MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Naperick]

Anyone know how often The Hangar sells out?

Believe it or not, its not that common of an occurance. 
The last sellout was for the win over IWU in the 3rd round of the national tournament on 3/16/13. The crowd that evening was SRO! 

A very well played game by both CCIW squads!  I was standing for nearly 2 hours and enjoyed every minute.

[Naperick]

Can anyone see a scenario with 4 CCIW schools making the D3 tourney?
It would probably mean NPU or NCC won the CCIW tourney.
Elmhurst & IWU split their next two games.
And we know Augustana is in.

Maybe with a little luck and all of the conference leaders winning their conference tourneys?  Maybe?




Nevermind!  As I wrote this post, I talked myself out of it.

[markerickson]

Even if the four seed wins the conference tourney, I do not envision more than two teams advancing to the tourney.

I am not surprised that NCC does not often sell out.  I am surprised that the program has not enticed one sellout against a comparable or superior opponent since 2013, but has somehow mustered enough energy now against a lesser opponent.

[AndOne]

Incidentally, if NCC were to drop out of the ranking, I presume Elmhurst would then go from 4 wins vs regionally-ranked opponents to only 2 (so far) which could prove to be quite significant.

Good point.

So there should be lots of NCC fans in Elmhurst on Sat! 

I will be huge Cardinals fan tomorrow night!
My wife went to NCC so I always root for the Cardinals..........................except when they play Elmhurst.

Something is amiss in the land of Oz.
A woman smart enough to go to NCC who then marries an Elmhurst guy? 
What form of sorcery did you use, Naperick? 

[AndOne]

Anyone know how often The Hangar sells out?

Believe it or not, its not that common of an occurance. 
The last sellout was for the win over IWU in the 3rd round of the national tournament on 3/16/13. The crowd that evening was SRO! 

A very well played game by both CCIW squads!  I was standing for nearly 2 hours and enjoyed every minute.

You should have seen the Seat Nazi before the game. 

[AndOne]

Both Greg and Titan Q have been very kind to iiwwuu, who seems to have joined in the last week and whose first two posts are highly critical of--one could say an attack on--Ron Rose.  The idea that a DIII coach--or ANY coach--could "hoard" players in the current higher education environment is absolutely absurd.  DIII players are not on athletic scholarships (and those are limited even at DI and DII).  All small colleges, including IWU, are finding it extremely difficult to cover the financial needs of their students and balance the books (and let's not even start on faculty compensation!).  Combine that with demanding admission requirements and the job of recruiting becomes even tougher.

With respect I'm going to counter your point above with the premise that the 'hoarding' of players actually benefits IWU.  Here's why... If the IWU basketball roster has 7-9 additional players who are recruited, and lacking the offer to play IWU basketball I am assuming that almost all of them would go to another college.  If we assume that 1 of the 7-9 would have gone to IWU anyway, and if you assume financial assistance of $13k of the $48k it costs to go to IWU, you still have 6-8 players who pay $35k/year to attend.  The result is an extra $210k-280k per year of extra income for IWU.

Is IWU's roster larger and is 'hoarding' occurring?  Look at the MBB rosters for other CCIW schools -- Augustana 19 / NCC 16 / Carthage 21 / Elmhurst 21 / Wheaton 18 (source: each schools web site).  At 27, IWU's roster is significantly larger.  And in the AAU circuit, and backed by the figures above, it would seem to indicate that IWU's roster is in fact bloated - to the benefit of IWU, to the benefit of the basketball program, and to the detriment of the players imho.  I'm simply pointing out a trend that I see developing, and one that I don't think is in the best interest of IWU or the players.  Its a fair discussion.  And one that impacts the success of the program.

First of all, I'm sure many students at IWU wish the 2014-2015 cost was $48K rather than the true cost which approaches $51K. 

Secondly, another disadvantage of a larger roster is the fact that the larger the roster, the higher the chance any particular player will see little or no playing time both from season to season, and over the course of a career. When there are only 200 minutes of playing time available during each game, and only 5 players can be on the floor at a time, a roster of 27 means there are over FIVE times as many players on the roster as can play at any given time. If IWU plays a 10 man rotation, that means 17 players will see little or no playing time over an entire season. Carrying that forward, depending on the class status of the starters and subs who do play, many members of a 27 man roster will have little or no possibility of seeing more than a minuscule amount of playing time until their junior year at best, likely their senior year. Furthermore, there will be several who will really never play during an entire 4 year career, if they stick it out that long.
While a kid who does stick it out should be admired, hopefully they are also realistic and accepting of their realistic chance of ever playing.

