MBB: Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

[Willy Wonka]

cmob - The great basketball minds I was sitting with likened the Tech/C-I game to a Class AA game. We're on the same page.

Mayo ran into problems this year when either of its Big 2 got into foul trouble. However, you'd tend to think that having two legit (small school) D1 guys would get them a little more respect from the other coaches; personally, I think Hicks could have gone MUCH bigger. Heck, even Sibley's coaches said afterwards that they greatly underestimated them. Getting the 3/4 seed would have been HUGE, since it would have allowed them a chance to play the lower tier teams rather than Sibley — even if it meant certain-death in the next round against Tonka.

TH4L - Fong is going to Olaf, too. The Sibley PG — who destroyed Mayo — apparently has his list down to GAC and UST.

[Drake Palmer]

Drake

Rodney Williams already is a big time D1 recruit as he has received interest or offers from Bradley, Iowa, Iowa State, Kansas, Minnesota, Purdue, Wisconsin, Miami (Fl), Ohio State

Cmob- let me rephrase my statement about Rodney Williams – he's a big time talent who would be an absolutely HUGE recruit if he had a consistent J and handles.  The kid has got amazing, semi-polished, athletic ability.  Yesterday's game was not unlike another game I saw Williams play over the Xmas break:  5-6 ridiculous dunks, 1 trey out of 7-8 jumpers, 6-7 blocks, & double digit boards. 

After the tourney is over I'll start a thread to track these HS players & list the schools in the MIAC they might be attending.

[TommieHoops4Life]

WW,

I love Fong's game, mainly because it's how I wanted to play back in the day but I never got to that level. He's a forward who can use his size to get inside but he can shoot the J as well. I'm guessing the Sibley guard you were referring to was Leslie? If he stays within the family circle, he'll join his bro at UST. That kid was unconscious from three land, but I also liked his courage to drive the lane among the big boys.

I heard today that Schilling from Tonka is going to the same D-2 school that Keating started out at. Interesting. Williams is a ridiculous athlete, but needs to polish everything a little and hit the weight room. He had a nasty alley-opp dunk yesterday off an inbounds play.

Probably my favorite post player in the tourney so far is C.J. Erickson from Tonka. He had like 5 blocks by halftime today. He can also score in a variety of ways. Just like we thought, Tonka blitzed Tech today. Tucker hit a barrage of 3s at the end of the first half to blow things open.

[Drake Palmer]

I just checked the MSHSL site & Sibley defeated Cooper 68-52. I then flipped over to the site that was doing the webcast & caught a little of the scoring summary:

Cooper:  Rodney Williams 26 points, or half of his team's total.

Sibley: Bruesewitz - 18 pts, Leslie - 14 pts, Garcia - 12 pts, Kaiser - 10 pts, Little Halvorsen - 7 points.

And for those of you grousing about the seeding, the following excerpt from the MSHSL site explains how they did the seeding for the state tourney this year.

This year marks the 12th year of the four-class format, and the fifth with all games being played in Minneapolis.

It also the first year that the top four teams in Class AAA and Class AAAA were seeded and their opponents determined by blind draw. The head coaches of the 16 schools logged onto a special page of the League Web site, and each coach ranked the other teams 1 through 7. The highest and lowest rankings for each team were discarded, leaving five rankings for each team. From those rankings, the top four seeds were selected. In conference calls with all eight head coaches of each class, League Associate Director Kevin Merkle announced the top four seeds. Coaches association representative Tom Critchley then conducted a blind draw of the four remaining teams to establish the opponents for the seeded teams. When the tabulating was completed, Benilde-St. Margaret's was chosen No. 1 in Class AAA, and Minnetonka was chosen No. 1 in Class AAAA.

This sounds reasonable me & its similar to how they used to do seedings for the AAU state tourney. 

[Willy Wonka]

Drake - Reasonable? A voting process where the metro teams outnumber outstate 5-3 (or 6-2, depending on how C-I views itself) will almost always skew to its own. If you take the conspiracy theory approach, this effectively rules out any favortism the outstate schools might show to each other based on the top/bottom being eliminated...but not among metro squads. I haven't paid as much attention to the lower classes, but I've got to imagine that this problem might be reversed there.

I understand this is just the way things are and it's not worth fighting. However, I'm more than happy to offer a possible solution.

Like the NCAA selection committee, select a group of deliberators who are respected basketball minds across the state before the season starts to follow the top schools for their particular class. ADs or retired coaches would seem best suited for these positions. By picking certain games to attend, they *should* by able to see 95% of the teams who qualify...and those that aren't seen probably won't be worthy of seeding anyway.

This doesn't eliminate the potential for bias or arguments on the decisions, but it would certainly relieve many of those concerns. At any rate, I'd trust it a lot more than a system that relies on coaches who are directly affected by the results. If you're going to do something, do it right — this goes double for the shot clock "experiment" that the Strib's Millea rightfully ripped earlier this winter.

As an aside on the MSHSL's decision-making process...Papa Wonka had a friend apply for a position with it a few months ago and was told the biggest issue its facing over the next few years is how to handle two boys who...umm...became females and now want to play sports.

