FB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[AndOne]

Who had Breunig in fantasy this week? 5TDs!

With a little help from his friends, Austin Breunig accounted for 350 yards today.
He rushed 26 times for 264 yards (10.2 avg) and 3 TDs, and caught 3 passes for 86 yards (28.7 avg) and 2 TDs. 🎩 🏅

In similar fashion:
Sola Olateju accounted for 282 yards.  He carried the ball 14 times for 194 yards (13.9 avg) and 2 TD runs.  He also caught three passes for 88 yards with a 67 yard touchdown catch.

Breunig & Olateju--------2 better RBs in any other conference?

[Gregory Sager]

North Park cruised to an easy 37-6 win over Carroll today on Senior Day. Vikings junior CB David Simmons had an outstanding game on both defense and special teams. He picked off two passes -- one in the end zone to thwart an early Carroll drive, and the other on a deep corner route at his own 24, which he then turned into a twisting, turning obstacle course of a 76-yard pick-six. He also tackled the Pioneers punter deep in Carroll territory after the punter had had to leap to snare a high snap, setting up another Vikings TD, and he blocked an extra point.

He wasn't the only defensive star, as Matt DiFecchio picked off a couple of passes as well, and Dalton McKay got into the act, too, by grabbing an errant Colton Bahling throw and taking it 47 yards to the house. All told, the Vikings had five interceptions for 132 return yards and a pair of touchdowns, and that was just in the first half.

On offense, freshman QB Grant Borsch got his first career start and didn't disappoint, becoming the first Vikings QB in the post-T.D. Conway era to log 200 yards of passing in a game. A lot of that came off of two touchdown catches by Norm Cupiccioti, who dodged, darted, and feinted around numerous Pioneers defenders for a 68-yard TD catch on the game's first drive, and then reprised it with an almost identical 62-yard TD catch in the fourth quarter. Frank Mauigoa finally returned to active duty after missing five games due to an injury suffered on the first play from scrimmage at Illinois Wesleyan, and he made his presence felt by bursting up the middle for an improbable seven-yard touchdown run in which he dropped the ball at the goal line, bent down, picked it up, and still somehow managed to thrust the ball across the goal line, all of this taking place while he had a couple of Pioneers wrapped around him.

It was a great Senior Day sendoff for the Vikings, made even sweeter by some nonsense perpetrated by the Pioneers earlier in the week. Someone with access to the official Carroll football Twitter account posted a picture of a black garbage bag with a North Park logo on it, saying that it would be the perfect Halloween costume. One of the Vikings snuck a box of black garbage bags onto the sidelines today, and as the clock was winding down in the fourth quarter there were Vikings up and down the sidelines who were waving those black garbage bags at the Pioneers across the field. Moral of the story: Don't rile up your opponent with pregame taunting when you have a 1-7 record.

[AndOne]

That is very cool with regard to NPU turning the tables on Carroll with the smuggled garbage bags.

I wonder how happy, from an athletic standpoint, Carroll is about rejoining the CCIW. Last season they finished 8th in football. They followed that with a 6th place tie in men's basketball, and a last place finish in women's basketball. Then, in the spring they finished last in both softball and baseball. This football season it looks like they'll finish tied for last.

[Gregory Sager]

The Carroll women's soccer team finished third this fall, but I think that that's the only first-division finish that Carroll's had since it returned to the CCIW.

I get the very strong impression that it's not about winning and losing for the Carroll administration -- it's about marketing. Sure, Carroll players, coaches, and everybody else connected to the university want to win just as badly as do the folks at any of the other eight schools in this league. But I sense that joining an Illinois-dominated league -- in particular a Chicagoland-dominated league -- was about raising Carroll's visibility south of the border. Being in the CCIW gives the Pioneers exposure in Chicagoland, and the Carroll AD has even said that the school wants to be very intentional about recruiting Chicagoland student-athletes, emulating Carthage in that sense. That's logical, given that Carroll has to compete for Wisconsin student-athletes with vastly cheaper WIAC schools. You have to do what you have to do to make your admissions quotas, especially when you're a tuition-driven institution like Carroll.

