MBB: Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

[RTF]

Why is Thern not joining his brother at SNC?  Any thoughts?

[RTF]

Meant Thorn in the last post.

[frodotwo]

Why is Thern not joining his brother at SNC?  Any thoughts?

Probably was not recruited by them. If I recall, SNC had a whale of a recruiting class as well, including Trevor Wattawa whom Point was also recruiting.

[tomt4525]

There's more info on the Point website:

http://athletics.uwsp.edu/news/2012/6/22/MBB_0622122620.aspx?path=mbball


The Kent Dernbach hire appears to be paying some early dividends with FOUR recruits from IL (Demeyers, Parker, Miklasz, and Bill Patterson is from IL as well).

Patterson, a 6-8 forward from Mount Carmel High School in Illinois, helped lead his team to a 2011 Chicago Catholic League Championship. He was a Chicago Catholic League All-Star and All-Conference player as a senior and was named the league's co-defensive player of the year. Patterson averaged 12.5 points, 9.2 rebounds and 2.8 blocks per contest during his senior campaign.

Yes, Dernbach seems to be paying huge dividends.  With as much talent as there is around the Chicago area, it's a great spot to have built in inroads there.

[Gregory Sager]

Still searching for info on Bill Patterson

Yeah... it makes it difficult when there's a William Patterson University!

Not that difficult ... there's only one 't' in William Paterson.

DeMyers is another guy that sounds extremely talented from reading about him, excited to see what he brings to the table.  At 6'5", does he have any wing skills??  Or is he strictly a back to the basket guy??

My understanding is that DeMyers was exclusively a center at Aurora Catholic.

There's more info on the Point website:

http://athletics.uwsp.edu/news/2012/6/22/MBB_0622122620.aspx?path=mbball


The Kent Dernbach hire appears to be paying some early dividends with FOUR recruits from IL (Demeyers, Parker, Miklasz, and Bill Patterson is from IL as well).

Patterson, a 6-8 forward from Mount Carmel High School in Illinois, helped lead his team to a 2011 Chicago Catholic League Championship. He was a Chicago Catholic League All-Star and All-Conference player as a senior and was named the league's co-defensive player of the year. Patterson averaged 12.5 points, 9.2 rebounds and 2.8 blocks per contest during his senior campaign.

The Chicago Catholic League is one of the best high-school basketball leagues in the entire midwest, so Patterson's certainly played against top-notch competition. I'm a bit surprised that he didn't get a scholarship somewhere.

[John Gleich]

Still searching for info on Bill Patterson

Yeah... it makes it difficult when there's a William Paterson University!

Not that difficult ... there's only one 't' in William Paterson.

Maybe it was just when things were auto filling when I was searching today... but every time I searched for Bill Patterson, I was getting William Paterson results.

Maybe it was user error, I dunno...

As it is, there's not a whole lot about Bill that I could find, other than some AAU things and about 2 game write-ups. Such is life when you play high school basketball in Chicago (and your name isn't Jabari Parker...)

[frodotwo]

Point reveals eight newcomers for next year's team:  http://www.stevenspointjournal.com/article/20120622/SPJ02/206220358/Pointers-men-s-basketball-Semling-sizes-up-recruiting-class?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|s

Robert Demeyers is from Aurora Central Catholic and played center for the Chargers at 6'5" and regularly scored and rebounded in double figures. He also averaged 7 blocked shots a game as a junior. I don't know if he has an outside shot, but could he be another Jared Jenkins?

Connor Miklasz is a 5'10" guard from Hersey HS in Arlington Heights. Playing for Harper College in Palatine, IL (NJCAA), he started in 27 games, averaging 9 pts, 4.5 asst and 1.6 steals per game. Doesn't look like a formidable schedule that the Hawks played last year (MATC beat them 2 out of 3), but Connor was one of the team leaders.

Still searching for info on Bill Patterson, but the question for next year is what will the roster look like??  They only lost 2 of the 14 via graduation, so these 8 additions would make 20 players, and we know that won't happen. The bottom six on the roster played only 238 minutes total so that would be the first place I'd look. Interesting competition ahead for sure.

Thanks for the link Fro...let the speculation begin

That is a bigger recruiting class than I expected.  There was a few of the freshman last year that I was impressed with and thought had some huge potential, I hope those few guys will be back.  Guys like Lutz, Ryf, Ritchay, Forsythe and Richard are the freshman I am talking about. 

With hoping those freshman continue their UWSP careers being said, there looks to be some impressive recruits coming.  This offseason I was concerned about point guard depth and size in the post.  They addressed both.  Getting 4 guys at least 6'7" is big time for a D3 program.  I expect Studer and Heuer to play right away with Thorn possibly needing a year to adjust from lower division high school ball to big time D3 college ball.  I don't know anything about Patterson but I like what I've read. 

