FB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Gregory Sager]

Millikin 23
North Park 17

After playing three quarters of really terrible football in line with the past two weeks, the Vikings offense came alive with ten points in the final quarter to draw within six. It was fortunate that Millikin's comparative inability to salt away a game against a sputtering opponent, in contrast to Elmhurst and Illinois Wesleyan, allowed the Vikes the opportunity to crawl back into it. At the end of the game, T.D. Conway ran a strong two-minute drill in a drive that started at the NPU 3 and made it to midfield before a series of fatal drops by his young receiving corps and an all-out MU blitz on 4th and 5 with 32 seconds left forced an incompletion that decided the game.

While it would've been nice if the Vikings hadn't waited so long to get things going, at least they fought back in this one. Unfortunately, falling short against a Big Blue team that is not likely to beat another opponent for the rest of the season (with the possible exception of Carroll) adds no luster to the attempted comeback. Moreover, NPU's already-banged-up defense lost a couple more key players this evening to injury. I dread the thought of how next week's game against North Central is going to turn out.

The NPU defense stepped it up in the second half and held Millikin to 62 total yards, which was good to see. And Enrique Menendez had another solid game running the ball, gaining 79 yards on 10 carries and scoring both North Park touchdowns. I'd like to see him get the ball more.

[BoBo]

Wheaton did a very nice job bottling up MSG in the second half and ultimately held him to just 65 yards on 11 carries.

Monosodium glutamate or Madison Square Garden?

[USee]

For Wheaton the biggest difference this week was the return is Sola Olateju to full time duty.  He is what makes this Thunder offense go.  He has been out or limited in every game until Saturday when he carried the ball 21x for 171 yards. 

The other factor for the Wheaton offense was the style of Carthage and Elmhurst.  Both those teams are aggressive defenses w experienced and physical corners.  That was a challenge for these young receivers and young offensive coaches. I expect we will see much more production from the Wheaton Offense going forward.

[matblake]

The other factor for the Wheaton offense was the style of Carthage and Elmhurst.  Both those teams are aggressive defenses w experienced and physical corners.  That was a challenge for these young receivers and young offensive coaches. I expect we will see much more production from the Wheaton Offense going forward.

Hats off to you USee.  You were the only one pointing this out as the Wheaton offense had its issues with the Redmen and Blue Jays and the rest of us were in "incredulous fan" mode.  I think we are seeing that cooler heads will ultimately prevail.

For Wheaton the biggest difference this week was the return is Sola Olateju to full time duty.  He is what makes this Thunder offense go.  He has been out or limited in every game until Saturday when he carried the ball 21x for 171 yards. 

Good point.  I would also say that the difference in styles of Olateju and Watson makes both of them harder to bring down.  I seem to remember several times when they rotated out that the other got a decent run.  Credit the o-line too.  That's a good Titan defense, Wheaton at times really controlled the line of scrimmage.

[USee]

Olateju makes people miss.  I saw 6-8 time yesterday he made an unblocked IWU player miss, often in the hole, on the way to a big gain.

[CardinalAlum]

Millikin 23
North Park 17

After playing three quarters of really terrible football in line with the past two weeks, the Vikings offense came alive with ten points in the final quarter to draw within six. It was fortunate that Millikin's comparative inability to salt away a game against a sputtering opponent, in contrast to Elmhurst and Illinois Wesleyan, allowed the Vikes the opportunity to crawl back into it. At the end of the game, T.D. Conway ran a strong two-minute drill in a drive that started at the NPU 3 and made it to midfield before a series of fatal drops by his young receiving corps and an all-out MU blitz on 4th and 5 with 32 seconds left forced an incompletion that decided the game.

While it would've been nice if the Vikings hadn't waited so long to get things going, at least they fought back in this one. Unfortunately, falling short against a Big Blue team that is not likely to beat another opponent for the rest of the season (with the possible exception of Carroll) adds no luster to the attempted comeback. Moreover, NPU's already-banged-up defense lost a couple more key players this evening to injury. I dread the thought of how next week's game against North Central is going to turn out.

The NPU defense stepped it up in the second half and held Millikin to 62 total yards, which was good to see. And Enrique Menendez had another solid game running the ball, gaining 79 yards on 10 carries and scoring both North Park touchdowns. I'd like to see him get the ball more.

This would be an ideal "trap" game in most other scenarios but it doesn't sound like NP will be up for that task with all they have going on.    Coming off a bye week, I hope NCC is able to get some guys that are dinged up healed.   Does NP have a decent O and D line this year?   That will determine if and how long they will hang in this game. 

