MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[markerickson]

In its loss to North Park, IWU uncharacteristically shot only .375 from the charity stripe, and lost by two points.

Wheaton's undefeated regular season definitely needs an asterisk.

[npbaseball40]

By the way, I'm wondering if there's any conference Covid protocol that might not allow the Wheaton men and ladies hosting games on the same day (possibly on Saturday)?

If there are, that's news to us at North Park... We're hosting a pair of games this Thursday - Augustana for the women (8pm) and Millikin for the men's play-in game (5pm).

[Gregory Sager]

The guy who takes the most pride in the 47-year old record is Bosko Djurickovic -- I heard him mention it in interviews at least 20 times over the years.

Greg, if you get your guy Bosko to say Wheaton 2021 ended the streak, I'll give it another thought.  Let me know how that convo goes?

Yeah, well, the next time that I get Bosko to change his mind about anything will be the first.

I'm not taking a side here. I'm simply saying that the argument that can be made on Wheaton's behalf is a legitimate one, based upon CCIW history. Pointing out that a position is legitimate is not the same thing as subscribing to that position.

[Gregory Sager]

In its loss to North Park, IWU uncharacteristically shot only .375 from the charity stripe, and lost by two points.

Always the glass-half-empty outlook, eh, Mark? C'mon, man, our alma mater just beat the #2 team in the nation yesterday. It's OK to be happy this time.

Jalen Boyd missed two free throws with 2:01 left on the clock and the Vikings up by three. Thirty seconds later, with the score still 74-71, Toby Marek missed the front end of a one-and-one. As Tom Slyder said in our postgame interview yesterday, if the Vikings had made those free throws (or even a couple of them), Mike Osborne's end-of-game heroics likely wouldn't have been necessary. I'm therefore not the least bit interested in anybody offering excuses along the lines of "IWU uncharacteristically shot only .375 from the charity stripe, and lost by two points," especially when that .375 comes from such a small sample size (3-8) in a game that only had a total of 20 free throws between the two teams.

To the credit of Bob and the other IWU fans on this board, none of them blamed their team's loss on bad FT shooting. In fact, Bob came straight out and said that NPU was the better team yesterday. I don't have the foggiest idea why you saw fit to make that argument for them.

[Titan Q]

Looks like NCC is done.

https://cciw.org/sports/2021/1/29/MBB_0129212306.aspx

No play-in game now.

[Titan Q]

In its loss to North Park, IWU uncharacteristically shot only .375 from the charity stripe, and lost by two points.

Always the glass-half-empty outlook, eh, Mark? C'mon, man, our alma mater just beat the #2 team in the nation yesterday. It's OK to be happy this time.

Jalen Boyd missed two free throws with 2:01 left on the clock and the Vikings up by three. Thirty seconds later, with the score still 74-71, Toby Marek missed the front end of a one-and-one. As Tom Slyder said in our postgame interview yesterday, if the Vikings had made those free throws (or even a couple of them), Mike Osborne's end-of-game heroics likely wouldn't have been necessary. I'm therefore not the least bit interested in anybody offering excuses along the lines of "IWU uncharacteristically shot only .375 from the charity stripe, and lost by two points," especially when that .375 comes from such a small sample size (3-8) in a game that only had a total of 20 free throws between the two teams.

To the credit of Bob and the other IWU fans on this board, none of them blamed their team's loss on bad FT shooting. In fact, Bob came straight out and said that NPU was the better team yesterday. I don't have the foggiest idea why you saw fit to make that argument for them.

I know on paper IWU's loss to NPU seemed like a "bad loss", but I think anyone who watched that game would disagree.

IWU played well - the Titans looked good on both ends of the floor.  I am pretty sure NPU fans watching the game felt like they were facing a legit Top 5 team.  I doubt any Vikings players/fans/coaches left thinking IWU was overrated or played bad or made a ton of mistakes.

NPU was just better than IWU Saturday.  Sure there were a few FTs missed by IWU...but NPU missed some big ones too.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

In its loss to North Park, IWU uncharacteristically shot only .375 from the charity stripe, and lost by two points.

Always the glass-half-empty outlook, eh, Mark? C'mon, man, our alma mater just beat the #2 team in the nation yesterday. It's OK to be happy this time.

