MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[titanhammer]

A must win for both teams at the Shirk Centier tonight. Regarding strength of league: I think it is down this year. Nothing compared to the 05/06 season when 4 teams were very good to great (IWU, Wheaton, NCC, and Elmhurst).

No, the gold standard for the CCIW was two years ago; in 2008-09 the league went 73-19 (.793) in non-conference play. Sure, there were four very good teams at the top of the league in 2005-06, but the bottom four stunk; Wheaton, Carthage, Millikin, and NPU combined to go 17-27 in non-conference play, dragging the league as a whole down to a pedestrian (by recent CCIW standards) 63-34 (.649).

Greg, I don't know how you can start your post with "No" when you don't even know what Lanny is intending by his statement.  If he is meaning how well the CCIW did in the post season, I would think that the '06 season was better than the '09.  If not for the perfect whistle that Adrian Adaire received, the Titans would have been national champions in '06.  The season you did mention was very good in the pre-conference, but does that mean the CCIW was that good...or they didn't play the best competition?  I don't think you get a great feeling for how the conference is on a national basis until the post season.  Just a lurker's opinion.

A few thoughts here in response, Mike:

1) Illinois Wesleyan lost to Virginia Wesleyan in the semifinals, not the finals. You have no idea how a theoretical IWU vs. Wittenberg championship game might've turned out, so you can't claim that IWU would've been the national champions if the Titans had beaten the Marlins.

2) Roughly half of the CCIW non-conference schedule remains the same from year to year, with minimal variation in overall difficulty level, in large part because there's such heavy interleague traffic between the CCIW and the NAthCon and MWC. If we really wanted to go into it in detail, I suppose that we could dissect the OWP of that season as opposed to other seasons -- once Pat reinstalls the past-seasons data for the various teams on d3hoops.com, that is. So the competitive baseline for 2005-06 is roughly the same as 2008-09's and for the other seasons surrounding those two (including this year's).

3) The post-season is a good test for a conference's relative strength. But the overall non-conference performance of a league is a better test, for two reasons. One, there's a lot more games involved, so the database is much bigger. Two, you don't only measure a league's strength by its top teams; you measure it from top to bottom. The bottom four is just as relevant to a league's overall strength as is its top four. It's not as though you get a mulligan for having really bad teams at the tail end of your standings. If you did, then the NCAC (Wooster and Wittenberg) and the MIAA (Hope and Calvin) would be considered to be much better conferences than they actually are, since the teams at the top are almost always successful on the national scene.

4) I know perfectly well what Lanny intended by his statement. He and I have had this argument several times before, both online and in person. And he's been wrong every time that we've had it.

1) I know it was the semi's...I was there.

2, 3, &4) I scrolled through.

Good luck to all teams, tonight.  I pray all are injury free.

[markerickson]

I'll take an ugly Viking road victory in this era any time without complaint.

[Gregory Sager]

Augustana 73
Elmhurst 49

[Mr. Ypsi]

It tooik 2 OTs to do it, but IWU downs Carthage, 103-94.

More once I catch my breath!

[Gregory Sager]

Double overtime final in Bloomington:

Illinois Wesleyan 103
Carthage 94

Sexauer and Djurickovic each had 34 points to lead their respective teams. Sounds like it was a great game.

[TitansIWU]

Whew.

[Mr. Ypsi]

At the Shirk it looked like a rout, then turned into a classic.  IWU led at the intermission by 8, then came back out on fire to push it to 16 or more.  They cruised along with double-digit leads until about 6 minutes left, when Carthage went on a 12-0 run, ultimately extended to 21-5 to finish regulation.  The first OT netted 10 for each team.  The final OT was all Titans.

For Carthage, Steve D. had 34, Malcolm Kelly had a monster game with 23 points and 9 boards, as did Tyler Pierce with 17 and 9.  Doug Sexauer had been in a bit of a funk the last few games, but came out of it big time with 34 points.  John Koschnitzky added 21 (and 7 boards), while Jordan Zimmer and Sean Johnson each added 15.

[Gregory Sager]

North Central beats Wheaton on the road, 79-67. Huge implications here, as it not only keeps NCC in second place, it gives the Cards a sweep that could potentially have tiebreaker implications down the road.

