MBB: Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

[miacwatchmen]

Alright thanks oAs. Where are you going to be tomorrow afternoon?

[sju4life]

mr watchmen?
Were you serious when stating "chicago kids never play defense"?  What an outrageous claim to make.  I am surprised your not kicked off this website for good.  I feel sorry for anyone who read that and took offense to it.  I am saddened that greg sager had to beat me to it because when i read that i was shocked.

[Pat Coleman]

The Chicago pipeline to SMU goes back a long, long time. It has NOTHING to do with Lovelace, Loco. It was there long before Lovelace, before Biebel (who is still active in SMU Athletics). They both benfitted from it, as did their predecessors. They have always had 6+ kids from Chicago area for at least 30 years.

There is a very simple, logiccal explanation of that, which also helps explain why they consistently have Cretin-DH kids, too.  (non-Catholics may not figure it out )

Goes back decades. My mom went to St. Teresa's in Winona out of Chicago in the '60s.

[miacwatchmen]

mr watchmen?
Were you serious when stating "chicago kids never play defense"?  What an outrageous claim to make.  I am surprised your not kicked off this website for good.  I feel sorry for anyone who read that and took offense to it.  I am saddened that greg sager had to beat me to it because when i read that i was shocked.

Oh wow i am sorry i offended a player on the SJU team. Sorry SJU4life. I really meant that i haven't seen a player from SMU play defense yet except for Haywood( who rarely did so).  I shouldn't have made such an outlandish comment about Chicago players. Sorry to Pat Coleman. I guess in light of SJU4lifes new idea please ban me from this site. Thank You and I will see you all in another life.

[Flip the Red Bird]

Gregory Sager,

Glad to see someone who has a good feel of Chicago, most people in Minnesota consider Chicago area Chicago and could care less.  Most of the kids are suburb kids, you don't get private school kids out of the city, I think that just makes common since that these kids don't come from the city and that is my point.  Are the kids in the catholic leagues: and I mean the ESC and De La Salle (CCL) better than recuiting kids from the cities.  If SMU could get any of the good Chicago kids they wouldn't be such a bad program.  But kids wouldn't make it academically.

Rayshaun wasn't a starter at Hillcrest, for good reason.  There are two players at SMU from St. Joe's, Big T and Alex Washington.  Alex started at St. Joe's last year and was recruited by a left over assistant off of Lovelace's staff as was Rayshaun.

Dan lewis, Hinsdale South (West Suburban league), Jason Washington Maine West (Central Suburban),  David Shaw De La Salle, (CCL), were some more of Lovelace's recruits out of Chicago that left after he did.  Other Lovelace recruits: Lear is from Antioch which is pretty much in Wisconsin and isn't hardly a suburb of Chicago. Bucc and Rohr both suburb kids.

Biebel recruits included Yankowski, St. Pats (ESC), El McClatchey De La Salle (CCL), Ryan Wilt Aurora Christian (Private), Nick Michaels Mt Carmel, Haywood (ESC), and Dan Kloak, Fenwick (I can't remember which conference).

Biebel recruited mainly in the ESC.  Lovelace did some ESC and hit the suburbs hard.  Trewick doesn't even know what the hell we are talking about.

Chicago is a very hard place to recruit and SMU doesn't recruit there.  They stick to the suburbs and ESC, but there is good talent there as well.  Because SMU can't get the really good kids in Minnesota: Good Southern Minnesotans go to GAC, city kids go to St. Thomas or their choice of other city schools.  So SMU gets the left overs and odd balls from Minnesota.  It is very hard for private schools to recruit in Wisconsin.  SMU's only real chance is to get some good players out of the ESC or the suburb schools around Chicago.  So hopefully Biebel is still recruiting, he sure can talk.  If SMU can't get the Chicago Area kids what hope do they have??

Can SJU guys play defense?  There giving up 70.6 points a game.  In 2003-2004 they were dead last in the league in defense (Points per game).  So I would have to say that SJU kids from Minnesota never play defense.

