FB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[wheels81]

IF you all take a look at the Mount Union roster it appears their recruiting methods follow Michigans with their speed primarily from FL and their "beef" from the local HS.

[wheels81]

Jaybird,
I would also like to express my thanks to EC for the great time had by all Wheaton attendees at the game this saturday.  From the ticket takers to the grillers to the very polite and helpful "kidzone" personel everyone I came in contact with from Elmhurst were/was very helpful and the consumate hosts.  My kids enjoyed the moonwalk, maybe Wheaton could learn a few things like that to add to their overall experience.  Sure beats having to drag my kids off the pole vault cushions at McCully.
By the way are you from Minnesota or Wisconsin?  You have a sorta "fargo" accent to you there now huh?  Geez.

[formerd3db]

Mr. Ypsi:

On a tangential topic, your Eastern Michigan seems to be doing better of late.  They beat Western Michigan yesterday.  That is good for their program.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Mr. Ypsi:

On a tangential topic, your Eastern Michigan seems to be doing better of late.  They beat Western Michigan yesterday.  That is good for their program.

Yeah, they're moving from pathetic to merely bad!  Out of 119 D1A teams, they've been in triple digits for about 150 straight weeks now; I'm hopeful they'll crack the 90s!

[Gregory Sager]

When was the last time Augie was 1-4 in conference?

A quick browse of the CCIW history and I would venture a guess of 1961 when Augie went 2-4 for the season.  1970 or 1978 would be a possibilities depending on how the matchups went as they finished 3-5 for the season.

Anyway you look at it... a very, very, very long time.

In 1978, Augie was 3-5 in CCIW play, according to the conference archives:

http://www.cciw.org/pdf/FB_Records.pdf

Right, but did they start off 1-4?  My point is Augie's season may be reaching a once in 50 year category...  bizarre.

Speaking as someone who was born in 1961, I have to ask you as emphatically as possible not to insinuate that 1961 was fifty years ago.

[79jaybird]

Wow, tough day at the office for Elmhurst and congrats to Wheaton.  I haven't seen a total domination like that in a long time.  Congrats to Coach Swider who gives a big bear hug whoa!  I met with Coach after the game and obviously excited about the win, gives me a big bear hug.  
Well.. after starting the season 4-0, we are back to 500 and can still equate last year's mark of 6-4 but a few things have to get done.
A) Get some sort of running game going.  This is going to be difficult as we are battered with injuries and have been having trouble running the ball.  B) The rushing defense has to get better as this is 4 weeks in a row where the opposition is running between the tackles with ease  C) Need more production from the offense and in particular the "skilled players".  How do you explain offensive woes when the team is second in the CCIW in fewest sacks against?  That tells me the O-Line is giving you a chance, and the skilled players need to step it up.

Hiker Jim Good to see you at the game and I didn't mean to seem puzzled when you stopped by!  I was just "in the zone" broadcasting and when my mind didn't match your face with your name, I was caught off guard.  Thank you for your compliments and I do look forward to seeing you at Wheaton in the playoffs.

BgBully- Hehe,  I am from neither!  I am a loyal Chicagoan born and raised in Mt. Prospect and a Prospect High School 1998 alum.  Elmhurst has done a GREAT job of making the football setting convenient and attractive for all ages.  This is a credit to Coach Krohn and Coach Journell who are trying to build up a winning program.  

Well, it's a 3- horse race  and I really don't see anybody beating Wheaton.  They are starting to get their #1's back as Andy Studebaker is expected to be back and the Thunder are slowly getting back to full strength. Gosh, even on their 3rd and 4th stringers they were still dominant.  Yikes!  That means they are going to be superb for many years to come.

[Gregory Sager]

Congrats to NP on a hard fought game. It sounds like the program is improving. Even though the team was statistically dominated, they hung in there and had a chance to win. It appears the only difference between NP and Wheaton is that Wheaton makes the plays when they have to and NP has yet to learn how to do that;D . Seriously, that will come with confidence. I hope they continue to make progress!