DeMyers is another guy that sounds extremely talented from reading about him, excited to see what he brings to the table.  At 6'5", does he have any wing skills??  Or is he strictly a back to the basket guy??  He sure has impressive rebound and block numbers.

Point guard depth should be in good hands with the additions of Miklasz and Parker.  Not much else to say about them until the season starts and we see if they log any minutes or not.  Anyways, great job to the staff at Point.  I'm again impressed with the athletes they continue to attract to Point.  I realize Point might be an easy sell to high school athletes with their tradition, especially in Men's Basketball, but it is still impressive to me to get continually get the top guys from Wisconsin who don't get scholarships along with pulling some kids from Illinois this year.

It is BIG to get that many BIG guys on one team, Kinda like Augie last year who had great size. I'm guessing that some of the freshman from last year may stay, but power forward/center is now  a crowded position. Richard may play fewer minutes and I think Kacala/Parlow/Van Handel are not likely to see the floor without great improvement over last  season. Small forward with Haas, Ritchay and now McGann is probably set so minutes for Ziemer/Lutz/Forsythe will be reduced/unlikely. Ty will likely be a shooting guard now along with Gio/Ritchay, and Parker/Ryf/Miklasz will share time at the point.  This of course is all speculation on my part, I'll sit there and cheer whoever is on the team.

I don't think the Point roster will be 20 large next year, historically it's been 14-16. 2010-11 had 18, but Johnston and Ziemer were injured all season and never saw the floor. The 04-05 team had nineteen but three saw no real floor time. The 02-03 team was the last time they had this much size inside (Iserloth/Kalsow/Maus/Gleich)

[John Gleich]

I don't think the Point roster will be 20 large next year, historically it's been 14-16. 2010-11 had 18, but Johnston and Ziemer were injured all season and never saw the floor. The 04-05 team had nineteen but three saw no real floor time. The 02-03 team was the last time they had this much size inside (Iserloth/Kalsow/Maus/Gleich)

I don't think they'll have 20... but I feel like we'll see a few more than the last few years.

And even though we had 4 guys 6'7"+, it was the depth of size that made us so "big" in my opinion... We had 11 guys 6'5" or taller. When 2-5 could be 6'7", 6'5", 6'7", 6'9", it just made everything that much more difficult for teams to function.

I loved Coach Neer's comment after the National Championship game in 05... In the second half, we dropped back into a 1-2-2 zone that he dubbed the Pterodactyl zone because everybody was so long!

[wcbsas]

Thanks for the link Fro...let the speculation begin

That is a bigger recruiting class than I expected.  There was a few of the freshman last year that I was impressed with and thought had some huge potential, I hope those few guys will be back.  Guys like Lutz, Ryf, Ritchay, Forsythe and Richard are the freshman I am talking about. 

With hoping those freshman continue their UWSP careers being said, there looks to be some impressive recruits coming.  This offseason I was concerned about point guard depth and size in the post.  They addressed both.  Getting 4 guys atleast 6'7" is big time for a D3 program.  I expect Studer and Heuer to play right away with Thorn possibly needing a year to adjust from lower division high school ball to big time D3 college ball.  I don't know anything about Patterson but I like what I've read. 

Without making a comment that starts another attack I would like thoughts, opinions and discussion on the merits of bringing in such a large recruiting class.  It is obvious next year's roster will not comprise 20 players.

Likely a number of kids have decided to leave voluntarily.  Is that 1, 2 or 5?  Not sure any of us know.

It is also not beyond the realm of possibility that some kids will be told not to come back.  What about the kids who do not want to voluntarily leave?   Is it fair or reasonable to them? 

[frodotwo]

Thanks for the link Fro...let the speculation begin

That is a bigger recruiting class than I expected.  There was a few of the freshman last year that I was impressed with and thought had some huge potential, I hope those few guys will be back.  Guys like Lutz, Ryf, Ritchay, Forsythe and Richard are the freshman I am talking about. 

With hoping those freshman continue their UWSP careers being said, there looks to be some impressive recruits coming.  This offseason I was concerned about point guard depth and size in the post.  They addressed both.  Getting 4 guys atleast 6'7" is big time for a D3 program.  I expect Studer and Heuer to play right away with Thorn possibly needing a year to adjust from lower division high school ball to big time D3 college ball.  I don't know anything about Patterson but I like what I've read. 

Without making a comment that starts another attack I would like thoughts, opinions and discussion on the merits of bringing in such a large recruiting class.  It is obvious next year's roster will not comprise 20 players.

