MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[augiefan]

IWU puts NCC away 72-67 in OT. NCC's young players are improving with every game, as Rasridon continues to struggle. Zimmer had a huge night for IWU.

[augiefan]

Wheaton comes from behind to win 62-55.

[Mugsy]

Wheaton beats Carthage 62-55.

Tim McCrary with 26pts, 8 rebs, 5 assists for Wheaton
Andrew Jahns with 12 pts

Wheaton got a big game from freshman guard Tyler Peters, 11 pts, 3 rebs, 1 steal.  This was huge given all the injuries to the other guards.

Steve D with 19pts, 1 reb, 5 assists for Carthage (but on 4 of 13 shooting)
Next highest point total for Carthage was Rual Guzman at 8 pts.

I didn't see or listen to the game, but it would seem the Wheaton defense and the +9 rebound advantage was key to the win.  Carthage shoots only 37% for the game, Wheaton shoots at 47%.  Wheaton was 16 of 18 from the charity line.

[Mugsy]

Looking at the play-by-play it looks like McCrary took over in the 2nd half, factoring in on almost every Wheaton score in the first 15 minutes.  Scoring 18pts and 4 assists in that span.

[WheatonFanChris]

First of all,
I figure I should introduce myself. I'm a 25 year old Wheaton alum, long time boards reader and have been attending Wheaton games by the boatload since I was around 10. So hopefully I can add a bit to this board seeing how during non-conference not too much was said from a Wheaton perspective.

Second,
Tonight was a massive win for the Thunder simply for confidence if nothing else. As said above, McCrary did take control of the entire game in the beginning of the 2nd half.

The first half offensively for both sides was boring and inefficient, partly because of good defense, and Wheaton especially struggled to run any offense at all. But that quickly changed when McCrary started attacking Mitch Thompson in the second half, and he either scored or was fouled, fueling the Wheaton comeback in front of a smallish crowd with the students still on break.

Other things of note:
-Jahns/Demoss did a good job with containment on Stevie D, although he did get his allotment of light foul calls.
-Spencer Schultze really struggled tonight on both ends (if i had a plus/minus stat it would be very ugly), but although all Wheaton's frosh had a nervous first couple minutes, Nate Haynes took some of Spencer's minutes effectively.
-Jeremy Pflederer is now consistently Wheaton's best energy player.

[ball]

Thanks for the concern, everybody. While I do usually dial down my screen time on d3boards.com a bit during the holidays, this year it was more of a mental-health break than anything else.

My zealous support of NPU men's basketball over the years has put me in a position where I sometimes feel as though I'm living and dying by how the Vikings are playing ...

I can relate- I am easily fixated on the status of programs I have been affiliated with and geographically close franchises.  

However, after some much-needed maturing, I now believe the standings/rankings ect. to be magnified because of their immediacy and there is something wonderful that will indeed matter much more in thousands of years from now...

Here is a recent quote from Shaq:

"I know I will play in the NBA next season," said O'Neal. "International? No. The good thing about me and my career is I came in, did it my way, did more than expected. For every athlete or every great person, there's a time when it has to end. When and if it ever ends it will be very graciously."

"We're going to have a big party. We're going to have a ceremony, and the next thing I'll be waiting for is the entrance into the place where your name will never be forgotten."

(http://sports.espn.go.com/boston/nba/news/story?id=5434969)  

The  "place where your name will never be forgotten" that he is referring to is, of course, is the NBA Hall of Fame.


While the NBA Hall of Fame is pretty legit- there is something far greater.

Jesus says: "However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." Luke 10:20.

Even if athletic accomplishments were remembered for generations to come, they would not be able to hold water as God's principle desire for our lives is solely based on the condition of our hearts.

My life has been improved through embracing God and as I strive to learn more about His character- I am becoming more satisfied. I encourage taking every thought captive and through deliberate time spent seeking truth come to terms with the offer God has given us.

Happy CCIW basket,
ball

[veterancciwfan]

IWU was extremely fortunate to secure a must home win against a NCC team with some outstanding freshmen talent. NCC will improve with every game. Raridon seems lost at the offensive end. Jordan Zimmer hit one of the biggest 3-point shots in recent Shirk Center history from deep in the left corner to give IWU a 68-66 lead with a minute left in OT, an absolute dagger for NCC. Zimmer and John Koschnitzky, who were both injured (the former with a broken foot bone and the latter with a painful back) during IWU's first 9 games, were easily IWU's best players tonight. Victor Davis has to play more minutes and probably will Saturday at Carthage.  IWU played only 9 with the 4 reserves: Schick, Gonzalez, Davis & Connolly. Injuries were a key factor in a disappointing 2nd half for the Titans. I can't see NCC as a serious threat in the CCIW unless Raridon regains the offensive dominance he showed last year as freshman.

