MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[79jaybird]

Augie 9-0  should we may as well give them the hardware now?
Elmhurst 6-3  big game coming up Sat at IWU
IWU 6-3 and/or 5-4  depending upon tonight vs. NC
I have to tip my cap to NPU for playing hard vs. Augie in Rock Island.  Good to see that no matter where you are in the conf. you play hard.

[Gregory Sager]

Elmhurst 76, Millikin 71

Chris Martin, 38 pts (20-for-freakin'-20 from the FT line), 11 rebs
Brent Ruch, 13 pts, 9 rebs
Nick Michael, 12 pts

Drew Gensler, 24 pts (12-12 FT)
Korte Long, 18 pts, 9 rebs

Elmhurst gets revenge in Decatur in a game most notable for the charity stripe exhibition put on by Martin and Gensler. Martin's 20-20 performance from the line is a new CCIW single-game record, snapping the old 16-16 record set by Sonny Parker of North Park in 1985 and Blaise Bugajski of Illinois Wesleyan the year before, both against Carroll.

Elmhurst led for the first three-quarters of the game, enjoying a bulge as big as 15 points in the first half and going into the locker room with a 38-26 advantage. The hosts fought back, though, and took the lead at 48-46 with 10:14 left. Elmhurst righted the ship, though, and although the Big Blue did manage one more tie at the 4:07 mark (61-61) it was basically all Bluejays the rest of the way, although they never got their lead back up above seven.

[dansand]

The matchup between the two Viking squads tonight resembled, I imagine, what a basketball game between real Vikings would look like...on a Viking ship...in rough seas.
     I've used the word brutal to describe a couple of other Augie wins and it applies here as well. That's not to take anything away from North Park. I was very impressed with Mathisen, especially in the early going. They seemed to go away from him in the second half. Jay Alexander looked good also. But in all honesty, their supporting cast didn't look very impressive and Augie shouldn't have let them hang around as well as they did. Augie has had a tendency all year to play to the level of their competition and tonight was no exception.

     My take on Harrigan was just that he wasn't as assertive on offense as he usually is. North Park didn't really deny him the ball so much or force him to take difficult shots, I think he just passed up some opportunities that he normally doesn't. Dain Swetalla played pretty well. He's a bit of a bull in a china shop right now, but he's pretty athletic for a 6-9 kid and I think he'll get a lot better. Drew Wessels probably had the best game for the Rock Island Vikings tonight. The poor guy can't buy a shot beyond a layup, but he was a terror on defense tonight. I'm pretty sure all four of his field goals were layups off of steals. I would have guessed that he had double digits in steals, but the box score says eight. Still pretty impressive.

     With the enigmatic Red Men coming to Carver Saturday, the Vikes better be a heck of a lot more ready to play than they were tonight. But, hey, a win's a win and I'm pretty happy with 19-1 and 9-0.

[Stat]

Good recap Dan, but how about a paragraph or two?

[sac]

The matchup between the two Viking squads tonight resembled, I imagine, what a basketball game between real Vikings would look like...on a Viking ship...in rough seas.
     

Thats just classic, nice.

[titanhammer]

I hope Schweer is OK.  The guys that do the "dirty work" are very important to  championship teams.  Steve is a very talented player and hope he's OK.  Could this be the Titans third set of twins:  Jones twins, Freeman twins, mask twins?  Jason could put his old one on for fun and have triplets for the first time.

[robertgoulet]

great game in naperville tonight. game of runs...North Central was up by 9 twice and 12 once......both times they got up 9 IWU cut the lead down to 2 or 3 in under 2 minutes. tough loss for North Central, they controlled the game until about 3 or 4 minutes left. They looked like the better team tonight for most of the game.

[Go Blue]

Wild game at The Griz tonight.  25 fouls called in the first half including 3 technicals and 47 fouls for the game and there probably could have been more called and 62 total free throws for the game?!?!  It was definitely crazy!  From the get-go, it looked like Chris Martin was not going to allow his team to lose the game.  He was pretty good tonight and Millikin is awfully small at the 3 without Mike Gavic.  The Big Blue battled throughout but it was late put-backs by Brent Ruch that really hurt them in the end.  It's been one of those years for Millikin playing a lot of close games in the conference and not getting the W in the end.  Hopefully they can bounce back and get North Central on Saturday for the second time this season.  

[veterancciwfan]

A classic D3 game at Naperville with IWU winning 91-88. IWU looked beat in both halves but made miraculous comebacks to win an emotionally draining game. Too bad one team had to lose. NCC is one substitute guard away from being perhaps the best team in the league. Matt Arnold hit a huge 3 point shot (around the 4 minute mark?) to give IWU a 2 point lead. There was a lot of coaching in the final 1:30 with numerous timeouts, substitutions, and defense changes. What a tough league. The difference beween winning and losing is so slim. Great players, great coaches, great fans are some of the reasons the CCIW is such a great league. As a fan, an amazing game to witness. Both teams started out slowly. I bet the FG percentages for both teams in the last 30 minutes was over 65%. NCC hit a hot streak in the 2nd half where they looked invincible led by Vicario's 3s. Two huge plays: 1) a combination block by the Jones brothers in the last 5 minutes. 2) a spetacular leaping defensive rebound by Teising (a tremendous athlete) in the last 2 minutes. He fell down after the leap with the ball in his hands. The refs huddled and discussed either a foul on IWU or traveling and called the latter. I thought IWU got the calls the last 2 minutes. Great job of coaching by Trost except for a confused zone defense that allowed Vicario a wide open 3 from the corner to cut a 4 point lead to one with about 10 seconds left. IWU started out in a zone and Vicario shreded it in the 1st half. IWU scored 49 in the 2nd half to win it in typical Dennie Bridges (remember him?) fashion-simply outscore your opponent. NCC played only 7 and Raridon's son only played a minute, so it was basically a 6 man rotation. I thought NCC looked fatigued in the final 4 minutes. Tired legs, especially Vicario who played the entire 40 minutes (I think). I really admire NCC's very effecient offense which features a lot of crisp passes, great spacing, few dribbles, and very few TOs. This was game IWU had to win and now we await another classic at Shirk with Elmhurst. Good night and good luck (especially IWU).