[miacwatchmen]

Flip- The Johnnies are giving up 70.6 ppg on defense and scoring 72.4 ppg on offense that is a +1.8 for SJU. The Cards are giving up 72.1 ppg and only scoring 66.7 ppg that is a margin of -5.4 .   It looks like the "minnesota" boys from SJU are play better Defense and scoring more points than the "chicago boys".   I never said SJU could play defense in fact most games they have problems with some guy on the defensive end of the floor.

If you look at the points per game scored to points per game allowed only one playoff team has a negative ratio. That team is HAM at -4.8  all the other teams are positive UST +14.8 , CAR +7.6, GAC +10.3, SJU +1.8, BET +4.0.  All the teams, except HAM, that had a negative ratio missed the playoffs. My point is that defense wins in this league and wether you have minnesota kids or chicago kids you need to play defense.

[Flip the Red Bird]

Defense wins no doubt about it:  At SMU we miss the boat there, no matter where we are from.  Hamline definitly has a defensive problem as well.  If they don't improve they will never contend for the title.

GAC is consistently a top defensive team, great team D, and very well coached.  These are constants in their program no matter who is playing for them.  That is why they have so many titles over so many years.  If SJU could play D they would be a contender, but they can't so leave it to Thomas, GAC, and Carleton to decide the MIAC crown.

Last game of the year here at SMU, those of you still playing, have fun!!

[Drake Palmer]

Flip - since your  red bird "feathers" appear to be ruffled a bit, tell us a little more about  the coaching situation at SMU.  When I've looked through the Redbird website I see a "bio" on Coach Trewick, but nothing on the two assistant coaches, Nigel Jenkins & McCain Rosonke.  Was this by design or an oversight? 

One of the reasons I ask is that I've seen SMU play several times this year, & at both games assistant coach Nigel Jenkins appeared to be the coach doing most of the "coaching"/talking during timeouts.  Jenkins is also the coach using the board to diagram plays.  Now I realize many head coaches delegate these types of responsibilities, but Jenkins seems to be earning more than his assistant coach's salary. Am I right, wrong, or somewhere in between?

[columbianmaffia]

too much talk about chicago without mentioning Rush st. and also dunkindonuts

i just saw a commerical for 7up plus with calcium...now thats what i call weak sauce

[Gregory Sager]

Gregory Sager,

Glad to see someone who has a good feel of Chicago, most people in Minnesota consider Chicago area Chicago and could care less.  Most of the kids are suburb kids, you don't get private school kids out of the city, I think that just makes common since that these kids don't come from the city and that is my point.  Are the kids in the catholic leagues: and I mean the ESC and De La Salle (CCL) better than recuiting kids from the cities.  If SMU could get any of the good Chicago kids they wouldn't be such a bad program.  But kids wouldn't make it academically.

Actually, you can get private school kids out of the city. Don't fall prey to making the same sort of sweeping generalization that MIACwatchmen made. The Chicago Catholic League consists of sixteen schools, and all but four or five of them are located in the city. The rest, except for Loyola Academy in posh Wilmette (where Michael Jordan's son Jeffrey currently plays) and Fenwick Academy in leafy Oak Park (alma mater of L.A. Clippers swingman Corey Maggette), are located in the more blue-collar inner-ring suburbs, and most of the ballplayers in the CCL reside at Chicago addresses. In fact, Maggette and several other outstanding players for Fenwick over the years have actually been Chicago kids from working-class homes who went to school there along with the Oak Park kids whose dads are lawyers, doctors, and accountants. Maggette's dad, for instance, is a Baptist preacher in a storefront church in Chicago's West Side ghetto who had to work a second job to put food on the table and pay for his son's parochial school tuition. (I suspect that Maggette's dad is well taken care of by his son nowadays.)