[iwu70]

Greg on target as usual.  Welcome to the world of CCIW lacrosse.

'70

[New Tradition]

Who had Breunig in fantasy this week? 5TDs!

With a little help from his friends, Austin Breunig accounted for 350 yards today.
He rushed 26 times for 264 yards (10.2 avg) and 3 TDs, and caught 3 passes for 86 yards (28.7 avg) and 2 TDs. 🎩 🏅

That 264 yards on the ground broke the previous NCC single game rushing record of 260 set by Steve Holden in 2004. I was there on hand for both of those performances, though I had a much better view of the Holden one.

[Augie6]

On the heels of Augie's season ending with a beatdown at Wheaton, the AD at Augie made an interesting comment in one of the Quad Cities papers regarding Coach Bell and his staff.  This comment appeared in the paper a few days before the final game.

Augustana athletic director Mike Zapolski said Bell is in good stead with the program. But he notes that Year 4 with a program full of his own recruits is an important one to show strides.

A few questions come to mind when you read this quote.  The big one is, what does "show strides" mean?  I certainly don't see how anyone involved in the program could look our football alums in the face and say they have made any progress these past three seasons. Plus, this staff was starting from what was a pretty low bar set for the 4 prior seasons under Cushman.  At least Augie finished at .500 the final three seasons of Cushman's tenure, something that Coach Bell has yet to achieve.  As I mentioned in a prior post, if you eliminate an 0-2 season in 1901, the 1-9 finish is the worst season ever at Augie in terms of number of losses and winning percentage.  Some other superlatives for this season included the worst losses ever to both North Central and Carthage, 2nd worse loss ever to Wheaton, only the 4th loss to NPU in the history of the program, and providing the only win to a bad Carroll team.  I can't imagine they won't show some strides from this mess of a season, so I guess we'll see following next season what Zapolski considers as acceptable progress. 

I've read a lot of comments this season about playing younger players and injuries, and, IMO, those are just excuses made by bad teams. If Augie is continuing to have to use younger players as starters 3 years in, then that tells me that the older players recruited aren't talented enough to win at the CCIW level.  Anyone that watched Augie play this year can see that the talent level isn't anywhere close to where it needs to be for Augie to be competitive in the conference.   Not sure how they improve anymore than 2-3 wins next season with the players they have on the roster, and it's pretty hard to recruit a quality freshman class when you are a 1-9 team. 

[markerickson]

Thanks for the clarification on the trash bag issue, Greg.  Seeing the players taunt the other sideline was extremely poor sportsmanship I thought at the time.  I even thought about sending Coach Conway an email to vent.  Then I forgot as I watched the Vikings capture the soccer tourney championship while simultaneously watching the (recorded) Bedlam Game between Oklahoma and Oklahoma State.

I did not appreciate the Viking players chant, "Na na na na, hey hey, goodbye" after a Carroll player got ejected for a late hit with targeting.  One of the Viking diminutive receivers caught a ball right in front of the Viking bench.  Maybe it was the guy who embarrassed Carroll with two long TD receptions and the defensive back got mad at yet another catch.

[Gregory Sager]

I did not appreciate the Viking players chant, "Na na na na, hey hey, goodbye" after a Carroll player got ejected for a late hit with targeting.  One of the Viking diminutive receivers caught a ball right in front of the Viking bench.  Maybe it was the guy who embarrassed Carroll with two long TD receptions and the defensive back got mad at yet another catch.

No, it wasn't Norm Cupiccioti. It was Josh Rito who got speared by Carroll DB Mario Van Schaik, who was then ejected for targeting.

[CardinalAlum]

On the heels of Augie's season ending with a beatdown at Wheaton, the AD at Augie made an interesting comment in one of the Quad Cities papers regarding Coach Bell and his staff.  This comment appeared in the paper a few days before the final game.

Augustana athletic director Mike Zapolski said Bell is in good stead with the program. But he notes that Year 4 with a program full of his own recruits is an important one to show strides.

