MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[TitansIWU]

I think that channel may air the games a week behind?

They will probably be showing the game that happened on the 19th.

[Gregory Sager]

So if Augie wins the CCIW Tourney,  do you think the CCIW gets only 1 team into the tournament?

Alas, yes.  I don't think any other teams would even be on the bubble for a C.

Agree
Rule of thumb pretty much is 6 or fewer losses and sitting in #1 or #2 spot in final regional ranking to get in as a Pool C.  Even with a loss CCIW tournament, Augustana would likely be in as a Pool C.  

The only other team in the first three regional rankings is IWU which would need a lot of luck to make it as a Pool C.  That luck means many bad things have to happen to others currently ranked by the NCAA in their Midwest Region.  I just don't see North Central or Wheaton having any chance as a Pool C --- too many losses.

But, should the CCIW get lucky and get two or more in we will all take it regardless of which team get in!!!

The rule of thumb really has less to do with losses and more to do with in-region winning percentage, because the primary criterion in question is exactly that -- in-region winning percentage -- rather than wins and losses. Remember, teams play wildly varying numbers of in-region games; just within our own league, there were teams that ended the regular season having played as many as 24 in-region games (Augustana, Elmhurst, and Illinois Wesleyan) and as few as 18 (Carthage) or 20 (Millikin). Then there's the MWC, which only plays 23 regular season games in spite of the fact that D3 teams are allowed to play 25.

With such wildly varying numbers of in-region games played by the various Pool C contenders around the nation, it becomes difficult to base a rule of thumb upon a fixed number of losses. Better to go with the formula used in the primary criterion, in-region winning percentage. In past seasons, .750 has been the usual threshold between "safe" and "bubble," with anything below .700 getting really dicey (although sub.-700 teams have occasionally snuck in due to strong credentials in the other four primary criteria).

[thunder38]

At 3:30 they also feature Happiness and Discontent by Aristotle.

I can't wait to see that.

I'm not sure which catches my attention more, the scheduling of the game vs. Augie or the rest of that captivating programming

[Gregory Sager]

I'm not good at remembering things, but I think Oshkosh was ranked #2 in the preseason.  I always get my seasons mixed up, but Lawrence topped them at The Alex in one of the first games of the season.  It might have also been the year LU went undefeated in the regular season because I almost picked LU but didn't because of that Oshkosh game at the biginning of the season.  But like I said, I tend to mix my seasons together.

I knew that UWO had been high one preseason.

That's how ugly rumors get started.  

Though that could explain their drastic drop from #2.

Oshkosh is the site of one of the world's biggest annual air shows, the EAA AirVenture Oshkosh. Leave it to you two ex-hippies to draw the wrong inference from the "high" comment.

[petemcb]

I'm not good at remembering things, but I think Oshkosh was ranked #2 in the preseason.  I always get my seasons mixed up, but Lawrence topped them at The Alex in one of the first games of the season.  It might have also been the year LU went undefeated in the regular season because I almost picked LU but didn't because of that Oshkosh game at the biginning of the season.  But like I said, I tend to mix my seasons together.

I knew that UWO had been high one preseason.

That's how ugly rumors get started.  

Though that could explain their drastic drop from #2.

Oshkosh is the site of one of the world's biggest annual air shows, the EAA AirVenture Oshkosh. Leave it to you two ex-hippies to draw the wrong inference from the "high" comment.

There are probably those who would say, in reference to this board, that information on the air show in Oshkosh would be less germane and/or self-descriptive than Kalamzoo/Battle Creek's annual hot air balloon festival.....   

[Gregory Sager]

It's interesting how just a couple of weeks ago people were speculating about the possibility of Augie being the first team in 38 years to run the table in CCIW play ... and yet, at the end of the day, Augie and North Central tied for the title with comparatively pedestrian 11-3 records.

This makes five times in the past six seasons that the CCIW champion or champions has finished with an 11-3 record.

I don't know if Augie considers their 11-3 conference "pedestrian" or not and I know North Central sure as hell doesn't!

In losing 3 of their last 5 games after being undefeated through their 1st 20, perhaps the word at Augie is "disappointed."

I believe the word at North Central may be "proud."  And proud is what the Cardinals should feel after having been picked to finish 6th, and using that as one of their motivational points in their improbable climb to to the league co-championship. "Elated" is also applicable as the Cardinals are elated to be hosting the CCIW tournament in the hangar this weekend.

Lastly, if both Augie and North Central are considered "pedestrian" at 11-3 in a league which the majority of us who post regularly on here have, for some time now, fostered as one of the two best D3 basketball conferences in the country, what word would you use to describe a 4-10 league mark?

Wow, Mark. Way to completely and utterly miss the point.

Did you not notice that I was talking about the records of CCIW champions over the years, and that I prefaced the term "pedestrian" with the word comparative? I would've thought that the succeeding sentence, the one where I mentioned how five of the last six CCIW seasons have ended with champions posting 11-3 records, would've tipped you off. Look here at the list of CCIW champions and their league records. An 11-3 tally is pedestrian by historical standards. Eight of the last 13 CCIW seasons have ended with an 11-3 champion or champions, and it's been almost three decades since the CCIW had a champion with a winning percentage lower than .786 (i.e., a record worse than 11-3).