[iwu70]

AO, most of the deep pine-sitters on the IWU roster play 15-20 games per year via the JV program.  It's IWU's development league/process.  You are right that some guys never make major varsity PT.  Many stick it out, true program guys, and only get to play when juniors or seniors -- surely that's been the case with Pennington, perhaps Nelms next year etc.  Some guys, seeing the reality, will give up on basketball and do other things available at IWU -- in leadership, in other sports, in many extra-curricular organisatons and clubs, or in academics.  IWU does have some history of injuries, and that also gives some guys their break, their chance to play -- sometimes early in the varsity season, sometimes late in the season.  Both have happened in previous years. 

Looking forward to Saturday's schedule of big games. 

Glad to see the inauguration of the Dennie Bridges Court at The Shirk.

IWU 70

[Titan Q]

Illinois Wesleyan (17-7, 9-4) vs Elmhurst (19-5, 9-4), 7:00pm...

(conference only stats)

Illinois Wesleyan (17-7, 9-4)
G - Dylan Overstreet, 6-3/180 Sr. (11.6 ppg, 3.5 rpg, 3.9 apg)
G - Jordan Nelson, 6-1/170 Sr. (13.0 ppg, 1.6 rpg, 1.7 apg)
G - Pat Sodemann, 6-3/195 Sr. (8.8 ppg, 2.6 rpg)
F - Ryan Coyle, 6-6/208 Jr. (5.9 ppg, 4.2 rpg)
C - Trevor Seibring, 6-8/235 So. (7.2 ppg, 5.3 rpg)

C - Mike Marietti, 6-8/245 Jr. (7.8ppg, 4.0 rpg)
G - Bryce Dolan, 6-0/165 Jr. (7.3 ppg, 2.2 apg)
F - Alec Bausch, 6-6/210 So. (5.2 ppg, 5.2 rpg)
G - Joel Pennington, 6-0/175 Jr. (4.5 ppg)
G - Brady Rose, 6-2/170 Fr. (3.9 ppg)

#22-Elmhurst (19-5, 9-4)
G - Pat Coleman, 6-2/190 Jr. (3.9 ppg, 2.4 rpg, 1.2 apg)
G - Kyle Wuest, 6-1/185 Jr. (16.8 ppg, 4.9 rpg, 2.6 apg)
G - Bryan Ackerman, 6-2/195 Jr. (11.6 ppg, 4.5 apg)
F - Brandon Schwebke, 6-4/210 Jr. (6.4 ppg, 3.8 apg)
F - Will Nixon, 6-7/210 Jr. (9.5 ppg, 7.4 rpg)

F - Erik Crittenden, 6-7/215 Jr. (10.9 ppg, 7.1 rpg)
G - Peyton Wyatt, 5-11/185 Jr. (4.9 ppg)
F - Kenny Payonk, 6-6/235 Jr. (3.1 ppg, 3.5 rpg)
G - Eric Leonard, 6-0/180 Jr. (2.8 ppg)

Pantagraph (game) - http://www.pantagraph.com/sports/college/basketball/men/busy-titans-face-elmhurst/article_0008a9ca-5165-54b8-aed3-e05dd323d518.html

Pantagraph (Bridges) - http://www.pantagraph.com/sports/college/basketball/men/iwu-to-dedicate-dennie-bridges-court-at-halftime-of-game/article_ddda32a0-810b-554e-aaf5-a3c3291a6789.html

Live video/stats - http://portal.stretchinternet.com/iwu/

WJBC Radio - http://portal.stretchinternet.com/wjbc/

[veterancciwfan]

This idea of hoarding players is silly. With the college age demographics, every D3 school is competing for a smaller pool of HS seniors. Every D3 school needs students whether they are athletes or not. There are a lot of reasons for a HS senior, athlete or not, to choose to enroll at IWU. And once there, a vast majority of them like IWU and are glad they came. And it is uncommon when an athlete leaves IWU for another school in order to get PT. The only recent IWU b'ball player I can remember doing that was Shawn McGuire, a guard who transferred to Eureka College after the first semester of his sophomore year (the 2001/02 school year and Scott Trost's initial year as coach). He played immediately and was one of EC's stars. Regarding hoarding of athletes, a better example would be Carthage's football program, which had something close to 80 freshmen footballer players last fall. And I'm sure the college President loved the football coach for achieving those numbers. 

