MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[TitansIWU]

Titans win!

IWU - 69
UWSP - 61

Titans are going to have to shoot better free throws than they did, or they may not go much further.  45% ugh.

[iwu70]

Congrats to the Titans on a 69-61 win over the Pointers.  Good D, but poor shooting, esp. FTs.  Gotta do better tomorrow.  Zimmer sat most of the second half.   I fear for his foot injury.  He scored 10 in the first half.  Strong senior play by Gonzalez and Rudnicki. 

Way to go TITANS!

Go CCIW. 

IWU70

IWU women up 47-12, yes, that's right, 47-12 at the half in KY.  Melissa Gardner with 14 first half points, 4 treys. 

[iwu70]

Great game by Kman . . . 14 points, great D on the Pointers top player. 

IWU70

[petemcb]

What a country! I'm sitting in my living room with the fire going, watching iwu take care of business against UW-SP and Wheaton up on Gustavus Adolphus.  Thank you Internet and congrats to the Titans on a big win!  Now let's see Wheaton and NCC continue to represent the CCIW well.

[John Gleich]

Nice game by IWU.  I really liked how they defended and spread the ball around.  They're going to need Zimmer, I think, and they may need to shoot better to have a chance against (probably) Hope tomorrow... but they're a disciplined team with lots of great fundamentals.

UWSP looked young and played young tonight.  With the exception of Senior Jordan Brezinski, the Pointers were pretty out-strengthed by the Titans... but there were a lot of Freshmen out there for SP.

IWU got 14 more shots as Point turned it over 12 more times.  Lots of those turnovers were just poor plays... indecisiveness, especially when you jump to take a jumper and then try to pass it off and the guy is crashing the boards.

Good luck to the Titans the rest of the way!

[diehardfan]

Woooooooo! Round two, here we come

68-60 Final for whoever is counting.

[petemcb]

Congrats to the Thunder!  CCIW goes 2 for 2. Bring it home NCC!  Schulze comes up really big.

[petemcb]

Add NCC to the list of CCIW winners.  We go 3 for 3 tonight!

[iwu70]

CCIW goes 5 for 5, men and women.  All teams into the second round. 

Carthage women had a big win tonight vs. WI. Whitewater.  IWU wins also, bigtime.

NCC, WC, and IWU all win on the men's side.

Keep it rolling CCIW !!!

IWU70

[NCF]

Congrats to the CCIW men's  and  women's teams!!! Keep it going!!

[unanimous22]

I think we're seeing the reason CCIW teams get Pool C bids.

[shepherd]

Eddgewood beats UWRF 75-67 by playing great defense the first half. So tomorrow Wheaton vs Edgwood at 7:00 pm central.  I think Wheaton has a chance to get to the sectionals vs the VA Wesleyan pod.  Further than that I don't know enough about the teams.

Hope looked off the chart tonight.  They moved the ball as good as Wash U a few years ago. The game vs Il Wesleyan should be a great one.  I for one will be watching both the Wheaton and Il Wesleyan game. 

Congratulations to the CCIW and win 3 more tomorrow.
Go Thunder!

[section7]

Nice win by IWU tonight against the Point.

As a Hope fan, loved getting to watch a hard played game prior to the Hope game.

Was very impressed with IWU's defense and overall intensity.

#25 Zimmer? did appear to be limping with ankle in the 2nd half

#32 Davis, well, all I can say is he is a MAN.  He will give Hope fits tomorrow night.

[Titan Q]

IWU 69
UW-Stevens Point 61

http://www.iwusports.com/custompages/MBB/MBB2012/HTML/ncaa1.htm

http://www.pantagraph.com/sports/college/basketball/men/iwu-men-win-ncaa-tourney-opener/article_2a9c3a98-64d3-11e1-9f59-001871e3ce6c.html


I've been in Phoenix on a work trip since Thursday.   Definitely very strange for me to watch an IWU NCAA tournament game from a hotel room in the desert, but glad I was able to see the game.

