MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Titan Q]

Friday
Southwestern (2-4) vs. Illinois Wesleyan (@ San Antonio, TX), 4 p.m.
Ron Rose must really enjoy the Riverwalk, because it seems like IWU makes this trip to San Antone a lot.

I think this will be just the 2nd trip to the Trinity (Tx) tournament in Ron Rose's 10 years as coach at IWU.

[Gregory Sager]

For some reason, it seems like IWU's made that trip more than once recently.

[augiefan]

Augie could very well come out flat, but they barely beat MacMurray last year, so perhaps. they will recall that game and take them seriously this year. It is an Augie tradition to lose at least one non conference game per year to a mediocre team, but it seems unlikely this year.

[augiefan]

AugieFan:  please explain why you describe Millikin's coach as being "fine."

Nadelhoffer inherited not only the worst team in the CCIW but one of the worst teams in all of DIII basketball. 1-24 the year before he took over and 1-24 his first year with his predecessor's holdover players. He is slowly building a competitive program. Not easy when you are selling Decatur, IL as the recruit's home for 4 years. Not exactly a garden spot.

I remember his playing days at Wheaton, where he was the ultimate team player and a DIII All American under Coach Harris, who was a top coach and excellent mentor. Good training for a future CCIW coach.

In recent years Millikin has given Augie all they can handle particularly in Decatur. Although last year was a little bit of a regression, the team looks better so far this year. Matt is one Juwan Henry away from producing a winner at Millikin.

Plus Titan Q thought he was a great hire. No better endorsement on this board. :-)

[Titan Q]

#22-U. of Chicago 74
IWU 57

http://athletics.uchicago.edu/sports/mbkb/2015-16/boxscores/20151214_jlv0.xml

The Titans are struggling mightily - very rough 2nd half tonight on the south side.  4-4 IWU faces #25 Texas Lutheran this Friday in San Antonio.

IWU lost 6-8 Mike Marietti early in the game with a knee.  He spent the remainder of them game on the bench with ice on his knee.  With Marietti, Coyle, and Rose out, the combinations on the floor tonight were...well...not as drawn up in early-November.  Not pretty - especially against a really good team.

At this point, I'd say the Titans are just trying to find some things that work for CCIW play...try to grind out a conference tournament spot (which will not be easy because both North Central and North Park are better at this point).

I am looking forward to seeing the guys play down in San Antonio this week.

[Gregory Sager]

North Park 84
Albion 78

Juwan Henry: 32 pts, 6 stls, 6:3 a:to
Jordan Robinson: 22 pts, 12 rebs, 3 blks
Michael Hutchinson: 10 pts, 6 rebs
T.J. Cobbs: 7:2 a:to

As I said on the air, Albion always likes a muddy track, and it was certainly a slog for the Vikings tonight. There were large stretches of the game that had no flow whatsoever, but the Vikes showed nice composure. They led for most of the second half, but never got satisfactory separation in spite of the fact that they had some 10-point leads at various points of the second stanza.

I was very impressed with the effort on the boards tonight for NPU. The Vikes have not rebounded well at all, as they were dead last in the league in rebounding margin coming into tonight's game, but in the second half everybody in the (hideously ugly) home black uniforms crashed the boards hard. NPU came away with a 40-31 rebounding advantage, the kind of stat that they don't often produce.

Not much more that you can say about the Henry/Robinson combo other than ... wow. On a night in which Colin Lake couldn't hit a shot to save his life, the two other Vikings stars picked it up for him and were totally dominant. They went a combined 20-34 from the field, and Albion had no answer for either one of them, let alone both.

The Vikings improve to 5-2 with the win.

[Titan Q]

Nadelhoffer inherited not only the worst team in the CCIW but one of the worst teams in all of DIII basketball. 1-24 the year before he took over and 1-24 his first year with his predecessor's holdover players. He is slowly building a competitive program. Not easy when you are selling Decatur, IL as the recruit's home for 4 years. Not exactly a garden spot.

He will build a program at Millikin.  He does things the right way and knows how to coach.

[Gregory Sager]

New d3hoops.com Top 25 is out:

* Augustana remains a unanimous #1
* Elmhurst moves up a spot to #6
* Illinois Wesleyan drops some points, but is still among the ORV with 29 points
* North Central is now on the ORV radar with four points

Meanwhile, over in Massey World, this is what Ken's computer is telling us today:

    1. Augustana
  13. Elmhurst
  26. North Central
  35. Illinois Wesleyan*
  55. North Park
133. Wheaton
186. Millikin
198. Carthage

(*IWU's loss to Chicago, which Massey has at #21, is not yet reflected in the Massey Ratings.)