"Dominated" is a relative term, Cardinaldad. IWU did dominate NPU in most statistical categories; that's very clear. But the dominance of the Titans was not overwhelming in terms of their offense moving up and down the field at will all day long at a pace that would indicate a multi-touchdown rout (in fact, the time of possession dominance by the Titans relative to their total yards gained mitigates against that; they simply did a very good job of playing keepaway by making first downs on the ground rather than ripping up huge chunks of yardage on deep passes and broken-tackle runs). The more impressive aspect of the dominance by the visitors was in the rather paltry numbers accumulated by the NPU offense. As I said, the Titans have a good defense.

More important than anything is the fact that the statistical dominance by Wesleyan didn't lead to many points. NPU demonstrated a "bend but don't break" attitude on defense; Wesleyan ran off drives of 53, 57, and 46 yards that ended with the Titans having nothing to show for their efforts on the scoreboard. It's also important to point out that in the fourth quarter the Titans gained a grand total of 31 yards on 14 plays from scrimmage, with their only first down coming on the game's next-to-last-play -- a play in which every NPU defender within reach was attempting to strip the ball from Marcus Dunlop's hands rather than bring him down. The North Park defense, in other words, performed admirably in high-pressure situations.

Overall stats are usually very instructive as to how a team performed over the course of a game, and I've been using them all season to monitor NPU's progress as compared to last year. But, as Mr. B pointed out, this was one of those games where you have to throw out the overall stats if you want to get an honest read on the outcome. As Mr. B said, last year the Vikings played the Titans relatively even in the stat book, and yet NPU got absolutely creamed, 44-0. This year the Titans racked up much better overall numbers than did the Vikings, and yet NPU was in a position to win the game for the last 6:48 of the fourth quarter.

As for "making plays" being the only difference between NPU and Wheaton ... just how many plays do you have in mind, anyway?

[Gregory Sager]

For those of you trying to speculate on the impact this has on the Titans down the stretch look no further than Carthage of 2004. Carthage beat NPU in Chicago 13-0 that day scoring NO offensive touchdowns and coming from behind in the second half to defeat a 1-9 NPU team. That Carthage team beat Wheaton in Kenosha the next week 39-21, secured the AQ and took Mt Union into the 4th quarter in Alliance before succumbing to the purple people eaters.

This game for IWU means NOTHING other than they are 5-0 in conference.

Well put, usee, and that's an apt illustration to prove your point. Just one question, though: How do you come from behind to win 13-0?

Congratulations to NPU senior DB Jerwane Ford on winning the CCIW Defensive Player of the Week award. Two of the three Wesleyan fumbles in Saturday's game were forced by Ford. He also recorded nine tackles, one for a loss. Ford leads the CCIW in forced fumbles with three. Jerwane's got a little Rodney Harrison and Roy Williams in him; I don't think I'd want to be an opposing ballcarrier with him bearing down on me.

Congratulations as well to Wheaton's Jordan Kemper upon being named CCIW Special Teams Player of the Week. I can't ever remember a CCIW student-athlete achieving POW awards in both basketball (which Kemper won for the week of February 13, 2006) and football. He may be the first ever to do it; if not, he's the first to do it in many, many years. That's a noteworthy accomplishment.

Good news for NPU freshman linebacker Bryan Kuhel, who had to be carted off the field on a stretcher in the first half of Saturday's game. He suffered a broken shin on a goal-line play, as one of his teammates told me afterward that Kuhel was pinned at the bottom of the pile when someone fell helmet-first onto his leg. When I saw the North Park trainers break out the air cast I was afraid that Kuhel's knee was messed up. A broken shinbone's a much happier outcome.

[burly]

....IWU coach Norm Eash termed the Vikings "probably the most improved North Park team I've seen in many, many years."

I think/thought so too, but they still can't win a game in the CCIW.

The only thing that proves, BP, is what a massive gulf existed between NPU and the rest of the league before this season's improved Vikings took the field.

Even if NPU has improved x amount in 2007, it isn't going to show up on the record if the team started out x + y +z behind the rest of the CCIW. That's why I've cautioned all season long against measuring NPU's progress by the Park's W-L record.

Fair enough.  I haven't followed NPU football close enough to know how to benchmark x + y + z vs. previous years. However, I will say that your very thorough posts this year have been helpful to gaining a better understanding. 