IWU's performance last night certainly wasn't a thing of beauty, but I thought it was an awfully gutty 40 minutes from Ron Rose's team.  Some observations...

* I give Jordan Zimmer a ton of credit for grinding out 20 minutes.  As I posted before the game, he was "doubtful" at best just a couple hours before tip (with a foot injury that has had him in a boot).  It was like watching a different player - he was not really able to run around screens like a mad man, as he usually does, and just generally be in constant motion away from the ball - but he provided a perimeter presence while he was on the floor that the Pointers had to respect.  And he scored 10 big first half points to help the Titans establish the lead.  Zimmer probably only played 5-6 minutes in the 2nd half, and was clearly hurting (left the game limping and remained out a long time) - I appreciated him trying to give it a go.  I certainly can't imagine his foot feeling any better 24 hours later - and think there is a good chance it's worse after playing last night - but it would probably take a lot to keep IWU's senior captain off the floor tonight.

* IWU's defense was a good as I've seen it all year.  The Titans just made absolutely everything difficult for the UW-Stevens Point offense.  The Pointers had several possessions where they were forced into bad looks at the end of the shot clock.  A telling stat - UWSP had 9 assists to 19 turnovers.

* An achilles heal for IWU this season has been turnovers.  Last night the Titans really took care of the ball - just 7 turnovers (to 14 assists), and I think 6 of those were in the 1st half if I recall the halftime stats. 

* I was shocked at how much IWU physically dominated a WIAC tournament team.  I knew coming in that Stevens Point wasn't very physical, but seeing the disparity play out last night was still very strange.  The Pointers were completely manhandled at the forward spots by 6-6 F John Koschnitzy, 6-5 Victor Davis, 6-5 Andrew Ziemnik, and 6-3 Eric Dortch.  I just can't remember ever seen that in a tournament game vs a WIAC team.

* IWU's Eliud Gonzalez, John Koschnitzky, and Stephen Rudnicki really stepped up last night with fellow senior Jordan Zimmer injured.  Gonzalez had 7 rebounds and 6 assists (and just 2 turnovers) and just had one of those true "floor general" kind of games.  Koschnitzky (15 pts) and Stephen Rudnicki (14 pts, 3 reb, 2 assists) combined for 29 points and helped fill the scoring void.  Both were very big down the stretch.

* I thought sophomore Victor Davis (11 pts, 3 reb) had a very strong game.  He played with patience and under control and just was a really tough matchup for the Pointers.


Again, it was't pretty, but I was very proud of the way the Titans played vs Stevens Point.  To say they played hard and with a lot of heart and passion would be an understatement.  There were just so many little examples of these things throughout the game.

The Titans would be an underdog @ Hope with a healthy Jordan Zimmer (at the Shirk Center it might close to a "pick 'em" with Zimmer healthy), so they will really have their work cut out for them this evening.  IWU's competitive advantage in this game will be physicality.   Just as Stevens Point did, I think the Flying Dutchmen will have some trouble on both ends of the floor with IWU's 3/4/5 players.  I guess I won't be surprised if Hope wins by a comfortable margin, but I also won't be surprised if this is a very close game.

[Mr. Ypsi]

I'll second everything Q reported.  I hadn't heard about Zimmer's injury prior to the game, but happened to be sitting behind his grandfather, who was surprised he played at all.  All his points came in about the first ten minutes (he was off to a MONSTER start), but he rarely saw the floor after that.  I have doubts that he can play effectively against Hope tonight, but I'll cross my fingers!

Victor Davis certainly impressed sac!  I was talking to him between games, and he didn't think Hope had any answer to him.  On the other hand, their forward, Nate Snuggerud, had a career game with 37 and 14!

I'm hoping for a good, close game tonight - because I'm pretty sure IWU can't blow out Hope this year, so if it isn't close it means WE got blown out.

The Titan defense was just phenomenal against UWSP.  Twice they didn't beat the shot clock at all, and at least two other times they had to do a deperation shot to beat it.  We're gonna need a repeat against Hope, but their trio of guards may be two quick to expect that.