MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Naperick]

That is certainly possible.  The tiebreakers for seeding the CCIW tournament are becoming more important with each passing week.

[sac]

That is certainly possible.  The tiebreakers for seeding the CCIW tournament are becoming more important with each passing week.

This seems like a year where just being anywhere in the top 4 is important.  Unless someone runs away from the pack, 1-2-3-4 seeds will all know they have 2 tough games to win the CCIW tournament and the NCAA bid.

But then again being #1 might be the most important, I assume the top finisher gets the privalege of hosting the tournament?

[petemcb]

That is certainly possible.  The tiebreakers for seeding the CCIW tournament are becoming more important with each passing week.

This seems like a year where just being anywhere in the top 4 is important.  Unless someone runs away from the pack, 1-2-3-4 seeds will all know they have 2 tough games to win the CCIW tournament and the NCAA bid.

But then again being #1 might be the most important, I assume the top finisher gets the privalege of hosting the tournament?

Correct. 

[petemcb]

That is certainly possible.  The tiebreakers for seeding the CCIW tournament are becoming more important with each passing week.

This seems like a year where just being anywhere in the top 4 is important.  Unless someone runs away from the pack, 1-2-3-4 seeds will all know they have 2 tough games to win the CCIW tournament and the NCAA bid.

But then again being #1 might be the most important, I assume the top finisher gets the privalege of hosting the tournament?

....and what a tournament it's shaping up to be!

[Gregory Sager]

Here's the article in the kenosha news from last nights carthage/NP game. About Bosko and his great quotes, they are hilarious! Carthage baseball coach Augie Schmidt is also known for absolutely great quotes throughout a baseball season.  At last years world series, he became the talk of the town from the moment the REDMEN showed up.

http://ksn.kenoshanews.com/view_article.php?articleNum=2462499

Andrew Horshak didn't seem very eager to go out of his way to give NPU much credit, but that's typical of a local paper in a small- or mid-sized market that's covering the hometown team. Fortunately, Bosko was pretty gracious in his words about the performance that his alma mater's team put on in beating his squad last night.

I did appreciate the fact that Horshak quoted Paul Brenegan after the game, and even gave him a chance to mention NPU's loss to Wesleyan last Saturday. North Park's always starved for media attention, so I'm sure that Paul was more than happy to get in a word about the Vikings, even if it's likely that nobody in Kenosha aside from K-Mark has ever heard of NPU.

ECdubb-Thank you for your compliments and glad you were able to hear the game. 
Very exciting game in Naperville, but again one that should not have gone to OT if your Elmhurst.  The Bluejays led by 7 with ~5:00 to go and could not put away the Cards.
Ryan Burks could not hit a shot to save his soul in the first half from 3-point line, but showed some maturity coming back in the second half/OT to help EC win. 
I thought the real backbreaker for NC was Matt Ryder hitting 4 3-pointers in the second half.
It's no secret that EC is lacking a guy to drive and draw fouls.  Drennan did a great job of this for NC last night.  Every time he drove inside the paint he either A) scored or B) drew a foul and received the 2 freebies. 
Huge game for Elmhurst against Augie this Saturday and a must win for EC if they really want to stay in the race for the CCIW title.   

Why didn't Chris Childs play last night for Elmhurst?

[79jaybird]

Hi Greg,

Childs is/was healthy just didn't see any action.  You had asked about Jimmy Saris awhile back.  Saris is also healthy and played the full JV game.  Jimmy needs to get "groomed" as he is still making a lot of underclassmen unforced errors.  I like his energy and tempo, but he does need to improve on his ball handling.  I think having him get experience and make his mistakes/learn at the JV level is a good decision.

[Gregory Sager]

Hi Greg,

Childs is/was healthy just didn't see any action.  You had asked about Jimmy Saris awhile back.  Saris is also healthy and played the full JV game.  Jimmy needs to get "groomed" as he is still making a lot of underclassmen unforced errors.  I like his energy and tempo, but he does need to improve on his ball handling.  I think having him get experience and make his mistakes/learn at the JV level is a good decision.

The difference between Childs and Saris is pretty vast. Saris is obviously still feeling his way at the collegiate level, whereas Childs demonstrated pretty conclusively a week ago Wednesday that he's able to hold his own at the CCIW varsity level.

It's not unheard of for a player to move back and forth between JV and varsity, particularly among freshmen, even after having achieved some success as a varsity player. North Park freshmen center Phil Schniedermeier came off the bench for twelve minutes against Carthage last night in the varsity contest and from all accounts played pretty well (he scored four points, but should've scored six -- the scorekeeper inadvertently credited Nick Williams with one of Schniedermeier's baskets). And yet Schniedermeier was back in a JV uniform tonight in the crackerbox against the Concordia (IL) junior varsity. Kendall Greer's been shuttling back and forth between JV and varsity all season long for NPU. I've seen other CCIW players doing the same on other teams. So it's not as though Saris's demotion is any sort of a surprise. But Childs's is, somewhat, especially since he was averaging almost 17 mpg in CCIW play until Wednesday night's DNP-CD.

