MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[GoPerry]

What a win for the Thunder.  Wasn't able to watch and the Augie archive only has the last 2 mins.  But the stat sheet basically shows a familiar recipe of what had to happen to come out with a road win like this.  Francis with a big game of course adding 7 rebs, only 3 turnovers.  But also Samuelson continuing his terrific play with 14 pts and 7 rebs.  Eichelberger with 15 and 5 but also 6-8 from the free throw line.  Luke Peters with 7 assts vs 1 turnover.  Lost the rebounding battle but only by 4 which in itself is a good effort considering that is below the Viking average.  Lots of fouls called(53) and a huge # of free throws(72) for both teams- yuk.

What's it all mean?  Nothing really.  Gotta keep it going on Saturday in the Hangar vs NCC, a place where Wheaton wins are pretty rare.

[Titan Q]

All 9 teams in the league have a home loss already...that is pretty amazing for January 11.

[Gregory Sager]

It's much less amazing now that everybody is playing either two or three league games in December.

[markerickson]

Chose not to watch much of the NP/Elmhurst game with better options, e.g., Wolves v OKC, available.  Three Viking starters tallied a total of 19 minutes played.  Coach Slyder had some lame lineups on the court during this debacle.

[Gregory Sager]

At this point Tom's just throwing stuff at the wall to see what will stick, Mark. He lost his best rebounder (Matt Mohr) to a leg injury a week ago against Millikin, and that's considering the fact that NPU was a weak rebounding team even with Mohr in the lineup. Those three starters you mentioned didn't play any defense at all at the outset of the two halves (which is when they saw all of their minutes). They may not be starters at all when Wesleyan comes to town on Saturday; in fact, I'd say that it's anybody's guess who'll start besides Colin Lake and Billy Kirby, although I think that Jason Hines may have earned a start last night; he scored a career-high 11 points before fouling out. Tom is just looking for somebody -- anybody -- who can give the team a spark at one end of the floor while capably defending their man at the other end. If he can't get that, he's going to use offense/defense substitution combos, which is what he did throughout the second half last night.

Trust me, Tom's not doing this because he prefers to do it this way. On the contrary, under normal circumstances he tends to use fewer players in his rotations than do a lot of other head coaches. And no head coach in college basketball, aside from a Grinnell System team, wants to play fifteen guys one game and fourteen guys the next. But, with the team struggling so badly, three new players on the roster, and a key component missing, he really has no choice but to play mix-and-match until he finds the best combinations he has available.

[augiefan]

Augie had a really bad 8 days. Blown out at IWU, an unimpressive win at home over Millikin and last night's beat down by Wheaton. They clearly are not the dominant team in the CCIW and may struggle to make the conference tourney. One good reason. The injury to Pierson Wofford in the ill advised exhibition game at the U of foretold Augie coming back to the pack in a conference as tough as the CCIW. The team needs to refocus, but IWU and Wheaton are sharing the cat bird seat right now.

[WUPHF]

I had never heard the name Andy McLaughlin before.

Was anyone surprised to see the sophomore and Moline, IL native come in and score 13 points in 9 minutes in what appears to have been his second career game.

[voxelmhurst]

Elmhurst 91
North Park 76

Colin Lake: 24 pts
Billy Kirby: 18 pts
Jason Hines: 11 pts
Toby Marek: 3:1 a:to
Josh Washburn: 3 stls

Jake Rhode: 24 pts, 6 rebs, 8:5 a:to
Jeremy Ireland: 18 pts, 7 rebs
Lance Gardner: 14 pts, 7 rebs
Ryan Patton: 13 pts, 4:1 a:to
Derek Dotlich: 4:2 a:to

Elmhurst got great performances from Rhode and Ireland. Rhode continues to impress, especially with his ability to aggressively attack the basket and find a way to get the bucket. He had a few highlight reel baskets yesterday, punctuated in the second half by a reverse layup while switching hands under the basket. Ireland, who can also hit the outside shot, provided the stability down low and scored some big buckets in the paint late  in the first half after North Park erased Elmhurst's early 14 point lead down to 1. After those noted above, the next EC player I was most impressed by was Justin Fox who ran and dove all over the court to collect his 6 rebounds. Really encouraged to see Coach Baines has the team playing cohesively and determined.

[AndOne]

I had never heard the name Andy McLaughlin before.

Was anyone surprised to see the sophomore and Moline, IL native come in and score 13 points in 9 minutes in what appears to have been his second career game.

Yes, especially since I don't believe he even dressed for varsity games last season. 

[lmitzel]

Augie had a really bad 8 days. Blown out at IWU, an unimpressive win at home over Millikin and last night's beat down by Wheaton. They clearly are not the dominant team in the CCIW and may struggle to make the conference tourney. One good reason. The injury to Pierson Wofford in the ill advised exhibition game at the U of foretold Augie coming back to the pack in a conference as tough as the CCIW. The team needs to refocus, but IWU and Wheaton are sharing the cat bird seat right now.