[wheels81]

Norm Eash on the post game:

"This will go down as one of the most disappointing games in my time here at Illinois Wesleyan. We didn't answer the bell in the second half. I told our team sometimes the best team doesn't always win but the team that plays the best does"

Wow... just wow.  So it had nothing to do with Wheaton answering the bell and showing they were the better team?

Yep. And now Eash is headed home to his wife, Kellyanne Conway. After dinner they are going to play a game where they take a story and see who can twist it so that the end is the furthest away from the way the event actually occurred.     

"Eash" is the sound one makes in response to a quote like that.  http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Eesh

[79jaybird]

Good old Norm, never ceases to amaze me what can/does come out of his mouth.  Fact is IWU (thanks AndOne)  was outcoached and their players out executed the Titans in the 2nd half. 

Pleasantly surprised at the level Elmhurst is playing at on defense and overall.  The offense could use some tweaking but the defense is right there.   Really, Elmhurst is just a few plays away from being 3-0 to start.  I think a lot of credit should go to the players who are adopting the new regime and making it work.

[Gregory Sager]

This would be an ideal "trap" game in most other scenarios but it doesn't sound like NP will be up for that task with all they have going on.

NPU is young, nursing injuries to multiple starters, and psychologically reeling from a close loss to a bad Millikin team that culminated what is now a four-game losing streak. This will not be a trap game for North Central.

Coming off a bye week, I hope NCC is able to get some guys that are dinged up healed.   Does NP have a decent O and D line this year?   That will determine if and how long they will hang in this game.

NPU's offensive line is very young -- two freshmen, a sophomore, and two juniors, with the sixth man also a freshman -- but it has actually performed quite well. The problems with the offense have mostly been on the shoulders of the skill players rather than on the O-line.

The defensive line for NPU is another story. Austin Regel, Mark Mamola, and Kejahn Joseph have given it everything that they have, but their comparative lack of size and the limited amount of snaps that they can take off, due to the lack of depth, has meant that the Vikings can be moved off of the ball by big O-lines. Getting a healthy John Kellum back is helping, as he's now almost back to full speed, and freshman Patamo Soa is getting better every week as Mamola's caddy at nose tackle. Soa's fellow frosh Quentin Voce looks like he might have a nice future, too, in the limited amount of time that he's seen, but he's really a linebacker. Getting sophomore Allen Lagaaia and his size and quickness into the lineup would be a major step forward for the NPU defensive line, but I have no idea when (or if) he'll be healthy enough to dress.

I think that the NPU defense in general, not just the D-line, is going to have serious problems trying to slow down the Cardinals, much less stop them. Chaun Maiava may be the best defensive player in the entire league, but there's only one of him.

This game could get very ugly very quickly.

[AndOne]

Good old Norm, never ceases to amaze me what can/does come out of his mouth.  Fact is Wheaton was outcoached and their players out executed the Titans in the 2nd half. 

Pleasantly surprised at the level Elmhurst is playing at on defense and overall.  The offense could use some tweaking but the defense is right there.   Really, Elmhurst is just a few plays away from being 3-0 to start.  I think a lot of credit should go to the players who are adopting the new regime and making it work.

79,

Just checking. Any chance you meant IWU was outcoached?

[wesleydad]

And One, how are you doing my friend.  Looks like you have a pretty good team to watch this year.  They have been playing well and it will be interesting to see how they do against Wheaton.  Are they as good as they look from afar?  Good luck the rest of the year.

[CardinalAlum]

Good old Norm, never ceases to amaze me what can/does come out of his mouth.  Fact is Wheaton was outcoached and their players out executed the Titans in the 2nd half. 

Pleasantly surprised at the level Elmhurst is playing at on defense and overall.  The offense could use some tweaking but the defense is right there.   Really, Elmhurst is just a few plays away from being 3-0 to start.  I think a lot of credit should go to the players who are adopting the new regime and making it work.

79,

Just checking. Any chance you meant IWU was outcoached?

Impossible!   Nobody outcoaches Norm! 

[USee]

Nice article in ATR on NCC. Nice job by Clyde Hughes in profiling the Cardinals.

http://www.d3football.com/columns/around-the-region/midwest/index


I found this quote by Jeff Thorne of particular interest:

"We know it's not about who you've lost to, it's who you've beaten," said Jeff Thorne, the second-year head coach at North Central after serving under his father as assistant coach. "We played great against those teams, but the reality is that we lost. We know the rules in Division III, if you don't win your conference, you better be clean in your non-conference slate. That's how the system works.

"Those are lessons not only our players learned but our coaches learned. Those are things you remember as a coach and you make sure those things don't re-occur."

