MBB: Midwest Conference

[jeffdc]

Good to see you "dc" - means that it is officially basketball season.....now for that "p" guy..... 

Glad to see that Grinnell may have set another record.  Because, of course, that is what The System is all about, right?      

Well, that and beating the !@# out of other teams :-)

JeffP is gone, not to return. He's into banjos and Wookiefoot these days. Sworn off bball.

[Titan Q]

It appears that the Good Guys gave IWU all they could handle last night.....okay, they didn't get blown out.  81-68.

"Monmouth gave Illinois Wesleyan all the Titans could handle..."


"Ripon Gives #4 Illinois Wesleyan All They Can Handle"

[jeffdc]

It appears that the Good Guys gave IWU all they could handle last night.....okay, they didn't get blown out.  81-68.

"Monmouth gave Illinois Wesleyan all the Titans could handle..."


"Ripon Gives #4 Illinois Wesleyan All They Can Handle"

Or...Grinnell gave <insert your team name here> all they could handle last night.... 

[East Beast]

Good to see you "dc" - means that it is officially basketball season.....now for that "p" guy..... 

Glad to see that Grinnell may have set another record.  Because, of course, that is what The System is all about, right?      

Well, that and beating the !@# out of other teams :-)

JeffP is gone, not to return. He's into banjos and Wookiefoot these days. Sworn off bball.

So JeffP is the coffee shop dude? 

[jeffdc]

yes, JeffP is the ponytailed coffee dude.

[scottie]

"The Midwest Conference - Giving non-conference opponents all they can handle since 1921."                         That's right....we know you're scared!!!   

[System Error]

While I appreciate all the players getting three pointers... and scoring so many points, but after watching the game in person, I must say Faith Baptist was simply awful. Hardly any of their players could even dribble the ball. It is no doubt they lost this game and had 44 TO's. This should hardly be considered a W on the schedule.

Congrats on the record, the dunking and three pointers, but this team would lose to every team in the MWC by 20.

[gcfan33]

It is a bit sad that Grinnell is forced to play teams of this caliber simply because other teams in Iowa refuse to put them on the schedule consistently.

While I know that comment will incite some people into bashing Grinnell's style, it's a sad truth that because of the style of play no one is willing to play Grinnell year after year... forcing situations where they have to schedule the Faith Baptists of the world.  People shouldn't bash Faith Baptist -- I'm sure they knew what they were in for before they arrived when they scheduled the game.  Just because they are at a recruiting disadvantage, and have a small faith based school with very few students doesn't mean we should be upset with them.  At least they put us on the schedule... which says they have a lot more cojones than the fools at Coe who haven't scheduled us in YEARS out of pure, unadulterated FEAR.

[East Beast]

As an MWC fan, I wish we wouldn't have to play Grinnell either. 

[Gregory Sager]

It is a bit sad that Grinnell is forced to play teams of this caliber simply because other teams in Iowa refuse to put them on the schedule consistently.

While I know that comment will incite some people into bashing Grinnell's style, it's a sad truth that because of the style of play no one is willing to play Grinnell year after year... forcing situations where they have to schedule the Faith Baptists of the world.  People shouldn't bash Faith Baptist -- I'm sure they knew what they were in for before they arrived when they scheduled the game.  Just because they are at a recruiting disadvantage, and have a small faith based school with very few students doesn't mean we should be upset with them.  At least they put us on the schedule... which says they have a lot more cojones than the fools at Coe who haven't scheduled us in YEARS out of pure, unadulterated FEAR.

That's completely unfair. Fear? Seems like you're in denial here. What does any team have to gain from playing Grinnell? Practically nothing that another school's players would have to do against Grinnell translates into anything useful that a coach wants to teach, other than practicing layups and some press-break stuff.

A big part of what goes into scheduling non-conference opponents is setting up games that will help one's team in January and February, either by instilling confidence in the troops (a la scheduling a cupcake) or by putting them up against a grindstone in order to hone their steel (a la scheduling a superior opponent). Playing Grinnell in November or December doesn't do squat in terms of helping one's team prepare for the conference season, because nobody else plays that style of basketball. It's a wasted night that does nothing more than play havoc with a team's statistics (both good and bad) and give everyone at that school's scorer's table gray hair. Playing Grinnell in the non-conference portion of the season is like training for a marathon by doing biceps curls.

I'm not an opponent of Coach Arseneault's system. I find it fun to watch, and one of the things I like about college basketball is its variety -- and Grinnell certainly adds to that. The system works for Arseneault, and it works for Grinnell. But it has its down sides as well, and one of them is that he has a hard time finding non-conference opponents -- for legitimate reasons, not because other coaches are afraid of the Pioneers.

[gcfan33]

Actually Greg, that's an interesting comment.  I think I didn't really plan out my thought enough before to comment that I agree with your statement.

The problem really is that you have some teams from the NAIA who don't mind playing the system because it doesn't hurt their numbers when it comes to their at large bid, and D3 coaches who don't see Grinnell as being a "beneficial" game for their team.

As someone who played at Grinnell I can agree that running the system = fun and playing against must be awfully boring.  Coaches don't want to play against it because they no longer have control over the game.  Players hate it because it's a layup and free throw drill.  None of that excuses Coe, our historical rival, of never scheduling Grinnell for a game... which was the actual intent of my post.

