It sounds like a great idea: Hosting a "legends game" to honor your most decorated former men's basketball players. But how do you make all the details of such an event come together, including getting busy star players to return to campus?

The University of Illinois pulled it off last fall with rousing success, honoring 30 former players with more than 15,000 fans in attendance. The keys, says Illinois Assistant Athletics Director Kent Brown, were planning ahead and thinking through every aspect of this unique event.

The first part of planning ahead was simply finding a date, which was not so simple, since many of Illinois's most recent alumni play overseas in the fall and a handful play in the NBA. Organizers also wanted to tie it into a home football weekend. And, for the event to succeed, the school needed its most famous and popular players to attend.

The Illini found the perfect date when former All-American and current Utah Jazz star Deron Williams had plans to host a charity event in Chicago on a Friday night in early September. Since some of his former teammates from the 2005 squad that played in the national championship game were involved, and there was a home football game the next day, the date was booked.

"The 2005 team was arguably the greatest of all time here, and since it was fairly recent, we knew that was a key group to have back," says Brown. "Deron's fundraiser was a huge lynchpin."

Dubbed "A Night of Legends," the Illinois event featured an alumni game and a ceremony that honored 30 former players by hanging their jerseys from the roof of Assembly Hall. Ticket prices were set at $15.

Naturally, the first question was, "Who do we honor?" Brown, along with other members of the athletic and basketball staffs, determined that an honoree had to be an Olympian, member of the National Basketball Hall of Fame, consensus All-American, National Player of the Year, Big Ten Player of the Year, or member of Illinois's All-Century team.

The oldest alumni chosen played from 1915-1917, while three others had their college careers interrupted when they served in World War II. Six players from the 1989 Final Four team were honored, as were three from the 2005 squad. "We wanted to find criteria that would ensure all the athletes selected were special, but we also wanted the honor to be attainable for future players," says Brown. A big part of the planning was coordinating the players' travel schedules. "Getting waiver approval for guys to leave their European teams for a couple days was not easy, but it was critical to have our most popular players in attendance," Brown says.

In order to build interest in the event, Illinois developed an intriguing strategy for unveiling the honored players. "In our first press release, we explained the event and announced only a handful of players who would be honored, including Deron, Dee Brown, and others of that level," Brown says. "Then on a weekly basis, we'd release two more names to keep a steady flow of information going. The media talked about it, we had the releases on our Web site, and fans constantly discussed the selections on our message boards.

"[Current Head Coach Bruce] Weber also spoke about it every time a new name was released," he continues. "That kept people thinking about our event over a long period of time."

Brown also carefully planned the unveiling of the jerseys. "We had to think about how we wanted them to look, how to unveil them, where to put them, and what order we would hang them in," he explains. "It may seem small, but when you're hanging 30 jerseys up in your arena, you can't just throw them up there haphazardly."

Finally, the night had to be filled with emotion and memories. Organizers accomplished this by including videos of Illinois basketball history during timeouts and a halftime tribute to those players who competed on or worked with Olympic teams. Former Head Coach Lou Henson and former Assistant Coach Jimmy Collins coached the two squads, and a video honoring all 30 legends was shown before their uniforms were unveiled.

"Any time you take on a project like this, the details are key to making it as successful as possible," Brown says. "The biggest thing is to plan ahead and map out your strategy."