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Illinois benefits from Lovie Smith hire while Bill Cubit moves on

Graham Watson

Illinois is already reaping the benefits of the Lovie Smith hire.

Jason Heggemeyer, Illinois associate athletic director, tweeted there were 1,400 new season ticket buyers by the end of day Monday and $370,000 in new ticket revenue.

Not a bad for a program that went 5-7 a year ago and averaged just under 41,342 per game, which was nearly 20,000 less than capacity.

However, not everyone is feeling the joy of Smith’s hiring.

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Former coach Bill Cubit, who was unceremoniously fired Saturday on athletic director Josh Whitman’s first day, told the Chicago Sun-Times he was hurt by the move, “but I’m not going to wallow in sorrow or self-pity.”

Cubit was hired as the interim head coach last August after the school was forced to fire coach Tim Beckman. In November, the interim tag was dropped and Cubit was given a two-year deal. However, before he could coach his first game as the Illini’s new head coach, he was given the axe.

“There has been a lot of negativity [at Illinois], and I swore I would not be negative,” Cubit said. “I swore that I’d be positive, even if things go against me. I don’t want to waste a minute of my life being negative now. Life is too short.”

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Cubit is now looking for work, but the prospects of him becoming a Power 5 head coach again are slim. He told the paper he didn’t know what his next move would be, but that he felt for the assistants on his staff that also would ultimately be unemployed.

“That’s the most important part of all this,” Cubit said. “Those guys put their faith in me.”

For more Illinois news, visit OrangeandBlueNews.com.

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Graham Watson is the editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at dr.saturday@ymail.com or follow her on Twitter!

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