MBB: Midwest Conference

[LU_nut]

I am sorry Titan Q, but we are never going to agree on the Ill Wes team in 05-06.    I tend to agree with Old School that the CCIW, WIAC and UAA are usually pretty even and very comparable top to bottom.    You are wearing very rose colored glasses if you believe that Titan team in 05-06 was not terribly inconsistent.   We beat Carthage soundly at their place.  I saw Augie and was unimpressed.    There is no reason for the titans to lose 6-7 games that year.  When they played well they were great.  If the poor games were not coaching or mental weakness, you tell me what it was.   The other teams in that conference that year were in their class talent wise.  They did get it together for a stretch and showed just how talented they were by beating a good Carroll team soundly as well as beating Whitewater and LU on their courts.   LU played a good game.   The front line for  IW was terrific.   Freeman was in my view the best center in the country and I saw Rosenfelt from St. Thomas and Gibson from Oshkosh numerous times and Freeman was better.......and he was considered the third best player on that team.   In addition, the Jones boys were men.
Sorry to disagree on this one, but I really thought the IWU team was as talented as any I have seen.   There was definately someting wrong with them to lose 7 games.   I really cannot say I know what it was, I just threw out two ideas.    I have seen enough CCIW games to know that the problem was not the strength of the conference that year.    They were awesome when playing well.

Old School, I am less familiar with the MIAA.   I tend to think of the MWC in comparison with the MIAC and IIAC.   The MWC champs have fared very well against their best teams, but I cannot say I know how the conferences compare top to bottom.   I clearly recognize the CCIW and WIAC gets bigger and better athletes than the MWC........the CCIW tends to have schools with twice the enrollment than the MWC and the WIAC of course is a whole different bred that tends to benefit from the lack of D2 programs in Wisc. as well as the ease of D1 players to come home to play with a reasonable tuition.

In a strange way, I think we both agree the the IWU team was very good.  I am just saying they should have been better start to finish.   They did not beat LU on a fluke.  It was an awesome game.   In my view, LU would have comfortably beaten Augie, at least on our court.   Again, I recognize I am sharing opinions, not facts.  However, those opinions are not without some basis in a number of games I have seen over the past several years.

Nut

[Titan Q]

I am sorry Titan Q, but we are never going to agree on the Ill Wes team in 05-06.    I tend to agree with Old School that the CCIW, WIAC and UAA are usually pretty even and very comparable top to bottom.    You are wearing very rose colored glasses if you believe that Titan team in 05-06 was not terribly inconsistent.   We beat Carthage soundly at their place.  I saw Augie and was unimpressed.    There is no reason for the titans to lose 6-7 games that year.  When they played well they were great.  If the poor games were not coaching or mental weakness, you tell me what it was.   The other teams in that conference that year were in their class talent wise.  They did get it together for a stretch and showed just how talented they were by beating a good Carroll team soundly as well as beating Whitewater and LU on their courts.   LU played a good game.   The front line for  IW was terrific.   Freeman was in my view the best center in the country and I saw Rosenfelt from St. Thomas and Gibson from Oshkosh numerous times and Freeman was better.......and he was considered the third best player on that team.   In addition, the Jones boys were men.
Sorry to disagree on this one, but I really thought the IWU team was as talented as any I have seen.   There was definately someting wrong with them to lose 7 games.   I really cannot say I know what it was, I just threw out two ideas.    I have seen enough CCIW games to know that the problem was not the strength of the conference that year.    They were awesome when playing well.

I am not a smart enough man to figure out what happened to IWU in league play in 2006, but I will just say this...

I find it very hard to accept the "mentally weak" and "poorly coached" suggestions, as that same exact group of IWU players and coaches went 12-2 in the CCIW in '03-04 (when the core group was sophomores), winning the CCIW over preseason #9 Augustana (including a win at Augustana on Senior Night in which the young Titans were up 29-3 midway through the 1st half)...they also went 12-2 in the CCIW in 2004-05...they won on the road in the tournament at #2 ranked Wash U and then #2 Hanover in back-to-back years. 