[redmen1]

Redmen dominate. They start out second half with a 21-0 run. Jefferey played well and Imani had 20 to lead the team. Keena Johnson played well also. Redmen need to keep it going. And i won the 50/50 raffle tonight and got 45 bucks spilt 3 ways so i got about 14 bucks. We need more fans. This team will be good next year. Any comments???

[Titan Q]

The Pantagraph article and the boxscore from last night's game in Naperville...

http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2006/02/02/sports/doc43e1ac22d28a2685458390.txt

http://www2.noctrl.edu/athlet/basketball_m/05-06/ncciwu2.htm


Keelan Amelianovich was outstanding in leading the Titans to a very hard-fought road win.  Amelianovich scored 28 points in the final 26 minutes of the game, including a number of long 3's (one about 26 feet) as well as some impressive takes to the basket.

North Central led 44-35 with 1:06 to play in the 1st half when the Titan scored 7 unanswered points in 59 seconds.  Amelianovich hit a 3 to start the run, followed by a Jason Fisher stolen in-bounds pass and layup (the boxscore credits this play to Adam Dauksas), and then Amelianovich hit a tough 6 footer to make it 44-42.  (The Titans looked to have tied to game at 44 just before the horn, but a Zach Freeman put-back was called offensive goaltending...which was probably the right call.)

North Central was amazing on offense for most of the evening.  Coming out of the locker room, the Cardinals connected on 15 of their first 17 field goals (think about that for a second).  Anthony Simmons (28 pts, 9-14 FG) was outstanding again for NCC and and Ray Vicario (23 pts, 7-12 3-pt) kept knocking down 3's.  The Cards were up 80-68 with 8:52 to play and looked to be on their way to a win in this big league game.

Matt Arnold got things going the right direction for the Titans, making a 3 to cut the NCC lead to 9 at 8:20.  After another defensive stop, Cory Jones scored in the paint, then a Zach Freeman dunk made it 80-75, and an Adam Dauksas 3 cut it to 80-78 with 6:17.  Cory Jones completed the 12-0 Titan run with a basket at 4:41 to tie the game at 80.

North Central regained a 1-point lead, 83-82, with 1:49 to play before Matt Arnold hit the shot of the game for Illinois Wesleyan - a 3 from the left wing to put IWU up 85-83 with 1:28 to go.  Zach Freeman knocked down 4 big free throws around a basket by his high school teamate Adam Krumtinger to make it 89-85 Titans at :37.  The Cards came charging back however behind a Ray Vicario 3 from the right corner to cut the Titan lead to 1.  Amelianovich hit 1 of 2 FT's to put IWU up 2 with :20 to play and Vicario could not connect on a 3 on the other end.  Zach Freeman could not ice it for the Titans, making 1 of 2 to push the IWU advantage up to 3, but Ray Vicario missed a long 3 to tie it at the buzzer.

It was a very strange evening that saw the women's game start 1:15 late due to the officials not being there...then of course that game went to overtime.  The men started at 8:40 - an hour and 10 minutes after the scheduled tip.  This was a big win on the road for the Titans, behind great performances by Keelan Amelianovich and Zach Freeman (20 points, 11 rebounds) and a lot of players who stepped up down the stretch.  Adam Dauksas settled down after taking about 3 bad shots when things weren't going well for the Titans to have a 14 point/7assist/1 turnover game.  IWU shot 54.8% from the field and the Cardinals a blistering 59.6%.

Adam Dauksas became the 2nd player in IWU history to surpass the 500 assist mark.  With 506 total now, Dauksas needs 18 to tie Brian Martin's ('89-93) school record.

[nochoresmartin11]

Well, it's too bad Martin couldn't assert himself again tonight, and it probalby not first team all conference.  I think it's time for that idea to be thrown out the window.  Good win Jays, gotta keep chipping away, (Chipping if Augie would lose a game!)...Good luck to everybody down the stretch. 

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Good insights, D.  I also really love the picture.  It's just got an understated...um... charm? about it.

Whatever it is, karma points every time I see it.  More of us have to get savvy enough to load a picture of ourselves so we can all be more personable.

[robertgoulet]

one other thing to add from last night.....i mentioned to one of my friends during the game that North Central was not shooting very well from the foul line.......

they shot 56% for the game (10-18).

in my opinion, if you shoot that poorly from the foul line you do not deserve to win a close game. that has got to be one of my biggest basketball pet peeves.....make your free throws!!!

i think the same thing whenever i see illinois play, they dont make free throws. it's going to come back to bite them one of these games.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

I agree.  Missing free throws are unacceptible.

By the way, with a handle like Robert Goulet, there are a lot of quality picture options for you as well.