Something is going on with Illini basketball’s Italy trip

A fake tweet from someone impersonating Illini Inquirer‘s Derek Piper was posted yesterday alleging that Andres Feliz and Kofi Cockburn wouldn’t be making the trip to Italy with the rest of the Illini basketball team. The now-deleted tweet was picked up by legitimate journalists, notably Jeremy Werner of Illini Inquirer, and quickly began to spread through Illini Twitter circles.

Quickly, it was determined that the tweet was a hoax coming from an impersonator – which in-and-of-itself is pretty mind-blowing:

But the story gets weirder – Cockburn and Feliz actually didn’t make the trip to Italy, and no one seems to be acknowledging it:

This appears to be true – they’re not in any of the pictures posted by @IlliniMBB:

What’s more, the media who are travelling with the team are silent, which raises yet another flag. Maybe this has nothing to do with the fake tweet, and I’m certainly no conspiracy theorist, but it sure seems like something is going on here, perhaps an administrative mistake?

UPDATE:


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Not ideal!