[Gregory Sager]

Mike Schauer is blistering his team on the WETN postgame interview. He answered the first question, which was about Landon Gamble, with, "He's only going to get better. But I don't care about North Central. I've got guys who don't listen, who don't pay attention, and I'm going to do something about that, and they're not going to enjoy it." He ignored the next question by the WETN guys and repeated, "I'm going to do something, and they're not going to enjoy it." And then he put down the mic and walked away from the broadcast table.

Landon Gamble had a terrific game for NCC tonight, scoring 21 and grabbing 9 caroms. Derek Raridon led the Cards with 25 points, and Kevin Gillespie added 12 points. Andrew Jahns had 22 for Wheaton, and Tim McCrary chipped in 14 points, 12 rebounds, and 6 assists.

[Gregory Sager]

Current standings

Augustana	8-0
North Central	6-2
Illinois Wesleyan	5-3
Wheaton	4-4
Carthage	4-4
North Park	3-5
Elmhurst	2-6
Millikin	0-8

Wednesday's games
North Park @ Augustana
Wheaton @ Carthage
Elmhurst @ Millikin
Illinois Wesleyan @ North Central

Friday's game
Illinois Wesleyan @ Elmhurst

Saturday's games
Carthage @ Augustana
North Central @ Millikin
Wheaton @ North Park

[A Lover of the Game]

Whew.

Whew is right.  I was glad the Titans didn't let the game go into a 3rd overtime.  What perplexed me was how #44 was kind of having his way a bit on the floor in tonight's game as well as the previous game. The Titan allowed him to score at will.

Freshmen, Andrew, got on the floor and showed the Titan how to grab the boards.  Good job. The Titans have been having some issues with rebounding.  Although they did do a much better job tonight – thank goodness.

Go Titans!

[Titan Q]

IWU 103
Carthage 94 (2OT)

http://www.iwusports.com/custompages/MBB/MBB2011/HTML/iwmbb19.htm

http://www.pantagraph.com/sports/college/basketball/men/article_b87673d8-2c2b-11e0-86c0-001cc4c03286.html

http://athletics.carthage.edu/news/2011/1/29/Mens_Basketball_0129110602.aspx


* Doug Sexauer: 34 pts, 5 reb (14-19 FG)
* John Koschnitzky: 21 pts, 7 reb (8-11 FG)
* Sean Johnson: 15 pts, 3 reb, 7 assists
* Jordan Zimmer: 15 pts, 3 reb, 2 assists

* Steve Djurickovic: 34 pts, 4 reb, 4 assists
* Malcolm Kelly: 23 pts, 9 reb, 2 assists
* Tyler Pierce: 17 pts, 9 reb
* Nick Kladis: 11 pts


IWU: 59.7% FG (40-67)

Carthage: 21-23 FT

[Titan Q]

Home win = +0
Road win = +1
Home loss = -1
Road loss = +0


+/- Standings through 1/29
Augustana +3
North Central +3
Illinois Wesleyan +1
Wheaton +0
Carthage +0
Millikin -2
North Park -2
Elmhurst -3

(Usually takes +4 to win the title)

[dansand]

Regarding strength of league: I think it is down this year. Nothing compared to the 05/06 season when 4 teams were very good to great (IWU, Wheaton, NCC, and Elmhurst). 

Umm...might wanna include the team that won the league by two games among those very good/great teams. 

[Titan Q]

Remaining schedules for spots 2-4 candidates...

North Central (6-2)
vs Illinois Wesleyan
@ Millikin
vs North Park
vs Carthage
@ Elmhurst
vs Augustana

Illinois Wesleyan (5-3)
@ North Central
@ Elmhurst
vs Millikin
@ Wheaton
vs North Park
vs Augustana

Wheaton (4-4)
@ Carthage
@ North Park
vs Augustana
vs Illinois Wesleyan
@ Millikin
vs Elmhurst

Carthage (4-4)
vs Wheaton
@ Augustana
vs Elmhurst
@ North Central
@ North Park
vs Millikin


While the race for the CCIW championship isn't very dramatic, the race for the other 3 conference tournament spots certainly is.  On paper, it looks to me like Wheaton is in the most trouble.

Two huge games coming up Wednesday - IWU @ North Central and Wheaton @ Carthage.  IWU and Wheaton not only have opportunities to make up ground in the standings, but also to secure tie-breakers over their Wednesday opponent (via season sweep).  The way this seems to be heading, it's extremely likely tie-breakers will come into play in determining who makes and conference tournament field, and in seeding.  (As always, the road teams will want to be seeds 2 or 3...not 4.)