A few questions come to mind when you read this quote.  The big one is, what does "show strides" mean?  I certainly don't see how anyone involved in the program could look our football alums in the face and say they have made any progress these past three seasons. Plus, this staff was starting from what was a pretty low bar set for the 4 prior seasons under Cushman.  At least Augie finished at .500 the final three seasons of Cushman's tenure, something that Coach Bell has yet to achieve.  As I mentioned in a prior post, if you eliminate an 0-2 season in 1901, the 1-9 finish is the worst season ever at Augie in terms of number of losses and winning percentage.  Some other superlatives for this season included the worst losses ever to both North Central and Carthage, 2nd worse loss ever to Wheaton, only the 4th loss to NPU in the history of the program, and providing the only win to a bad Carroll team.  I can't imagine they won't show some strides from this mess of a season, so I guess we'll see following next season what Zapolski considers as acceptable progress. 

I've read a lot of comments this season about playing younger players and injuries, and, IMO, those are just excuses made by bad teams. If Augie is continuing to have to use younger players as starters 3 years in, then that tells me that the older players recruited aren't talented enough to win at the CCIW level.  Anyone that watched Augie play this year can see that the talent level isn't anywhere close to where it needs to be for Augie to be competitive in the conference.   Not sure how they improve anymore than 2-3 wins next season with the players they have on the roster, and it's pretty hard to recruit a quality freshman class when you are a 1-9 team.

A6,

I think you got on this earlier this year but I don't see what Augie is trying to be.   Are they trying to be a running team, a passing team?  There's zero identity.   The Augie team I saw this year was the smallest up front I can remember.  We used to look across the field and shake our head at the size of the Augie O Lines.  I have friends that are high school coaches in the quad cities and they all say Bell is a great guy and coach and say he just doesn't have the kids to do what he wants to do.  It comes back to recruiting.  It doesn't appear he has the right kids in house yet.  What is Augie doing as an administration to be better?   How many full time coaches are they committing to the football program?   The facilities upgrade was a nice start but now what?

[Gregory Sager]

Some other superlatives for this season included ... only the 4th loss to NPU in the history of the program

I think you got on this earlier this year but I don't see what Augie is trying to be.   Are they trying to be a running team, a passing team?  There's zero identity.   The Augie team I saw this year was the smallest up front I can remember.  We used to look across the field and shake our head at the size of the Augie O Lines.  I have friends that are high school coaches in the quad cities and they all say Bell is a great guy and coach and say he just doesn't have the kids to do what he wants to do.  It comes back to recruiting.  It doesn't appear he has the right kids in house yet.  What is Augie doing as an administration to be better?   How many full time coaches are they committing to the football program?   The facilities upgrade was a nice start but now what?

I've heard from some -- not all, but some -- Augie people over the past few years that the AC administration just isn't committed to winning anymore. I've always found that hard to believe, as Augustana continues to be very strong in some sports -- men's basketball is a national force, baseball continues to be excellent, and Augie is always really solid in the running sports as well -- and the upgrades to the Knowlton Athletic Complex (which includes Lindberg Stadium) speak for themselves. I think that some of the grumbling can be explained by the fact that long-time Augustana supporters were spoiled by decades of AC being better across the board than everybody else in the CCIW, and they can't adjust their thinking to the realization that such a state of affairs couldn't go on forever, no matter how hard Augie tried. This is a league that has developed a reputation for being nationally competitive in just about every sport that's sponsored by D3, and you don't get that way by having the same school win the all-sports trophy (whether it's a mythical one such as the CCIW's or an actual one) every single stinkin' year. F'rinstance, just ask the MIAC how it's working out for them to have become St. Thomas And The Twelve Schools That St. Thomas Beats Like A Drum At Everything.

While Augustana is located a considerable distance away from Chicagoland, it's one of only two four-year schools in a metro area of 380,000 people. It's located in a stable middle-class neighborhood in Rock Island, it has the most physically attractive campus in the CCIW, and it's still close enough to the all-important western suburbs of Chicagoland to be a viable college choice for a large number of high-school student-athletes who live there, which is vitally important. Kids from the western 'burbs have come to play an even more prominent role in Augie recruiting in recent decades than the northwestern Illinois and eastern Iowa kids who used to represent Augie's bread-and-butter recruiting zone.