[usee]

Wheaton scored a mere 18 pts in the first half while trailing at the break 18-29. They outscored Carthage 44-26 in half #2 to win.

[Gregory Sager]

It's usually hard to find anything positive to say about a 13-point home loss, but I'll say this for NPU: The Vikings played hard tonight. The biggest beef that the North Park coaching staff had had with the team's recent meltdown was that too many players were simply phoning it in and seemed more concerned with their playing time than with what they were actually doing with the minutes that they had. Tonight, however, NPU played tough and pretty much went toe-to-toe with Augie and that borderline bondage film that Grey Giovanine calls a defense. (I'm impressed that D.A. Robinson and Shaun Collins are still conscious and upright tonight after the elbows to the head that they were dealt in the second half.)

The biggest problem, however, was that North Park simply couldn't put the ball in the basket even when it had good chances to do so. Against a team as strong and as deep and as defense-oriented as Augie, you have to make the most of your good opportunities. Unfortunately, NPU had a serious problem with hitting layups, putbacks, and close-in jumpers. At one stretch, Jorge Gonzalez missed a layup, got the rebound, missed the putback, got the rebound, and missed another putback -- and the next time down the floor he missed yet another layup. I don't want to single out Gonzalez, because his teammates were doing the same thing, but it perfectly illustrates half of the problem. The other half of the problem was the FT shooting. The box score isn't up yet (lots of tech problems at the scorer's table tonight, and with the school on break there doesn't seem to be a lot of support staff around), but NPU didn't hit a single free throw in the first half, and I doubt that the hosts shot even .500 from the line in the second half. It was a cesspit of rimouts at the line tonight for North Park, and many of those rimouts were badly off-line to begin with. Augie shot very poorly from the line for most of the game as well, but that simply magnifies NPU's mistakes.

Augie, which shot 43% from the field to NPU's 36%, went over five minutes without scoring to start the second half. That was in large degree due to North Park's defense, but Augie missed its fair share of bunnies during that stretch, too. However, North Park only scored six points during that Augie drought, cutting a nine-point halftime Doggie lead down to three, 33-30. That and a 35-32 tally a few minutes later was as close as North Park got. Still, the hosts were in it for most of the way in the second half, but NPU got a bad case of chuckeritis in the last few minutes while Augie finally righted the ship at the free throw line.

Augie will no doubt grind out a bunch of wildebeest-ugly wins like this over the next two months. I don't think anything fazes them. Do not bet against Augie in a close game. That's usually true of any Giovanine team, but it seems especially true this year. Nevertheless, this one felt like it was within reach of an upset for NPU, simply because of how hard the host Vikings played (D.A. Robinson and Clayton Cahill in particular) and the fact that they kept the game within arm's length until the last few minutes. If the Park had only made some of those misses right at the basket, if the Park had only shot free throws better than a junior-high girls team, if the Park hadn't squandered some of their early first-half possessions because not everyone was on the same page in terms of the play-calling. If, if, if ...

Maybe I'm putting lipstick on a pig here, but it is a pretty shade of lipstick.

[Gregory Sager]

Nobody's posted the MU/EC score yet, so I will: Elmhurst 73, Millikiin 52. The Big Blue shot only .327 (18-55) from the field (Elmhurst shot .574), got outrebounded by twelve by a notoriously small team, and trailed by 30 with almost ten minutes left in the game. The silver lining, if you can call it that, for Millikin is that for the first time this season a Big Blue player scored twenty points; sophomore forward Kelvin Jacobs got the Andrew Jackson tonight for MU. In fact, it's the first time this season that a Millikin player has topped sixteen points.

Zack Boyd led Elmhurst with 24. Sean Fendley didn't play for Elmhurst tonight.

[Mr. Ypsi]

0-14 seasons are relatively rare, but I think Millikin is capable of pulling it off.

My question for those who follow both the men and the women - which has fallen lower, Millikin men or Augie women?  I ask this with no intended disrespect and hopes that they will recover soon, but both programs seem in terrible straits.

[Gregory Sager]

0-14 seasons are relatively rare, but I think Millikin is capable of pulling it off.

My question for those who follow both the men and the women - which has fallen lower, Millikin men or Augie women?  I ask this with no intended disrespect and hopes that they will recover soon, but both programs seem in terrible straits.

Millikin men, easily. Even when the Augie women went 0-14 in the CCIW back in 2005-06 they still managed to go 6-19 overall. Augie women are always good for a minimum of three or four non-conference wins a year. This year, f'rinstance, they came into CCIW play with a 4-7 record.

The worst record ever posted by a CCIW men's team was the 1979-80 edition of North Central, which went 2-24, 0-16. That team, and the 1973-74 NCC team that went 2-23, 0-16, set the pace in this dubious category.