[columbianmaffia]

Mayo ran into problems this year when either of its Big 2 got into foul trouble. However, you'd tend to think that having two legit (small school) D1 guys would get them a little more respect from the other coaches; personally, I think Hicks could have gone MUCH bigger. Heck, even Sibley's coaches said afterwards that they greatly underestimated them. Getting the 3/4 seed would have been HUGE, since it would have allowed them a chance to play the lower tier teams rather than Sibley — even if it meant certain-death in the next round against Tonka.

i hear ya man

Drake

Rodney Williams already is a big time D1 recruit as he has received interest or offers from Bradley, Iowa, Iowa State, Kansas, Minnesota, Purdue, Wisconsin, Miami (Fl), Ohio State

Cmob- let me rephrase my statement about Rodney Williams – he’s a big time talent who would be an absolutely HUGE recruit if he had a consistent J and handles.  The kid has got amazing, semi-polished, athletic ability.  Yesterday’s game was not unlike another game I saw Williams play over the Xmas break:  5-6 ridiculous dunks, 1 trey out of 7-8 jumpers, 6-7 blocks, & double digit boards. 

i hear ya man

little halvorsen with a sick nasty dunk on williams to start the game today...it was tight...turning point in the game...williams elbow to halvorsens face after missing a bunny...frustration set in

[piperinsider]

Winona State 86, Bentley 75
* three straight years to the championship

[sumander]

Update from Heath Hotzler of the Fool-Em on the NDSCS coaching vacancy:

The finalists for the North Dakota State College of Science men's basketball job are University of Mary assistant Kevin Forde, Kilgore (Texas) College coach Scott Schumacher, Scottdale (Ariz.) Community College coach Paul Eberhardt and Fort Dorchester (S.C.) High School coach Gregg Gierke.

Schumacher could have the inside track here. He's the president of the NJCAA Coaches Association, and the junior college representative to the USA Basketball selection committee.

Gierke is also an interesting candidate. He built up more than 400 wins as a JUCO coach in Florida and Illinois.

Winona State 86, Bentley 75
* three straight years to the championship

That win by the Tommies get's bigger every day!

[sumander]

Cmob, getting dangerously close to your 1000 post! I trust you have some roller skating, spandex, tripple burger philosphy conjured up for us??

[abominable_snowman]

- Can high school basketball PLEASE get a shot clock in use 24/7? I'm sick and tired of teams holding the ball with 3 minutes to play.

I do believe this is in the works.  It was experimented with this year in a few schools. DeLaSalle I think was one, tried it in early non-conference games.

The hardest thing will be schools providing capable bodies to run it.

[Drake Palmer]

Double play...

Willy, the Big 9 hasn't earned the same level of respect, or hardware as the other large school conferences around the state.  I checked my handy dandy state tournament guide, and aside from Buffalo's state championship last year (a marginal metro team); you have to go way back in the time machine to 1990 when Owatonna was the last non–metro team to win the large school state championship.

So when the best Big 9 team, Mayo comes up the cities and gets spanked by a decent Tartan team; loses at home to a strong Stillwater team; & then requires a last second tip in to beat a .500 club, Owatonna, 54-52 in the sectional final, you're not going to amass many votes that way.  I don't care if it's the new coaches seeding committee, or the Wonka panel of basketball deliberators.   

On paper, the other semi-outstate team, St. Cloud Tech had a better overall record 26-1 vs. Mayo's 24-4, plus Tech soundly beat some solid teams on the way to state:  Elk River out of the tough NW Suburban in the sectional semis & Moorhead in the sectional finals.

Having said that, I'd readily admit that Mayo looked better than what I saw of St. Cloud Tech.  I caught a portion of their game against Tonka on TV yesterday.

But Minnetonka is going to make a lot of good teams look bad.  I'd love to see a Sibley upset, but realistically I just hope they can make it a competitive game against Minnetonka on Saturday night.

I saw the Sibley-Tonka game back in December & although the score was relatively close, the game was never in serious doubt.  But in Sibley's defense, they were missing Noah Kaiser who's a nice shooting, decent sized 6-4 guard.  If Sibley's Mike Bruesewitz continues his streak of good game- bad game I'm guessing he's due for a down game on Saturday night.  Hope the other Sibley players can pick it up.  Tonka's CJ Erickson looked like a pogo stick he was blocking so many shots!

[Drake Palmer]

Is it just me or my computer, but has the former beige shading on the message board turned into a pukey looking green?

Cmob- Ray Richardson must have interviewed you after the Sibley-Cooper game.  The Halvorsen dunk and trash talking got a nice little writeup in the Press today.

[MiacLostProphet]

PI- This Brusewitz character isn't the younger brother of the 2004 grad from Litch is he?  Because he was a big boy, threw me around like a rag doll, but i still got the W.  Also does anyone know when the D-II championship game will be played and if it will be on TV?

[TommieHoops4Life]

Winona State is playing Augusta State on Saturday at 1:30 local time for the D-II Championship. CBS is carrying the game live as it always has.

[Nites]

I just checked the MSHSL site & Sibley defeated Cooper 68-52. I then flipped over to the site that was doing the webcast & caught a little of the scoring summary:

Cooper:  Rodney Williams 26 points, or half of his team's total.

Sibley: Bruesewitz - 18 pts, Leslie - 14 pts, Garcia - 12 pts, Kaiser - 10 pts, Little Halvorsen - 7 points.

And for those of you grousing about the seeding, the following excerpt from the MSHSL site explains how they did the seeding for the state tourney this year.

Pardon my ignorance, but why does seeding matter?  The purpose of the state championship is to prove you are the best.  In order to make that claim, you have to beat the best.  Sooner or later you have to play the best so why should it really matter if it's in the first game of the tourney or the final game.  Just my opinion.