CHAMPAIGN - When Bruce Weber says Sunday's Illini basketball opponent has ties to the state of Illinois, he isn't kidding. Texas A&M-Corpus Christi's head coach, Perry Clark, was rumored to be a coaching candidate at Illinois in the 1990s when he was head man at Tulane.

Assistant coach Billy Garrett played at Illinois State University, was head basketball coach and athletic director at Providence St. Mel High School in suburban Chicago and has helped bring to Corpus Christi six players who played prep ball in Chicago or the suburbs.

That alone provides enough reasons to believe the Islanders will be plenty motivated when they invade the Assembly Hall this afternoon.

"I have known Billy Garrett for a long time," Weber said. "His das was a famous player out of Indianapo-lis. Billy has six players from Chicago (at Corpus Christi) and those kids will be fired up.

"They are athletic and they will be very, very aggressive. And they do have a couple of big guys."

Texas A&M-Corpus Christi opened its season Friday night with an 83-64 victory over Texas A&M-Kingsville. Four players scored in double figures led by 14 from Jawan Nelson, a 6-foot-9 freshman who is one of those five Chicago-area recruits. Nelson is from Sauk Village and played at Bloom Township.

Garrett also has personal knowledge of the Big Ten, having been on Steve Alford's staff at Iowa during the 2006-07 season.

Illinois will be trying to build off the progress it showed in the second half of Friday's season-opening 66-50 victory over Eastern Washington.

Trent Meacham led the Illini with 18 points and said he's glad to finally have meaningful games to look forward to.

"We're excited to play," Meacham said. "We've been beating up on each other since the end of last sea-son."

It remains to be seen whether Weber will start Demetri McCamey, who the coach says should be Illinois' best player. McCamey did not start Friday and Weber said his role will be determined by how consistently he shows maximum effort in practice and in games.

McCamey came off the bench less than four minutes into the game and finished with 11 points, three assists and five turnovers in 29 minutes of action.

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Illinois vs. Texas A&M-Corpus Christi

When: Sunday, 4:30 p.m.

Where: Assembly Hall, Champaign

Records: Both teams are 1-0.

Radio: WTRX-FM (93.7)