MBB: Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

[Drake Palmer]

Congrats to the Auggies, Oles, and Johnnies.    When Olmscheid gets it rolling, he's pretty much unstoppable.  McKiernan was on fire as well.   They're a tough bunch. 

Along with the NCAA news, it looks like Coach Whittle is done at MAC:

https://hoopdirt.com/diii-dirt-whittle-head-basketball-coach-macalester-college-mn/

Seemed like a good hire when it was first announced.  Was never able to get the stars to align - Gutierrez's injury this season didn't help. 

Wow, nice little nugget, bball1122.  Always interesting how in the course of everyday events a regular "Joe Schmo" poster stumbles across a website like Hoop Dirt. 

Hopefully, this means the end of the Semi-System or System ball at Macalester. Good luck to the next new coach.  They'll need it. It would be great if they could revive their basketball program.

[SUMMIT!!!!!]

Congratulations Augsburg! Olmscheid & crew were a team possessed

And wow, three MIAC teams in the big dance:

Augsburg

St. Johns

St Olaf

League historian (Mose) - is this a first for the MIAC?

It has never happened before. The MIAC has had two reps on sixteen different occasions, but never three.

not only that, but the women also got 3 in for the first time ever....SIX combined bids for one conference has got to be a D3 record. And it is six separate institutions (since the NCAA and MIAC count CSB and SJU as two even though they are basically one).

Elsewhere, UMAC champ Bethany Lutheran will head up to Collegeville and take on the Johnnies. Anything can happen but Johns should win that one solidly.

But what if the NCAA sends an officiating crew to Collegeville w/ instructions to screw the home team?

Probably shouldn't even have NCAA playoffs anyway.  What's the point?  Johnnies are clearly the best, based on the regular season. 

and if you don't believe they are, just ask them

[Mr. Ypsi]

Six teams for men and women is not only not a d3 record, it is not even the high for this year.  NESCAC has four men's teams and at least three women's (I haven't checked carefully enough to see if it was more than three).

[OldAuggie]

Elsewhere, UMAC champ Bethany Lutheran will head up to Collegeville and take on the Johnnies. Anything can happen but Johns should win that one solidly.

But what if the NCAA sends an officiating crew to Collegeville w/ instructions to screw the home team?

Probably shouldn't even have NCAA playoffs anyway.  What's the point?  Johnnies are clearly the best, based on the regular season. 

and if you don't believe they are, just ask them

"There will be no post game show"

[Pat Coleman]

Congratulations Augsburg! Olmscheid & crew were a team possessed

And wow, three MIAC teams in the big dance:

Augsburg

St. Johns

St Olaf

League historian (Mose) - is this a first for the MIAC?

It has never happened before. The MIAC has had two reps on sixteen different occasions, but never three.

Thanks Mose Jr.     I did a quick scan back to 2006 and didn't notice any.  Before 2006, it seemed the rest of the country viewed the MIAC as strictly a one team qualifier for the NCAA tourney.

Did you also make note of the size of those tournaments? Kind of a key factor.

[max55]

Congrats to the Auggies, Oles, and Johnnies.    When Olmscheid gets it rolling, he's pretty much unstoppable.  McKiernan was on fire as well.   They're a tough bunch. 

Along with the NCAA news, it looks like Coach Whittle is done at MAC:

https://hoopdirt.com/diii-dirt-whittle-head-basketball-coach-macalester-college-mn/

Seemed like a good hire when it was first announced.  Was never able to get the stars to align - Gutierrez's injury this season didn't help. 

Wow, nice little nugget, bball1122.  Always interesting how in the course of everyday events a regular "Joe Schmo" poster stumbles across a website like Hoop Dirt. 

Hopefully, this means the end of the Semi-System or System ball at Macalester. Good luck to the next new coach.  They'll need it. It would be great if they could revive their basketball program.

Tim Whittle put up some some staggering numbers since 2009 including a career conference record of 19–161 (10.6% win rate) and giving up 100 points in the first half against Loras.

Heres a great article with some more mind-blowing career stats for him: https://medium.com/@maxkatz55/tim-whittle-macalester-career-highlights-4fc815224a42

Baffling how he was able to keep the job for so long. Gotta think the Athletic Director Kim Chandler is next to go.

[Smitty Oom]

Along with the NCAA news, it looks like Coach Whittle is done at MAC:

https://hoopdirt.com/diii-dirt-whittle-head-basketball-coach-macalester-college-mn/

Seemed like a good hire when it was first announced.  Was never able to get the stars to align - Gutierrez's injury this season didn't help. 

Wow, nice little nugget, bball1122.  Always interesting how in the course of everyday events a regular "Joe Schmo" poster stumbles across a website like Hoop Dirt. 

Hopefully, this means the end of the Semi-System or System ball at Macalester. Good luck to the next new coach.  They'll need it. It would be great if they could revive their basketball program.

Tim Whittle put up some some staggering numbers since 2009 including a career conference record of 19–161 (10.6% win rate) and giving up 100 points in the first half against Loras.

Heres a great article with some more mind-blowing career stats for him: https://medium.com/@maxkatz55/tim-whittle-macalester-career-highlights-4fc815224a42

Baffling how he was able to keep the job for so long. Gotta think the Athletic Director Kim Chandler is next to go.

I was wondering his conference win rate, thanks for doing the research!

He certainly did not have a good run at MAC, but he was an assistant coach at WashU and won a (couple?) national championships? WUPHF or someone else can confirm that. What I am getting to is that the current athletic state at Macalester is poor and it would be a tough program to turnaround. Wonder what will be next for him in the basketball?

