MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Gregory Sager]

NPU comes into tonight's game at King Arena a substantial underdog to Wheaton. It'd certainly be great if the Vikings could manage to follow up on the offensive performance against Millikin with a similar share-the-wealth plan at that end of the floor, rather than have Colin Lake and Billy Kirby once again have to shoulder all of the burden of putting points on the board. It would be fantastic if one or more of the newcomers, particularly Quinn Williams and/or Josh Washburn, added more dimension to the offense tonight, although that might be asking too much, too soon.

Aston Francis is going to get his points, regardless of who he's facing. The Vikings are going to have to work hard to make sure that Wheaton's complementary scorers such as Ricky Samuelson and Kobe Eichelberger don't go off big-time against them. And I'm going to be curious to see how well the Vikings are able to defend the paint tonight, as that's been a serious shortcoming for them this season. However, the effort and the preparation by NPU this season has been an especially gratifying thing for me to see, and I'm hopeful that the Vikings will show up at King ready to put themselves into a position to compete for the upset.

[AndOne]

I've been really impressed with Brady Rose this season.  He has turned into a really special player...and is a great leader on the floor.  I'm excited to watch him develop the rest of this season and next.

Isn't Rose graduating? This is his 4th year of school, and he is listed as a senior on the IWU roster.

[duckfan41]

NPU comes into tonight's game at King Arena a substantial underdog to Wheaton. It'd certainly be great if the Vikings could manage to follow up on the offensive performance against Millikin with a similar share-the-wealth plan at that end of the floor, rather than have Colin Lake and Billy Kirby once again have to shoulder all of the burden of putting points on the board. It would be fantastic if one or more of the newcomers, particularly Quinn Williams and/or Josh Washburn, added more dimension to the offense tonight, although that might be asking too much, too soon.

Aston Francis is going to get his points, regardless of who he's facing. The Vikings are going to have to work hard to make sure that Wheaton's complementary scorers such as Ricky Samuelson and Kobe Eichelberger don't go off big-time against them. And I'm going to be curious to see how well the Vikings are able to defend the paint tonight, as that's been a serious shortcoming for them this season. However, the effort and the preparation by NPU this season has been an especially gratifying thing for me to see, and I'm hopeful that the Vikings will show up at King ready to put themselves into a position to compete for the upset.

I'll be in King as well tonight, rooting for my Thunder of course but am excited to see the potential scoring contest between Lake and Francis. I would guess that Luke Peters will match up on Lake which would provide him an obvious disadvantage length and height-wise. From what I remember of last year's matchup at Wheaton, Peters bullied him for the most part and took him out of the game. Of course, NPU had Robinson last year who provided his 22 and 11, so I'm interested to see how NPU's offense looks without the Conference POY, since I haven't been able to see them play yet this season.

[USee]

Through 4 CCIW games (against 4 good teams), IWU is leading the league in:

* Scoring defense: 68.0
* FG % defense: .423
* 3-point FG % defense: .278

Hopefully that continues tonight - Elmhurst is averaging 83.0 per game and has some very talented offensive players.

3pt defense surprisingly has very little to do with actual defense and much more to do with offensive shooting. .278 is likely to regress to the mean as IWU  opponents shoot better. 

Just checked. IWU website has opponents with .295 3pt%?

[lmitzel]

Through 4 CCIW games (against 4 good teams), IWU is leading the league in:

* Scoring defense: 68.0
* FG % defense: .423
* 3-point FG % defense: .278

Hopefully that continues tonight - Elmhurst is averaging 83.0 per game and has some very talented offensive players.

3pt defense surprisingly has very little to do with actual defense and much more to do with offensive shooting. .278 is likely to regress to the mean as IWU  opponents shoot better. 

Just checked. IWU website has opponents with .295 3pt%?

That's for the season. They're allowing a .278 clip in their four CCIW games (25-90).

[Titan Q]

Isn't Rose graduating? This is his 4th year of school, and he is listed as a senior on the IWU roster.

He is going to play next year.  IWU just took a different approach to listing his year on the roster than NCC did with Connor Raridon.

[iwu70]

Glad to hear that about Brady Rose.  That means only Burdine, Streety and Beasley will be lost to graduation, right?   The Rose-Bonnett one-two punch on the perimeter comes back.   Lovely.

IWU'70

[Gregory Sager]

Final from Waukesha:

North Central 73
Carroll 54

This was not as close as the final score seems to indicate. Todd Raridon had his bench in for a good long time at the end of the game. Carroll didn't hit its first trey until the final three minutes.

[Gregory Sager]

The Vikings are getting embarrassed tonight. They're down by 22 at the half, and Tom Slyder has used practically everybody on the roster thus far in the hope of finding a spark. Wheaton, which gave up 90+ the other night to Carroll, of all teams, is playing superb defense, and getting great runouts out of defensive rebounds.

[AppletonRocks]

The Titans are awesome.....oh, this isn't the WIAC board....sorry 

[all blues]

Halftime in Rock Island: Augustana 28, Millikin 27

[Yogao]

Augie up 28 to 27 at the half.  11 first half turnovers has kept them from getting into an offensive rhythm. I don't know what's more surprising, the coat lasted 15 minutes, or Augie only had 5 first half fouls with 3 of them coming in the last couple of minutes. 

[Gregory Sager]

Wheaton 98
North Park 59

[GoPerry]

Greg said it earlier.  All Thunder the whole way, 98-59.  The Vikings not really good at all tonight.  I expected Wheaton to win but certainly not like this.  The Thunder had 30 1st half pts in the paint out of 43 total on a whole bunch of layups.  Another very strong performance by Kobe Eichelberger coming of the bench with 13 and 9 with 2 blks.  Colin Lake is a really good player but just not a lot of help around him.

At least the end of the bench got lots of minutes for both teams.  A little surprised that Cade Alioth only got garbage time tonight although his minutes have been inconsistent of late.

Had to put the announcers on mute.

[Gregory Sager]

Carthage and Illinois Tech are going to overtime at Keating.

The Red Men have trailed the entire game, including by as much as 18 in the first half, but they whittled it down and Jordan Thomas tied it up with a layup with twenty seconds left. Anthony Mosley missed a 16-footer at the buzzer that would've won it.