The idea that Chicago kids can't hack it in a private college environment just isn't true. Plenty of players who grew up in the city have gone on to have fine careers at private institutions in D3. I know a little something about that as a North Park alumnus. Two of the starters on the threepeat national championship teams from the Park (1978, 1979, and 1980) were city kids (both of them All-Americans, in fact: Future Portland Trailblazer Michael Harper and future NBA draft pick Modzel Greer); one of the starters on North Park's 1985 national championship team was a city kid; and three of the starters on North Park's 1987 national championship team (including All-American Michael Starks) were city kids. Plus, back in North Central's heyday in the 1980s and early 1990s, many (if not most) of the best players for the Cardinals were from the city; their coach, Bill Warden, had coached in the Chicago Public League and had great connections there. A number of great Augustana players back in the late '70s and early '80s were from Chicago as well.

The Chicago Public Schools are a mess academically, and except for a few select high schools it's a bit of a crapshoot as to whether or not a student-athlete from the CPS can hack it in a demanding collegiate academic environment. But you can't dismiss them all out of hand; even the ones from deficient academic backgrounds can catch up to their collegiate peers if they're willing to work hard enough at it, and often the kids coming out of jucos are the best bet in that regard. They've not only made up some of the ground in terms of academic skills and knowledge, they've also learned what's expected of them in a college classroom.

The Chicago Catholic League's schools are all generally fine institutions, and their student-athletes get the attention and the support that their CPS peers lack (both in the classroom and, usually, at home). CCL kids make great D3 student-athletes, and the CCIW has had tons of them over the years.

Chicago is a very hard place to recruit and SMU doesn't recruit there.  They stick to the suburbs and ESC, but there is good talent there as well.  Because SMU can't get the really good kids in Minnesota: Good Southern Minnesotans go to GAC, city kids go to St. Thomas or their choice of other city schools.  So SMU gets the left overs and odd balls from Minnesota.  It is very hard for private schools to recruit in Wisconsin.  SMU's only real chance is to get some good players out of the ESC or the suburb schools around Chicago.  So hopefully Biebel is still recruiting, he sure can talk.  If SMU can't get the Chicago Area kids what hope do they have??

That's a canny strategy on the part of SMU. You have to know your school's pluses and minuses where recruiting is concerned, and you recruit those areas where you can maximize your resources of time and money and get the most dividends in terms of prospects who enroll at your school. Chicagoland is a tough place to recruit, but it's a rich mine of talent for D3. The metro area has eight million people, three million more than the entire state of Minnesota, and the high school hoops here is some of the best in the country. Basketball certainly plays a much more prominent role in winter athletic life on the prep level here than in Minnesota, because high school hockey in Chicagoland is negligible; there's no more than a tiny handful of high school hockey teams in the entire state of Illinois, and nobody pays any attention to the sport on the high school level here.

The CCIW, which is one of the top two conferences in all of D3 in terms of national success and caliber of play, is a Chicagoland-based conference. Five of the eight schools in the conference are located here, and all eight recruit here. Wheaton and Millikin are the only two CCIW schools for whom Chicagoland is not their primary recruiting ground. I'd say that about 75-80% of the players in the CCIW over the years have been Chicagolanders. And, as I said in my previous post, lots of other D3 schools recruit here (and there are six other non-CCIW D3 schools in the metro area as well). Loras is an even better example than SMU of a school located far away from Chicagoland that has recruited kids from here and had great success with them. Seventeen of the 28 players listed on the Loras roster are from the Chicago metro area, and only ten are from Iowa. Four of the five Duhawks starters -- their four leading scorers, in fact -- are Chicagoland kids, and Loras is 17-7 this season with wins over UW-Whitewater and Wartburg to their credit.

too much talk about chicago without mentioning Rush st. and also dunkindonuts

Rush Street hasn't been a happening place in over twenty years, CM. Just how old are you, anyway? The big touristy areas to party in Chicago nowadays are in Wrigleyville around the ballpark; in Lincoln Park near the DePaul campus; and on Division Street in Oldtown.