Jalen Boyd missed two free throws with 2:01 left on the clock and the Vikings up by three. Thirty seconds later, with the score still 74-71, Toby Marek missed the front end of a one-and-one. As Tom Slyder said in our postgame interview yesterday, if the Vikings had made those free throws (or even a couple of them), Mike Osborne's end-of-game heroics likely wouldn't have been necessary. I'm therefore not the least bit interested in anybody offering excuses along the lines of "IWU uncharacteristically shot only .375 from the charity stripe, and lost by two points," especially when that .375 comes from such a small sample size (3-8) in a game that only had a total of 20 free throws between the two teams.

To the credit of Bob and the other IWU fans on this board, none of them blamed their team's loss on bad FT shooting. In fact, Bob came straight out and said that NPU was the better team yesterday. I don't have the foggiest idea why you saw fit to make that argument for them.

I know on paper IWU's loss to NPU seemed like a "bad loss", but I think anyone who watched that game would disagree.

IWU played well - the Titans looked good on both ends of the floor.  I am pretty sure NPU fans watching the game felt like they were facing a legit Top 5 team.  I doubt any Vikings players/fans/coaches left thinking IWU was overrated or played bad or made a ton of mistakes.

NPU was just better than IWU Saturday.  Sure there were a few FTs missed by IWU...but NPU missed some big ones too.

Any loss is a bad loss when you're that good.  I don't think they played poorly, but there were definitely some defensive lapses and some unforced turnovers that would need to be tightened up for tournament play.  Because there are so many guys who can be counted on, it's easy to let focus and discipline slip a little bit.  I'm sure it was a good wakeup call for them - one of those losses you don't mind too much, especially right before March.

[Titan Q]

In its loss to North Park, IWU uncharacteristically shot only .375 from the charity stripe, and lost by two points.

Always the glass-half-empty outlook, eh, Mark? C'mon, man, our alma mater just beat the #2 team in the nation yesterday. It's OK to be happy this time.

Jalen Boyd missed two free throws with 2:01 left on the clock and the Vikings up by three. Thirty seconds later, with the score still 74-71, Toby Marek missed the front end of a one-and-one. As Tom Slyder said in our postgame interview yesterday, if the Vikings had made those free throws (or even a couple of them), Mike Osborne's end-of-game heroics likely wouldn't have been necessary. I'm therefore not the least bit interested in anybody offering excuses along the lines of "IWU uncharacteristically shot only .375 from the charity stripe, and lost by two points," especially when that .375 comes from such a small sample size (3-8) in a game that only had a total of 20 free throws between the two teams.

To the credit of Bob and the other IWU fans on this board, none of them blamed their team's loss on bad FT shooting. In fact, Bob came straight out and said that NPU was the better team yesterday. I don't have the foggiest idea why you saw fit to make that argument for them.

I know on paper IWU's loss to NPU seemed like a "bad loss", but I think anyone who watched that game would disagree.

IWU played well - the Titans looked good on both ends of the floor.  I am pretty sure NPU fans watching the game felt like they were facing a legit Top 5 team.  I doubt any Vikings players/fans/coaches left thinking IWU was overrated or played bad or made a ton of mistakes.

NPU was just better than IWU Saturday.  Sure there were a few FTs missed by IWU...but NPU missed some big ones too.

Any loss is a bad loss when you're that good.  I don't think they played poorly, but there were definitely some defensive lapses and some unforced turnovers that would need to be tightened up for tournament play.  Because there are so many guys who can be counted on, it's easy to let focus and discipline slip a little bit.  I'm sure it was a good wakeup call for them - one of those losses you don't mind too much, especially right before March.

Great teams all lose games.  There are always going to be nights you get beat because the other team is better.

I agree IWU had some mistakes...but NPU did too.  I thought those kind of evened out.  It came down to NPU hitting some big-time shots.

[GoPerry]

In its loss to North Park, IWU uncharacteristically shot only .375 from the charity stripe, and lost by two points.

Always the glass-half-empty outlook, eh, Mark? C'mon, man, our alma mater just beat the #2 team in the nation yesterday. It's OK to be happy this time.

Jalen Boyd missed two free throws with 2:01 left on the clock and the Vikings up by three. Thirty seconds later, with the score still 74-71, Toby Marek missed the front end of a one-and-one. As Tom Slyder said in our postgame interview yesterday, if the Vikings had made those free throws (or even a couple of them), Mike Osborne's end-of-game heroics likely wouldn't have been necessary. I'm therefore not the least bit interested in anybody offering excuses along the lines of "IWU uncharacteristically shot only .375 from the charity stripe, and lost by two points," especially when that .375 comes from such a small sample size (3-8) in a game that only had a total of 20 free throws between the two teams.