[Naperick]

Incidentally, if NCC were to drop out of the ranking, I presume Elmhurst would then go from 4 wins vs regionally-ranked opponents to only 2 (so far) which could prove to be quite significant.

Good point.

So there should be lots of NCC fans in Elmhurst on Sat! 

I will be huge Cardinals fan tomorrow night!
My wife went to NCC so I always root for the Cardinals..........................except when they play Elmhurst.

Something is amiss in the land of Oz.
A woman smart enough to go to NCC who then marries an Elmhurst guy? 
What form of sorcery did you use, Naperick? 

I am lucky!  As they say in football, I may have outkicked my coverage!   

[AndOne]

This idea of hoarding players is silly. With the college age demographics, every D3 school is competing for a smaller pool of HS seniors. Every D3 school needs students whether they are athletes or not. There are a lot of reasons for a HS senior, athlete or not, to choose to enroll at IWU. And once there, a vast majority of them like IWU and are glad they came. And it is uncommon when an athlete leaves IWU for another school in order to get PT. The only recent IWU b'ball player I can remember doing that was Shawn McGuire, a guard who transferred to Eureka College after the first semester of his sophomore year (the 2001/02 school year and Scott Trost's initial year as coach). He played immediately and was one of EC's stars. Regarding hoarding of athletes, a better example would be Carthage's football program, which had something close to 80 freshmen footballer players last fall. And I'm sure the college President loved the football coach for achieving those numbers.

I wasn't looking at the situation of IWU's having 27 players as "hoarding" players. My focus was solely on the fact that with a roster that's large, many players will never realistically have a chance to play more than a minuscule number of minutes for their entire career, and several likely will really never play at all.
If 15 players dress for varsity games, a roster of 27 would mean that 12 players don't even suit up for a varsity game. That must be very disheartening. Especially when every one of them was likely considered a star in high school. They may get to play in JV games that don't count in the standings, and that often are only attended by family members and close friends. However, I sincerely doubt that is what they had in mind as far as their college basketball experience is concerned. Furthermore, varsity team members 11-15 may play the majority of JV minutes leaving only a few garbage minutes for JV players 1-5. That means JV players 6-12 not only don't suit up for varsity games, but they don't even play in the. JV game. These players will likely never play a varsity game in their entire 4 year career and will have ended up only watching college basketball instead of playing college basketball as they, no doubt, had dreamed of doing. If their love of the school outweights this disappointment, then great. If not, you have a pretty sorry state of affairs. At any rate, this is one of the unfortunate realities of having a roster with as many as 27 players.
.

[iwu70]

AO, you are poorly informed.  No varsity players, very few, play JV minutes.  Only the last 12 or so guys on the roster play JV games.  That's the point, JV as development of freshmen and sophomore players.  "Junior varsity" -- get it?  Most guys who are freshmen and non-varsity sophomores play the majority of minutes in JV games.  Of course, many of these guys would rather be playing varsity minutes, dressing for the varsity, but they know their time will come.  If they can't make the transition from JV PT to varsity PT, then those are the guys that likely drop out of the program or move to another program, which in IWU's case is very very rare.  Having a long roster, guys willing to be "system guys" is one of the true strengths of the IWU program.  Very few players coming in as freshmen, even sophomores, have expectations to play varsity minutes.  Not many Kory Coons out there.  (or is it Cory Koons, I can never remember?)  LOL.

Perhaps Q or others can tell us how the IWU JV squad did this year -- they usually have a pretty good squad, winning season, and prepare to continue that winning when their time comes to play varsity minutes as upperclassmen. 

Great games upcoming.

IWU70

[Mr. Ypsi]

iwu70, not JUST the bottom guys on the roster; sometimes it is a promising guy who is stuck behind even better players - classic example, Keelan Amelianovich: primarily JV as a freshman, CCIW MOP as a sophomore.

AO, what is your solution?  The admissions office should deny them admission?  Or are you hinting that Coach Rose 'promised' them huge PT, then reneged?  They came to IWU (no doubt hoping to be a star on the court), didn't make it (at least initially), but stuck it out.  Whether or not they ever make it, IMO they are to be lauded, not scorned.

And it's not like they will lose a scholarship if they quit.  So sticking it out is a tribute to their tenacity (or a testament to their lack of self-awareness, if you must be cynical).

[markerickson]

Anybody else not able to watch the video feed?  I click here, http://northcentralcardinals.com/, at the hoops image...nothing.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Anybody else not able to watch the video feed?  I click here, http://northcentralcardinals.com/, at the hoops image...nothing.

I wasn't going for the video, but I got nothing on livestats either.