[Gregory Sager]

Nadelhoffer inherited not only the worst team in the CCIW but one of the worst teams in all of DIII basketball. 1-24 the year before he took over and 1-24 his first year with his predecessor's holdover players. He is slowly building a competitive program. Not easy when you are selling Decatur, IL as the recruit's home for 4 years. Not exactly a garden spot.

He will build a program at Millikin.  He does things the right way and knows how to coach.

I like Matt, and I respect him a lot. Heck, I'll go so far as to say that I kinda root for him in January and February when his team isn't playing mine, which is a dangerous attitude to take in this league. But let's be honest ... Millikin is a really hard sell on the recruiting trail, as augiefan said, at least in terms of CCIW-quality prospects. (Again, as I did four years ago, I'll qualify that a bit by saying that downstaters may not have quite as negative an opinion of Decatur as Chicagolanders do. I'm not a downstater, and I don't know many downstaters, so I can't speak for them.) And I doubt that it's going to get any easier anytime soon to both woo the type of players to Millikin that the program needs in order to compete in this league, and then (just as importantly) to keep them there and in uniform once he's got them.

I think that Joe Hakes made the right decision by hiring Matt back in '11 when Joe was running things at MU. Matt does things the right way, he knows how to coach, and he is an outstanding ambassador for the institution. I suspect that Matt's got as good a shot at turning it around eventually as did anybody else that Joe could've hired at the time. But I don't agree that it's foreordained that Matt will rebuild the Big Blue into a program that can consistently compete in the CCIW, however you define that. In the immortal words of Benjamin Franklin, "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." Heck, you can do a search and find detailed four-paragraph explanations from me on the CCIW football board as to why North Park will never be able to field a decent football team. Now I'm not so sure about that guarantee, either.

(And, before you get it into your head to respond to my point, Chuck, Augustana is still not going to go undefeated in CCIW play this season. )

In recent years Millikin has given Augie all they can handle particularly in Decatur. Although last year was a little bit of a regression, the team looks better so far this year.

It looked better when T.J. Sims was in uniform. But Sims has missed the last two games after being benched at halftime of the game at Rhodes (after a first half in which he'd taken only two shots and missed them both). Nobody really seems to be sure of his current status, aside from the fact that he's still listed on the online roster, because nobody from MU ever posts here. We know that Matt Nadelhoffer is not afraid to discipline his star players to the point of suspending them for multiple games, since he's done it in the past to both T.J. Griffin and Deavis Johnson. But if the current Sims situation is more than just a suspension of a few games, and if the Big Blue don't have Sims come CCIW time, your point about Millikin looking better this season is invalidated.

Matt is one Juwan Henry away from producing a winner at Millikin.

This may not have been your intention, augiefan, but it reads as though you think that players like Juwan Henry grow on trees. I can assure you that they don't, because if they did NPU would've found its way to that particular orchard a lot sooner.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Greg, for the record I don't think Augie will go undefeated either.  But they seem good enough that, unlike you, I'm not gonna say it's outside the realm of possibility.  (Since they are my selection in the undefeated contest, I've gotta root for them - though not to the point of rooting against IWU when they meet! )

[Gregory Sager]

North Central 77
Albion 63

Augustana 86
MacMurray 62

[sac]

Can anyone tell me if the 1973 Augustana team gathers to pop open a bottle of champagne when the last CCIW team takes a loss?

[Gregory Sager]

That's a good question. If they do, pretty soon they're going to need to have their home-health-care nurses pop the corks for them.

[Mr. Ypsi]

That's a good question. If they do, pretty soon they're going to need to have their home-health-care nurses pop the corks for them.

Spoken like an uppity whipper-snapper!

Good grief.  The seniors on the 1973 team probably don't even qualify for Medicare yet.  I'd say they have (hopefully) a good many years of independent celebration ahead of them!

Be careful - we relics can be feisty.  And know how to disinherit disrespectful young'uns!

[joehakes]

Thanks for the kind words, Greg.  I felt very good about Matt when I hired him and feel that way even more today.  He has done what Millikin needed him to do and has raised the level of the program.  He will continue to do that in the right way.

It's tough to change a culture and he has done that really well.  People will judge success in different ways, often without knowing what success in a particular situation may be.  Matt has chosen to find the positives in bringing young men into the program and teaching them about life.  The wins will come in time.