Quote from: Titan Q on April 22, 2020, 08:20:41 AMQuote from: centconfwatcher on April 22, 2020, 05:35:02 AM
I don't know if I'm as sold on Illinois Wesleyan as you are Titan Q, which is understandable, lol! But a 9 loss team being a sure fire top 10 team after playing some games last year (both Wheaton losses, getting blown out by Concordia Texas, two of those at full strength if I'm not mistaken) but we will see in the year to come, teams definitely get better and Freshmen can be a huge part of a team's success/identity.
This is the purpose of the exercise - to get as many opinions in the conversation as possible.
Regarding IWU, to be exact, I have them in the top 12 (not 10). There are 12 teams in that "Tier 1."
The Titans certainly lost a couple bad ones. (You mentioned the Concordia loss in TX. IWU lost its starting PG and leading scorer, Grant Wolfe, the day before that game during a practice in TX.) On the flip side, they won 19 vs what Massey says was the 2nd strongest schedule in the country. IWU finished in a CCIW tie with Elmhurst, and had good wins vs North Central (Sweet 16), Elmhurst (Sweet 16), and 2 vs Augustana (per Massey, #19 and the 2nd best team not in the NCAA tourney field).
With IWU returning its top 8 scorers from a team that finished 3rd in the CCIW and played in the conference championship game, I guess the question is which 12 teams would you rank ahead of them? To come up with those 12 you'll have to dip into some teams that lose a bunch.
Based on what I am seeing in terms of who returns what, it seems to me both IWU and Elmhurst are pretty safe top 12 teams going in.
I think IWU benefits from the CCIW being much deeper and having better teams in the middle and at the bottom of the pack than some leagues on the east coast. If you put a team like Christopher Newport say into the CCIW, I'm not sure that they don't win as many games or more than the league's top, but they lose out on a good strength of schedule number because of the conference games they have to play. My top 25 right now:
1. RMC
2. Emory
3. Johns Hopkins
4. Yeshiva
5. Swarthmore
6. Elmhurst
7. St. Thomas
8. Platteville
9. St. John's
10. NWU