MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Titan Q]

Credit to Titan Q for his preseason prediction that Augie would be very competitive despite losing 8 seniors including the team's top 6 scorers from last year's team. I was sure it would be a rebuilding year.

Actually, the credit for that should go to AndOne. Mark was the first one to posit, back on October 6 (and again on October 22) that Augustana could turn out to be very good this season.

I assume augiefan is referring to my comments about talent level since he was involved in that discussion...

Regarding Augustana, I watched a lot of their game vs Alma tonight.  In my opinion the Vikings are absolutely not overrated.  I will go as far as to say this - Augie is more talented this year than last year.  Now, that talent is young and/or experienced, so it is not all meshed together yet, and not always pretty.  But I believe this might be the most talented Grey Giovanine Augie team I have seen.

Last year's Augie team made the Elite Eight, and the 2015 version played in the national championship game, and this year's team is more talented? 
They may be more athletic, but I think the jury will remain out for awhile on the question of bring more talented.

Yes, I believe Augustana's 2016-17 team is more talented than the Elite 8 team last year.  That doesn't mean they'll do as well (I don't think Augie will win the CCIW this year), but just matching pure talent last year vs this year, I think this team is more talented.

If, after only two games, you can tell this Augie team is more talented than their last two teams that went a combined 56-7, then the first thing you should do tomorrow morning is go out and buy a lottery ticket. 🤓

Who WILL win the CCIW?

I would certainly like to see Q's vision of a his year's Augie team come to fruition, but the simple truth is freshmen and sophomore dominated teams do not succeed in the CCIW.

Not often, but it happens:

* 2003-04 IWU (12-2, 1st) - Dauksas (So.), Amelianovich (So.), Freeman (Fr.), etc

* 1999-00 Carthage (11-3, 1st) - Wiertel (So.), McDaniel (Fr.), Garnes (Fr.), etc


And this Augustana team has nice senior presence with Jacob Johnston emerging as a leader.

[AppletonRocks]

If the USA is ever in a real energy crisis, there has to be a way to make power out of the biomass that Grey and Pat Miller spew from the sidelines.  Both of them are shining examples, despite their records, of how not to act as a coach.  Fun to watch them act like petulant children. 

Have a good summer. 

[Gregory Sager]

I assume augiefan is referring to my comments about talent level since he was involved in that discussion...

Yeah, that would make sense.

I think that several of us felt before the season that Augie was going to be very solid. Chuck, for instance, guessed last fall that Augie was going to be a top four team, even before the preseason coaches poll picked the Rock Islanders third. What I don't think that any of us anticipated was Augustana actually winning the league. For that matter, nobody tabbed North Park to win it, either. (I had my suspicions that NPU had a shot at it, but I didn't express that publicly.) And, certainly, nobody outside of the Carthage coaches and players figured that the Red Men had any chance at all to win it, either, as they were the true surprise team of the 2016-17 season.

Of course, a lot of this has to do with the fact that the consensus #1 pick lost its most important player to injury only three games deep into the conference season. I wonder which teams people would've picked as their respective choices for CCIW champion if they'd known ahead of time that North Central wouldn't have Connor Raridon for most of the season?

[Titan Q]

On the Hope vs Augustana hosting topic, when we did our mock Pool C selections on the Hoopsville Selection Sunday show, we had Hope ahead of Augie in the process...

http://www.d3boards.com/index.php?topic=4232.msg1793874#msg1793874

In other words, we had Hope as an overall higher tournament seed.  The hosting decision would seem to me to come down to seed. 

Will be very interesting to see how this plays out and it's a huge decision -- both teams (Augie, Hope) have such a great homecourt advantage.  Whoever gets to host will have to be considered the favorite to get to Salem.

[badgerwarhawk]

I suspect that Miller might have said three or four magic words ... and at about 110 decibels.

Miller said "that was a rookie mistake."  No profanity or "magic" words were involved and I don't understand why as an official you would compound the ridiculous mistake you had just made by calling a technical when the coach you just screwed says something like that about it.  But that's what happened.  Despite it all we had to do was make three of the ten free throws we missed and we'd be playing next weekend.  As vocal as Miller is he doesn't swear at the officials.   

Congratulations and good luck to Augustana.

[Gregory Sager]

Yep. And I just apologized on the WIAC board for assuming otherwise about Pat.

[Titan Q]

Hope is the host.

[Titan Q]

A video capturing the atmosphere when Hope and IWU met in Round 2 five years ago - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEuAYQ3q7kw.

It's quite a special venue.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

Greg, I thought one reason GG didn't get the T is because he was yelling at his own player. On the video, when they gave him the timeout, he was at halfcourt in the face of his Pt Guard, who had just turned it over against the press. I could be wrong but that may have been the difference.

This is the secret in the sauce for Ramapo's Chuck McBreen. If you have never watched (or heard) him, he is incredibly fiery on the sidelines and many have assumed he is going after refs when in reality he is going after his players. The refs know this, obviously, but it amazes me how many times fans think he should have been T-ed up when in reality he said nothing to the refs. Most times he is very cordial with the refs... though he might spin around and lose his mind with the bench. Crazy to watch.

Not sure that is what actually happened with Grey, but worth sharing the comparison.

[Gregory Sager]

Again, Dave, the real issue with what Giovanine was doing had to do with his location -- midcourt stripe, well out onto the floor -- than with the volume or the target of his yelling.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

Again, Dave, the real issue with what Giovanine was doing had to do with his location -- midcourt stripe, well out onto the floor -- than with the volume or the target of his yelling.

Understand and Bridgeland was well out on the court himself, but he kept going out, back to the sideline, out again, etc. which makes his example last night a little different.

I have seen my fair share of coaches well out on the court at the time of a timeout... if the refs feel the timeout was granted or being granted, they tend to look past this one especially if they are not the target of the coach's ire.

[USee]

Again, Dave, the real issue with what Giovanine was doing had to do with his location -- midcourt stripe, well out onto the floor -- than with the volume or the target of his yelling.

Maybe the refs had less tolerance for the yelling than the positioning of the coaches. If GG was indeed yelling at his own player and not the ref, that was different than what the UWW coach did (yell at the refs) and they had more tolerance for the position of the coach given the circumstances (and the timeout). He may have been trying to yell at his player to get a timeout and came out on the floor so he could see him. Whatever the case, the two situations were very different.

I can't believe I am a GG apologist now....yuck.

[Gregory Sager]

Makes you want to take a shower, doesn't it?

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

Those might have been the funniest two lines this chat room has seen in a little while... love it.

[augiefan]

Titan is correct. Our discussion relates back to talent levels of CCIW teams in mid-November, 2016, and I am not trying to sand bag him. I really respect his posts and the fact that he is pretty nonpartisan compared to some of the rest of us despite his love for IWU.

My son in law and grandson were at the game last night in Whitewater and were rooting for Whitewater, as one of the Warhawks was a teammate of my grandson in high school last year. Their Observation was that the the refs totally blew the 2 shot foul call to the detriment of UWW but had no choice but to follow the possession arrow rule. However, they also felt the officials should have swallowed their whistle and not t'd up the Whitewater coach given they blew the FT call. They also did not believe Coach G deserved a t, since he was berating his own player and was on the court trying to get a time out.

That's the view of two neutral observers who were court side. They both acknowledged it was a special game between to really good teams.