So I just have trouble thinking that group of kids, that had won so many tough games is so many tough places, suddenly became mentally weak for a two month stretch during their senior year.  Or that the same coaching staff just started suddenly doing a bad job.  That just doesn't compute for me.  In athletics, isn't it as simple sometimes as players just not playing very well at times...or not playing as well as their competition?

I will also add that I have seen several situations over the years where a senior-dominated team (8 of the 9 members of IWU's rotation were seniors) does not play as well as it did when the core was sophomores and juniors.  Why that is, I don't know...but I've seen it in the CCIW quite a few times.

I'm also not convinced you are very familiar with the level of play in the CCIW that season.  The Augie team you saw play Puget Sound at Lawrence didn't have their star point-guard, Drew Wessels (out with mono).  I was at that game too and Augie just wasn't the same team without Wessels, who went on to make the 1st Team All-CCIW the next year.  And obviously there were not many worse teams to play without your point-guard than Puget Sound.  If that is what you are basing your view of Augustana, North Central, and Elmhurst on, I'm confident you don't have a good grasp of what those teams were like.  There just wasn't very much separation between those 4 CCIW teams that year.  Note that incredibly talented Zach Freeman was 9th in votes for the All-CCIW team that year (he made the 2nd Team) and that Chris and Cory Jones did not make the all-conference team...

http://www.cciw.org/winter_bball_m/05_06_MBBallconf.htm

Besides IWU's two All-Americans (Dauksas, Amelianovich), the CCIW also had Rick Harrigan (Augie) and Chris Martin (Elmhurst) make the D3hoops.com AA team...and NCC's Anthony Simmons (1st Team All-CCIW) and Daniel Walton (2nd Team) were very close to that caliber.

[Gregory Sager]

the CCIW tends to have schools with twice the enrollment than the MWC

That's quite an exaggeration. The average size of MWC schools is 1,577 full-time undergrads; the average size of CCIW schools is 2,322 full-time undergrads. That means that MWC schools are on average almost exactly two-thirds the size of the average CCIW school in terms of full-time undergraduate enrollment.

And since when is school size a factor in basketball success, anyway? D3 basketball teams are based upon recruited student-athletes, just as they are in D1 and D2, not upon student-athletes drawn from the general undergraduate population on a tryout basis. Student population size is basically irrelevant. The 2007 national champion, Amherst, has fewer undergrads than does St. Norbert or Carroll. The 2006 national champion, Virginia Wesleyan, has fewer undergrads than the MWC average.

[LU_nut]

Titan Q.  I do not know for a fact what the reason was that IWU did not play up to par during parts of that season.  I threw out two options that obviously you found a bit insulting.   Not my intention.   Your observation that you have seen the same thing happen to other teams that had success earlier is interesting.   I have found in the MWC that senior leadership is really a big deal and has a lot to do with success, even when it is a group that has been playing a lot the previous years.    Lake Forest a few years ago is probably an exception in that they had a good group that made the playoffs as Sophomores and then actually faded.   That was the group that including the Klos kid that led his Glenbard North team downstate in HS.

I did see a lot of the North Central team you mentioned as well Carthage and Ehlmurst to a bit lesser extent.   All had very good big guys(at least until Powell graduated at Carthage) The North Central team had a great front line.   I found it very interesting that the current coach did a lot better with Taylors kids than Taylor did...........however, he has not yet proven he can recruit a similar level of kids given the level of competition in recruiting in the CCIW.   LU played against that group in Naperville(and lost in OT) in Taylors last year as coach.   I just still believed IWU had superior talent and depth.

I asked other people/fans/parents in the CCIW that year how the heck that IWU team lost 6 games and the response was that the same team did not always show up.    I know the CCIW is a very good conference and that was probably a strong year.    The point I am making is that I think that team was exceptional in it's talent.   Heck, three of the kids were all-american (two that year, one the next).
Maybe they got a little complacent after playing together for 3 years.     All I know from watching them was that when they were on(or really wanted it), they were a very, very good team.

