The Undefeated and the Winless

[ronk]

Probably that is true of the CCIW today (though, as I noted, the Titans came danged close just three years ago).

No, not probably. That is true. And don't make too big a thing out of how close Wesleyan came three seasons ago; North Central was a better team that year, and the Cardinals did not have a healthy Landon Gamble or Aaron Tiknis the first time that your Titans played them. The CCIW played out true to form when NCC won that fourteenth game.

But after all, you're just a young whipper-snapper.  My senior year, IWU ran the table, and Augie did it for the final time 3 years later.  And, of course, Wheaton was booted out back in the late fifties for going four straight years without a loss.

All of which are examples so ancient as to be completely irrelevant. It's not a coincidence that the arrival of D3 in 1974-75 brought an end to undefeated CCIW teams. Everybody had to start playing by the same rules with regard to financial aid from that point onward. And other things have changed since then as well, notably the expansion of D1 and D2 that has made it so much harder to find blue chips hiding in the weeds. That has not only brought down the overall quality of top-end D3 talent, it's also had something of a leveling effect within the CCIW in particular (since the CCIW had one of the greatest sources in the country for those hidden blue chips back in the day, the city of Chicago).

Sorry to pull the ol' "you're a dinosaur" number on you, Chuck, but you really are one. The circumstances are just too radically different now than they were back when Jim Borcherding had 7'0 John Laing and 6'11 Bruce Hamming on his great 1972-73 Augie team.

No doubt the conference is much better today than when I was a lowly student, but Elmhurst is so far not looking as strong as expected, IWU seems to have some shortcomings, etc.  I'll repeat that I would be surprised, but not totally shocked if Augie could pull it off this year.

And I'll repeat what I said. Put it out of your mind, because it won't happen.

It does seem strange that NPU could not pull it off, since their incredible run began only 5 years after Augie ran the table - surely the CCIW did not improve in depth THAT much in such a short span of time.

It did, and that's a fact. From what I've been told by people who were around CCIW basketball during the entire decade of the '70s, both Millikin and Illinois Wesleyan got much, much better in the intervening years between the '73 Augie team and the North Park threepeat. Of course, both of the downstate teams had lost their big guns (Leon Gobczynski and Jack Sikma) to graduation by the time that the Park began that run, but those Millikin and Illinois Wesleyan teams in the late '70s were still very good. Carthage and Elmhurst had what was at the time rare spasms of competence in the mid to late '70s under Jon Swift and Jon Hawthorne, respectively. (You'll be happy to know that Hawthorne was an IWU grad.) And then there's Augie itself. Augustana made it to the D3 Final Four in '76 and '77 despite finishing second in the CCIW behind the Sikma Titans. And the Augie teams of the late '70s and early '80s were absolutely outstanding. Long-time Augie fans like current AC radio commentator Dan Sand will tell you that the Augie teams at the turn of the decade, led by superstars Bill Rapier and Maxwell Artis, were matched only by the '73 Laing/Hamming team for excellence. The '81 Augie team made it to the national championship game and should've won it, but Potsdam State hit a halfcourt buzzer-beater to send the game into overtime and ended up winning by two.

Ask anybody who was around back then, and they'll tell you that the CCIW improved in terms of depth over the course of the Seventies. The second-best record posted by a CCIW team in '73 was Elmhurst's, and that was a modest 15-8. Augie alone went 19-5, 18-7, and 21-6 during North Park's threepeat.

Did those Vikings teams tend to run hot-and-cold, and just fire it up in the clutch?

No, not at all. Millikin, Illinois Wesleyan, and (especially) Augustana simply had good teams that were extraordinarily hard to beat in their own buildings, even for Harper, Greer, Thomas & Co.

   I was @ the semifinal loss to Scranton but, 39 years later, that's about all I remember.

[magicman]

The '81 Augie team made it to the national championship game and should've won it, but Potsdam State hit a halfcourt buzzer-beater to send the game into overtime and ended up winning by two.

Greg,

Thanks for bringing back that memory today, of my alma mater getting that game into overtime on Leroy Witherspoon's buzzer beating half court basket. I still have the tape of that game in the favorites file of my computer and bring it out each season to watch it again. It was one of our finest moments.   Plus K

The recent struggles of Potsdam State have left me with mostly memories of the good times, because there has not been any good times at Potsdam in over ten years.

[John Gleich]

All of which are examples so ancient as to be completely irrelevant.

I think he just called you irrelevant, Mr. Ypsi...


As a reminder, until a few years ago, the CCIW NEVER had a conference tournament either... until it did.

All I know is that the more superlatives you put together, the so much greater bigger huger larger crow you end up eating in the end... 

[David Collinge]

All of which are examples so ancient as to be completely irrelevant.

I think he just called you irrelevant, Mr. Ypsi...

We just put a similar question to a vote in the NCAC room.

[Mr. Ypsi]

JG, he only implied that I was irrelevant, but he flat-out stated that I was a dinosaur!  I object!!  It was mastodons I had to dodge on the IWU campus, not dinosaurs.

DC, and I am proud of my 'victory', even if I didn't see the poll and get to vote for myself!

[John Gleich]

JG, he only implied that I was irrelevant, but he flat-out stated that I was a dinosaur!  I object!!  It was mastodons I had to dodge on the IWU campus, not dinosaurs.