[Titan Q]

Snow day in B-N...Illinois State, Illinois Wesleyan, all of the high schools, and State Farm all shutdown.  Fortunately it sounds like the snow is just about over, so the Red Men should be OK for travel tomorrow.

Any Carthage fans know when the bus will be pulling up to the Shirk Center tomorrow?  We're all waiting to get on there and yell at Bosko.

[79jaybird]

Between 8-12" of snow came down up in the NW suburbs of Chicago.  More in the city and points south.  Traffic was atrocious as it took me nearly an hour to get to my hockey game last night, that usually takes only 20 minutes!  Hopefully everybody is safe and sound.
Looking at the Augie/Elmhurst game I think a couple of things stand out.  First, Elmhurst has to have a presence inside.  They can't rely on the perimeter and shy away from going inside to Ruch, Hintzsche, and Stzremp.  I also think they need to string together a complete game with no "gaps", that we saw in both the Wheaton and NC games.
For Augie, I think Brett Wessels is going to a key.  He was the main reason Augie beat EC in Rock Island.  Wessels was finding open looks for 3 and hitting almost all of them.
These are the two factors that stand out IMO, in addition to the rebounds, turnovers, tempo etc. 

[pistol]

State Farm shut down?!? Thank God.

[AndOne]

Hi Greg,

Childs is/was healthy just didn't see any action.  You had asked about Jimmy Saris awhile back.  Saris is also healthy and played the full JV game.  Jimmy needs to get "groomed" as he is still making a lot of underclassmen unforced errors.  I like his energy and tempo, but he does need to improve on his ball handling.  I think having him get experience and make his mistakes/learn at the JV level is a good decision.

The difference between Childs and Saris is pretty vast. Saris is obviously still feeling his way at the collegiate level, whereas Childs demonstrated pretty conclusively a week ago Wednesday that he's able to hold his own at the CCIW varsity level.

It's not unheard of for a player to move back and forth between JV and varsity, particularly among freshmen, even after having achieved some success as a varsity player. North Park freshmen center Phil Schniedermeier came off the bench for twelve minutes against Carthage last night in the varsity contest and from all accounts played pretty well (he scored four points, but should've scored six -- the scorekeeper inadvertently credited Nick Williams with one of Schniedermeier's baskets). And yet Schniedermeier was back in a JV uniform tonight in the crackerbox against the Concordia (IL) junior varsity. Kendall Greer's been shuttling back and forth between JV and varsity all season long for NPU. I've seen other CCIW players doing the same on other teams. So it's not as though Saris's demotion is any sort of a surprise. But Childs's is, somewhat, especially since he was averaging almost 17 mpg in CCIW play until Wednesday night's DNP-CD.

And Childs is a sophomore with another whole year of college level experience under his belt.

It appears Mitchell Blair and Marco Macias are EC's 3rd & 4th guards at least for the time being. They were the only other guards, besides the starters, that played in EC's hard fought OT win against NCC on Wed.

Childs, Sarris, and the others seemed to get lost on the EC bench Wed night. I believe they had 12 players on their bench. During timeouts, it looked like the army had invaded.

[petemcb]

In the Wheaton at Elmhurst OT game last week, Macias barely played.  In fact, I don't know if he played after the first 10 minutes of the first half.  It sounds like it may be a little bit of Musical Chairs in Elmhurst for a while.  Is there any more to the Childs situation?  I didn't think he looked any worse than any other guard Elmhurst had in the game that night.

[markerickson]

I had not realized Carthage had a 14 game win streak versus NPU.  When I was an undergrad, NP never lost to either Carroll or Elmhurst en route to 30+ game win streaks that broke in the post-Bosko era.

Are there any 15+ win streaks again a single opponent currently active? 

[Gregory Sager]

I had not realized Carthage had a 14 game win streak versus NPU.  When I was an undergrad, NP never lost to either Carroll or Elmhurst en route to 30+ game win streaks that broke in the post-Bosko era.

Are there any 15+ win streaks again a single opponent currently active? 

NPU hasn't beaten Elmhurst in pretty much the same timespan. I haven't double-checked it, but I think that the last time the Vikings beat the 'jays was when NPU eked out a 64-62 win on January 5, 2000 in Faganel Hall -- all the way back when Rob Berki was still playing center for the Vikings. That would put Elmhurst's streak over NPU at 16 games.

The irony is that Elmhurst and Carthage -- not Elmhurst and Carroll -- were the two victims of North Park's head-to-head winning streaks that remain the longest in CCIW history. North Park beat Elmhurst 33 straight times from 1976 thru 1993, and Carthage 33 straight times from 1977 thru 1994.

The other piece of unfinished business for NPU is to win at Wheaton, where the Vikings have now fallen short 16 straight times. But, alas, that's gonna have to wait for another season.

[Titan Q]

Links to the Pantagraph's article on the IWU/Carthage game and some notes...

http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2008/02/02/usports/doc47a3d1ac910da961505182.txt

http://www.iwuhoops.com/notes08.htm