Millikin came into the CCIW season this year with a 1-9 non-conference record, the lone win a 66-50 victory over Robert Morris-Springfield back on December 1. That's the worst non-con record posted by a CCIW team since North Central went 0-9 back in 1987-88 -- and that was actually a decent Cardinals squad that ended up going 8-8 in the league and finished fourth (I seem to remember Bill Warden's crew having a ton of injuries early on that year). In the modern era of CCIW men's basketball (i.e., post-1967), only seven teams have done as badly or worse in non-conference play as MU has done this season -- and that '87-'88 NCC team and the 1969-70 Millikin team that went 0-4 in non-con play but 8-8 in the league really shouldn't be counted as bad teams.

The Big Blue program is in a bad way, no matter how you slice it.

[Titan Q]

IWU was extremely fortunate to secure a must home win against a NCC team with some outstanding freshmen talent. NCC will improve with every game. Raridon seems lost at the offensive end. Jordan Zimmer hit one of the biggest 3-point shots in recent Shirk Center history from deep in the left corner to give IWU a 68-66 lead with a minute left in OT, an absolute dagger for NCC. Zimmer and John Koschnitzky, who were both injured (the former with a broken foot bone and the latter with a painful back) during IWU's first 9 games, were easily IWU's best players tonight. Victor Davis has to play more minutes and probably will Saturday at Carthage.  IWU played only 9 with the 4 reserves: Schick, Gonzalez, Davis & Connolly. Injuries were a key factor in a disappointing 2nd half for the Titans. I can't see NCC as a serious threat in the CCIW unless Raridon regains the offensive dominance he showed last year as freshman.

There is no question IWU was fortunate (lucky) to escape that game with a win.  After leading most of the game, losing would have been a complete disaster, and just a killer.

I am still hopeful the Titans can put it all together, but it's really been a strange season so far.  If there is any silver lining in last night's game, it is that John Koschnitzky and Jordan Zimmer played so well.  On the flip side, so many of the other guys were just completely ineffective though.  IWU just can't seem to get it all clicking together this year. 

I had heard early yesterday that Doug Sexauer would not play due to that bad sprain.  Then he not only played, but started and played 34 minutes.  The WJBC guys seemed to paint the picture that Doug was just completely ineffective on the floor however, and just could not move well at all.  And I guess Sean Johnson has now suffered some kind of hip injury per the Pantagraph?  The Titans really need these two to be good this weekend.

IWU's game @ Carthage Saturday is huge for both teams...probably a little more so for the Red Men.  If Carthage wants to have any chance to contend for the CCIW title and salvage the 2010-11 season, they have to win on their home floor Saturday.  For IWU, it is an opportunity to get a big road win.

CCIW play in full swing...gotta love it.  Sure looks to me like Augustana is the best team in the league by a decent margin.  I hope I'm wrong.

[usee]

Q, it's early but your +1, 0, -1 scoring for CCIW wins needs to be teed up by this weekend.

[usee]

In the Wheaton game it seems the turning point came w 5.35 left in the 2nd half and Wheaton leading by 1 at 46-45. From the Carthage writeup: Tim McCrary scored on a layup, and Carthage's Mitch Thompson was whistled for a technical foul. Andrew Jahns made the first two free throws, and McCray sank his, putting the Thunder up by six points, 51-45. A jumper by McCrary at 4:04 gave the Thunder an eight-point lead, 55-47. The Red Men pulled to within four, 57-53, at 1:54 on a layup by Malcom Kelly. Pflederer hit the front end of a one-and-one with 42 seconds to go to make it 58-53. Carthage's Jon Cieski was fouled on a three-point attempt with 26 seconds to go and made two of his three free throws to cut the lead to three, 58-55. At 14.6 seconds, Pflederer was fouled and completed the one-and-one for a five-point lead, 60-55. Tyler Peters drained two free throws at 4.6 seconds to complete the scoring at 62-55. The Thunder out-scored the Red Men, 44-26, in the second half.

Here's Bosko's comments after the game:

"It wasn't just Tim McCrary tonight," said Carthage coach Bosko Djurickovic. "Andrew Jahns late in the second half was the killer. We made McCrary shoot the ball. We pick and choose, and all teams do that. He's a really good basketball player, but that was a choice we made. We played really well tonight against a team that's going to be in the race all the way to the end. We just haven't been able to get over the hump. We can't close games out—we were out-scored, 44-26 in the second half. We got out-rebounded again, and Wheaton did a very good defensive job on Steve Djurickovic. I thought our preparation was spot-on. We're getting a little far along in the season to say that things are going to be alright."  

Andrew Jahns is really having a great season for the Thunder. He is averaging 15.8 pts, 2.7 rebs and is shooting 84% from the line and 52% from the field, including 43% from the arc. All that and he is Wheaton's best defender. Last night he guarded Stevie D and held him to 4-13 from the field.