be avoided. Not now. Not when you’re Bruce Weber’s daughter.

The Illinois men’s basketball team, with Emily’s father in his ninth season as head coach, has lost 11 of its last 13 games entering the Big Ten Tournament. Last week, Illinois women’s basketball head coach Jolette Law was fired a day after her season ended. Many think Bruce Weber will be next.

“There’s even been times lately that I’ve cried,” Emily says.

“Because I feel awful that this is happening. And I wish for the players and my dad that it was turning around.”

A sophomore in Media and a cheerleader at Illinois, Emily has long followed the Illini through times both good and bad. Sometimes, she can’t help but think back to the 2004-05 season, which now seems like ages ago.

In that season, the best in Illini history, Bruce Weber could have run for mayor of Champaign.

Among the Orange Krush members massing near the court at the Assembly Hall were students dressed as chefs, with the tagline “Grilling with Weber.”

Pregame introductions of that season now read like an introduction to Illinois’ all-time greats: guard Dee Brown; guard Deron Williams; guard Luther Head; center James Augustine; forward Roger Powell Jr. — five players who would land on NBA rosters at one time or another.

After the starters were introduced, the coaching staff would follow — a sequence climaxing with the introduction of Bruce Weber, whom many fans responded to with affectionate chants of “Bruuuuccce.”

The sound created by that particular chant mimics one with a meaning that could not be any different, but that has been heard increasingly often as this season has progressed.

“Boo.”

The onomatopoeic expression for disapproval, its usage is not uncommon in the basketball world.

This year’s Illinois fanbase, however, released the boo birds on its own team in Chicago’s United Center on Dec. 17, as a then-10-0 Illinois team fell to UNLV, 64-48. Those birds have stalked the Illini ever since.

Every inbounding chance that doesn’t run smoothly and every drawn-up play that breaks down appears this season to elicit a less-than-forgiving fan response. The only way to gauge that beyond the occasional booing is by the less-occasional early exit from home games.

“Even the Iowa game that we won, people still were leaving early,” Emily said. “And we’re winning. So I don’t know, they would leave early when we’re losing and when we’re winning. I don’t know, it doesn’t make sense to me. Why don’t you want to stay and support your team till the end?”

Emily doesn’t think the players have given up. She says her father doesn’t think so either. Neither does her boyfriend, Spencer Harris, a receiver on the Illinois football team that’s season played out eerily similar to the basketball team’s, resulting in the firing of Ron Zook.

“He knows,” Emily said of Harris. “He went on the six-game losing streak, too. And he said after that, they’re (the basketball players) just so emotionally drained right now.”

Emily is upset that some fans have turned against the team and her father. During one game — she does not remember which — she was cheering in front of the Orange Krush as a camera panned the section. In front of the camera — and probably unknowingly in front of Emily — one student took a cardboard image of Bruce Weber’s head and ripped it in half.

“Every part of me wanted to be like, ‘That’s my dad that you just ripped apart,’” Emily says.

In a way, Emily is as true a fan as there is. Her unconditional love for her father translates into an unconditional fandom for his Illini. Win or lose, she will always support Illinois.

Of course, her loyalties have shifted over the years. She still remembers cheering for dad’s team in West Lafayette, Ind., when he was an assistant at Purdue under Gene Keady. She was too young to know what was going on in the games, but even then was drawn to the cheerleaders, whom she wanted to join someday.

When Emily was six, in 1998, the Webers moved to Carbondale, Ill., where as head coach he turned around a Southern Illinois team that was coming off three straight losing seasons.

He was quickly picked up by Illinois, and the next two years were history. The Illini won the Big Ten Championship in 2004, Weber’s first season at Illinois, and won it again in 2005, also going 37-2 and appearing in the national title game.

That Final Four year was special not just for the basketball moments, but the family ones as well, as the entire Weber family got to experience it under one roof.

Emily was in seventh grade at Jefferson Middle School, and older sisters Hannah and Christy were still living at home as well.

During that season, just as any other Emily can remember, Bruce was always working. His typical schedule typically had him leave home soon after Emily left for school in the morning and return around seven or eight at night. That’s not counting away games, when he could be gone for days at a time, or the heaviest part of recruiting season, when he would be gone nearly a month. When home, Bruce can often be found on the phone.

Family time is rare but treasured in the Weber household. When Bruce’s three daughters lived at home, it happened most often during dinner. After nearly every home game, Bruce would bring home food — his favorite is pizza — and the family would eat dinner together, sometimes starting as late as 11 p.m.