I may be alone in this but I don't know of anyone else who would call that game "ill-advised." Out of curiosity, were you against that exhibition from the outset? Season ending injuries can happen any time, not just in stepping up a couple weight classes.

I wouldn't hit the panic button yet. They're 3-2 in conference, yeah, but both losses have come to the teams ahead of them and they're still in pretty good shape overall. I'll agree that it hasn't been a good week-plus though and they need to get things figured out.

[AndOne]

I think one of the mistakes Augie made last night was not necessarily letting Francis go off for 40, but allowing Samuelson & Kobe "Beef" Eichelberger combine for almost 30 more. Hitting only 4 of 16 from downtown Rock Island didn't help either.
Additionally, the box score indicates a T against the Augie TEAM (not Bench which usually means the coach). Anyone know if the T was on a player or a coach?

Has Mike Schauer shortened his rotation? 🤔

[Yogao]

LiveStats showed the T as on the bench. I didn't know there is a difference between team and bench.  Either way Augie has to stay out of foul trouble, because even with a deep bench, not having Orange and Ebel for the last 3+ minutes hurt them tremendously.

[duckfan41]

Has Mike Schauer shortened his rotation? 🤔

There has definitely been a shrinkage of the rotation, noticeably at the 4 and 5 positions as Spencer Peterson has gotten into better basketball shape and has played well. Unfortunately for Cade Alioth, Peterson's gaining of a wind had essentially eliminated his minutes altogether. Francis will come out for 30-45 second spurts about half way through both halves, but never much more of a rest for him unless the game is in hand.

Schauer has often used smaller rotations when his teams are going well, this team going mostly 8 deep unless foul trouble arises. This year's team is especially interesting to me, because there are many talented freshman waiting to come into the fold, but with an experienced and talented backcourt at each of the three guard positions, and the three starting guards averaging more than 30mins per game, keeps them hungry for minutes if their name does end up being called. I see this time of the season as Schauer finding a formula that has been very successful, and combinations to put onto the floor to play well together.

This group is on a roll, and going into the always heated rivalry game with NCC this weekend will be a solid checkpoint to further observe just how good this Wheaton team might be.

[AndOne]

An overflow crowd of 115 was on hand at Millikin last night to witness North Central defeat the home team 71-54. Comparison wise, the game between the school's women's teams @ NCC drew 145!

Erwin Henry led NCC in scoring with 16. Alex Sorenson had 11, and Aiden Chang 11.
Sorenson was the leading rebounder with 7.
Connor Raridon had 7 assists. Raridon, a forward forced into being NCC's primary point this season due to injuries, is the overall conference assist leader with a per game average of 6.07.

As they should have, the Cardinals have now won 7 games in a row. They will look to extend that streak on Saturday night when the Crusaders thunder down Naperville Road to visit the Cardinals roost in The Hangar, where home team boosters and alums will enjoy pre-game food and (non intoxicating 🙂) drink.

[Gregory Sager]

LiveStats showed the T as on the bench. I didn't know there is a difference between team and bench.  Either way Augie has to stay out of foul trouble, because even with a deep bench, not having Orange and Ebel for the last 3+ minutes hurt them tremendously.

TEAM and BENCH are live stats terms, not NCAA terms. The NCAA has three classes of technical fouls: administrative, Class A, and Class B. Class A and Class B techs can be assessed, depending upon the context, to either a player or a coach. A Class A tech results in two free throws; a Class B tech results in one. Generally speaking, Class A techs are assessed to someone saying or doing something that can generally be considered as offensive behavior (taunting, shoving, excessive arguing, swearing, etc.), while Class B techs are assessed for more general sportsmanship violations (hanging on the rim, interfering with the ball following a basket after a delay-of-game warning has already been given to that team, running down the floor out of bounds, slapping the backboard to interfere with an opponent's shot, etc.).

Wheaton was given two free throws following the Augie tech subsequent to Ebel's disqualification last night, so it was a Class A tech. Whether it was assigned to Ebel, to Grey Giovanine, or to someone else from Augustana is unclear. It's not likely that it was assessed to a player who was in the game at that moment, or it would've been assigned to that player in live stats. The question is whether or not the Carver live stats operator still considered Ebel to be in the game or not after he had been disqualified with his fifth foul but was still on the court. This same thing happened last week in the MU @ NPU game; Millikin's Michael Beaty fouled out, mouthed off to official Terry Murphy, and was T'ed up. The crackerbox's live stats operator -- correctly, I think -- assigned the Class A tech to Beaty rather than to TEAM, because, even though Beaty had been disqualified, he had not yet been substituted for by Mark Scherer and was thus still active for statistical purposes. If the Carver live stats operator thought along those same lines, then the tech wasn't assigned to Ebel because he hadn't been assessed the tech -- rather, it was assessed to somebody on the Augustana bench (and I think we all know who the likely culprit is ).

An overflow crowd of 115 was on hand at Millikin last night to witness North Central defeat the home team 71-54. Comparison wise, the game between the school's women's teams @ NCC drew 145!

There must be a lot more alternative entertainment options in Decatur than there are in Naperville.