Mr. Sager.   I certainly understand that size of school is not the main driver of the level of b-ball played.  I probably should have said the size of the school, the facilities and the commitment to sports.   I think that the CCIW clearly has an overall advantage over the MWC due to these facts.   Again, I am not complaining.  I just think those are the reasons that the CCIW is and will continue to be a superior athletic conference to the MWC.   As you probably know, the MWC only allows 23 games in the regular season and does not allow in home recruiting.    I guess I would say that the MWC administrators like their position in the world.    It will likely be a very  long time before a MWC football team wins a NCAA football game.

I think all of those reasons make the 5 year run that the top of the MWC has had in b-ball all the more exciting.   Having success against some of the better teams in the CCIW and WIAC is a big deal for a MWC school.   It will be very difficult for it to be maintained in my humble view.   

Nut

[Gregory Sager]

Mr. Sager.   I certainly understand that size of school is not the main driver of the level of b-ball played.  I probably should have said the size of the school, the facilities and the commitment to sports.   I think that the CCIW clearly has an overall advantage over the MWC due to these facts.   Again, I am not complaining.  I just think those are the reasons that the CCIW is and will continue to be a superior athletic conference to the MWC.   As you probably know, the MWC only allows 23 games in the regular season and does not allow in home recruiting.    I guess I would say that the MWC administrators like their position in the world.    It will likely be a very  long time before a MWC football team wins a NCAA football game.

As I said, student population size has nothing to do with the fact that the CCIW fields stronger teams on average than does the MWC. On the other hand, you have correctly identified two of the most prominent actual reasons for this phenomenon: Facilities and in-house rules. The CCIW doesn't have better facilities across the board than does the MWC, but on balance CCIW schools do tend to have bigger gyms, bigger stadia, better weight rooms, etc. And the MWC's in-house rules restricting the length of sports seasons and forbidding home recruiting visits are likewise handicaps when it comes to MWC schools competing for prospects with CCIW schools.

However, there's more to it than just facilities and in-house rules. The CCIW has the superior tradition in basically every sport in which the two conferences each compete (CCIW schools don't have hockey programs) and it enjoys a stronger athletic reputation than does the MWC. In recruiting, reputation and tradition carry enough weight so that perception often becomes reality. Lastly, the CCIW is much more of a Chicagoland-based conference than is the MWC, which is much more widely dispersed in terms of geography than the CCIW. The schools within the CCIW thus enjoy the advantage of better proximity to the main population center within the triangle formed by Wisconsin, eastern Iowa, and Illinois than do their MWC peers. The MWC does have better proximity to the Milwaukee area than does the CCIW, but metro Milwaukee is only one-fifth the size of metro Chicago.

[Mr. Ypsi]

"the CCIW is much more of a Chicagoland-based conference ..."

So how come distant outposts Augie and IWU, keep beatin' your sorry Chicagoland butts?!

[Duck and cover!  Incoming!  Hey, guys, I was only razzing! ]

[Gregory Sager]

"the CCIW is much more of a Chicagoland-based conference ..."

So how come distant outposts Augie and IWU, keep beatin' your sorry Chicagoland butts?!

[Duck and cover!  Incoming!  Hey, guys, I was only razzing! ]

(The CCIW sponsors 21 sports, Chuck. Men's basketball is only one of them. Nevertheless, it's true that Augustana has always been the best across-the-board athletic department in the league. But Augie has long built its prowess upon Chicagoland-based talent, particularly from the western suburbs. Take a look at the football, men's basketball, and baseball rosters for Augie, and you'll see that roughly half of each of those three teams consists of kids from the 'burbs.)

[petemcb]

Check out their men's soccer roster sometime too.  Significant west and northwest suburban representation.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Yeah, a lot of IWU's talent is from Chicagoland, as well.  Greg, this IS the men's basketball board, after all!   But if you want to toss in other sports, the Titan ladies won conference golf this fall with a larger margin over 2nd than 2nd had over 7th, and, of course, their indoor track team won the NCAA title just a few weeks ago!