I think that the bottom line is that there's nothing in terms of resources or campus environment that's stopping Augie from restoring its former status as a football powerhouse (unless the football program's budget has been slashed in recent years, and I haven't heard of that happening). I don't mean "powerhouse" in the Reade-era sense, because that's never going to happen again. I mean more like the Schmulbach and Barnes eras, in which Augie is consistently a first-division CCIW football program as well as a champion and/or playoff team often enough for it to be both a realistic expectation for every team fielded by the program and a recruiting draw. From my admittedly limited point of view, the problem seems to be managerial. Augie just hasn't hired the right guy the past couple of times the head coaching job has come open.

[Augie6]

On the heels of Augie's season ending with a beatdown at Wheaton, the AD at Augie made an interesting comment in one of the Quad Cities papers regarding Coach Bell and his staff.  This comment appeared in the paper a few days before the final game.

Augustana athletic director Mike Zapolski said Bell is in good stead with the program. But he notes that Year 4 with a program full of his own recruits is an important one to show strides.

A few questions come to mind when you read this quote.  The big one is, what does "show strides" mean?  I certainly don't see how anyone involved in the program could look our football alums in the face and say they have made any progress these past three seasons. Plus, this staff was starting from what was a pretty low bar set for the 4 prior seasons under Cushman.  At least Augie finished at .500 the final three seasons of Cushman's tenure, something that Coach Bell has yet to achieve.  As I mentioned in a prior post, if you eliminate an 0-2 season in 1901, the 1-9 finish is the worst season ever at Augie in terms of number of losses and winning percentage.  Some other superlatives for this season included the worst losses ever to both North Central and Carthage, 2nd worse loss ever to Wheaton, only the 4th loss to NPU in the history of the program, and providing the only win to a bad Carroll team.  I can't imagine they won't show some strides from this mess of a season, so I guess we'll see following next season what Zapolski considers as acceptable progress. 

I've read a lot of comments this season about playing younger players and injuries, and, IMO, those are just excuses made by bad teams. If Augie is continuing to have to use younger players as starters 3 years in, then that tells me that the older players recruited aren't talented enough to win at the CCIW level.  Anyone that watched Augie play this year can see that the talent level isn't anywhere close to where it needs to be for Augie to be competitive in the conference.   Not sure how they improve anymore than 2-3 wins next season with the players they have on the roster, and it's pretty hard to recruit a quality freshman class when you are a 1-9 team.

A6,

I think you got on this earlier this year but I don't see what Augie is trying to be.   Are they trying to be a running team, a passing team?  There's zero identity.   The Augie team I saw this year was the smallest up front I can remember.  We used to look across the field and shake our head at the size of the Augie O Lines.  I have friends that are high school coaches in the quad cities and they all say Bell is a great guy and coach and say he just doesn't have the kids to do what he wants to do.  It comes back to recruiting.  It doesn't appear he has the right kids in house yet.  What is Augie doing as an administration to be better?   How many full time coaches are they committing to the football program?   The facilities upgrade was a nice start but now what?

Card Alum,

That is the biggest question I see with the program and it is something I mentioned in an earlier post.  After 3 years, there is absolutely zero identity to this team.  In year one, they were a one man team, offensively, with Sam Frasco being that guy.  Since then, I have no idea what they want to be.  Just look at the QB position over the past two years.  The starter to begin the past two seasons is someone with no running ability and is an average passer.  Then you have someone who is a little better runner, with less passing ability, but is not particularly good at either.  Finally, you have another QB who is a pretty good runner with very little ability to throw the ball.  If you know what you want to be offensively, wouldn't you recruit the same type of kid at such a key position?  On the defensive side of the ball, the only consistent thing I have seen the past 3 years is that they are just plain bad.  I have met most of the coaching staff and they seem like great guys.  Clearly, they don't have the talent that is needed to compete, so the coaches are failing from a recruiting standpoint.  I don't know why that is, but it's not going to be any easier going forward.  Who would want to go play for a program that has gone 4-6, 3-7 and then 1-9 over the past three seasons.  Facilities have been addressed and there doesn't seem to be an problem in the number of coaches in the program (just look on Augie's website), so I don't think either of those things are the issue.  From a purely coaching perspective, It's hard for me to even make a judgement about the ability of this staff, because you can have the best coaches in the country, but you can't win without talent on the field.  I could speculate on why this staff is unable to recruit, but, in all honesty, I can't give you a good reason on why this is happening.  I do know that the other programs at Augie (Basketball, Baseball, Men's Track and Field and Wrestling,after a few lean years) don't seem to have this problem.