To the credit of Bob and the other IWU fans on this board, none of them blamed their team's loss on bad FT shooting. In fact, Bob came straight out and said that NPU was the better team yesterday. I don't have the foggiest idea why you saw fit to make that argument for them.

I know on paper IWU's loss to NPU seemed like a "bad loss", but I think anyone who watched that game would disagree.

IWU played well - the Titans looked good on both ends of the floor.  I am pretty sure NPU fans watching the game felt like they were facing a legit Top 5 team.  I doubt any Vikings players/fans/coaches left thinking IWU was overrated or played bad or made a ton of mistakes.

NPU was just better than IWU Saturday.  Sure there were a few FTs missed by IWU...but NPU missed some big ones too.

I'd like to watch the game but for the life of me can't find a link to it on the NPU website.  Can anyone help with an archive link (if it exists)?

[Gregory Sager]

You need to have access to Boxcast to watch it at this point, GP.

As for the "bad loss" discussion, I think that there may be at least four different interpretations of that term:

1) A "bad loss" is one in which a team at or near the top of the league standings loses to a team at or near the bottom of the league standings, regardless of how the game was played.

2) A "bad loss" is one that has an outsized detrimental effect with regard to a team's status in the league standings (Bob's CCIW formula of "win all eight of your home games, and all of your road games against the bottom half of the league" comes to mind), the d3hoops.com national poll, various league and Regional Ranking tiebreakers, etc.

3) A "bad loss" is a loss in which the losing team played terribly against an opponent it should've beaten easily.

4) A "bad loss" means being on the wrong end of a rout.

In a normal season, there is typically little or no difference between the first two definitions ... but this, of course, is not a normal season. And, since there is no national tournament to worry about, and both the Titans and the Vikings were already locked into their final seedings for the CCIW tourney regardless of what happened in the crackerbox on Saturday, the only way that Saturday's game could be construed as being a "bad loss" according to the second definition would be if Illinois Wesleyan plummets drastically in the d3hoops.com poll that Pat will release shortly -- and even then it's debatable how much meaning should be ascribed to that.

The game wasn't a rout, so that leaves out the fourth definition. That leaves definitions #1 and #3. Definition #1 is inarguably true; Illinois Wesleyan was (and is) the #2 team in the league, while North Park was the #8 team and has only moved up to #7 because of the premature end of North Central's season to a positive Covid-19 test or tests. But I agree with Bob that definition #3 really doesn't fit the bill. Illinois Wesleyan didn't play at peak efficiency, but I've seen enough of the Titans this season to know that they played well by their own standards. The other part of that equation is that North Park is definitely a far better team right now than the ugly 3-10 record of the Vikings would seem to indicate. Saturday's game didn't occur in a vacuum -- the Vikings played an absolutely tremendous 20 minutes of basketball in the second half of their road game romp over Carroll last Tuesday, outscoring the Pioneers 45-23 in that period, and they picked right up where they'd left off in Waukesha when they tipped off in the crackerbox floor on Saturday. And they've played (and lost) a bunch of really close games this season, especially the overtime loss to Wheaton in which Toby Marek short-rimmed what would've been the game-winner at the buzzer to end regulation. So there's that to consider as well.

[Pat Coleman]

The craziest thing about that closing few minutes was all the missed free throws!

[Gregory Sager]

Tell me about it. It made for several stomach-flipping loops on that roller-coaster ride of the final three minutes.

In retrospect, those six straight muffed free throws seem like an anomaly -- two teams mutually executing poorly for a stretch of thirty seconds in a game in which both teams otherwise generally played at a high level throughout.

[PauldingLightUP]

You can find Stout and La Crosse replays on Boxcast. That is unfortunate for fans can't get NPU replays.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

I guess I define "bad loss" in opposition to "good loss."  A good loss is one that still feels like forward momentum.  I suppose if we're using a continuum with "bad loss" "loss" and "good loss," it could be argued this one was just a "loss."  I hadn't taken that option into consideration.  This loss shouldn't feel like a stumbled to IWU, but it's also a loss that, given their abilities, shouldn't have happened.  NPU played great and earned the win; I just believe IWU is good enough they could've prevented it without a superhuman performance.

[Ultimate Titan Fan]

Great teams all lose games.  There are always going to be nights you get beat because the other team is better.

I agree IWU had some mistakes...but NPU did too.  I thought those kind of evened out.  It came down to NPU hitting some big-time shots.
[/quote]

I had the same impression. The oldest cliche seems the most applicable: It came down to which team wanted it more.