The real intent of my post was to comment that rather than bash teams like Faith Baptist for having a poor team, maybe we should be wondering why no one else will play us.  Is it really because they have nothing to gain?  I am guessing that these games draw good crowds, are fun for people at the respective schools, and while it may be an uncomfortable game for coaches... isn't this what people want to see once a year?  I just wish more coaches would understand that and schedule Grinnell so that our own fans wouldn't have to bash our schedule.  It's not Grinnell's fault... it's just a product of how we play and everyone else's aversion to playing against it.

[John Gleich]

Actually Greg, that's an interesting comment.  I think I didn't really plan out my thought enough before to comment that I agree with your statement.

The problem really is that you have some teams from the NAIA who don't mind playing the system because it doesn't hurt their numbers when it comes to their at large bid, and D3 coaches who don't see Grinnell as being a "beneficial" game for their team.

As someone who played at Grinnell I can agree that running the system = fun and playing against must be awfully boring.  Coaches don't want to play against it because they no longer have control over the game.  Players hate it because it's a layup and free throw drill.  None of that excuses Coe, our historical rival, of never scheduling Grinnell for a game... which was the actual intent of my post.

The real intent of my post was to comment that rather than bash teams like Faith Baptist for having a poor team, maybe we should be wondering why no one else will play us.  Is it really because they have nothing to gain?  I am guessing that these games draw good crowds, are fun for people at the respective schools, and while it may be an uncomfortable game for coaches... isn't this what people want to see once a year?  I just wish more coaches would understand that and schedule Grinnell so that our own fans wouldn't have to bash our schedule.  It's not Grinnell's fault... it's just a product of how we play and everyone else's aversion to playing against it.

Part of a non-conference schedule is to prepare a team for their league and, potentially, for the NCAA tournament.

Because of the extreme... unorthodox(?) nature of the system, a game played against it will not improve a team in the more conventional skills they will need to play 96%+ of their games.

Furthermore, the track-meet nature of the game could potentially harm a team, especially if it is played right before another game (I think MWC teams have seen that, based on the Friday-Saturday schedule... that second game has proved very difficult for system opponents because they're exhausted from the previous game).

The System is successful against teams that aren't prepared for it and against teams that have certain deficiencies  (lack of depth, poor free throw shooting teams, teams that aren't disciplined or can't make layups, etc).  Really good teams do to the system what they do to any team... take away what they're trying to do and force their will upon their opponents.

In some situations, it's taking what the defense gives you and lots of times that's layup after layup.  A team doesn't have an opportunity to run their offense and because Grinnell really doesn't run a typical offense, they can't well run their defense.  It's a lost game in terms of preparation for the rest of the schedule.

[The Roop]

Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.................

[Gregory Sager]

None of that excuses Coe, our historical rival, of never scheduling Grinnell for a game... which was the actual intent of my post.

That leads me to ask, though, if in turn Coe really considers Grinnell to be its rival. Perhaps it was a rivalry back in the day -- i.e., when the two teams were in the same league, prior to Coe's leaving the MWC for the IIAC. But I'll bet that if you asked contemporary Kohawks fans, they'd say that Cornell or Wartburg or some other IIAC foe was their big rival. That's how rivalries work; they tend to be oriented along league-affiliation lines. Given Grinnell's relative geographic isolation as far as the MWC is concerned, it has no natural rivalries within the league, a la Monmouth/Knox or Ripon/Lawrence.

It's very hard to keep a rivalry healthy when the two schools don't share a league, unless you're talking about independents. That's one of the things that makes the Monon Bell rivalry (Wabash/DePauw) unique; it's managed to stay healthy in spite of the fact that the two schools are no longer part of the same league.

The real intent of my post was to comment that rather than bash teams like Faith Baptist for having a poor team, maybe we should be wondering why no one else will play us.  Is it really because they have nothing to gain?  I am guessing that these games draw good crowds, are fun for people at the respective schools, and while it may be an uncomfortable game for coaches... isn't this what people want to see once a year?

Coaches are much more apt on the D1 level to make scheduling decisions that take attendance into consideration than they are in D3. In fact, the D3 ethos is that crowds are really secondary to the whole purpose of the division; the mission statement of D3 clearly declares that the division's primary interest is to serve the student-athlete rather than the fan. In this instance, it's a creed that suits the coach just fine, since he can then declare that it's not in the best interest of his players to play a non-conference game against Grinnell, for the reasons PS and I have stated.

There are some coaches here and there in D3, however, who do like the idea of getting some added publicity for their programs by playing a Grinnell program that is as close to an intrinsic media magnet as it can be said that D3 has. (It was certainly no coincidence that when ESPN decided to employ the novelty of broadcasting a D3 game it picked D3's most novel program to be one of the two participants.) I can think of one SLIAC program, for instance, that welcomed playing Grinnell within the past couple of years because it was thought that playing the Pioneers would lead to greater media exposure within the St. Louis metro area.

But you can't take it for granted that an IIAC coach would want to play Grinnell simply because it might put an extra handful of people in the stands that night, as opposed to that IIAC team playing Monmouth or Bethany Lutheran or Rockford. As PS and I have said, there's some very strong reasons why a coach would resist the idea of scheduling Grinnell that have nothing to do with the potential of losing to the Pioneeers.

[OBC]

Grinnell easily handled Wartburg tonight, 100-83. That's their second Iowa conference victim this year. Both Buena Vista and Wartburg were expected to contend for the conference title. I'd consider both of those games very nice wins.

The next two games, however, really mean something. On the road against the presumptive favorites in our own dear MWC. Whew! Good luck boys.