Likely a number of kids have decided to leave voluntarily.  Is that 1, 2 or 5?  Not sure any of us know.

It is also not beyond the realm of possibility that some kids will be told not to come back.  What about the kids who do not want to voluntarily leave?   Is it fair or reasonable to them?

Without being inside the program it is hard to tell if current players decide not to come back and that leads to new recruits or if the new recruits leads to players deciding not to return. All of these young men were stars for their respective HS teams and it has to be a blow to some of them to be relegated to the bench and seeing only a few minutes of floor time the entire season. Some I'm sure get homesick, some end up not liking the school or the program, family situations, health, or any other number of situations come into play. I'm sure by now the coach has spoken with each of the players on the team from last year and they all know what the expectations are for them and the team for next year.  I looked at the Point rosters for the past decade and the turnover numbers for underclassmen from prior years looks like this:

'10-11 to 11-12     7
  9-10 to 10-11     0
  8-9   to  9-10     3
  7-8   to  8-9       4
  6-7   to  7-8       4
  5-6   to  6-7       3
  4-5   to  5-6       1
  3-4   to  4-5       2
  2-3   to  3-4       2
  1-2   to  2-3       3

So for what ever their reason each season averages about 3 players leaving the team as underclassmen. The last two years are anomalies in that no one left after the championship season and seemingly everyone did two seasons after that.   

[John Gleich]

Some things to think about...

The landscape has changed significantly in the past 8 seasons. Prior to the elimination of redshirting, it wasn't uncommon for a team to carry 18, 19, or even 20 kids, with some of them being redshirts. It allowed for larger recruiting classes with the full knowledge and understanding that some kids wouldn't finish out 4 years.

Being close to the program and the players as I have been over the last 12 or so years, I know some of the factors that have gone in to kids who have decided not to come out. It's been more difficult living away, but I do still have contact with other former players and we have talked about it a little bit. I'm not going to talk about any individual person's situation, but I can say that they're all varied and everybody's different.

What I find interesting about Fro's list is that it doesn't seem indicative of how the team necessarily was doing (not that Point has really lacked success in the past decade... It's "hard" when your "lack of success" is a third place finish in the toughest conference in the country and a 17-10 record).

I took Frodo's list a step farther and looked at two things... I looked at the year-by-year result...

11-12  20-8 (12-4) 2nd Place WIAC, NCAA 1st Round
10-11  26-4 (14-2) 1st Place WIAC, NCAA Sweet 16
09-10  29-4 (12-4) 2nd Place WIAC, NCAA National Champs
08-09  24-5 (14-2) 1st Place WIAC, NCAA 2nd Round
07-08  23-7 (12-4) 2nd Place WIAC, NCAA 2nd Round
06-07  26-3 (15-2) 1st Place WIAC, NCAA Sweet 16
05-06  17-10 (11-5) 3rd Place WIAC
04-05  29-3 (13-3) 1st Place WIAC, NCAA National Champs
03-04  29-5 (11-5) 2nd Place WIAC, NCAA National Champs
02-03  24-4 (14-2) 1st Place WIAC, NCAA 2nd Round
01-02  21-6 (11-5) 1st Place WIAC
00-01 18-7 (10-6) 1st Place WIAC
99-00 25-5 (14-2) 1st Place WIAC, NCAA Elite 8
98-99 15-10 (8-8) 5th Place WIAC


And then I looked at the composition of the rosters.

It's just a straight-up look at the eligibility-year make-up of a team (so there are true freshmen and redshirt freshmen mixed in there when applicable) and there are also guys that transfer in (that's how you go from 2 juniors in 08-09 to 3 seniors in 09-10 and 2 sophomores in 09-10 to 3 juniors in 11-12). 


Year  Roster Size Seniors/Juniors/Sophomores/Freshmen (Redshirts)

11-12  14 - 2/2/2/8
10-11  18 - 4/3/6/5 (three players did not dress for each game or were injured)
09-10  15 - 3/5/2/5
08-09  14 - 4/2/5/3
07-08  16 - 1/5/4/6 (one player did not dress for each game or were injured)
06-07  14 - 2/2/6/5
05-06  15 - 2/2/3/8
04-05  19 - 6/3/3/7 (4*)  *No redshirts, 4 players practiced but did not dress, used a year of eligibility
03-04  20 - 1/7/4/8 (5)
02-03  20 - 1/3/7/9 (5)
01-02  19 - 2/1/4/12 (4)
00-01  21 - 3/3/4/11 (6) 
99-00  20 - 3/6/3/8 (5)

So, a couple of more things. It obviously was easier to keep more players with redshirting, because only 15 could dress (unless you're Grinnell, who dresses half of the entire male student body for games, but they still have to abide by the 15-man rule should they make the NCAA tournament... Point just always abides by the 15 man bench rule all the time), thus there were several players who just practiced.