When you watch Augie over the past several seasons, you see teams that are undersized and not particularly athletic.  I have no problem with recruiting guys who may be undersized, because you can get them bigger and stronger in the weight room.  What you can't do is coach speed and athleticism.  That is something that Augie has been sorely lacking for a long time.

[Gregory Sager]

The flip side of Augie's decline is something that we're not going to hear about here from partisans, given that Millikin fans almost never post on d3boards.com for any sport. But, since somebody's gotta say it, I will: Millikin's program turnaround this season has been truly remarkable. The Big Blue football program went into a downward slide during the latter half of Doug Neibuhr's tenure, and it never got any traction at all under Patrick Etherton. Last year in his first season Dan Gritti managed to win three CCIW games, something that the Big Blue hadn't done since Neibuhr's penultimate season in '09. This year he's got a regionally competitive Millikin team that is right up there with the glory days of the Neibuhr era at the turn of the millennium in terms of success -- and he's done it with mostly with his own recruits, aside from a small handful of important Etherton holdovers such as Nicco Stepina, Isaiah Blumenshine, Nick Perry, Connor Brewer, and Gabe Xayathone.

His complete reversal of the Millikin program's fortunes has been extremely impressive, and even though nobody who posts here regularly follows the Big Blue I'm surprised that this turnaround hasn't been mentioned yet.

[Gregory Sager]

On the heels of Augie's season ending with a beatdown at Wheaton, the AD at Augie made an interesting comment in one of the Quad Cities papers regarding Coach Bell and his staff.  This comment appeared in the paper a few days before the final game.

Augustana athletic director Mike Zapolski said Bell is in good stead with the program. But he notes that Year 4 with a program full of his own recruits is an important one to show strides.

A few questions come to mind when you read this quote.  The big one is, what does "show strides" mean?  I certainly don't see how anyone involved in the program could look our football alums in the face and say they have made any progress these past three seasons. Plus, this staff was starting from what was a pretty low bar set for the 4 prior seasons under Cushman.  At least Augie finished at .500 the final three seasons of Cushman's tenure, something that Coach Bell has yet to achieve.  As I mentioned in a prior post, if you eliminate an 0-2 season in 1901, the 1-9 finish is the worst season ever at Augie in terms of number of losses and winning percentage.  Some other superlatives for this season included the worst losses ever to both North Central and Carthage, 2nd worse loss ever to Wheaton, only the 4th loss to NPU in the history of the program, and providing the only win to a bad Carroll team.  I can't imagine they won't show some strides from this mess of a season, so I guess we'll see following next season what Zapolski considers as acceptable progress. 

I've read a lot of comments this season about playing younger players and injuries, and, IMO, those are just excuses made by bad teams. If Augie is continuing to have to use younger players as starters 3 years in, then that tells me that the older players recruited aren't talented enough to win at the CCIW level.  Anyone that watched Augie play this year can see that the talent level isn't anywhere close to where it needs to be for Augie to be competitive in the conference.   Not sure how they improve anymore than 2-3 wins next season with the players they have on the roster, and it's pretty hard to recruit a quality freshman class when you are a 1-9 team.

A6,

I think you got on this earlier this year but I don't see what Augie is trying to be.   Are they trying to be a running team, a passing team?  There's zero identity.   The Augie team I saw this year was the smallest up front I can remember.  We used to look across the field and shake our head at the size of the Augie O Lines.  I have friends that are high school coaches in the quad cities and they all say Bell is a great guy and coach and say he just doesn't have the kids to do what he wants to do.  It comes back to recruiting.  It doesn't appear he has the right kids in house yet.  What is Augie doing as an administration to be better?   How many full time coaches are they committing to the football program?   The facilities upgrade was a nice start but now what?

