MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[USee]

Wheaton got a decent draw. I think it's a little unfair Hope is hosting instead of Wheaton but the Thunder have to feel like they can compete with anyone on any floor after playing the schedule they played.  Should be a fun weekend.

When I sat down and did my own seeds(1,2,3,4 in each pod) I ended up with Wheaton as the last #1, Hope the first #2.  I felt it could go either way and you could make a case for both.

I think if the regional were at Wheaton you could say the Great Lakes #2 having to travel to Midwest #3 might be a little unfair as well.  No?

Uh, no. There is a very clear metric between the two.

[sac]

Wheaton got a decent draw. I think it's a little unfair Hope is hosting instead of Wheaton but the Thunder have to feel like they can compete with anyone on any floor after playing the schedule they played.  Should be a fun weekend.

When I sat down and did my own seeds(1,2,3,4 in each pod) I ended up with Wheaton as the last #1, Hope the first #2.  I felt it could go either way and you could make a case for both.

I think if the regional were at Wheaton you could say the Great Lakes #2 having to travel to Midwest #3 might be a little unfair as well.  No?

Uh, no. There is a very clear metric between the two.

Win percentage and regional ranking were in Hope's favor.   They also looked at results vs Carthage, Illinois Wesleyan and Calvin.  I'm sure it was very close and a tough decision and could have gone either way.

[USee]

Wheaton got a decent draw. I think it's a little unfair Hope is hosting instead of Wheaton but the Thunder have to feel like they can compete with anyone on any floor after playing the schedule they played.  Should be a fun weekend.

When I sat down and did my own seeds(1,2,3,4 in each pod) I ended up with Wheaton as the last #1, Hope the first #2.  I felt it could go either way and you could make a case for both.

I think if the regional were at Wheaton you could say the Great Lakes #2 having to travel to Midwest #3 might be a little unfair as well.  No?

Uh, no. There is a very clear metric between the two.

Win percentage and regional ranking were in Hope's favor.   They also looked at results vs Carthage, Illinois Wesleyan and Calvin.  I'm sure it was very close and a tough decision and could have gone either way.

That's code for "I know we lost head to head, but let's pretend that didn't actually happen". Come on man. Hope lost HTH. The rest of that criteria is important without that glaring result staring us all in the face. It's a crime Wheaton isn't hosting. So be it.

[Pat Coleman]

Someone please explain to me why the #2 team in the Great Lakes should not be hosting the #3? They like having two hosts in each region... unless its the South and you are Scranton.

Yes, but Hope (Great Lakes) and Wheaton (Midwest) are in different regions.  Just because Team A is a #2 seed in one region, and Team B is a #3 in another, does not mean that Team A should automatically be a higher seed than Team B in terms of the bracket.  It is still supposed to come down, like everything else, to the criteria:

* Hope: .760/.556/2-4 (lost to Wheaton)
* Wheaton: .704/.607/8-5 (beat Hope)

It seems to me Wheaton should be a higher seed in the tournament than Hope.  With mileage not a factor between Hope/Wheaton/Rose-Hulman/Penn St-Behrend, I think Wheaton has a real beef.

It is supposed to but in reality they really try to give two pods to each region.

Gotta pull the line about lack of creativity and pin it to the top of every board for a while.

[Denny McKinney]

Kiko and anyone else. It is Gorlok. No C. We have our own poster who has trouble with it. But, for this week they earned for folks to take the time to get it right. No Beef, here. When the Gorloks play the Griffins (FU). We have enough body parts to build 3 or 4 mascots.

[BunchTime]

Looking at the Webster Gorloks...

