MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[titan2000]

LU is tough, defeated UW-Oshkosh Tuesday 82-75.

[martin]

Jim -

I must have been wrong about seeing a pre-season CCAC poll.  I cannot find it now.  I thought I read that SXU was picked to win the CCAC.  In the preseason NAIA poll, Robert Morris was ranked 4, SXU was 16, and Olivet Nazarene was receiving votes.  Those teams finished 1, 2, 3 last year and the preseason NAIA poll forecasts the same finish this year.

I am not knocking UIC.  Jimmy Collins has done a great job there but it is tough to get talent to come to UIC so he will have some good years interspersed with some down years.  I think this will be a down year.  UIC was picked to finish sixth (of nine) in the Horizon League.  No UIC player was picked for the preseason All League teams.

Talent is spread far and wide these days - evidenced by Michigan State losing to Hawaii.  I think the sports anchors have tunnel vision and cannot see beyond the name of a school.  It undoubtedly shocked him that SXU even existed, let alone had a basketball team capable of beating UIC.

[martin]

Talking about the CCAC and NAIA made me curious about the state of the NAIA.  Enough to delay my departure for Thanksgiving dinner.

Does the NCAA still have a moratorium on taking applications for DIII membership?  I think the membership implosion of the NAIA slowed a bit when the NCAA decided to take a breather on new members. 

Some of the CCAC members would be good candidates for DIII.  Most of them have 10 sports.  Some would be strong enough to compete in the CCIW.  Others could do OK in the MWC.  The league is very uneven.  Why is IIT playing D1 basketball?  It went 1-31 last year.  Robert Morris, SXU and ONU are significantly better than the other 4 CCAC D1 members (IIT, St. Francis, IUSB, PUCal).  It is an unusual league - a variety of schools (13 in all) with very disparate goals for their athletic programs.

Has there been any talk of CCAC teams trying to go DIII?  Is the NAIA still imploding?

[augiedad]

Nice coverage of the local small colleges in the Chicago Sun Times every Thursday.  Today...

"Illinois Wesleyan thinking national championship"

http://www.suntimes.com/output/campus/cst-spt-small24.html

It also mentions Elmhurst, Augustana, Robert Morris, and St. Xavier.

[b_holmgren]

Martin - bash on sports anchors all you want, but their job isn't to know every single detail about every single school. There's no time for that. Yes it was probably not as big an upset as it looked to the casual observer (UIC isn't too far removed from being an NCAA tourney team), but I seriously doubt he had time to research common opponents or that state of the SXU program.

The nature of the job is knowing a fair amount about everything that's going on and being able to pass that along to the viewers. Is not being in tune with every detail of NAIA or DIII basketball considered unacceptable in that business? Not a chance. The duty of the sports anchor is to cater to what the majority of the people want to see. With as many pro and major college sports teams as are in the Chicago area, you could fill weeks and weeks of sportscasts without ever having to worry about the small colleges. For that reason, they won't normally give those programs more than a passing glance until playoff time.

I didn't see the sportcast in question, but you probably need to lighten up a little and realize the nature of the business. Just because it's common knowlege to you doesn't make him (or anchors in general) ignorant.

And I'm down off my soap box.... 

[bluejaybacker1]

Augiefan,

Who said the win was significant against St. Norbert. 

I just said Brian Lee played solid again, following up his solid play at Hope.

[petemcb]

All of this NAIA talk has me wondering whether I'd run into any chatsters tonight.  I'm trying to make it down to St. Xavier, where there's a tournament, obviously hosted by ranked (and presumably rising) St. Xavier playing at 8:00, preceded by an Olivet Nazarene team that received votes in the poll versus Huntington University from Indiana (I believe ranked 7th in the preseason NAIA poll) at 6:00.  That should be a couple of great games in a very nice facility.....you know, seatbacks for us old guys.....

[Gregory Sager]

That does sound like a great tournament, Pete, and if there wasn't another game tonight I'd be down there at the Shannon Center. However, the NPU women have their home opener tonight against Carleton, and with the entire campus deserted due to Thanksgiving break the distaff Vikings are going to need all the fan support they can get.

[petemcb]

Greg,

Maybe you should find that questionably-comported kangaroo costume, sneak into the crackerbox, seat the costume right behind the bench with an "I am Greg, go Vikes go" sign hanging around it's neck, and make your way down to the Shannon center for the doubleheader.