Since this is also the MWC page, I'd better make a relevant comment before we all get chased home!  My point (to the extent I had one, rather than just bantering!) is that most MWC teams are not significantly farther from Chicagoland than are Rock Island and Bloomington (some are even closer).  That recruiting base might be a reason for CCIW superiority, but it doesn't seem that it is inevitible  .

[petemcb]

OK.  Here's a conference-related question:  Has anyone heard of any noteworthy recruiting announcements yet  -  particularly from Lake Forest?

[The Roop]

You may have to go to the football board and begin your quest there. I don't remember a Lake Forest basketball poster in 3 years.

[Gregory Sager]

Check out their men's soccer roster sometime too.  Significant west and northwest suburban representation.

Definitely, as is true of all of Augie's sports rosters. I didn't mention men's soccer because Augustana's not a traditional power in that sport.

Yeah, a lot of IWU's talent is from Chicagoland, as well.  Greg, this IS the men's basketball board, after all!   But if you want to toss in other sports, the Titan ladies won conference golf this fall with a larger margin over 2nd than 2nd had over 7th, and, of course, their indoor track team won the NCAA title just a few weeks ago!

I didn't "want to toss in other sports" -- you simply forced my hand with your rather annoying burst of alumni boosterism last night. But I'm certainly glad that I unknowingly induced you to click over to the CCIW website and start poring over women's golf scores. I can't decide if I'm more amused that my penchant for posting nitpicking addenda is rubbing off on you, or that you actually think that anyone will care enough about women's golf and women's indoor track for it to be worth your while to mention them.

Since this is also the MWC page, I'd better make a relevant comment before we all get chased home!  My point (to the extent I had one, rather than just bantering!) is that most MWC teams are not significantly farther from Chicagoland than are Rock Island and Bloomington (some are even closer).  That recruiting base might be a reason for CCIW superiority, but it doesn't seem that it is inevitible.

Actually, Chuck, most MWC schools are significantly farther from Chicagoland than are Rock Island and Bloomington. Here's the distance of all 18 schools from the corner of State and Madison (and may Miles Brand forgive me for using MapQuest):

school	miles
North Park	8.87
Elmhurst	18.25
Wheaton	28.91
North Central	31.48
Lake Forest	32.49
Carthage	70.33
Beloit	95.79
Carroll	106.91
Illinois Wesleyan	134.46
Augustana	177.27
Ripon	177.65
Millikin	185.07
Lawrence	196.06
Knox	198.33
St. Norbert	205.95
Monmouth	212.99
Illinois College	237.40
Grinnell	287.15

I don't think that comparative distance to the Chicagoland recruiting hotbed is the major advantage that the CCIW has over the MWC. I doubt that it's even among the top three advantages. But it does exist, even to a smaller degree for the CCIW's downstate schools.

[Gregory Sager]

Lawrence has picked up a pretty decent recruit, 6'0 Tyler Crisman from Lincoln-Way East HS in the southwestern Chicago suburb of Frankfort (scroll down from the Quincy announcement). He averaged 11.6 ppg and 3.6 apg for the Griffins this past season.

[systemfan86]

Since this is also the MWC page, I'd better make a relevant comment before we all get chased home!  My point (to the extent I had one, rather than just bantering!) is that most MWC teams are not significantly farther from Chicagoland than are Rock Island and Bloomington (some are even closer).  That recruiting base might be a reason for CCIW superiority, but it doesn't seem that it is inevitible  .

Could the cost of school be a factor as well? I'm too lazy to do the research, but I'm willing to guess that the average tution at MWC schools is significantly higher than the tuition of the other conferences. Given that much of the CCIW is made up of state-schools, it must be less expensive to attend those schools.

Lots of kids never consider non-state schools because of $$$.

If GC hadn't ponied up the financial aid, I would have been at a state school.

[The Roop]

News to me. I didn't know the CCIW had ANY state schools.

http://www.cciw.org/general/mission_statement.php