MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[AndOne]

North Central 69, Wheaton 55
Although Wheaton was up at the half, the second half was all Cardinals in the airplane hangar. NCC used an 18-2 run to turn a three-point deficit into a 13-point advantage in the third quarter, and then sealed the deal with a late 9-0 run to close it out. Aiden Chang had 15 points, Alex Sorenson and Jagger Anderson scored a dozen each, with Sorenson adding nine boards, and Matt Cappelletti hauled in ten rebounds as well to help NCC dominate the glass by a 39-25 margin. Aston Francis (13 pts) was the only double-figure scorer for Wheaton, but it was a very inefficient (6-16) 13 points. He didn't get to the FT line at all tonight.

Having gone to the locker room at the half, down by one and looking for a solution to Wheaton's success in the opening stanza, North Central found the answer would center on defense. To that end, the Cardinals clamped down on the Wheatie offense, limiting the visitors to 21 points in the second half, including only 3 by the CCIW's leading scorer, Aston Francis. Francis, who had 10 at half, finished as Wheaton's high man with only 13. Furthermore, chiefly through the efforts of the Cardinals' Tommy Koth, the Wheaton leader was forced into having to take 16 shots to earn his 13 points. 5 of those 16 shots came from three, with only one of the five being successful.
Additionally, even though defense was such a large part of the NCC victory, that defense was ignited by the shot of energy injected into the proceedings by Jaquan Phipps who I felt was the Cards MVP of the evening. It seemed like JQ was everywhere on the court during the 2nd half. With the score 47-40 NCC, Phipps stole the ball from Wheaton's Luke Peters, drove the length of the floor, laid it in as he was fouled, and converted the FT. In addition to this great defensive play and resulting and one, he was active on the offensive end driving the baseline and to finish in traffic, and later flashingdown the lane to take a feed from under the basket and convert.

INTERESTING SIDELINES TO THE GAME

NCC's Aiden Chang and Wheaton"s Luke Peters exchanged verbal barbs throughout the evenings.
At 49-40 the two exchanged words as they lined up for the FT following Phipps steal from Peters.
Following Phipps conversion a TO was called and Peters appeared to purposely run into Chang on his way to the bench. The TV broadcast team also voiced their belief that such was the case. 
Later, with a couple of minutes left, Chang hit a big 3 from the corner to basically seal the deal. His glance/gesture in the direction of Mr. Peters gave a "that one was for you" impression.
The exchanges were reminiscent of the verbal taunts that used to be a regular occurrence between Peters older brother Tyler, and NCC's Vince Kmiec when they competed against each other a couple of years ago.

With 3:51 remaining and NC up 57-50, the Cards had the ball out of bounds FT line, extended left. One second remained on the shot clock. A lob was thrown in to Alex Sorenson who caught it and laid it up off the backboard. Alex' shot missed but Aiden Chang rushed it took the rebound off the board, and laid it in. Clearly, this was not possible in just one second. However, believing the ref had signaled the ball hit the rim, the shot clock operator pushed 'reset' thus making Chang's basket count. At that point Wheaton Coach Mike Schauer went absolutely nuts to the point that his coat was off in a flash, and his ensuing gyrations rivaled those of the acknowledged world leader from Augustana. From my seat, it looked like the ball grazed them rim. However, after reviewing the tape several times now, I don't believe it did. The ball, came straight down off the backboard. If it had grazed the rim, it's trajectory would have changed, even slightly. This did not happen. Given this, the shot clock should not have been reset, and for Sorenson the catch the ball, put it up off the backboard, and Chang to then catch the rebound and put it in within one second is a physical impossibility. A shot clock violation should have been called and it should have been Wheaton ball out with NCC leading 57-50. With what transpired in the game after this incident, I also don't believe that the final outcome would have been other than a NCC victory, but at that point the Cardinals should still have had 57 points, not 59.

[AndOne]

Last night NCC freshman Matt Cappelletti started his fourth game of the season, and fourth in a row. In each of the 4 starts, Matt has now collected double digit rebounds, with 13, 10, 14, and 10 last night. Previous to the last 4 games, Matt did not play at all in 4 of NCC's early season games, and played a total of 3 minutes in 2 others. Therefore, he has basically played in only 13 of 19 games so far this season. In those 13 games, he now has a total of 94 rebounds, an average of 7.2 RPG. This would rank third in the conference. When the 2 games for 3 minutes total are added in, his average is 6.3 RPG, good for 7th place in the conference.

in 8 conference only games, he has 69 rebounds. Thats an average of 8.6 RPG which does rank third in the CCIW.

