MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[iwumichigander]

It was changed a couple of years ago... I believe we have gone two seasons since the last time we had it. I can check in a bit because I remember the year the vRRO had a MAJOR impact and I believe it was 2013. Randolph got in mainly based on their vRRO numbers. The ODAC that year was loaded in the vRRO category.

However, this isn't a basketball-only decision. This is across the board for all sports, especially in Division III, who use the criteria (which is almost every sport in every division, believe it or not). There was a sentiment that the vRRO could greatly influence a team's resume based on conference games and some other aspects that makes them basically appear better than they really might be. One ranked, always ranked was actually one of the reasons we lost a week of regional rankings (used to be four). They didn't want the number to be too big. They finally went back to only ranked, but have not added a week of rankings for informational reasons.

My compromise would be twice ranked, always ranked... but that could also muddy the waters.

I'll add that the allegations were certain regions "stacked the deck" by ranking teams in the early rounds, that would otherwise - likely not get ranked - for the purposes of increasing vRRO for other teams in their region.  Allegedly, it created an NCAA tournament insurance policy.

[Gregory Sager]

The selection committees often work into Monday morning on those weekends for what it's worth.  The selection can take until midnigh, then pairing teams and placing them in appropriate parts of the bracket can be another few hours.  When I chaired the men's DIII soccer committee, my night ended at 5 a.m.  on Monday, after which I promptly turned the wrong way on a one way street in Indianapolis.  Fortunately, there was only one other car on the road at that time.  Unfortunately, that car had red lights on top of it that spun around in a hypnotic manner.

Thanks, Joe. This was the best laugh I've had all week!

[joehakes]

The selection committees often work into Monday morning on those weekends for what it's worth.  The selection can take until midnigh, then pairing teams and placing them in appropriate parts of the bracket can be another few hours.  When I chaired the men's DIII soccer committee, my night ended at 5 a.m.  on Monday, after which I promptly turned the wrong way on a one way street in Indianapolis.  Fortunately, there was only one other car on the road at that time.  Unfortunately, that car had red lights on top of it that spun around in a hypnotic manner.

Thanks, Joe. This was the best laugh I've had all week!

Glad I could be of service. 

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

It was changed a couple of years ago... I believe we have gone two seasons since the last time we had it. I can check in a bit because I remember the year the vRRO had a MAJOR impact and I believe it was 2013. Randolph got in mainly based on their vRRO numbers. The ODAC that year was loaded in the vRRO category.

However, this isn't a basketball-only decision. This is across the board for all sports, especially in Division III, who use the criteria (which is almost every sport in every division, believe it or not). There was a sentiment that the vRRO could greatly influence a team's resume based on conference games and some other aspects that makes them basically appear better than they really might be. One ranked, always ranked was actually one of the reasons we lost a week of regional rankings (used to be four). They didn't want the number to be too big. They finally went back to only ranked, but have not added a week of rankings for informational reasons.

My compromise would be twice ranked, always ranked... but that could also muddy the waters.

I'll add that the allegations were certain regions "stacked the deck" by ranking teams in the early rounds, that would otherwise - likely not get ranked - for the purposes of increasing vRRO for other teams in their region.  Allegedly, it created an NCAA tournament insurance policy.

Considering the national committee can change the rankings at any time, any week, except for one season... this allegation doesn't hold that much water. The one year they weren't allowed to change things (for some strange reason), things were corrected in other ways. The national committee has never shied away from changing regional rankings if they think they are not accurately being put together or of a region is trying to be creative. Remember, the chair of the regional committee is on the national committee. He (She) has to argue in favor of those rankings and the committee will make sure to put them in their place (and their region) if they have to. Furthermore, I have heard on more than one occasion, including on record in an interview, how each committee member on the national committee puts its bias' to the side and really works to do the best overall job for the division. In other words, they don't want shenanigans going on and won't allow it. You may think or heard allegations of those types of happenings, but I have yet to see proof of such a system in place.

Now, you may be confusing it with something that is uttered often: it is up to the regional committee to put the best resume forward to get as many teams in the NCAA tournament from their region as possible. That is not uncommon, but that has to do more with position teams correctly and not putting in a "blocker" (as what happened in the Atlantic Region a few years ago) that precludes others from getting a chance at the "table."

[Gregory Sager]

I read often but rarely post as I am a little more conservative with my comments than most.  Although after reading the past couple days I think it's safe to say anything on here!

Ha! Quite true!

