MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[cardinalpride]

the only unfortunate thing about IWU losing to NCC at the shirk and squeaking by Carthage in Kenosha is that now all the other CCIW "contenders" may actually think they have a chance vs these guys. My bet is IWU finishes w 1 loss in conference. (and this is from someone who would like nothing more than for them to finish with 1 win).

Usee, there is nothing unfortunate about IWU losing at the Shirk.  Not to mention, if you place the bet on IWU finishing with 1 loss, you will lose.  IWU will have at least two losses because NCC will beat them again at the Bird's Nest.  That's right, NCC takes both conference games over IWU this year!!  Ya heard it here first!!

[cardinalpride]

... and if that happens (Wesleyan going 13-1), nobody will ultimately remember how close Carthage came to beating them. All the wins eventually blur together, while the big upsets stick out in your mind forever. Just look at how many people remember that North Central upset over Carthage the year that Bosko went on to win his first CCIW title in Kenosha. That upset took place five years ago today, and yet people were bringing it up just this week on CCIW Chat.

Another nice road win for NCC.  This win is especially nice due to the energy and emotion spent on the victory versus IWU.  This Aurora team had nothing to lose and everything to gain in trying to defeat the Cards for the first time this year.  However, NCC jump out on Aurora 11-0 or 11-2 and never looked back.  They dominated the game from beginning to end scoring 56 pts. in the 1st half and another 46pts. in the 2nd in route to a 102-73 victory.  Impressive!  Just keep winning NCC and the D3 hoops posters will remember you forever!!!    With two more road wins versus in region opponents with .500+ records, I can't wait to see the next SOSI/QOWI that Pat produces.  Furthermore, the Cards are gaining the necessary momentum and confidence it takes to win a CCIW title. 

[bluejaybacker1]

Mr. Sager,

I totally agree with you on your statement about the size of the Jays' heads in regard to reading this chat room. They have no reason to have a big head cause they have yet to show us what kind of team they really are.

The Bluejays' may have the talent to make a run for the CCIW title, but that doesn't mean they are built to make that run. The Jays' really lack something you see in great teams in all sorts of sports. They are really talented, yetthey just seem to play down to the other teams level and just think they can turn it on and win a game. The Mililkin game for instance they felt that they could turn it on in the 2nd and win, but wait the Big Blue went and shot at least 65% in the 2nd half, and your not going to make to many comebacks when a team does that. Elmhurst needs to come out on the floor from the tip and say we are going to play for 40 mins. I have yet to see this team play for a full 40 mins., will it be too late when they decide to play a FULL game, I hope not.

[Hoosier Titan]

I must agree that the close game in Carthage wasn't due to poor play by IWU but rather to a great performance by Carthage.  Imani shot lights out to start, and Jeffery did nearly the entire game. 

The Titan bench players were huge.  Chris Jones was 6/6 on field goals.  Matt Arnold turned out to be a better matchup for the quick Carthage guards than Jason Fisher and even pulled in quite a few rebounds.  Steve Schweer came in late in the game to defend Jeffery, and that seemed to make him and the whole Carthage side work a bit longer and harder to score.  The Red Men were looking more tired down the stretch.

The hard foul by Schlemm on Freeman was unfortunate.  The Red Men are good enough to win lots of games playing fairly; they don't need to act like that.

[devildog29]

For those of us greenies, not that we need any reminder, but welcome to the CCIW.  Is it me, or does it seem in conference play, that bullseye on the Titan uniforms of being ranked #1 just multiplied in size about 10 times starting this week? 

Hammer, you mention Bosko pulling Schlemm until the end of the game.  Credit where credit is due, despite the hard time that the students always give him at the Shirk (including myself 10+ years ago) Bosko really is a class act and a professional as a coach.  His "tan" and candor always get him the most attention, but he truly is one of the best coaches around. 

[kenoshamark]

Here is an article from the Kenosha News on the game last night....and as I suspected, Bosko was very pleased and encouraged by the effort last night.  I agree that they finally put a 40 minute game together and now we will see how they follow-up with their next opponent.

http://www.kenoshanews.com/articles/index.php?articleNum=4695

[Titan Q]

Regarding a bullseye on the Titan unis...

We interviewed Bosko for our WJBC pregame show last night, as we do with every opposing coach.  This isn't exact (I don't have the tape of it) obviously, but it's close...

"Scotty and his team are under a very unique kind of pressure that few understand.  We were there just a few years ago.  Everyone expects you to win every game by a big margin and when you don't, everyone wants to know what went wrong.  Meanwhile, you're every team's biggest game and even the teams that can't win it (the league) are bound to play you tough.  The fun thing about this type of pressure is that it means you must have an awfully good basketball team."

