MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Gregory Sager]

Greg: Do you understand that we have over 25million bushel of corn in this area?

Yep, more or less. Your dad posted something to that effect back when "all the corn in Manito" was the fashionable CCIW Chat version of the "all the tea in China" cliche. What makes the cliche work is the hyperbole involved ... well, that and the fact that a tiny and obscure central Illinois farming community became so well-known in this room.  

[Gregory Sager]

Also, there are some innacuracies in this thread regarding the presidential search and some of the candidates but I won't be going in to them in this forum. Let's just say there were some good applicants in the last round that didn't work out and there are some good finalists in this round that will hopefully work out.

Did you get a chance to meet the finalists, Rob? Did you attend the on-campus forums? And do you have any sense of how they'd relate to North Park athletics? I've gotta think that the subject of NPU sports must've come up at more of the meet-the-candidate forums than just the first one. Like I said, I wasn't able to attend any of them, but I'm guessing that you did.

I'm sure that you agree with me and Omaha and Dennis and Mark and all of the other Parkers who lurk or who post occasionally on CCIW Chat that an athletics-friendly new president is a pretty important component to getting NPU sports moving in the right direction.

[Gregory Sager]

A background of changing jobs frequently should be a negative.

I somehow doubt that Dennis Bridges would turn down Larry Brown if he wanted the job. 

As to Bill Harris being (perhaps) the last 'lifer' of our lifetimes, I hope you are wrong, but you may well be right. As to Bosko, I'll monitor closely how long he stays at Carthage - sure you can afford 25 million bushels of corn?!

Harris isn't really a "lifer". By "lifer" I meant a young coach who goes on to spend his entire coaching career, or nearly all of it, at one school -- a thirty- or forty-year guy, like those I named last night (Bridges, Bessoir, Robinson, etc.). When Bill Harris arrived at Wheaton in the fall of 1991 he was in his early forties, and had just completed a very successful seven-year stint as the head coach of The King's College (my youngest brother's alma mater, incidentally), an NAIA school in downstate New York's Westchester County that has since closed, reopened, and relocated to the Empire State Building in Manhattan.

As for my "all the corn in Manito" bet, I'm not worried. Things change, of course, but I have a pretty good ballpark idea of how long Bosko's going to stick around at Carthage under the present circumstances.

(And I'm not intending to sound an ominous note to the Carthaginians who're reading this; Bosko loves his job, and he has developed a real appreciation for the college and the community up there. In a lot of ways Carthage is a much better fit for him than his alma mater ever was. I don't think he's leaving anytime soon.)

[Gregory Sager]

Would Lawrence coach John Tharp have interest in the IWU job?  That seems to me to be a very good fit.  I have no idea if Tharp is tied to Lawrence though or what his situation is.

What about Aurora's coach?

Pat Cunningham at Trinity (Tx)?


I have to believe IWU will hire a proven head coach.  They have that luxury. 

I expect all three of those would have interest.

Could be, but speaking only for myself I'd have a hard time with the idea of relocating from San Antonio to Bloomington.

[Gregory Sager]

How about the coach from Buena Vista in the IIAC.  He has the best winning percentage in the country and has been to the National Tournament every year since I can remember.  From what I know, he is a young guy also.

Brian Van Haaften (who is only 39 or 40 years old) would appear to be an excellent choice for Illinois Wesleyan. Check out his profile on the Buena Vista website; his accomplishments are pretty remarkable, especially in terms of how fast he got to 200 wins as a head coach. But he's very much an Iowa guy -- born and raised there, and has apparently spent his entire life there. That might make him a less attractive candidate, or it might discount his interest in the Illinois Wesleyan job altogether.

(Is there some significance to the fact that your e-mail address is vanhaaft@ncn.net, go dutch?  )

I would keep an eye on Todd Raridon for the Illinois Wesleyan job. I've heard from many sources that Dennis Bridges was instrumental in helping Raridon land the North Central job after he'd left Nebraska Wesleyan under something less than ideal circumstances (interestingly, his successor at NebWes just left that school this week to take the head job at Luther, after only two years as the head coach of the Prairie Wolves). Raridon's record as a recruiter in Illinois is still incomplete -- although Chris Drennan and Reid Barringer appear to be a nice start -- but there's no getting around the fact that he has done a very impressive job with his predecessor's recruits. North Central's now on the map as a team with which to be reckoned for the first time in quite a while. It only took him two years to get the Cardinals back into the NCAA tournament after an absence of a decade and a half.

[Titan Q]

An article from the Pantagraph on IWU recruit Sean Dwyer...

Hersey's Dwyer still heading to IWU

Rowley said Dwyer compares well to Adam Dauksas, who recently completed four years as IWU's starting point guard.

"I'm familiar with Adam Dauksas," the Hersey coach said. "Sean is at least as good as Dauksas. They will love this kid."


This Titan fan hopes coach Rowley is right.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

I think you all forget one thing about the IWU job.  Sure there is one heck of a tradition to seel, with great facilities and a really good overall experience, which is fine for the kids, but how many coaches want to take on that legacy?  I mean Trost struggled for basically one year, before things started turning around.  Do you really want to take the job at a school where they've only been hesitant about a coach once in the past half-century?

It's a lot to live up to, especially for a guy (like Tharp, but a number of candidates would fall into this category) who has built a program?  I mean, some of these guys have the chance to be "the Dennis Bridges of ______" at their school.  Without the monetary incentive of d1 or an IWU connection to draw them back, I just don't see the appeal of the job for an established coach.