[Gregory Sager]

If you win the conference, postseason play will take care of itself

Unfortunately, that's not really true, devildog. I agree with the gist of your "cart before the horse" post about focusing first upon winning the conference championship and only secondarily upon getting into the playoffs. But the sad fact of the matter is that postseason play doesn't always take care of itself, either in football or in basketball.

In 2002-03 the CCIW had tri-champions in men's basketball: Augustana, Carthage, and Illinois Wesleyan. Only one of those teams, Illinois Wesleyan (which won the autobid via tiebreaker), took part in March Madness. Augustana and Carthage were left standing outside the door of the big dance. In football, which is even more prone to shared championships than is basketball (due to fewer conference games played in that sport), shared championships can prove to be even more problematic in terms of postseason bids. Here's a list of CCIW football co-champs who were each denied a bid to the D3 playoffs:

2006 -- Augustana
2001 -- Illinois Wesleyan
2000 -- Illinois Wesleyan
2000 -- Wheaton
1994 -- Illinois Wesleyan
1990 -- Millikin

That's a lot of CCIW championship teams that got left out in the cold.

So ... yeah, focus first upon winning the conference title. But never assume that if you do so then the playoff bid will "take care of itself". Playoff possibilities do merit at least a little anticipatory speculation of the type that usee demonstrated.

[Gregory Sager]

Mr. Ypsi not only doesn't speak for "Titan Nation", after some posts I'm not sure he even speaks for Mr. Ypsi!

I'm going to do the seemingly impossible and agree with both usee and Q! 

Chuck, these two sentences have convinced me that you missed your calling. Instead of teaching stats to undegraduates, you've should've pursued a career in politics.

Fair enough.  I haven't followed NPU football close enough to know how to benchmark x + y + z vs. previous years. However, I will say that your very thorough posts this year have been helpful to gaining a better understanding. 

Thanks, BP!

[Gregory Sager]

Wheaton naturally draws interest nationally, and its competition for recruits is as much against other colleges around the nation that share the same religious philosophy as it is against fellow CCIW schools. If you are of the religious orientation that Wheaton espouses, your college selection is naturally limited in scope and you then are automatically looking at schools all across the country rather than just within a couple of states in the midwest portion of the country.

That's not true, AO. Evangelical high school kids are most certainly not limited in scope in terms of schools to which they can apply. There's no hard-and-fast universal rule that says that an evangelical kid has to apply only to evangelical schools, and that's as true for the student who eventually chooses Wheaton as it is for the one who doesn't. In fact, plenty of kids from a born-again Christian background don't even apply to any evangelical schools.

When I was an evangelical high school kid I applied to both evangelical schools (North Park and Wheaton) and a non-evangelical school (St. Olaf). Two of my closest friends in my church have sent their children off this fall to non-evangelical schools: One's daughter is at Grinnell (and the only thing keeping Grinnell from being the exact opposite of an evangelical school is the fact that it doesn't sponsor Satanic blood rituals ), and the other's son is at the University of Illinois.

I know more Wheaties than I can count (which probably makes me sketchy in the eyes of many of my fellow Parkers ), and I can assure you that plenty of them applied to non-evangelical schools as well as to Wheaton. A friend of mine whose kid applied to Wheaton told me that his kid also applied to Chicago, Princeton, and Carleton. Not an evangelical school among those three! John Pietkiewitz, a highly-touted Wheaton recruit in basketball last year who transferred out after only a week, is now at D2 Flagler College in Florida. Flagler is a non-evangelical school. Jacob Carwell, whose sister Emily played on Wheaton's women's basketball team the past four seasons, is transferring to Wheaton to play basketball as well -- and he's transferring from Benedictine, a Catholic school. And the best example for our purposes is of course HOFer-in-exile Diehardfan (April Lee), who applied to most decidedly un-evangelical Lawrence University as well as to Wheaton.

Many evangelical kids (and their parents) would never consider applying to a non-evangelical school. But many of them would, and do. There isn't the self-imposed-ghetto mentality among evangelicals that many in American society think there is.

[Gregory Sager]

Each CCIW school has its own little recruiting niche -- Wheaton's is certainly the most unique because of the religious affiliation.  I honestly cannot think of one recruit in football, basketball, or baseball (the three sports I follow the recruiting scene the closest for) that IWU has competed with Wheaton on.  I'm sure there have been a few, but none I am aware of.