[martin]

B_Holmgren -

I don't think it is the sports anchors job to know every single detail about every school playing college basketball but they should at least know what is being reported in their sportcast.  I know that may be asking a lot of them.  After all, they spent most of October saying out to you to some reporter in a bar full of drunk Sox fans.  

A 30 minute newscast has 22 minutes for news, weather and sports after commercials.  Ten o'clock news is now 35 minutes so maybe 25.  Three minutes or so is devoted to sports.  Almost all of it to professional sports.  The reporting consists primarily of reading the front page of the Tribune and Sun Times sports sections and rehashing it on television.  

If they are going to report college basketball scores, either report them without comment or with some informed comment.  The sports anchor I saw did not even say where SXU was located - just that UIC was upset in its home opener.  Why was this an upset?  Because UIC went to the "big dance" a couple of years ago and promptly lost?  The Bulls won 6 NBA championships in the 90's.  If they lose these days, is that an upset?

The Tribune did a nice story on the game which you can read
here.
The story included a quote from an SXU player that gave some good context to the story:
"I think everyone else is looking at this as more of an upset than we are," Reiter said. "We knew we could come in and play with this team."

I realize that sports journalism is an oxymoron - particularly on television.  The anchors are usually ex-jocks who have a hard time pronouncing many words let alone doing any actual reporting.  I rarely watch television news because it is so vapid.  When I do watch it, something ends up setting me off.

[augiedad]

Pete, if you do get to the St. Xavier tourney tonight, can you report whether or not Jabari Saunders plays?  Titan Q reported that Saunders did not play at all in the 2nd half vs UIC.  Versus East-West I suspect SXU won't need him, but vs Huntington they certainly will.  Also interested in know how Olivet Nazarene does vs Huntington relative to what IWU did to them.

How good must Huntington be?  To beat a D1 team (IUPW-Fort Wayne) in an exhibition is nice, but to clobber (by 25 pts) Georgetown of Kentucky? 

If Jabari Saunders is playing, I am going to rearrange some plans to make it to the Shirk Center Monday night.  That has a chance to be a classic.

[augiedad]

Carthage plays Westmont College (NAIA D1) tonight at 5:00pm our time.

http://www.broadcastmonsters.com/carthage_broadcast_page.htm

The Red Men faired pretty well vs NAIA power Concordia (Cal.) the other night.  Lots of good CCIW vs NAIA games lately!

[augie_superfan]

I would assume that Huntington team will be real good.  I saw Georgetown play their exhibition vs. the Univ. of Kentucky this year and they were able to hang right there with UK for the first 10 minutes of each half which was pretty impressive.

[martin]

This was in the Tribune story on the SXU/UIC game:
St. Xavier ended the half on a 12-4 run but lost standout Jabari Saunders to a freak foot injury as he was leaving the court at the half.

Saunders may not play this weekend.  SXU plays East-West tonight at 6pm and Huntington tomorrow at 1pm.  He may be ready to go against IWU on Monday if the injury was not too severe.

Olivet Nazarene is playing Huntington at 8pm tonight at SXU.  Huntington is an NAIA D2 school - ranked 7 in the preseason poll.  On Tuesday, Huntington beat IWU 89-83 to raise its record to 7-1.  IWU in this case is INDIANA Wesleyan University.

As good as IWU (the Illinois greenie version) is this year, what are the chances of it going undefeated?  It is bound to lose a CCIW road game.  I will fearlessly predict that IWU will lose at home to Hanover on December 20.  Recent history of the Hanover/IWU rivalry is that Hanover wins at IWU and IWU wins at Hanover.

[dansand]

I would assume that Huntington team will be real good. I saw Georgetown play their exhibition vs. the Univ. of Kentucky this year and they were able to hang right there with UK for the first 10 minutes of each half which was pretty impressive.

Huntington is very good. They return their top six guys from last year's 22-11 team, including their conference's player of the year Alex Kock, who had a very solid freshman season at D1 Wright State before transferring. He's a terrific inside/outside threat. They've also added two outstanding freshman guards, Kyle Benge and Ty Riddle--typical Indiana kids--both great shooters. Both are contributing a lot off the bench. East-West is awful. SXU should be able to play their JV team (if they have one) and win by 20.