Impressive work by this rookie.

[lmitzel]

Having gone to the locker room at the half, down by one and looking for a solution to Wheaton's success in the opening stanza, North Central found the answer would center on defense. To that end, the Cardinals clamped down on the Wheatie offense, limiting the visitors to 21 points in the second half, including only 3 by the CCIW's leading scorer, Aston Francis. Francis, who had 10 at half, finished as Wheaton's high man with only 13. Furthermore, chiefly through the efforts of the Cardinals' Tommy Koth, the Wheaton leader was forced into having to take 16 shots to earn his 13 points. 5 of those 16 shots came from three, with only one of the five being successful.
Additionally, even though defense was such a large part of the NCC victory, that defense was ignited by the shot of energy injected into the proceedings by Jaquan Phipps who I felt was the Cards MVP of the evening. It seemed like JQ was everywhere on the court during the 2nd half. With the score 47-40 NCC, Phipps stole the ball from Wheaton's Luke Peters, drove the length of the floor, laid it in as he was fouled, and converted the FT. In addition to this great defensive play and resulting and one, he was active on the offensive end driving the baseline and to finish in traffic, and later flashingdown the lane to take a feed from under the basket and convert.

Agreed on both points. I was nervous about Francis going off, and Jagger and Tommy did a great job keeping him in check. And Phipps' stat line doesn't do justice to the impact he had on the game.

With 3:51 remaining and NC up 57-50, the Cards had the ball out of bounds FT line, extended left. One second remained on the shot clock. A lob was thrown in to Alex Sorenson who caught it and laid it up off the backboard. Alex' shot missed but Aiden Chang rushed it took the rebound off the board, and laid it in. Clearly, this was not possible in just one second. However, believing the ref had signaled the ball hit the rim, the shot clock operator pushed 'reset' thus making Chang's basket count. At that point Wheaton Coach Mike Schauer went absolutely nuts to the point that his coat was off in a flash, and his ensuing gyrations rivaled those of the acknowledged world leader from Augustana. From my seat, it looked like the ball grazed them rim. However, after reviewing the tape several times now, I don't believe it did. The ball, came straight down off the backboard. If it had grazed the rim, it's trajectory would have changed, even slightly. This did not happen. Given this, the shot clock should not have been reset, and for Sorenson the catch the ball, put it up off the backboard, and Chang to then catch the rebound and put it in within one second is a physical impossibility. A shot clock violation should have been called and it should have been Wheaton ball out with NCC leading 57-50. With what transpired in the game after this incident, I also don't believe that the final outcome would have been other than a NCC victory, but at that point the Cardinals should still have had 57 points, not 59.

Real time I thought for sure it hit the rim. Seeing the NCTV angle confirms what AndOne said: the ball never hit the rim. I remain convinced though that the clock started on time (the display on our control shows tenths of a second, and it's possible there more like 1.5 seconds left and that's why we didn't see a change in the clock). But with the buzzer going off, it should have been a shot clock violation, and that's not on the table, so I still don't know why Schauer went after us for that play. Either way, I agree that the outcome probably does not change.

For all the talk about crazy ejections and technicals in prior days, this was a fun addition to that collection.

I'm convinced that officials are vastly more concerned with the coach's box in the lateral sense than in the forward sense. That is to say, they take a much keener interest in a coach's moving up and down the sideline than they do in his actually stepping onto the court, probably because: a) the time-honored place for a coach to get in a ref's ear was always the scorer's table; and b) enforcing the coach's box laterally keeps them away from the officials when the game's at the other end of the court. Case in point: I only watched the overtime portion of last night's AC @ CC game, and yet I counted no fewer than three occasions in which Grey Giovanine had both feet a step or two on the court while the ball was at that end. Granted, he's savvy enough to only do it when the ball is on the other side of the floor (and he's nimble enough to step back when the ball gets reversed to bench side), and giving him a box warning for such a modest occupation of illegal territory might strike officials as being more trouble than it's worth. Then again, given how often he does it, I can definitely picture him doing a Glenn Van Wieren to some unsuspecting player flying up the bench side of the floor on a fast break.

I almost never see it called, so I'm of the opinion that the officials don't care so much about the letter of the law as much as the spirit of the law. Which is probably for the best; half the coaches in the league would have double digit technicals and Grey Giovanine would be ejected from every game if they enforced the box literally. I am a little surprised though that Schauer didn't get a technical for his outburst after that putback even if he was absolutely right up to the point of complaining at the table to us about it.