As for your alternative word choices, I doubt that Augie coaches and players are disappointed at all in the overall outcome of their season to date. Sure, they'd like to be hosting this weekend, but they're the co-champions of the league in a season where they were picked to finish third -- a distant third, I might add, in terms of the preseason poll voting.

[Gregory Sager]

Just a question, who is the most "sideline animated" coach in the CCIW?

After watching the Augustana coaching staff roam and rant with no technical fouls in sight last night, Grey Giovanine gets my vote, although Bosko has to be on the first team somewhere.

Thoughts?

Bosko's not all that animated. He's colorful (the monosyllabic barking at his players, the deep tan, the classic Djurickovian shrug and arm gestures), which is a different thing altogether than "animated." He doesn't wander up and down the bench, and he lobbies the refs rather than yells at them. After all, why should he yell at them? He's known some of the older ones, such as Reuben Norris, Ken Faulkner, Ken Maziarka, Fritz Larsen, etc., since the Carter administration. Mark Scherer's more animated than Bosko. Mike Schauer is, too, if your definition of "animated" focuses upon roaming the sidelines (Mike's a lot less rooted to his chair than was his mentor, Bill Harris).

Really, though, it's a Hobson's choice. Grey Giovanine is so much more animated (by any definition of the term) than his seven peers that it's really not even worth discussing, IMO.

[Gregory Sager]

I'm not good at remembering things, but I think Oshkosh was ranked #2 in the preseason.  I always get my seasons mixed up, but Lawrence topped them at The Alex in one of the first games of the season.  It might have also been the year LU went undefeated in the regular season because I almost picked LU but didn't because of that Oshkosh game at the biginning of the season.  But like I said, I tend to mix my seasons together.

I knew that UWO had been high one preseason.

That's how ugly rumors get started.  

Though that could explain their drastic drop from #2.

Oshkosh is the site of one of the world's biggest annual air shows, the EAA AirVenture Oshkosh. Leave it to you two ex-hippies to draw the wrong inference from the "high" comment.

There are probably those who would say, in reference to this board, that information on the air show in Oshkosh would be less germane and/or self-descriptive than Kalamzoo/Battle Creek's annual hot air balloon festival.....   

"It's not a balloon! It's an airship!

[Gregory Sager]

AndOne- I know you are excited and drinking the red kool-aid to celebrate.

the question I have is traditionally on a stat sheet if both teams have an identical conf. mark,  they list the team with the better overall record first.
I.E.
1) AUGUSTANA 11-3 22-3
1) N. CENTRAL 11-3  22-3

or Alphabetically which would be the same thing as above.

I will say North CEntral has overachieved all year and stunned everybody.

"Overachieved" or "grown up"?  (And I don't know the answer.)

The best single class I can recall in the CCIW in essentially forever would have to be IWU, Class of 2006: Dauksas, Amelianovich, the Jones twins, Schweer, etc.

Does "essentially forever" include the twenty-five or so years that you didn't follow the league, Chuck?

[Gregory Sager]

To early to tell, lets see how well the Young Cardinals perform when the stakes are turned up and higher! I do know this, they have talent, they are extremely well coached, they are loose and not supposed to be here! The only thing that really stands in their way, they have to perform and play back to back nights when they are now the hunted with the target on their back, instead of hunting the other teams they play! One other comment, out of their 8 man rotation, if I am correct they have 4 guys (Evans, Gillespe, Raridon, and I am sorry the name of the Transfer that has come on and helped since being healthy

That would be 6'6, 200 sophomore forward Aaron Tiknis, a transfer from D2 Wheeling Jesuit.

[Mr. Ypsi]

AndOne- I know you are excited and drinking the red kool-aid to celebrate.

the question I have is traditionally on a stat sheet if both teams have an identical conf. mark,  they list the team with the better overall record first.
I.E.
1) AUGUSTANA 11-3 22-3
1) N. CENTRAL 11-3  22-3

or Alphabetically which would be the same thing as above.

I will say North CEntral has overachieved all year and stunned everybody.

"Overachieved" or "grown up"?  (And I don't know the answer.)

The best single class I can recall in the CCIW in essentially forever would have to be IWU, Class of 2006: Dauksas, Amelianovich, the Jones twins, Schweer, etc.

Does "essentially forever" include the twenty-five or so years that you didn't follow the league, Chuck?

Unless one is as fanatically dedicated to travel as iwumichigan, it was well-nigh impossible to follow a d3 league from 2 states away prior to d3hoops.com.   Heck, with the media (non)converage of d3, I would have been hard pressed to follow the MIAA!

But point taken.  Any single-class candidates from my "lost era"?