Card Alum,

That is the biggest question I see with the program and it is something I mentioned in an earlier post.  After 3 years, there is absolutely zero identity to this team.  In year one, they were a one man team, offensively, with Sam Frasco being that guy.  Since then, I have no idea what they want to be.  Just look at the QB position over the past two years.  The starter to begin the past two seasons is someone with no running ability and is an average passer.  Then you have someone who is a little better runner, with less passing ability, but is not particularly good at either.  Finally, you have another QB who is a pretty good runner with very little ability to throw the ball.  If you know what you want to be offensively, wouldn't you recruit the same type of kid at such a key position?  On the defensive side of the ball, the only consistent thing I have seen the past 3 years is that they are just plain bad.  I have met most of the coaching staff and they seem like great guys.  Clearly, they don't have the talent that is needed to compete, so the coaches are failing from a recruiting standpoint.  I don't know why that is, but it's not going to be any easier going forward.  Who would want to go play for a program that has gone 4-6, 3-7 and then 1-9 over the past three seasons.  Facilities have been addressed and there doesn't seem to be an problem in the number of coaches in the program (just look on Augie's website), so I don't think either of those things are the issue.  From a purely coaching perspective, It's hard for me to even make a judgement about the ability of this staff, because you can have the best coaches in the country, but you can't win without talent on the field.  I could speculate on why this staff is unable to recruit, but, in all honesty, I can't give you a good reason on why this is happening.  I do know that the other programs at Augie (Basketball, Baseball, Men's Track and Field and Wrestling,after a few lean years) don't seem to have this problem.

When you watch Augie over the past several seasons, you see teams that are undersized and not particularly athletic.  I have no problem with recruiting guys who may be undersized, because you can get them bigger and stronger in the weight room.  What you can't do is coach speed and athleticism.  That is something that Augie has been sorely lacking for a long time.

Recruiting is by far the most important aspect of college coaching in any sport. Therefore, if you're failing from a recruiting standpoint, it means that you're failing from a coaching standpoint. Now, we've talked more than once in this room about how the landscape for football recruiting is different than it is for other sports, because the size of the roster is so much bigger. That greatly exaggerates the conditions for schools that have inherent recruiting difficulties due to location, such as North Park and Carroll, or which have limited financial or facilities resources. This means that some allowances have to be made in gauging the abilities of coaches; it's not always just about wins and losses in D3 football. But none of those restrictions apply to Augustana. As you said, there's no extenuating circumstances that can explain why Augie isn't recruiting good football players by the dozens. Therefore, it's gotta be the coaches.

(Of course, as you also pointed out, it gets harder and harder to recruit if your program has the rep of being a loser, no matter how good your facilities and no matter how pretty your campus. But that's not an insurmountable hill to climb, as Dan Gritti is proving at Millikin.)

[79jaybird]

The echoes and frustration out of Augie are matched (to some degree) at Elmhurst.   The current Elmhurst regime has not really shown much in terms of development and getting the program to take strides forward.  Another loss this weekend where the 2nd half was a complete meltdown. I'd like to see a stat of the opponents vs. Elmhurst scoring in the 2nd half.  I can't imagine it being pretty.

IMO- Augie needs to get their identity back.  Perhaps going back to the Wing-T.  When Augie's Wing-T was polished, they were next to unstoppable.  2nd, sometimes 3rd man through the hole and they are almost always generating 4-6 yds (minimally) a carry.   

Once they chose to distance the Wing-T,  they were looking to adopt programs and ideas from others,  and well the results prove it. 

The other thing that comes to mind, is that it is just harder to recruit Chicago suburban kids.  With the rise of North Central (Thorne Sr. era) and other local programs (EC/CC) having (select years) success,  there are more vultures out there looking for the bread. 

I'm curious to see what the EC admin thinks of the state of the Jays program.