[Flip the Red Bird]

Gregory Sager,

I'm not saying it can't be done, and I know of a lot of kids too who are from the city, don't do well in HS and do just fine in a challenging college environment and actually SMU being very small would be a place that would be great for kids like that.

What I am saying is that with limited resources as SMU has you must go where your best chances are and that definitly isn't in the public school league.  It is a big risk and tough to recruit in, unless you have a coach like Bill Warden who is familiar with the area, or Biebel, or Lovelace, Trewick just doesn't make sense to me, who is he going to get out of Chicago???

Loras does a great job in Chicago, that is what SMU needs to be doing if they want to win in the MIAC.

Drake,
I don't know what the situation is with the coaches at SMU, but I have observed the same things from Nigel, during games it seems he has a better sense of what is going on than the other coach.  He definitly has the respect of the players and they respond to him.  What people say around here is that he runs the program.  It is funny that the assistants don't even have a profile, but do all the work. 

And whose feathers won't be a little ruffled: I thought we were going to play in the playoffs finally.  It has been a long. long. long time

[Flip the Red Bird]

Sager,

By the way I am no expert in Chicago like you, you should have this converation with Johnny Gencius he is an expert on everything Chicago and knows every player to ever play there, too.  Maybe he should be recruiting for SMU!!!

I don't know what Magette playing at Fenwick, or where Jordan's son plays has to do with SMU, great for Kloak a SMU player who played at Fenwick, I guess he played at a high school that had a stud before him.  Chicgao has better basketball than Minnesota no doubt about it that is all I know.

[SUMMIT!!!!!]

The bottom line of SMU's ability to recruit in the CHicago area - now and going back eons- is very simple: they are run by the Christian Brothers, a Catholic order comparable to the Jesuits and the Benedictines. The Brothers run Cretin-Derham Hall (which explains the high number of Raiders at SMU in all sports and beyond). The last I heard-- and I'm sure Mr Sager will provide the exact correct number  - is that the Order runs something like a dozen high schools in the greater CHicago area - some in the city proper, others in the burbs- as well as many more elemntary schools. Even those on SMU's roster who attended a public HS may very likely have attended a CB elementary school. THIS is the connection. It has zero to do with coaches hired (past, present or future)-- the Order runs its schools in a similar fashion, and kids who grew up attending CB schools find themselves comfortably drawn to a college run by the same Order (much like the large number of SJP and Benilde grads attending SJU-- both are Benedictne HS run by the Abbey).

It does not explain every one of the Chicago area kids at SMU, but it accounts for a substanital portion. 

Pat-- nice to hear your mom went to Teresa....it was a shame they closed up, but times change and crap happens.

[Flip the Red Bird]

The only players that are Catholic at SMU are Haywood and Smith (I believe Smith's brother is in the priesthood).  No one else has anything to do with the Christian Brothers.  De La Salle does send some kids because of this connection and will continue no matter who the coach, but what De La Salle, Chicago kid has ever made an impact at SMU?  That's for you answer Sager.  The last one here was David Shaw, do you see him helping SMU?

If you get players becuase of the Christian Brothers connection and not because you recruit them how good can they be?  I know were talking DIII, but you still have to recruit like crazy to get good players, unless your Thomas or GAC, kids just want to go there.  Nobody just wants to go play basketball at SMU.

[Gregory Sager]

Thanks, MM. You've gotten to the heart of the issue with regard to SMU and the Chicagoland connection. I figured that it might have something to do with a particular Catholic order.

Flip, perhaps only a couple of SMU players are Catholic, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were recruited for SMU with the help of Catholics who have connections to the school.

I know that there's at least three Christian Brothers high schools in the Chicago area -- De La Salle and St. Pat's in the city, and Brother Rice in Evergreen Park, just outside the city limits -- and I wouldn't be surprised if there's more.  I just took a look at the De La Salle website, and I notice that they offer advanced-placement SMU courses there.

De La Salle is a school that has a lot of powerful connections within the city's business and political leadership. All of the Daley men, from the old mayor to the current mayor and his brothers, went there.