That said, this move was probably a couple years overdue.

Wonder if we will have another new coach in the MIAC next year... 

[bball1122]

Whittle definitely did not have the success he was hoping for, but he's had some weird/unfortunate stuff happen during his time.  A few years back, his best player (Pierce Peters) just decided to quit six games into his senior year (and he may have been the best player in the league that year).  A couple years later, his best (or one of his best) player (Dylan Kilgour) broke his arm during the second game of the year.   This year, his best player (Michael Gutierrez) blows out his knee a couple weeks before practice starts, his second best player (Wyatt Ferm) decided to go abroad in the middle of the season, and another of his other better role players also didn't play a minute, I think due to some combination of being abroad and an injury (Carl Salvino).   

With all that being said, Whittle clearly didn't get the job done.  He mostly ignored Minnesota (except for this year's junior class, in which he landed Gutierrez and Ferm, beating out many MIAC schools for both.  His change of style this year clearly looked like an act of desperation with little chance of being successful, and it may have finally cost him his job (even if your AD doesn't care a whole lot about winning, being the butt end of a SportsCenter segment is not a good look).   

The crazy part is, next year had the looks of being his best team at Mac.  A trio of Gutierrez, Ferm, and Jackson Henningfield would have been formidable.    In the end, it will be interesting to see where Mac turns next.  Do they go national again and try to strike gold with someone who has coached at a school with similar academics to Mac (like the Whittle hire)?  Or do they stay local and hire someone with Minnesota ties who could establish a more consistent connection to Minnesota recruits?   

[Gregory Sager]

In the end, it will be interesting to see where Mac turns next.  Do they go national again and try to strike gold with someone who has coached at a school with similar academics to Mac (like the Whittle hire)?  Or do they stay local and hire someone with Minnesota ties who could establish a more consistent connection to Minnesota recruits?

How many D3-quality high-school basketball prospects does Minnesota produce who can qualify for admission to Macalester? That's a serious question, by the way; I don't know the answer. But it'll tell you everything you need to know about whether a Macalester coach has the luxury of recruiting close to home or will always have to go far afield to find his players in order to be competitive in the MIAC.

[bball1122]

I absolutely think a school like Mac will have to look nationally for recruits, but Carleton has seemed to find a way to be mostly comprised of MN kids (with a smattering of national players like Matthew Stritzel, Tianen Chen, Peter Bakker-Arkema, John Eckert) while being "elite" academically. 

In Mac's last truly successful season (2003-04, in which they finished 2nd in the MIAC), they had 3 players on the All-Conference team, two of which were from MN (and one of whom was player of the year, Ben Van Thorre).  10 of their 18 players that year were from Minnesota.

Coach Whittle never had more than five Minnesotans on the roster during his nine year tenure at Mac.

All in all, I think it will be hard to be competitive in the MIAC relying mostly on national players.   

[Gregory Sager]

National recruiting doesn't mean poor quality recruiting. Remember that all of the teams in two of the most formidable leagues in D3, the NESCAC and the UAA, do their recruiting nationally. NESCAC and UAA rosters all bear the same Rand-McNally look to them that Macalester's had -- and nobody ever tells Williams that it has to stick to Massachusetts to be successful, or that Wash U has to bring in Missourians in order to succeed.

[bball1122]

I'm well aware that national recruiting isn't poor recruiting.  Nor would I tell Williams or WashU to change a thing.   They've been very successful doing what they're doing.   But since Mac hired Coach Whittle, they've clearly moved to a more national recruiting strategy.  And how did that work for them? I'm not saying it would be impossible for the right person to do it,  but I am saying it's not likely. 

[SUMMIT!!!!!]

Awards for the season are out....no major surprises"
http://www.miacathletics.com/sports/mbkb/2017-18/releases/20180223w7srmo 

I am perplexed how five forwards & one post constitutes an All-Conference "team" and the 2nd team has four guards and one forward but it is far better than 18 "first team" and a handful of Honorable mentions   

[txg]

How does Olmscheid get POY?  I'm almost certain I saw him miss 4 or 5 shots in 80 minutes against St. Olaf this year.  Erratic.

[SUMMIT!!!!!]

I think the problem at Mac is far deeper than the coach or recruiting. Other than a handful of seasons in the 2000-2007 era, the Scots have rarely finished higher than ninth in the 11-team era and eighth in the "old days" of fewer MIAC members. They have won a grand total of two MIAC regular season titles in nearly 100 years of play-- outright in 1937 and shared in 1981 (which I seem to recall was a year eligibility issues at several MIAC programs). Heck, they lost nearly 60 MIAC games in a row about a decade ago! 

A new coach isn't going to change the cultural at Mac, no matter how good his recruiting plan.  And this culture extends beyond men's hoops. With the exception of baseball in recent years and soccer (both genders) in the 1990-early 2000s, Mac has been inept in every sport for as long as I've followed the MIAC. No one coach or even a new AD or even a complete overhaul of the Athletic Dept is going to change that. IMO the recent fiascoes with their football program and the women's hoops show an administration that doesn't value athletics. Unlike their academic "cousins" (Williams, Amherst, Wash U to name a few), it seems the Mac administration has no desire for success in any athletic field.

I don't profess to have an answer but it seems the Administration doesn't care if they are the butt of jokes or the punchline on ESPN. Without support from the top, the new coach can recruit only MN kids, or can recruit only non-MN kids or only recruit kids from outside the US, and the result will remain the same-- 4-16 as a very good season, 2-18 as the norm.