However, I think someone like BV's coach or Aurora or even Rairdon who has shown they can coach and recruit well, but have yet to establish a program, could be a better fit.  There certainly are some great assistants out there, but I doubt IWU goes that route.

Ypsi, thanks for the take on Molinari.  Those were my perceptions as well, but I'm not as close to the situation as others.

[markerickson]

Raridon at IWU scares me.

[emeritusprof]

Long term coaches may be as scarce as single team careers in pro baseball these days, but it seems to me the most significant variable in the mix is undergrad experience.  If IWU wants a "lifer" (as someone said) then the search would be best limited to grads of IWU with a strong attachment to alma mater.

In football, Carthage had such a person in Art Keller.  At the time he retired, he and Bear Bryant shared the college football honors for career records.  Keller had offers from major schools all over the country, but stayed at Carthage--even though that meant a move from his beloved Carthage, Illinois to Kenosha, Wisconsin.  Keller had the deep commitment to Carthage that most often is seen among a school's graduates--and he was one.  And, he had winning teams throughout a long career which included many years as an independent, required to schedule games with larger schools in order to fill a schedule.

[sac]

I would imagine that alot of interest will be shown that's for sure.  When Wheaton was up at Hope this year, I noticed in the Hope program that their one assistant might be head coaching material.  Not sure of his name but seemed really involved and according to the program, knows what it takes to win in D3.

You must be referring to Matt Neil, a former Hope player.  He's been an assistant for at least 16 years and coached the JV's while I was at Hope.  He's the man behind Hope's bigman success over the years.

I think he would make a good head coach someday,  but I'm not sure thats his interest.  He's a teacher first and formost.

Within the next 5 years or so Hope will be going through this same situation.

Good luck to IWU, I bet they'll get a really good coach down there.

Raridon at IWU scares me too......

[playballalldatime]

The article says that Dwyer was Daily Hearad Player of the Year and Player of the Year for the East Division - let me get this one straight....

Dwyer was: All Conference, All Area, Player of the East, Player of the Year, MSL which is the entire MSL Conference and Most Valuable player in the MSL - Dwyer was nominated All Tournament (only 10 players nominated) at the Pekin Holiday Tournament and given the exclusive Mr. Hustle Award which is only given to one individual amongst 180+ players....

this kid sounds like he will be great!!

[Cardsfan4life]

I don't think Raridon will go to IWU unless he wants to pick up the philosphy of Larry Brown.

[Gregory Sager]

Long term coaches may be as scarce as single team careers in pro baseball these days, but it seems to me the most significant variable in the mix is undergrad experience.  If IWU wants a "lifer" (as someone said) then the search would be best limited to grads of IWU with a strong attachment to alma mater.

In football, Carthage had such a person in Art Keller.  At the time he retired, he and Bear Bryant shared the college football honors for career records.  Keller had offers from major schools all over the country, but stayed at Carthage--even though that meant a move from his beloved Carthage, Illinois to Kenosha, Wisconsin.  Keller had the deep commitment to Carthage that most often is seen among a school's graduates--and he was one.  And, he had winning teams throughout a long career which included many years as an independent, required to schedule games with larger schools in order to fill a schedule.

I'm betting that a lot of schools had coaches like that. Illinois Wesleyan has had Horenberger and Bridges; Carthage had Keller; and North Park had Ted Hedstrand. Hedstrand coached at both North Park Academy and NPC/U for what must've been close to a half-century, and he either coached or taught virtually every sport known to man during that time. He was a good college coach, but an even better high school coach; his work with the boy's basketball team at North Park Academy (which closed in 1969) earned him a place in the IBCA Hall of Fame. He was North Park's first varsity men's basketball coach when the school transitioned from a juco to a four-year institution in the late '50s, and he coached the men's cross-country team for what must've been close to thirty years. NPU's home cross-country meet is named the Ted Hedstrand Invitational in his honor, and the football field at Holmgren Athletic Complex is named Hedstrand Field. "Hed", who passed away in 1999, was a wonderful Christian man with an impish, droll sense of humor. He was one of my favorite people at North Park.

Other coaches who put in long tenures at their alma mater included Lee Pfund of Wheaton and Joe Ramsey of Millikin, both of whom logged at last twenty years as a head basketball coach at their schools.

There have also been a few CCIW lifers who aren't actually alumni of their respective schools. Current coaches Al Carius of North Central (who started coaching men's cross-country there in 1966) and Joe Bean of Wheaton (who started coaching men's soccer there in 1969) are two good examples. Carius is a University of Illinois grad, and Bean is a graduate of East Stroudsburg State. In fact, Bean had brief coaching stints at two schools in Connecticut before he came to Wheaton.

[augiedad]

For the IWU job, what about Wheaton grad Matt Nadlehoffer, the head coach at Eastern U.?

[Knightstalker]

Greg, Charlie Brown at NJCU is a former JCSC point guard, one of the best in the schools history and has been a basketball coach in Jersey City between Dickinson High School and NJCU for over thirty years.  The only D-I job he ever considered was the St. Peters job and he decided his heart was with the kids he was getting into NJCU.  He is a man who has dedicated his life to the youth of Jersey City.  Retired middle school principle, former hs coach and coach at NJCU.  His predecessor was Larry Schiner who is still the AD.  We got some lifers here in NJ too.