Record
20-7 overall/15-3 SLIAC

Common opponents with IWU
Elmhurst 71 Webster 70 (11/26 at Webster)
IWU 104 Elmhurst 73 (1/4 at Elmhurst)
IWU 80 Elmhurst 68 (2/8 at IWU)

Wash U 85 Webster 68 (1/4 at Wash U)
IWU 98 Wash U 73 (at IWU)

Massey ratings
IWU #4
Webster #168

Rotation
G - Hollis Edwards , 5-10 Sr (6.4 ppg, 1.9 rpg, 3.6 apg)
G - Ahmad Smith, 6-2 Jr (16.5 ppg, 2.8 rpg, 2.2 apg)
G - Hunter Ward, 6-3 Fr (10.0 ppg, 5.1 ppg, 2.7 apg)
C - Aaron Griffin, 6-6 Jr (8.3 ppg, 5.6 rpg)
C - Kevin Miller, 6-8 So (14.7 ppg, 8.4 rpg)

G - Jonathan Odjo, 5-11 Fr (4.4 ppg)
G - Adam Etter, 5-11 Fr (5.4 ppg)
C - Jarrod Huskey, 6-6 Sr (6.3 ppg, 3.7 rpg)

NCAA D3 Tournament Records
Webster: 0-3 (3 appearances)
IWU: 49-22 (23 appearances)

Been to handful of Webster games.  A little more info on the Gorloks for you...

PG Hollis Edwards -- senior leader...heart and soul of team...not a prolific scorer...doesn't look for his shot but he can knock down an occasional perimeter jumper....very active on the defensive end...2 to 1 assist to TO ratio...solid, stead player.

SG Ahmad Smith -- Gorloks leading scorer....can score in bunches...athletic slasher...not a high percentage 3pt shooter....more of a streak shooter...can hit tough mid-range, off-balance shots...likes to get to the rim...tendency to hunt his own shot.

SF Hunter Ward -- perhaps Webster's best player...not your typical SLIAC player...very athletic...can do a little bit of everything...1st game wasn't until Jan. and has really picked it up in last 10 games. Cracked the starting lineup in late Jan...has scored 15 or more in last 4 of 5 games. 

PF Aaaon Griffin -- Pretty athletic post player...solid player...has the ability to have a breakout game in the scoring column...has been inconsistent at times...can hit the 12-15 ft jump shot...footwork is a little awkward at times but gets the job done...has only scored in double figures 1 time in last 7 games.

C Kevin Miller -- has lost a lot of weight but conditioning and fouls can sometimes become a problem...surprisingly athletic...very skilled and tough around the rim...Gorloks 2nd leading scorer....is the guy Gorloks will look to when they need a bucket...All but 5 games he has scored in double figures.

Bench guys -- mostly solid, steady energy guys...not looked to score all that much...Huskey, a former starter, is the most experienced and capable of scoring and playing bigger minutes. 

[sac]

From the manual:

The Championships Committee has prioritized the following site-selection criteria for all championships:

1.  Complete bid;
2.  Quality and availability of the facility and other necessary accommodations;
3.  Geographical location (which may include such factors as rotation of sites, weather, accessibility and transportation costs);
4.  Seeding
5.  Attendance history, hosting history and revenue potential, which shall be considered necessary to assure fiscal responsibility


The highest-seeded team that meets all selection criteria (and after a review of the submitted host materials) will be selected as the host institution, provided geographic proximity is maintained. It is the intent of the committee to create competition brackets with a maximum of eight teams competing in each bracket. Flights will be kept to a minimum. The host institution will play the second game when applicable.

The higher-ranked team will be listed at the top of the competition bracket. The top team on the bracket is the designated home team and will wear the light- (white-)colored jersey in contrast with the visiting team's dark uniform.

[USee]

It is a tradition unlike any other, since it is playoff time it requires my own version of the starting lineups. Since we have 3 CCIW teams playing, I will roll out these lineups on different days. Let's  start with Augie vs St Thomas:

St Thomas Tommies feature:

Zach "Dennis" Riedman   Sr, F, 6-4, 12.5 ppg
"Sarah" Conner Nord    Jr, F 6-6, 11.5 ppg
Marcus "Smart" Alipate   Jr, G, 6-0, 10.7 ppg
Erik "Spoelstra" Tengwall    Sr, G, 6-1, 9.9 ppg
Taylor "Inigo" Montero    So, G, 6-4, 7.0 ppg