He obviously has been reading Pat's stuff on D3.com. More than that this makes me wonder if NCC has decidedly shifted their non conference strategy in a way no one else is really thinking about. We know NCC likes to schedule tough non conference opponents and it has been well documented how this strategy can really hurt you if you don't win your league (see 2015). So Jeff Thorne may have intentionally scheduled higher quality NAIA opponents because he gets the best of both worlds. He plays higher quality opponents that feeds the philosophy of preparing your team to play at a high level, AND he doesn't penalize his team if they happen to lose one of these games as they don't "count" against their D3 record. I think its a smart idea if that is the strategy.

[USee]

As far as Thorne's opinion on his own team, he said the following:

Thorne said defensively the Cardinals are probably playing as well as they ever have, limiting their first two CCIW opponents – Illinois Wesleyan and Millikin – to a touchdown each in their first two games.

"Probably the most favorable comparison with our past teams, defensively we're really playing at the kind of level I want to see us playing at," Thorne said. "We have depth along our defensive line that allows us to rotate people in. We have an experienced secondary. They are really playing fantastic defense.

and about the offense he said:

Thorne compared the Cardinals receiving corps to North Central's 2013 group. That team went undefeated and lost in a dramatic snow-filled national semifinal game against Mount Union 41-40, where the Purple Raiders needed a last-minute drive to prevent North Central from advancing to the Stagg Bowl.

"We have a very, very strong receiving corps, just like that 2013 team and obviously we have an outstanding quarterback," Thorne said. "So we do have some parallels between this team and some of our former teams, but it's still too early to tell how that will shake out, especially having a lot of important games still to play, including this week against North Park."

Noticably absent is anything about the running game. The Cardinals have been decidedly a 60% run 40% pass team for many years in the John/Jeff Thorne era but this year they are averaging just 138 yds per game and 3.5 yds per carry. If you look back the last 5 years NCC has also been 60/40 run v pass and has averaged between 213-243 yds per game and 5.1-5.6 yds per carry. And this years numbers are even more alarming when you consider they have a healthy Austin Bruenig, who was a POY candidate last year (6.9 yds per carry and 118 yds per game) and a healthy O'Shayne Brown, who in 2014 averaged 6.1 yds per carry and was averaging over 9 yds per carry last year before he got hurt.

That is a dramatic dropoff in running game production given the consistent emphasis. I haven't seen enough of NCC live to understand the reasons behind this. One thing is for sure, it hasn't hurt their offensive production as Broc Rutter is putting up ridiculous numbers and NCC has one of the better receiving units in the country.

[AndOne]

And One, how are you doing my friend.  Looks like you have a pretty good team to watch this year.  They have been playing well and it will be interesting to see how they do against Wheaton.  Are they as good as they look from afar?  Good luck the rest of the year.

Yes, the Cardinals are very fundamentally sound, tough, and exciting to watch.
Without delving into too deep of an analysis, here are a few things I've noticed so far this season:

* QB on a football team might be the single most important position in all of the major sports. Last year the Cards were ably led by a freshman who posted very good numbers, and showed the potential to be an excellent player in the future. This season, however, they have had the good fortune to have a D1 QB transfer into the program. Broc Rutter, only a freshman eligibility wise, has completed 63.6% of his passes for 1,069 yards and 11 TDs vs only 2 INTs in four games. His efficiency rating is 174.6.
And, should he get hurt, into the game can come a much more than capable backup.

* The Cards are a generally young and deep team. Among the centers, guards, tackles, and TEs on the O line, the current 2 deep chart shows no seniors. They have especially excelled at pass blocking.
Among the other positions on the offensive side of the ball, 2 of the 3 starting WRs are seniors whose experience with things like running routes, I think, aids the freshman QB. Starting RB Austin Breunig, who led the conference in rushing last year, is also a junior.
The Cards lead the conference in successful 3rd Dow conversions. 

* While probably lacking what can be called a superstar, the WR corps, led by Alex Ulmer, as a whole are experienced, athletic, tough, and results orientated. They always seem to be where the QB expects them to be, and always seem to be able to make the tough catch.

* On defense, the Cards do not currently start any seniors either on the line or at any of the three LB
spots. There is some bend to their overall D line and LB play, but not much break.
The secondary is probably NCC's most experienced area overall. 3 of the 4 starters are seniors. With 9 INTs so far, they both defend the pass, and support the run very well.

* The Cards lead the league in:
- Punting
- Preventing the opponent from converting on 3rd down,
- Turnover margin.

** Despite the above, NCC still faces tough competition ahead, particularly in the form of Wheaton which has now racked up 29 regular season conference wins in a row.

Areas for Improvement

* As previously posted about, the Cards are running less, and throwing more this season. However, when they do run, the run blocking needs to improve as they sit only in 5th place in the conference in average yards gained per rush.

*  NCC is currently only 7th in average yards per kick-off return.

Just a few things. Not a complete list by any means.