Invariably, there is attrition. Some guys aren't as good as they thought they were and realize that this isn't high school anymore, that their natural talents have brought them this far, but they're going to have to WORK really hard to earn playing time in a perennial national top 25 (and often top 10) program. And some guys just don't want to do that. Others realize that their passions lie elsewhere and so they decide not to come out for the team. Some guys transfer. Some leave school altogether. Some get hurt and aren't able to perform at a high level.

And the honest truth is that sometimes players need to be cut. It's a rare situation, but sometimes  roster decisions need to be made by the coach to move the program forward. We don't like to think about it or talk about it, but it's a reality that isn't just present at UWSP.

There is certainly reason to recruit a large recruiting class. Just look at the number of seniors on each of these teams. Everybody that is brought into a program isn't necessarily going to finish. It's a truth in athletics at every level, from high school on up and it's true of the scholarship divisions too... but it's even more true of D-III because of lack of scholarships and the true scholar-athlete character of our division.


One final thing... The WIAC does not field a junior varsity team. Some schools play a limited (as mandated by the conference by-laws) JV schedule (Platteville has done this, maybe Oshkosh?), but if they did have junior varsity teams (like, say, the CCIW), there would be a few entailments:

1) The roster size would be able to be bigger. You can keep more players if they are playing games more often. Only 5 players can play at any one time, so if you increase the number of games, that's a larger total number of games... and those freshmen and sophomores who are sitting on the bench, waiting their turn, can get better in a game-like setting, in addition to at practice and their own work outside of practice

2) When there number is called, those former JV players will be more seasoned than their counterparts who had to sit on the bench the whole time. They'll have 1-2 years of college basketball playing experience. Sure, it will be against other JV competition, but it is experience none the less.

3) You would see more players sticking it out from Freshman to Sophomore and Sophomore to Junior year.



Just my two cents. Or my 12 cents, as the case may be...


Wait, no, two more cents coming...

I wanted to talk briefly about what I think the minimum roster size should be. I don't think that any college basketball team should carry less than 15.

My reasoning is multifaceted. From a game-standpoint, you don't want to limit your options. The chance that things would come down to the 15th guy on the bench are ultra-rare (to the point of potentially never happening, I guess, but there's still a chance). Guys can get injured. They can foul out.

But even more-so, from a practicing standpoint, things can flow really smoothly with 15 guys. I'll explain.

Let's say that your team is working on offense and the team that scores keeps the ball. If you have 15 guys, then you can run a first, second, and third team. First and second go out initially and which ever team scores, they keep the ball and the third team steps out and plays defense. This will allow the coaches to coach-up whichever team just got scored on while everybody else is playing and getting better.

Or, let's say that you want to work the first team defense against a future opponent's offense and they run a lot of plays. You can draw up the play for the second team to run it against the first team, and while they're running the play, you can be drawing up a play for the third team.

You simply don't have these options if you have less than 15.

Ok, I'll sit down now.

[wcbsas]

I looked at the Point rosters for the past decade and the turnover numbers for underclassmen from prior years looks like this:

'10-11 to 11-12     7
  9-10 to 10-11     0
  8-9   to  9-10     3
  7-8   to  8-9       4
  6-7   to  7-8       4
  5-6   to  6-7       3
  4-5   to  5-6       1
  3-4   to  4-5       2
  2-3   to  3-4       2
  1-2   to  2-3       3

So for what ever their reason each season averages about 3 players leaving the team as underclassmen. The last two years are anomalies in that no one left after the championship season and seemingly everyone did two seasons after that.

The average of 3 per year seems reasonable.

But if you add in the suspected turnover from '11-'12 to '12-'13 ... your likely to end up near 5, 6 or 7 players.

Choosing the low end of that number means the last two years have averaged 6 players turned over.
Seems to me it might be indicative of a change in philosophy.

Without a doubt there are a lot of reasons for turnover many related to athletes lack of desire to continue but to me there seems to me the recruiting net is being cast wider with collateral athletes being moved out faster.