NCC's Aiden Chang and Wheaton"s Luke Peters exchanged verbal barbs throughout the evenings.
At 49-40 the two exchanged words as they lined up for the FT following Phipps steal from Peters.
Following Phipps conversion a TO was called and Peters appeared to purposely run into Chang on his way to the bench. The TV broadcast team also voiced their belief that such was the case. 
Later, with a couple of minutes left, Chang hit a big 3 from the corner to basically seal the deal. His glance/gesture in the direction of Mr. Peters gave a "that one was for you" impression.
The exchanges were reminiscent of the verbal taunts that used to be a regular occurrence between Peters older brother Tyler, and NCC's Vince Kmiec when they competed against each other a couple of years ago.

I missed the run in live, but definitely caught it on replay. Don't know how I missed it in real time.

Anyway, glad to see Vince passed the torch of the "Eff You" Three to a deserving candidate. 

[USee]

I wasn't there and didn't watch but, in the moment, it could be that Schauer thought the shot clock did not start on time at the table and didn't realize the refs mistakenly reset the clock. In that regard he may have felt "homered" and came over to the table to voice his frustration at the perceived delay in starting the shot clock late?

[lmitzel]

I wasn't there and didn't watch but, in the moment, it could be that Schauer thought the shot clock did not start on time at the table and didn't realize the refs mistakenly reset the clock. In that regard he may have felt "homered" and came over to the table to voice his frustration at the perceived delay in starting the shot clock late?

His argument wasn't about not starting the clock on time. He was on us about the reset itself, and said (maybe not verbatim, but close): "You guys know that shot didn't hit the rim, right?" He didn't say anything about a late start, at least not that I caught. AndOne was sitting closer, and may have heard better, I'm not sure. But I didn't catch anything about starting the clock, and it's only with the benefit of seeing the replay that I can see that argument being made, not that it matters.

[AndOne]

I wasn't there and didn't watch but, in the moment, it could be that Schauer thought the shot clock did not start on time at the table and didn't realize the refs mistakenly reset the clock. In that regard he may have felt "homered" and came over to the table to voice his frustration at the perceived delay in starting the shot clock late?

USee,

I was 2 seats to the right of the shot clock operator. Schauer questioned him as to why the shot clock was resent and was told by the operator that he thought he saw the ref signal that the ball had hit the rim. Next Schauer turned his attention to the ref who said he did not intend to indicate the ball hit the rim, and if anyone had thought they saw such a signal, they were mistaken. That then brings up your point as to the possibility that the game clock (which also starts the shot clock and controls the shot clock unless its reset) was not turned on immediately when Sorenson first touched the lob. I honestly don't know if Schauer questioned that point or not. I also don't know the answer to that question as I was watching the play, not the clock. At any rate, when the play started only 1 second showed on the shot clock, and it was just not physically possible for Sorenson to put it up off the backboard, and for Chang to then rebound it and put it in, all within just 1 second. Accordingly, it seems Coach Schauer had a valid argument no matter if he argued the game clock didn"t start on time, OR the shot clock shouldn't have been reset. As I said, I don't think the ultimate outcome would have been any different given what transpired during the remainder of the game, but NCC was indeed credited with 2 points that they did not truly/legally score.

[lmitzel]

On a non shot clock-related issue, Carthage's Brad Perry wins CCIW Player of the Week honors.

http://www.cciw.org/news/2017/1/30/MBB_0130172415.aspx

[Gregory Sager]

Congrats to Brad Perry for winning POW, and condolences to Brad Perry for being saddled with one of the most unflattering pictures in the history of the Internet.

[Gregory Sager]

New poll is out:

North Park climbs from #23 to #20
Augustana drops from #16 to #22

Nobody else from the CCIW is receiving votes.

[gordonmann]

Congrats to Brad Perry for winning POW, and condolences to Brad Perry for being saddled with one of the most unflattering pictures in the history of the Internet.

There are better photos on D3photograhy.com's gallery if Brad or anyone else wants to see him in a more intimidating posture.

[Gregory Sager]

I wasn't thinking that he needs a more intimidating picture, Gordo. I was thinking that he needs a less troglodytic one.