(Scott and Bosko are very good friends.  Most people forget that between North Park and Carthage, Bosko was Scott Trost's assistant coach at Elmhurst for 2 years while Bosko was working in private business.)

He's exactly right about what he called "unique pressure."  I watched how focused and how hard the Wabash players played on November 19...same at Chicago on December 3...Puget Sound on 12/29...and without question North Central and Carthage now in the league.  I guess the statement that Scott Trost regularly makes to us of, "We are going to take everones' best shot," is somewhat cliche, but it couldn't be more accurate.  Everyone associated with Carthage from their head coach to their former 1st Team All-American assistant coach to the radio guys to the S.I.D. told us last night that the Red Men played their best game of the season last night.  That wasn't a coincidence.  

As as a fan - just as Bosko spoke about from a coaches perspective - it is very fun to follow because it means your team is awfully good and it means you're going to see some incredible games, like the one last night in Kenosha.

[Titan Q]

Thanks for the link, Mark.  Some quotes from that article...


"You don't want to say that it was a game for the ages because we're 4-8, but it was a game that reminded you of our ages," Carthage coach Bosko Djurickovic said. "We competed tremendously. We were so good tonight. This is a huge step in the right direction."
-----
"We're going to take everyone's best game," Illinois Wesleyan coach Scott Trost said. "There are no off nights. It's funny to say, but when you're 10-0, everything is great. When you lose a game, I think your kids have a tendency to lose their confidence a little bit. No matter how hard it was, maybe this win will give us a little more confidence."
-----
Immediately after the loss, the Red Men received a rousing ovation from the crowd and kudos from a relieved Titan team in the postgame handshake line.

"It was the No. 1-ranked team and we had a chance to make them 0-2 in the conference," Jeffery said. "We had so many fans here. It's kind of disappointing, but it was also really fun to play in a great atmosphere like this."

[Gregory Sager]

The "give the champion your best shot when you play them" bit isn't just a cliche. It's beyond cliche. It's a blindingly obvious fact, and really doesn't need to be restated. I saw it for myself yesterday when the NPU women's team defeated Millikin. I doubt that there was a single member of the Vikings who wouldn't tell you that she reached down and found a little more within herself because the opponent was the defending national champions. I think that this sort of thing is something that every sports fan already knows. I guess I don't see the point of belaboring it for the umpteenth time.

Carthage may have given IW its best game last night, but let's not forget that the Red Men did it without Bowens, Hart, and Hood. That's a lot of missing talent and experience. It makes the Carthage performance last night all the more remarkable.

Nevertheless, another cliche is that there's no column in the standings for moral victories. No matter how tightly-contested, it's just as much of a W for the Titans as a 20-point walkover would've been ... and for Carthage, the hard truth is that they're now 4-8, 0-1 no matter how energized they looked last night.

[Titan Q]

"The veteran Titans wouldn't go away, though, as the inside tandem of Zach Freeman and Chris Jones combined for 12 points in the final seven minutes to give their team a 45-44 halftime lead."


Zach Freeman was IWU's player of the game last night in my opinion.  He was fantastic down the stretch.  Zach finished with 14 pts, 4 rebounds, 4 assists/1 T.O., on 4-7 FG and 6-6 from the FT line.

As I re-read some of the posts from last night in more detail, I am amused by Stat's quote: "Freeman had moments down low, but pretty much invisible."  There is absolutely no one else in that gym last night that would have said Freeman was invisible.  He battled as hard as I have seen him battle, getting to the FT line, and keeping the Titans in the game until he got hurt and had to leave...

08:12  67-67  T 9  GOOD! FT SHOT by Freeman, Zach
08:12  67-68  V 1  GOOD! FT SHOT by Freeman, Zach
07:44  67-70  V 3  GOOD! LAYUP by Jones, Cory [PNT]
06:58  67-72  V 5  GOOD! TIP-IN by Freeman, Zach [PNT]
06:35  68-72 V 4  GOOD! FT SHOT by Schlemm, Brian
05:53  71-72  V1  3 PTR by Imani, Malik
05:10  71-73  V 2  GOOD! FT SHOT by Freeman, Zach
05:10  71-74  V 3  GOOD! FT SHOT by Freeman, Zach

Those FT's were all while Carthage was playing him very physically down low, but he found a way to get himself to the line.

I've never read anything positive about the greenies from my friend stat, but that Freeman statement is bizarre.