[hoops2]

A change in lead recruiter is, IMO, most likely the reason for so many being brought in at UWSP.  The current assistant coach has a background in Illinois and made some connections there.  He knew some kids and was able to give them a chance to play for a good program in an excellent league at a fine academic institution.  He'd be foolish to not offer these players a chance if he is convinced they could be an upgrade to what is on the current roster.  I don't think coach Semling was overly pleased with the way the team finished.  He didn't have anyone he could trust to put on the floor and he doesn't want that again.  Great people for sure but maybe not mentally as tough as you need to be in this league.  Maybe that's just being young.  There are some differences in abilities most definetely in the WIAC but to me if often comes down to the old "who wants it more" and I'm not sure Point's kids all had that toughness that Porter, Kalsow, Bennett, Janse, Krull, Soderberg, Moses, Hurd, Lazarcik, Koch etc. have.  I could be wrong but I think Point will be much tougher  next season.  Maybe not better in the wins and losses but more physical and ready to rumble when things get tough.     

[frodotwo]

A change in lead recruiter is, IMO, most likely the reason for so many being brought in at UWSP.  The current assistant coach has a background in Illinois and made some connections there.  He knew some kids and was able to give them a chance to play for a good program in an excellent league at a fine academic institution.  He'd be foolish to not offer these players a chance if he is convinced they could be an upgrade to what is on the current roster.  I don't think coach Semling was overly pleased with the way the team finished.  He didn't have anyone he could trust to put on the floor and he doesn't want that again.  Great people for sure but maybe not mentally as tough as you need to be in this league.  Maybe that's just being young.  There are some differences in abilities most definetely in the WIAC but to me if often comes down to the old "who wants it more" and I'm not sure Point's kids all had that toughness that Porter, Kalsow, Bennett, Janse, Krull, Soderberg, Moses, Hurd, Lazarcik, Koch etc. have.  I could be wrong but I think Point will be much tougher  next season.  Maybe not better in the wins and losses but more physical and ready to rumble when things get tough.     

Point will be marginally more experienced when the next season starts. They will have 4 players (3 starters) returning that averaged 20 minutes or more and 2 others that averaged 10 or more. That compares with 4 returning core players (2 starters) plus a transfer that saw decent minutes as well for the start of last season. They add six freshmen and two transfers to that mix. One of the transfers (Heuer) saw only 131 minutes of action and the other (Miklasz) played in 27 games and had good stats, but against lesser competition than he'll see in the WIAC. Whether or not they'll be tougher is yet to be seen, bigger for certain, but it will take the newbies some time to develop that toughness. I have the same concerns looking ahead as I did last year: With all these new faces, how do you find the (floor) time to develop them all? It was basically a 6 man rotation last year and if that happens again, WIAC and NCAA tourneys will be short stays again.

[tomt4525]

A change in lead recruiter is, IMO, most likely the reason for so many being brought in at UWSP.  The current assistant coach has a background in Illinois and made some connections there.  He knew some kids and was able to give them a chance to play for a good program in an excellent league at a fine academic institution.  He'd be foolish to not offer these players a chance if he is convinced they could be an upgrade to what is on the current roster.  I don't think coach Semling was overly pleased with the way the team finished.  He didn't have anyone he could trust to put on the floor and he doesn't want that again.  Great people for sure but maybe not mentally as tough as you need to be in this league.  Maybe that's just being young.  There are some differences in abilities most definetely in the WIAC but to me if often comes down to the old "who wants it more" and I'm not sure Point's kids all had that toughness that Porter, Kalsow, Bennett, Janse, Krull, Soderberg, Moses, Hurd, Lazarcik, Koch etc. have.  I could be wrong but I think Point will be much tougher  next season.  Maybe not better in the wins and losses but more physical and ready to rumble when things get tough.     

Point will be marginally more experienced when the next season starts. They will have 4 players (3 starters) returning that averaged 20 minutes or more and 2 others that averaged 10 or more. That compares with 4 returning core players (2 starters) plus a transfer that saw decent minutes as well for the start of last season. They add six freshmen and two transfers to that mix. One of the transfers (Heuer) saw only 131 minutes of action and the other (Miklasz) played in 27 games and had good stats, but against lesser competition than he'll see in the WIAC. Whether or not they'll be tougher is yet to be seen, bigger for certain, but it will take the newbies some time to develop that toughness. I have the same concerns looking ahead as I did last year: With all these new faces, how do you find the (floor) time to develop them all? It was basically a 6 man rotation last year and if that happens again, WIAC and NCAA tourneys will be short stays again.

I absolutely expect Point's team next year will be better than last year's squad.  Last year's squad had no depth whatsoever, which will improve this year.  Also, the size Point added will not go unnoticed.  In a couple games I watched Point was manhandled down low.  That won't happen with a guy 6'9" in the middle and with other big guys as options.  Not sure which big will emerge, IMO it's down to Studer and Patterson, but they become a lot more versatile with their returning players and added size in the recruiting class.  You can't go a season with basically one guy over 6'4"  in their rotation all season long.