I was able to attend the Carthage @ North Park game and man was it exciting.  Both teams played well and fought hard all the way to the buzzer.  Not much more a fan can ask for. 

As we all know Henry was the difference in this game.  Only thing to question about his game tonight was his three he shot at the buzzer of overtime up 7!!!!   That didn't sit well with the Carthage bench nor should it.  To make things worse the NPU coaches didn't seem to be too concerned about it at all.  I couldn't believe a player showing up the opposing team like that and not having a coach yell at him or tell him not to shoot it to begin with!

This is not true at all, R&B. Tom Slyder and Bosko Djurickovic had a heated discussion about this in the handshake line after the game, and Tom's repeated response in that discussion to Bosko's complaints about Juwan's final trey attempt was, "Don't worry, I'll handle it." And he did. Juwan got chewed out for it afterwards, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if he runs extra laps in practice today because of it as well. Tom wasn't aware that Juwan was going to take that shot. The NPU head coach does not take poor sportsmanship lightly.

Kind of put a sour note on a great game by him.

I agree.

Henry asked for the ball, knowing he was in trey land, to see if he could net 50 points.  He was not trying to show up Carthage.  I see nothing wrong with his choice.

Agreed.

I have to disagree with both of you. I can understand the powerful temptation that presented itself to Juwan; after all, how many players ever get the chance to score 50 points in a college basketball game? While I agree with Mark that the NPU star wasn't trying to show up the Red Men by taking that shot, I think that the game's unwritten rules of sportsmanship are pretty clear and are very much worth keeping. He should've held the ball and not taken that shot.

The Carthage team stopped fouling with about 15 seconds left because the game was over!  All 5 Carthage players stayed on their offensive side of the court not even attempting to defend. How can anyone think it's appropriate to shoot any shot for any reason?   There is no excuse for that. I don't care if the individual was going for 100.

Exactly. If the Red Men were continuing to defend right down to the final buzzer, then Juwan would've had every right to take that shot. But, as R&B said, they not only stopped defending, they didn't even cross the midline. That's a clear signal that the player on the team that's about to win should just hold the ball.

As R&B said, it was a sour note to an otherwise thrilling game. I don't think that it reflects badly upon NPU or the team or the coach or anything like that, and I certainly don't think that it makes Juwan Henry a bad person. As I said, I think that he made a poor choice in a moment of temptation, but I can understand why he did it. Certain people associated with Carthage (not all of them, mind you, or even most of them) were grousing about it after the game, but, again, I can understand their feelings as well. It was a very tough loss, which is hard enough to take (in Steve Marovich's gamer, he quoted Bosko as saying, "I can't remember too many losses that hurt as much as this one" -- and Bosko's been through a few close basketball games in his day), and in that situation it's natural to focus upon something like this as a sort of emotional outlet for one's disappointment.

Now it's 18 hours later, and I hope that cooler heads are prevailing in the light of day. It's time to get over it and move on. As I told Brad Kruse's dad, North Park HOFer Freddie Kruse, after the game last night, I will be the Red Men's #1 fan on Saturday night when they host the Green People up in Kenosha. Go Red Men!

[Gregory Sager]

... and, incidentally, if the Red Men play as hard and as well on Saturday in Tarble as they did in the second half against NPU last night, they will beat Illinois Wesleyan by ten points.

I know that everybody is down on the bottom three teams in the league, with ample justification. Nevertheless, having seen both IWU and Carthage in the crackerbox within the past five days, I have no hesitation about saying this. The Titans had better come prepared to strap it on, because Carthage is very capable of pulling off that upset.

[petemcb]

I have to disagree with both of you. I can understand the powerful temptation that presented itself to Juwan; after all, how many players ever get the chance to score 50 points in a college basketball game? While I agree with Mark that the NPU star wasn't trying to show up the Red Men by taking that shot, I think that the game's unwritten rules of sportsmanship are pretty clear and are very much worth keeping. He should've held the ball and not taken that shot.

The Carthage team stopped fouling with about 15 seconds left because the game was over!  All 5 Carthage players stayed on their offensive side of the court not even attempting to defend. How can anyone think it's appropriate to shoot any shot for any reason?   There is no excuse for that. I don't care if the individual was going for 100.

Exactly. If the Red Men were continuing to defend right down to the final buzzer, then Juwan would've had every right to take that shot. But, as R&B said, they not only stopped defending, they didn't even cross the midline. That's a clear signal that the player on the team that's about to win should just hold the ball.