[John Gleich]

Like you said, GS, the whole "you get everybody's best shot" thing is true, but obvious... but something that is a little LESS obvious that I saw at my career at UWSP was that teams would come out strong to begin the game and come out all hyped up ("Oo, we're playing the #1 team!) but after that initial surge, when our system both offensively and defensively continued, relentlessly, they tended to back down, more often than not.  Many times in the last few years, teams would come out, seemingly hyped up, but they played rather tight, like they almost felt that they needed to play a perfect game to beat us.  I think that sentiment caused them to play tight, and when you play tight, more often than not, you won't have good results.

The teams that had good results against us (such as Oshkosh last year in the last reg season game) were the teams that came out with the attitude that they really had nothing to lose.  It almost is along the lines of a D-3 vs. D-1 game... the D-3 team is going to come out firing to take down the "big boys"... and that's why you'll get games like last night.  I listened to part of the game, and it didn't sound like Carthage really cared what IWU had done earlier this season.  There wasn't any "reverential awe", which you certainly won't get in a great conference like the CCIW, but they really sounded like they played like they had nothing to lose.

[augiedad]

The "give the champion your best shot when you play them" bit isn't just a cliche. It's beyond cliche. It's a blindingly obvious fact, and really doesn't need to be restated. I saw it for myself yesterday when the NPU women's team defeated Millikin. I doubt that there was a single member of the Vikings who wouldn't tell you that she reached down and found a little more within herself because the opponent was the defending national champions. I think that this sort of thing is something that every sports fan already knows. I guess I don't see the point of belaboring it for the umpteenth time.

Gregory,

I do not agree.  Why did Bosko bring up this exact topic when asked the simple question by Q on WJBC: "What did you make of IWU's loss Wednesday to North Central?" (I believe that is exactly the question as I recall from last night.)  In other words, if so blindingly obvious, why would a very successful coach in our league answer with the "IWU is going to take every team's best shot" topic and compare it to what his team went through during the Wiertel/Garnes/McDaniel days?

It is not blindingly obvious actually.  There are a lot of people around the league or even country who will see that IWU beat 4-8 Carthage by 1 point and automatically assume IWU played poorly vs the same Carthage team that lost to Team A by so many points, Team B by so many points, etc.  Kind of like many assumed IWU must have played poorly at U. of Chicago in a ballgame I witnessed first hand just how hard Chicago played and how badly they wanted to win.   Many people do not understand that kids bring different levels of focus and intensity to the different games and just how much that affects the level of a team's play.  I saw it time and time again with my son's Augustana teams.  In the days leading up to the game, you can even feel it from talking to them - you know which games they are fired up for.  But from reading these boards, I do not get the sense that this fact is "obvious" at all.  Some people assume that a team ranked whatever must beat an "unranked" team by so many points and if not, something went wrong.

Listened to the IWU/CC game as my son's former team doesn't have internet radio unfortunately.  Q, enjoyed all of the pregame and postgame interviews - outstanding.  Your new pbp guy is absoutely brutal though.  Sorry, it has to be said.  You bail the guy out constantly during the broadcast because he doesn't know that the heck he's doing it seems.  Bring back Art Kimball!!

What a league this is.  Should be a great race!

[augiedad]

Carthage may have given IW its best game last night, but let's not forget that the Red Men did it without Bowens, Hart, and Hood. That's a lot of missing talent and experience. It makes the Carthage performance last night all the more remarkable.

I see that Bowens was having a good year, but CC doesn't really miss the Hart and Hood kids do they?

Hart - was averaging 7 points/4 rebound
Hood - was averaging 4 points/1 rebound


I've read about Hart's "potential" here, but the fact is, he wasn't doing much offensively this year, right?

Seems to like CC's biggest problem has been not really knowing how to fit all of the talented pieces together.  Sometimes when you take a few pieces away and make it more obvious for all who the key players are and force those key players to figure it out, it actually works out better.  (Note how some key CC players stepped up last night.)

My guess is that Carthage will play very uninspired basketball Wednesday @ Elmhurst and lose by 20+ to a Bluejay team that is almost cooked.

[augiedad]

Final thought.  Wouldn't it be somewhat amusing if after all these years of North Central, Augustana, Elmhurst and a few others begging for a conference tournament and IWU leading the charge against it, if the Titans actually did not win the regular season title but defeated one of these in the inaugural tourney to win the auto. bid?

Just a thought.  It could happen.

[Stat]

Jeff Gibbs, Jeff Gibbs, Jeff Gibbs.

Touche!