[Gregory Sager]

.......which actually makes it an even more interesting question for the historians on the board:  In a second rephrasing of Mark's original question, when was the last time a CCIW conference co-champion   was not a lock for the tournament?  

before the CCIW had an automatic bid (circa 1980 or so)

the question came up in 1978 when north park won its first ncaa title.  the ncaa told us that the rules at that time allowed only one representative from a conference that did not have an automatic bid.  Thus, at that time, two cciw schools could have both had 25-1, 15-1 league records, with identical tiebreakers for the league title, and the league would have gotten only one team - decided by coin flip.

That was an incredibly stupid rule, since the 1978 field only had 30 teams. Two teams, Humboldt State and Ashland, got opening-round byes and played each other in the second round (Humboldt State, the winner, got to host North Park in the quarterfinals way out in the remote woods of northern California and succumbed to the Vikings in overtime). The CCIW's second-place team that season, Augustana, went 19-5, 12-4 and would've made a more-than-worthy addition to the field that March.

For those who are wondering why the CCIW didn't have an automatic bid in 1977-78, it's because two of the nine schools in the league -- Carroll and Illinois Wesleyan -- were still declared NAIA members at that point.

1980 was the first year the league got two bids, so i would imagine that was the first year the league got an automatic bid.

In 1979 the D3 tourney field had a full 32 teams for the first time, so there probably weren't any slots available for a CCIW runner-up, anyway, considering that there wasn't another CCIW team that had a record as sparkling as Augie's had been the previous season. The CCIW's two second-place teams for the 1978-79 season, Augustana and Millikin, finished 18-7, 11-5 and 17-9, 11-5, respectively.

I don't think that the CCIW officially received an automatic bid until the last NAIA holdout, Illinois Wesleyan, dropped its NAIA affiliation and became an exclusively D3 school in 1983. By that point, of course, it didn't matter, since the CCIW was an established powerhouse that was never going to be left out in the cold in terms of D3 tourney bids, automatic or not.

[Gregory Sager]

AndOne- I know you are excited and drinking the red kool-aid to celebrate.

the question I have is traditionally on a stat sheet if both teams have an identical conf. mark,  they list the team with the better overall record first.
I.E.
1) AUGUSTANA 11-3 22-3
1) N. CENTRAL 11-3  22-3

or Alphabetically which would be the same thing as above.

I will say North CEntral has overachieved all year and stunned everybody.

"Overachieved" or "grown up"?  (And I don't know the answer.)

The best single class I can recall in the CCIW in essentially forever would have to be IWU, Class of 2006: Dauksas, Amelianovich, the Jones twins, Schweer, etc.

Does "essentially forever" include the twenty-five or so years that you didn't follow the league, Chuck?

Unless one is as fanatically dedicated to travel as iwumichigan, it was well-nigh impossible to follow a d3 league from 2 states away prior to d3hoops.com.  Heck, with the media (non)converage of d3, I would have been hard pressed to follow the MIAA!

Not picking on you, Chuck (for a change). Just askin'.

But point taken.  Any single-class candidates from my "lost era"?

Heck, yeah. Right off the top of my head I can think of a couple:

IWU '77 (Jack Sikma, Bob Spear, John Lenehan)
NPC '80 (Michael Harper, Modzel Greer, Greg Gierke)

The NPC class of '85 (Justyne Monegain, Lars Anderson, Johnny Kuehn, Adam Lazich, Matt Schwartz) was right up there, too. I can probably think of more that are in that neighborhood if I give it some thought.

I'd put the Carthage class of '03 (Antoine McDaniel, Rob Garnes, Bart Fabian) right up there, too.

[TitansIWU]

Just a question, who is the most "sideline animated" coach in the CCIW?

After watching the Augustana coaching staff roam and rant with no technical fouls in sight last night, Grey Giovanine gets my vote, although Bosko has to be on the first team somewhere.

Thoughts?

Bosko's not all that animated. He's colorful (the monosyllabic barking at his players, the deep tan, the classic Djurickovian shrug and arm gestures), which is a different thing altogether than "animated." He doesn't wander up and down the bench, and he lobbies the refs rather than yells at them. After all, why should he yell at them? He's known some of the older ones, such as Reuben Norris, Ken Faulkner, Ken Maziarka, Fritz Larsen, etc., since the Carter administration. Mark Scherer's more animated than Bosko. Mike Schauer is, too, if your definition of "animated" focuses upon roaming the sidelines (Mike's a lot less rooted to his chair than was his mentor, Bill Harris).

Really, though, it's a Hobson's choice. Grey Giovanine is so much more animated (by any definition of the term) than his seven peers that it's really not even worth discussing, IMO.

I really wanted to use a different word than animated, but I couldn't think of how to get my first choice past the censors.

You did find a way to bring up a vague reference to a horse in your Hobson's choice comment. I don't have the same ability to veil a reference to my chosen member of the equine family!

[Gregory Sager]

We hired a new Around the Nation columnist and his first piece out of the gate includes an extensive section about North Central:

http://www.d3hoops.com/columns/around-the-nation/index

Great article, Pat, but you might want to inform Brian that "irregardless" is not a word.