[4samuy]

North Central 69, Wheaton 55
Although Wheaton was up at the half, the second half was all Cardinals in the airplane hangar. NCC used an 18-2 run to turn a three-point deficit into a 13-point advantage in the third quarter, and then sealed the deal with a late 9-0 run to close it out. Aiden Chang had 15 points, Alex Sorenson and Jagger Anderson scored a dozen each, with Sorenson adding nine boards, and Matt Cappelletti hauled in ten rebounds as well to help NCC dominate the glass by a 39-25 margin. Aston Francis (13 pts) was the only double-figure scorer for Wheaton, but it was a very inefficient (6-16) 13 points. He didn't get to the FT line at all tonight.

Carroll 75, Millikin 66
The Big Blue made a game of it for a half, but Carroll got separation in the second stanza and didn't allow the hosts to get any closer than nine, as the Pios got the wire-to-wire win. Kyle Keranen led the way with 19 and six, Ben Widdes chipped in 15, and Nick Penny -- who is quietly putting together a really good freshman year up in Waukesha -- added 14 and seven. Tyler Pygon paced Millikin with 20, while Jack Simpson contributed 11 to the losing cause.

Carthage 74, Augustana 70 (OT)
As 4samuy noted, Augustana blew a 20-point lead in this one. It was a first-half 20-point lead (34-14 with 3:58 to go to intermission), but, still, twenty points is twenty points. According to Bosko Djurickovic on his postgame interview with John Weiser, the Red Men made a concerted effort from that point onward to attack via the dribble rather than settling for jumpers, and the strategy paid off. They pared the lead down to a dozen at the half, finally caught up at 51-51 on a Brad Perry tip-in with 7:55 remaining, and actually took their first lead of the contest a couple of minutes later. But Augie took the lead back -- it never went beyond two possessions either way for the rest of the game -- and forced Carthage to have to tie it in the final ten seconds. Mike Stevenson made a layup with eight ticks left, Brad Perry blocked a Nolan Ebel shot at the other end to force the extra session, and the Red Men got two huge plays in overtime -- a three-point play by Kienen Baltimore with a minute and a half left that broke a tie, and a Brad Kruse tip-in of a Mike Kjeldson missed trey with 53 seconds left to build a one-point lead back up to three. Baltimore had 20 and seven off the bench for Carthage, while his fellow freshman big Perry had 17 and seven, Stevenson scored a dozen, and Kruse hauled in 14 rebounds. Kevin Kozil dished out five assists to only two turnovers. Augie was led by Jacob Johnston, who had a sensational night with 22 and 11. He was aided by Dylan Sortillo, who had 13 points, and Chrishawn Orange, who scored 12 and had three steals. A.J. Dollmeyer had eight boards off the bench for Augustana, which committed an astonishing 22 turnovers. I think you'll have to go a long, long way back in the books to find a game in which an Augie team turned the ball over 22 times.

Johnston did have an outstanding game.  That being said, he was defending Stevenson on the inbounds pass with 10 seconds remaining and turned his head toward the inbounder for a split second allowing Stevenson to break to the basket receive the pass and score.

[4samuy]

Wofford just played Wednesday - http://static.augustana.sidearmsports.com/custompages/Men's%20Basketball%20Stats/2016-17mbbstats/17mbb18.htm. So I guess whatever happened went down since then.

Article with Coach G comment - http://www.qconline.com/sports/college_sports/without-wofford-augie-men-suffer-tough-road-loss/article_7e668eb5-d296-560a-af23-ddfa25366c88.html.

Rather interesting... I did a search and discovered this: http://www.qconline.com/news/crime/protection-orders-filed-after-augustana-incident/article_6b2adccd-0360-5669-bdd6-4d98c4a65f72.html

I realize this might have been brought up on the boards previously, but considering I couldn't keep up over the summer with this page, I may not have seen it. While it appears Wofford was a "victim" in this case... could it still possibly be related? Very interesting year for Mr. Wofford.

It escaped everyone's attention this summer, so thanks for posting it, D-Mac.

I had heard thru twitter this fall that Woffords jaw was wired shut, but thought it was due a basketball related injury and he would be back with the team.  Obviously not.

[Gregory Sager]

Boy, and I thought our league had problems with the All-Conference selection process. Check out this story from d3hoops.com:

http://www.d3hoops.com/notables/2017/01/fdu-mitchell-suspended

[4samuy]

I had mentioned during the Carthage game vs Augustana that Augie can really struggle against zone defenses.  This becomes more pronounced now that wofford is out.  The two guys that were able to find the openings in the zone and convert were both Wofford and Johnston.  Augustana still has the depth to be successful, but being without the versatility of Wofford will make things a little more difficult