DC, and I am proud of my 'victory', even if I didn't see the poll and get to vote for myself!

And here I thought the mastodons spent all of their time in suburban Chicago...

[Gregory Sager]

All I know is that the more superlatives you put together, the so much greater bigger huger larger crow you end up eating in the end... 

I'm aware of that. But if it ever happened -- which it won't   -- I'd be sharing my heaping platter of Corvus brachyrhynchos with good company, since Bosko Djurickovic makes it a point to mention the CCIW's no-unbeaten-team-since-'73 streak every time that a TV, radio, or print journalist asks him about the league.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Updated through games on 12/9

Undefeated (20)
Texas-Dallas
Christopher Newport
Swarthmore
Augustana
Eastern Nazarene
SUNY-Canton
Juniata
Susquehanna
Keene State
Carroll
Bethel
Amherst
Ohio Wesleyan
Lancaster Bible
Benedictine
Whitworth
Whitman
John Carroll
Austin
NYU

Undefeated vs D3 (7)
Hope
Nebraska Wesleyan
Geneseo State
Claremont-Mudd-Scripps
Chapman
Whittier
LaGrange

Winless (22)
Howard Payne
Hunter
Keystone
Curry
Earlham
Franklin
Illinois Tech
Olivet
Lesley
Johnson State
Maine-Farmington
Bryn Athyn
Penn State-Abington
Dominican
George Fox
Geneva
Washington & Jefferson
Waynesburg
SUNY-Maritime
Trinity (TX)
Northland
Martin Luther


Winless vs D3 (8)
Valley Forge
Greenville
Oglethorpe
Ozarks
Marywood
Crown
Whittier
Kalamazoo

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Maranatha Baptist getting its first d3 loss tonight - losing 58-15 to Oshkosh, with 15 minutes remaining.  Final score: 89-44.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Dominican hosting Edgewood tonight.  One of them has to win... I think.

[Greek Tragedy]

I'm definitely worried about this one.

[hopefan]

To refresh our memory:

Undefeated

Ohio Wesleyan - David Collinge
Augustana - Mr. Ypsi
Whitworth - Greek Tragedy (1), Hoops Fan (2)


Eastern Connecticut - 7express  Lost to WPI   11/13
Randolph-Macon - Gregory Sager  Lost to Mary Washington   11/15
Virginia Wesleyan - magicman  Lost to Wesley    11/15
Scranton - ronk - Lost to Hobart   11/21
Franklin & Marshall - njf1003 - Lost to Lancaster Bible  11/21
Wooster - wooscotsfan - Lost to Skidmore  11/21
UW-Stevens Point - hope1 - Lost to Hope   11/21
Marietta - sac - lost to St. Vincent   11/24
Elmhurst - augie77 - lost to Benedictine  11/25
Hope - KnightSlappy - lost to Cornerstone  11/28
St John Fisher - FCGrizzliesGrad - lost to RIT  12/2
Penn St-Behrend - pg04 - lost to La Roche 12/5
Oswego State - hopefan - lost to Buffalo State 12/5
St Thomas - John Gleich - lost to Carleton 12/5


Winless
Lesley - magicman
Johnson St - sac
Earlham - Mr. Ypsi
Dominican - Greek Tragedy
Martin Luther - augie77

Cairn - 7express  WON Wilson   11/14
Ohio Wesleyan - David Collinge  WON Otterbein      11/14
Sarah Lawrence - Knightslappy   WON Pratt   11/20
Maine Maritime - FCGrizzliesGrad(1), Hoops Fan (2) - WON SUNY Maritime  11/21
Wilson - Ronk - Won vs Penn State-Altoona  11/30
Crown - John Gleich - Won vs Oak Hills Christian  12/1
Summit (Baptist Bible) - pg04 - Won vs Keystone  12/2
LaRoche - wooscotsfan - Won vs Penn State Altoona 12/2
Franciscan - njf1003 - Won vs Mount Aloysius 12/2
Chatham - hopefan - Won vs Washington and Jefferson 12/5
Penn College - Gregory Sager - Won vs Wilson  12/5

[FCGrizzliesGrad]

JG, he only implied that I was irrelevant, but he flat-out stated that I was a dinosaur!  I object!!  It was mastodons I had to dodge on the IWU campus, not dinosaurs.

DC, and I am proud of my 'victory', even if I didn't see the poll and get to vote for myself!

And here I thought the mastodons spent all of their time in suburban Chicago...

Actually the mastodons are over here in Indiana going to IPFW

[Mr. Ypsi]

JG, he only implied that I was irrelevant, but he flat-out stated that I was a dinosaur!  I object!!  It was mastodons I had to dodge on the IWU campus, not dinosaurs.

DC, and I am proud of my 'victory', even if I didn't see the poll and get to vote for myself!

And here I thought the mastodons spent all of their time in suburban Chicago...

Actually the mastodons are over here in Indiana going to IPFW

Maybe they were woolly mammoths - I always confuse them with mastodons.

And of course mastodons were known to roam a bit - I doubt they all stayed in Fort Wayne!

[Greek Tragedy]

As my Pointers are getting smoked by NCC, my attention, and concern, turns to Dominican's battle with fellow winless Edgewood. Tied game with about 7 to go.

Edit: Dominican sneaks out a loss! 84-78