Congratulations to Jackie Errico (NCC), Kelly Brooks (Wheaton) and the 15 other CCIW student-athletes from various sports that were honored with the 2011 Merle Chapman Leadership award!!!  The award identifies the student-athletes from the eight member institutions that best exemplify the traits that Chapman displayed and encouraged during his three-plus decades of service as teacher, coach and mentor to the athletes, coaches and administrators of the CCIW. Those traits are loyalty, enthusiasm, and commitment to academic, athletic and personal excellence, leadership and sportsmanship.  A wonderful honor for these student-athletes to achieve.

http://www.cciw.org/news/2011/4/13/Gen._0413112716.aspx

Congratulations to the 2011 CCIW All-Conference Women's Basketball Teams, Laura Karsten and Coach Madsen.  The majority of the honors were very deserving and as always, there were several players that were more deserving of the honor that did not make the cut due to the fact that the winning teams, as in the past, tend to get more players on the All-Conference Teams.  It is unfortunate that the CCIW tends to honor players just because they are on a winning team even though other players in the conference had better statistics and were more deserving of the honor. 

In response to all of the Titan Fans' postings regarding the 2011 CCIW All-Conference Women's Basketball Teams, you should all be very pleased with the outcome.  Having 4 players on the All-Conference Teams is exceptional and something to be proud of.  Wanting or expecting more would have only taken the honor away from other players in the conference that were truly deserving of the honor, not just because they were on a winning team).

Based on last year's All-Conference selections, the teams that finished higher in the standings did secure more selections.  The following were the number of selections that each team received last season:

IWU:  4
Wheaton:  3
Carthage:  3
North Central:  2
Elmhurst:  1
Milikin:  1
North Park:  1
Augustana:  0

If the top teams again get 3-4 selections, there will be several players with better stats that will not be considered for the All-Conference Team.

I was at the NCC/IWU game.  I was overall impressed with NCC's and Errico's performance against top-ranked IWU.  Considering the debth of IWU's bench having played 15 girls and NCC playing 7 girls, my accolades go to NCC!!!  NCC needs to get off to a better first half as they were neck to neck in scoring in the 2nd half.  That has been a problem in past games, as well.

NCC's Newson has an ankle injury.  It is anticipated that she will be back on the court on Saturday.