Off the bench:
Cortez "Peanut" Tillman So, G, 5-11, 5.0 ppg
"Bob" Dylan "Tony" Stewart Jr, G, 6-3, 4.7 ppg
Grant "Hill" Shaeffer  Fr, G, 6-0, 4.7 ppg


Augie features:
Hunter "Gatherer" Hill   So, G, 5-9 12.8 ppg
Tayvian "Magic" Johnson   So, F, 6-6 10.0 ppg
Ben "Nolan" Ryan  So, F, 6-5, 8.8 ppg
Kevin "Love" Schlitter    Sr, C, 6-8, 7.6 ppg
Danielius "Marcus Aurelius" Jurgutus, Jr, G, 6-0, 8.3 ppg

Off the bench:
Nic "Van Exel" Hoepfner Jr, F, 6-6, 7.0 ppg
Jawan "Howard-Webster" Straughter   So, G, 6-1, 4.4 ppg
Griffin "dor" Pils"ner"   So, G, 6-4, 3.6 ppg

[kiko]

Kiko and anyone else. It is Gorlok. No C. We have our own poster who has trouble with it. But, for this week they earned for folks to take the time to get it right. No Beef, here. When the Gorloks play the Griffins (FU). We have enough body parts to build 3 or 4 mascots.

My apologies.  They've earned the right to expect idiots like me to get it right.

[Denny McKinney]

I had a temporary malfunction. A post I was trying to put on SLIAC page momentarily appears here. If you caught it. You were not seeing things. 

[WUPHF]

My apologies.  They've earned the right to expect idiots like me to get it right.

If you knew how often the mascot is spelled Gorlock or Gorelock by members of the Webster campus community--faculty, staff and students--you would not feel the need to apologize.

I actually love the Gorlock mascot and current logo which looks just like a buffalo at first glance, but I absolutely love the first rendition of the Gorlock which included a pump sprayer: http://www.websterathletics.com/sports/2008/1/8/GORLOKHISTORY.aspx

[toooldtohoop]

Congratulations to Tyler Peters on a tremendous season, an outstanding career, and his nomination as a Jostens finalist.

http://athletics.wheaton.edu/news/2014/3/4/MBB_0304141927.aspx

Hopefully a lot more to be done!

[Denny McKinney]

+1K Kiko. Like I said, it was not a Beef. I just figured if we can keep track of SOS's to the hundredth, Explaining the "No C" was not an issue. But, way to be a stand up kind.

[Gregory Sager]

From the manual:

The Championships Committee has prioritized the following site-selection criteria for all championships:

1.  Complete bid;
2.  Quality and availability of the facility and other necessary accommodations;
3.  Geographical location (which may include such factors as rotation of sites, weather, accessibility and transportation costs);
4.  Seeding
5.  Attendance history, hosting history and revenue potential, which shall be considered necessary to assure fiscal responsibility


The highest-seeded team that meets all selection criteria (and after a review of the submitted host materials) will be selected as the host institution, provided geographic proximity is maintained. It is the intent of the committee to create competition brackets with a maximum of eight teams competing in each bracket. Flights will be kept to a minimum. The host institution will play the second game when applicable.

The higher-ranked team will be listed at the top of the competition bracket. The top team on the bracket is the designated home team and will wear the light- (white-)colored jersey in contrast with the visiting team's dark uniform.

(underlined emphasis mine)

I was going to post this as well. Don't underestimate the D3 men's basketball Championship Committee's desire to make some coin, if possible, out of this tournament. And don't dismiss that desire out of hand as being nothing more than a distasteful grab for filthy lucre, either -- remember, D3 is a welfare case as far as the NCAA is concerned. Our various national tournaments and meets are funded by D1 football and men's basketball TV revenue.

The 800 extra tickets that they'll sell by holding the pod at DeVos rather than King aren't chicken feed.

[Gregory Sager]

One other thought.  This jumped out at me when Titan Q recently resurrected the list of incoming recruits for the 2010-11 season:

Unofficial list of CCIW recruits (6/24/10)...