This might demonstrate the risk of commenting on a game I neither attended nor watched online.  With this additional information, I would agree that he would have been better to dribble out the clock. 

Also, I'm guessing that I have probably butchered the editing/quoting process on this post and am trusting our resident editor to clean up what needs to be cleaned up. 

[WUPHF]

Tom Slyder and Bosko Djurickovic had a heated discussion about this in the handshake line after the game, and Tom's repeated response in that discussion to Bosko's complaints about Juwan's final trey attempt was, "Don't worry, I'll handle it." And he did. Juwan got chewed out for it afterwards, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if he runs extra laps in practice today because of it as well.

That just seems crazy to me...but what are my two cents worth?

[Gregory Sager]

In my opinion, Coach Slyder had a strange reserve deployment. Rubio and Woods (who saw his first action ever in an NPU uni I believe) played while NPU's two tallest players did not even dress.

Ray Rubio's being eased into the rotation, Mark. He's made cameo appearances in three of NPU's last four games, and Tom Slyder was very up-front about the fact that he liked Rubio's game enough to use him immediately after he transferred in from Loras at break. And, since he's a guard, his presence in the game has nothing to do with Biko and/or McNamara not being in. As for Dyron Woods, he finally got into game shape only to tweak his hamstring last week. He's still not 100%, but I strongly suspect that he, too, is going to be eased into the rotation as his leg gets better. He has significantly more upside than does either Biko or McNamara. As for why neither of the two veteran Vikings bigs dressed last night, I'm not certain -- but Carthage didn't offer good match-ups for either one, anyway. The Red Men feature a bunch of 6'4, 200 guys on their front line, and neither Biko nor McNamara are really equipped to handle smaller, quicker "bigs" defensively.

Carthage totally sucked in the first half and NPU totally sucked in the second half.  Thus, the game went into OT.  Henry had so many points <10' of the basket.

Bosko said in the Carthage gamer that the two treys Juwan hit in overtime were 35-footers. That's a bit of an exaggeration, but they were certainly a good 28-to-30 feet from the basket. He likes that particular spot out from the right elbow of the crackerbox's west end, though -- I've seen him shoot from that very spot time and time again over the course of his career.

He finished with a remarkable 47 points.  NPC former players at the game recollected that Bosko pulled Dan Hill when he had scored 46.  Did Barach score more than 46?  Greg/Dennis?

We need a survey!  Does Sager work harder looking up historical data (like his comment about Barach , for example) for Markerickson or Mr Ypsi?

Insert quote and vote starting now!

... and there's the second-best laugh I've had all week!  Thanks!

Out of force of habit, I suppose, I'll point out to Mark that:

* Dan "the Thrill" Hill scored 43 in that remarkable game he had against Rust in 1989-90, not 46. I'm sure that you were talking to Rob Bady last night, Mark, and I'm sure that Rob was right that Bosko yanked Hill towards the end of the Rust game ... but I'm pretty sure that it was because the sharpshooter from Woodstock was about ready to pass out from exhaustion. The skinny 6'3 Hill, who is on my short list of the greatest shooters that I've ever seen in this league, was painfully slow. (We used to joke that Bosko timed him in endline-to-endline sprints with a sundial.) Rust was a run-and-gun outfit that used hockey line changes and pressed the entire game. Bosko had to use Hill judiciously, because he couldn't even keep up with normal opponents on defense, much less Rust's jackrabbits. But he was so unerringly on from three-point range in that game that the Rust coach actually slapped a box-and-one on him. It was one of the funniest things that I've ever seen in a basketball game, because it's hard to think of a player whose lack of footspeed made him less likely to get the box-and-one treatment. But that's how good of a shooter he was.

* Mike Barach scored 47 against Bishop in '87, as this archived newspaper article indicates. That was the school record until Jack Ecker broke it with 54 against Carthage in '95. Coincidentally, Juwan Henry's performance last night for NPU was the most that anybody's scored against Carthage since that game two decades ago when Ecker lit them up. And in another coincidence, Juwan will probably pass Barach (and Barach's running mate Michael Starks) on the NPU career scoring list on Saturday. He now trails Starks by two points and Barach by ten.

Tom Slyder and Bosko Djurickovic had a heated discussion about this in the handshake line after the game, and Tom's repeated response in that discussion to Bosko's complaints about Juwan's final trey attempt was, "Don't worry, I'll handle it." And he did. Juwan got chewed out for it afterwards, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if he runs extra laps in practice today because of it as well.

That just seems crazy to me...but what are my two cents worth?

