A little about the site and myself...

I'm a 1993 graduate of Illinois Wesleyan University and currently reside in Bloomington.   I work for State Farm Insurance at our corporate headquarters in Bloomington.  My sister Erin graduated from IWU in 1995 and then earned a Masters degree from University of Illinois (Champaign) in 1997. She now resides in Boston and works as a real estate agent.  My parents, Bob and Joan, reside in Oak Lawn.

I'm originally from Oak Lawn, a south suburb of Chicago.  I attended Brother Rice High School of the Chicago Catholic League where I played baseball.  My first exposure to Illinois Wesleyan basketball was listening to the countless stories my father (Bob Quillman, Sr. IWU '57) would tell me as a kid about playing for Coach Jack Horenberger. An all-stater from small school powerhouse Pinckneyville High School, my dad was originally recruited to IWU by then Pantagraph Sports Editor Fred Young. He played alongside one of the best scorers ever to put on a Titan uniform - Dean Padgett.  (The vacancy left by my dad's graduation in '57 was filled by a freshman by the name of Dennie Bridges.)

It didn't take me long to get hooked on Titan basketball.  As a freshman in 1989-90 I learned why so many people loved watching games at the Fred Young Fieldhouse - what  a great atmosphere for basketball. I made every home game that year and many road games, watching the Jeff Kuehl/Mark Edmundson led Titans, who went on the the D3 Elite Eight that year and lost a heartbreaker to Depauw.

As the station manager of campus station WESN FM (88.1) my junior year I decided that the "Far Left FM" should be broadcasting Titan games.  Local AM station WJBC did most of the games, but I just couldn't understand why they would pass up a Titan game for that "other university" across town when schedules conflicted.  So, with some shoddy equipment and a former Titan basketball player (Mike Thomas '91) as my color guy, my basketball play-by-play career began at North Park University one winter night.  We didn't really know what we were doing, but we did alright and we got better with each game. With an assortment of color guys I did every remaining Titan basketball game (home & away with the exception of the holiday trips) during the '91-92 and '92-93 seasons.

For the last six years I've worked as part of the WJBC broadcast team on IWU basketball broadcasts.  Working with legendary broadcaster Art Kimball from 2001-02 to 2004-05 was an honor.  As a kid, I'd watch the IHSA state tournament TV broadcasts from Champaign every year and Art, of course, was the play-by-play man. I learned a lot about broadcasting in those four seasons with Art, who was the consumate professional. Art is one of the good guys around the sport of basketball. 

So to make a long story short, I've been a big Titan hoops fan for many years now.  So why the website? In December of 1998 I was fooling around with a web design program on my computer - I decided to use IWU basketball as the topic. Being completely computer illiterate, I had no intention of ever publishing this page. But as I began adding stuff I realized how easy it was to make a pretty good site. On 12/5/98 I published the site for the first time on free America Online server.  That first season the page received an average of 10 hits per day. Before the 1999-2000 season I purchased the domain name "IWUhoops.com."   That year the site averaged over 100 hits a day.  In 2000-01 over 300 people hit iwuhoops.com per day on average.  That number increased to 809 per day during the 2001-02 season and 1350 in 2002-03.  Today the site gets about 1800 hits per day during the heart of the season.  

I always enjoy receiving feedback and suggestion about the site, so please feel free to E.Mail with any thoughts.  Thanks for stopping by, and Go Titans!

-- Bob Quillman (E.Mail - "bobquill@aol.com")