North Central

* Landon Gamble (6-5 F/C, Lockport Township H.S.) - 9.2 ppg, 4.5 rpg 

Its strange sometimes to see how numbers translate from one level to the next.  From a 9.2 ppg / 4.5 rpg average in high school, Landon Gamble blossomed into a model of consistency during his four years as a Cardinal:

14.1 ppg / 5.2 rpg as a freshman
13.7 ppg / 5.4 rpg as a sophomore
14.5 ppg / 5.8 rpg as a junior, and
15.5 ppg / 5.2 rpg as a senior (while facing an extraordinary number of double- and triple teams)

Landon was probably only the 3rd best player on his high school team. The NCC staff, primarily assistant coach Todd Kelly, saw his potential.
Landon had less help and faced more opposition this year than ever.
To cap his remarkable career, Landon scored his all-time high of 33 points in his final college game. He ended up with 1,616, 4th in NCC history.

I'd forgotten to make this point last week when the topic was active -- I blame it on the avalanche of posts about Jim O'Boye reffing Wesleyan games -- but the points that kiko and Mark made about Landon Gamble are a great illustration of something that I've maintained for a long time is true about recruiting, particularly in terms of recruiting at this level.

Some people get all worked up about a recruit's high-school statistics and/or awards. They're all well and good, but neither statistics nor awards are the best barometer for trying to gauge how well a recruit is likely to perform in college. High school is high school, and college is college, and they are very different levels. While there's a general trend for players with gaudy high-school numbers to do well in the college game, and for players who put up pedestrian numbers in high school to not be college standouts, there's so many exceptions to those trends that statistics and awards don't even come close to being fool-proof indicators.

Of course, there's no such thing as a fool-proof indicator for gauging how well a high-school senior will perform on the court as a collegian. But the best indicator is what I call (because it sounds fancy and smart ) a player's pursuit index. What I mean by "pursuit index" is this: How many college programs are recruiting this kid? At what level -- D1, D2, D3, NAIA-1, NAIA-2, juco, etc. -- are those programs? And how successful are those programs within their respective levels?

Chicagoland was full of high-school centers who had much better statistics than did Landon Gamble during his senior year at Lockport. Nobody who looked at the list that Bob was keeping of CCIW recruits back in the spring of '10 probably gave a second thought to Landon Gamble, based upon his stats as posted by Bob. But, while I don't know exactly what Gamble's pursuit index was, I know that there were at least two CCIW programs who really coveted him: North Central and North Park. I remember sitting in the stands at NCC's baseball stadium during a CCIW baseball tournament game that spring with Steve Schweer, who was then North Park's GA, and we were talking about next season's CCIW recruits. He was very disappointed that Gamble had elected not to choose NPU; Gamble had apparently balked at the fact that the Park had two more years' worth of Emanuel Crosby's services to go, whereas NCC had an immediate opening at the center position (does anybody remember Brandon Stanciel? ) and he therefore would have the chance to step right into the starting lineup as a Cardinals freshman. Steve was pretty sure that Gamble was going to pan out to be a very, very good CCIW center, and he was right.

As I said, I don't know how many other schools were after Gamble, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were more than just NPU and NCC. The reason why I think that the most important indicator of how well a high-school player will do in college is the number, level, and quality of college programs pursuing him on the recruiting trail is this: College coaches get paid to assess high-school talent. That's their job. Recruiting is by far the biggest and most important thing that college coaches do, so high-school talent evaluation is a core skill for them. Sure, they'll look at stats and awards, but they're all about the eyeball test. They want to look at a player in a game situation and visualize what he'll be like in three or four years, three or four years that are very important not only in terms of skills development but in physical development as well. The physical difference between an 18-year-old basketball player and a 21-year-old basketball player is often pretty dramatic.

No smart college coach recruits based upon high-school stats and awards. He recruits based upon what he sees as college potential. That's why Landon Gamble was a blue chip, in spite of his modest numbers as a Lockport senior -- and it's why pursuit index, rather than stats and awards, is the best gauge of a recruit's potential.