They aren't worth all the corn in Manito, that much is for certain.

[Gregory Sager]

I have to disagree with both of you. I can understand the powerful temptation that presented itself to Juwan; after all, how many players ever get the chance to score 50 points in a college basketball game? While I agree with Mark that the NPU star wasn't trying to show up the Red Men by taking that shot, I think that the game's unwritten rules of sportsmanship are pretty clear and are very much worth keeping. He should've held the ball and not taken that shot.

The Carthage team stopped fouling with about 15 seconds left because the game was over!  All 5 Carthage players stayed on their offensive side of the court not even attempting to defend. How can anyone think it's appropriate to shoot any shot for any reason?   There is no excuse for that. I don't care if the individual was going for 100.

Exactly. If the Red Men were continuing to defend right down to the final buzzer, then Juwan would've had every right to take that shot. But, as R&B said, they not only stopped defending, they didn't even cross the midline. That's a clear signal that the player on the team that's about to win should just hold the ball.

This might demonstrate the risk of commenting on a game I neither attended nor watched online.  With this additional information, I would agree that he would have been better to dribble out the clock. 

Also, I'm guessing that I have probably butchered the editing/quoting process on this post and am trusting our resident editor to clean up what needs to be cleaned up. 

I may just leave it this way as an object lesson for all the kids out there who want to post quotes on d3boards.com, Pete.

[Rafi]

I read often but rarely post as I am a little more conservative with my comments than most.  Although after reading the past couple days I think it's safe to say anything on here! 

I was able to attend the Carthage @ North Park game and man was it exciting.  Both teams played well and fought hard all the way to the buzzer.  Not much more a fan can ask for. 

As we all know Henry was the difference in this game.  Only thing to question about his game tonight was his three he shot at the buzzer of overtime up 7!!!!   That didn't sit well with the Carthage bench nor should it.  To make things worse the NPU coaches didn't seem to be too concerned about it at all.  I couldn't believe a player showing up the opposing team like that and not having a coach yell at him or tell him not to shoot it to begin with!

Kind of put a sour note on a great game by him. 

Anyone else notice this or have an opinion on the matter?

Well, this means Jayme Moten will replace Henry for all-conference!

[Gregory Sager]

Greg/Dennis?

I forgot to mention that the Great One was in the house last night. It was the first Prikkel sighting that we've had in the crackerbox this season. What with Steve Marovich being present as well in his new part-time role as Carthage SID Phil Burwell's stringer, we should've brought Ray Smith and Ed Alsene to the game and held a CoSIDA emeritus convention.

I read often but rarely post as I am a little more conservative with my comments than most.  Although after reading the past couple days I think it's safe to say anything on here! 

I was able to attend the Carthage @ North Park game and man was it exciting.  Both teams played well and fought hard all the way to the buzzer.  Not much more a fan can ask for. 

As we all know Henry was the difference in this game.  Only thing to question about his game tonight was his three he shot at the buzzer of overtime up 7!!!!   That didn't sit well with the Carthage bench nor should it.  To make things worse the NPU coaches didn't seem to be too concerned about it at all.  I couldn't believe a player showing up the opposing team like that and not having a coach yell at him or tell him not to shoot it to begin with!

Kind of put a sour note on a great game by him. 

Anyone else notice this or have an opinion on the matter?

Well, this means Jayme Moten will replace Henry for all-conference!

Man, everybody's earning rim shots today!

[AppletonRocks]

Tom Slyder and Bosko Djurickovic had a heated discussion about this in the handshake line after the game, and Tom's repeated response in that discussion to Bosko's complaints about Juwan's final trey attempt was, "Don't worry, I'll handle it." And he did. Juwan got chewed out for it afterwards, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if he runs extra laps in practice today because of it as well.

That just seems crazy to me...but what are my two cents worth?

This board is populated with a lot of underbilled lawyers !!  The dead horse is still dead !!

[AndOne]

Tom Slyder and Bosko Djurickovic had a heated discussion about this in the handshake line after the game, and Tom's repeated response in that discussion to Bosko's complaints about Juwan's final trey attempt was, "Don't worry, I'll handle it." And he did. Juwan got chewed out for it afterwards, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if he runs extra laps in practice today because of it as well.

That just seems crazy to me...but what are my two cents worth?

Nothing from nothing is still nothing, WUH. 

[toooldtohoop]

The scoreboard at NP has the point totals for players who are on the floor.  A teammate probably told him, if he didn't see it himself.

Thanks 44.