IWU primarily recruits kids from the state of Illinois, and a huge majority of those are from the Chicago area.  Wesleyan will occasionally find a kid from out-of-state like freshman RB Bo Lanter (Clayton, MO), but it's usually a neighboring state.

IWU recuits against other CCIW schools quite a bit, but also against the likes of Wash U, Chicago, and Lawrence...much more so, I suspect, than other CCIW schools.  In the last decade, IWU has also started bumping into the Ivy and Patriot leagues quite a bit too for the Illinois kid with good grades/test scores...those schools really hit the Chicago area hard nowadays.

I have no idea if Wheaton's religious affiliation, and the very specific recruiting niche it creates, is an advantage of disadvantage overall vs other CCIW schools.  I'm sure it could be argued either way.  I do think it is clear that Wheaton finds a lot of "upper level" athletic talents because of its niche - like Kent Raymond in basketball, for example.  But IWU has found a ton of those kids over the years too due to its niche.  Again using basketball, 1st Team All-Americans Zach Freeman, Keelan Amelianovich, and Adam Dauksas in recent years.

For each school it is really all about 1) figuring out what its niche is, 2) finding the kids that fit that niche, and 3) selling them on the fit.

Well put, Bob. I would argue, though, that Wheaton's recruiting niche isn't necessarily the most unique, unless you're talking specifically about religious orientation or geographic dispersal. Wheaton's only unique in terms of its 100% evangelical (and 100% non-geographically-determined) range. However, NPU also extensively recruits out of state (in some sports more than others) to augment its Chicago-based athletic recruiting, and that partly but not wholly reflects the fact that NPU's resident undergraduates are mostly out-of-staters. And, while NPU doesn't exclusively recruit evangelical student-athletes, North Park coaches use the school's evangelical orientation as a special selling point to those types of prospects.

It's interesting that you brought up the fact that Illinois Wesleyan and Wheaton don't go head-to-head over athletic prospects. NPU and Wheaton do on occasion go head-to-head for a recruit; just within the last six years the CCIW's two evangelical schools have competed over two basketball prospects and one soccer prospect of which I'm aware (Wheaton got the two basketball players, NPU got the soccer player).

While the other six CCIW schools are much more geographically oriented in terms of recruiting, each is unique in a Venn diagram kind of way. There's plenty of overlap (particularly in the Chicago suburbs, where North Park recruits as well), but plenty of specificity as well. Augustana's geared towards pursuing student-athletes from the western suburbs, rural northern Illinois, and eastern Iowa. Carthage is more apt to pursue prospects from the northern and northwest suburbs and Wisconsin. Elmhurst and North Central focus very strongly upon the western suburbs, with Elmhurst getting some northwest suburban kids and NCC getting some city kids and south suburban kids as well. Illinois Wesleyan goes all over the Chicago suburbs as well as downstate for its student-athletes. Millikin's a south-suburbs-and-downstate kinda school. And, as Bob said, the academic level of the prospects that the various CCIW schools pursue isn't 100% congruent, either.

Like Bob, I'm not convinced that Wheaton's niche gives that school a decided advantage. It has its advantages, yes, but it has its disadvantages as well. The proof is in the pudding; while Wheaton does an excellent job across the board in CCIW sports, Augustana has won more titles than anyone else. (Of the three CCIW schools with 100-plus conference titles, Augie has 171, Wheaton has 157, and NCC has 141.) I think that, as Bob alluded, it all comes down to knowing your recruiting niche and working hard within it rather than the niche itself.

[redman04]

7 turnovers for the redmen..... Can't get away with that when you play Wheaton!

[usee]

For those of you trying to speculate on the impact this has on the Titans down the stretch look no further than Carthage of 2004. Carthage beat NPU in Chicago 13-0 that day scoring NO offensive touchdowns and coming from behind in the second half to defeat a 1-9 NPU team. That Carthage team beat Wheaton in Kenosha the next week 39-21, secured the AQ and took Mt Union into the 4th quarter in Alliance before succumbing to the purple people eaters.

This game for IWU means NOTHING other than they are 5-0 in conference.

Well put, usee, and that's an apt illustration to prove your point. Just one question, though: How do you come from behind to win 13-0?

Greg, I am surprised you didn't correct my typo. the score of that game was 13-10.