“If he could have a meal, it’d definitely just be like pizza and a beer,” Emily says.

Another favorite of Bruce’s, Emily says, are buffalo chicken rolls she sometimes makes for him with her mother, Megan.

But those times have become fewer and farther between. Hannah is married and lives in St. Louis, Christy lives in Champaign and Emily lives on campus. Bruce is as busy as ever.

Emily can’t remember the last time he had a day off. Even last Christmas, when the family gathered and played the board game “The Game of Things,” Illinois had a practice in the evening.

If anything, Emily notices that her father is busier this season than usual — she does not believe he has given up.

“I’ve never seen my dad stop trying and he’s so, so hard on himself,” Emily said. “And he’s blaming everything on himself. And that’s really hard to watch, too, that he’s probably harder on himself than he needs to be.”

Overhearing phone conversations, which Emily does often while visiting her father in his office on campus, is a main source of information on the state of things.

The current state is somber. Emily says it’s evident in the tone of his voice, but most obviously in the words he is saying to his closest friends. “I’m doing all I can.” “Tough times don’t last, tough people do.”

When Emily can’t be around her dad, the two communicate over the phone.

“I text him after every single game,” she said.

One text, sent after Illinois’ 80-57 loss at Nebraska on Feb. 18, stuck with her. She remembers her father saying that it was a sad time in his coaching career, and he was praying and hoping for things to turn around and result in something good.

To hope that her father’s possible firing would ultimately lead to a positive is something Emily admits she has not previously had to do.

“Normally after a season, it’s like, ‘Oh, I wonder what next season’s gonna be like,’” she says. “Just really never questioning, ‘Oh, maybe we won’t be here.’”

Now she finds herself reflecting on what may no longer be her house in Champaign, with its basement full of Illini memorabilia.

“I think I’ve just kind of taken that for granted, that my dad really has been lucky,” Emily said. “My whole family’s been lucky. I’ve lived three places in my life, and he was at Purdue for 18 years. That’s a really long time for a coach to be somewhere.”

An Illinois men’s basketball coach has never been fired in Emily Weber’s lifetime. Lou Henson retired. Lon Kruger left for a brief stint in the NBA. Bill Self is still with Kansas.

Bruce Weber has never been fired in Emily’s lifetime, either. As she begins the realization of the darker side of the business, she has found a support system among her friends, most notably best friend Cally Turner, a student at Kentucky and daughter of fired Illinois football head coach Ron Turner.

“I’ve called her probably the most out of anybody in the past couple of weeks,” Emily said. “Sometimes it’s hard for your friends to really understand, and she’s somebody who does. She gets it. The coaching world is completely different.”

Cally, whose father was also fired from the Chicago Bears and Indianapolis Colts, has provided advice in large part revolving around staying positive.

“One of the things she told me is every single move that they’ve made, that their family’s been through, something good has come out of it,” Emily said.

Last season, Weber had the opportunity to leave Illinois on his own terms when Oklahoma expressed interest in hiring him to helm its program. Weber declined because of what Emily described as a mix between wanting to coach this year’s freshmen and wanting to stay close to his family in Champaign and St. Louis.

“He told us it just wasn’t time for him to leave,” Emily said.

For now, Emily can only try and ignore the painful attention. But it is hard to do.

“Especially after the last home game, everybody was just kind of emotional,” she said. “And I had a midterm the next day. And it was so hard to study after the game for me, just because that could be the last game that he coached there.”

If Weber is fired, Emily thinks she will probably stay enrolled at Illinois, but cheerleading may be a different story.

“I don’t know if I would be able to do cheerleading,” she says. “Like standing there, watching another coach, I think that would be really difficult for me.”

She wants as many people as possible to know Bruce Weber the way she does: As someone who would come home after Illinois’ season-ending loss to Wisconsin and immediately give her a hug and wish her a Happy Birthday before going out to dinner, never mentioning his own feelings about the defeat.

“He just lost another game, he was still able to be happy and wanting to celebrate my birthday … he’s not selfish at all,” said Emily, who turned 20 on Sunday.

Emily said she met athletic director Mike Thomas and his family earlier in the season.

“We were in Cancun, it was really just a friendship between our families and things like that,” Emily said. “I mean, I never really see the business side.”

But with each loss, the business side becomes impossible to ignore.

“The past couple weeks, it’s like we have been losing and I have been just thinking about, ‘What if my dad does decide to leave or, you know, or if he does get fired?’” Emily said. “It’s so hard for me to think, like it’s been my life for the past nine years.”