Being on the men's basketball staff at Illinois comes with certain perks, former Bill Self assistant Billy Gillispie learned while house shopping upon moving to C-U in 2000.
The future Kentucky head coach wound up with the perfect place — "on the 15th hole at Lincolnshire Fields Country Club," he remembers — after coming to an arrangement with the previous owners.
"I was having a hard time finding a home to buy and the people selling this particular house weren´t entertaining anyone´s offer," he says. "So I wrote a contract and included four tickets to Fighting Illini home games.
“Suddenly, they got excited about selling.”
