The Illini's season-opener against Kent State will have to wait another day.
Originally slated to start at 8 p.m. Friday night, severe weather delayed the game for more than two hours before Illinois announced that the game was postponed until Saturday afternoon. The game will now kick off at 1 p.m. Saturday, and it will not be televised, though it will be streamed online by Big Ten Network.
The postponement was understandable, as the scenes shared on social media looked nasty.
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Not long before the originally scheduled kickoff, fans were asked to evacuate the seating area at Memorial Stadium, and some fans sat in the concourse for hours. Players and coaches also waited out the storms that never left.
It's been a challenging week for the Illini, who saw head coach Tim Beckman fired last Friday, and now the season-opener — the first game under interim head coach Bill Cubit — has been postponed.