MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[augiedad]

That leads me back to my question.  What kind of coach, if any "certain kind" is IWU looking for.  Tharpe was mentioned, but he's in the "Bennett (pick whatever one you want)" kind of mold where it's more methodical, motion offense, tough man-to-man defense etc...IWU, from what I understand, is more of an up tempo run and gun type team.  If a Tharpe or Bennett came in, wouldn't IWU be basically starting from scratch with a whole new system and then a whole new look at what kind of recruits the new coach would be looking for.  Would current players want to play in a offense of that type?  Thoughts from those closer or more familiar with the program?

OS, you are not really suggesting that a school make a longterm head coaching decision based on the abilities of the current players and how they fit the candidates' coaching style, are you??  That is crazy.  You pick the coach you want, you hope the transition goes as well as it can go with the players who are there, and you build for the future.

Bridges to Trost was a big shift at IWU.  Anyone remember those Bridges guys (Kaston, Hubbard, Camerdella, etc) playing Trost's system that first year?  It was ugly.  Yet, Trost adjusted and the players adjusted that 2nd year and they won a CCIW title, and then Trost got "his own guys" (Dauksas, Amel., Freeman, etc) in after that and played a totally different style at IWU...and succeeded.

To think IWU is going to pick a coach based on who's style fits Z. Freeman, Gant, Nussbaum, etc is nuts.

[augiedad]

John Baines seems like a great assistant coach and a great D3 head coaching prospect.  Tom Jesse at Augustana as well.  I just do not see IWU hiring an assistant coach though for the best Division III head coaching job in the country, when you can hire from a pool of this many proven, successful current head coaches. 

There is no way you can hire John Baines over John Tharp, Mike McGrath, Todd Raridon, etc.

[augiedad]

Zach Kelly, the 6'7" prospect out of Glenbrook North that Illinois Wesleyan was pursuing, has chosen to attend Washington (MO). He'll reunite with former Glenbrook North teammate Sean Wallis, who saw a lot of playing time for the Bears last season as a freshman.

http://www.chicagohoops.com/articles1/kellycommits.html

I watched Kelly play on TV in the state tournament both years and saw him in person 4-5 times.  I was always shocked IWU was after him.  He is big, but that is about it. 

Kelly is a first cousin of Sean Wallis, the Wash U point-guard of the future and Kelly's GN teamate.

[Titan Q]

Jim, Todd Raridon's interest in the Illinois Wesleyan job really isn't much of a surprise to a lot of people. I've heard a lot of people speculate over the past two years that Dennis Bridges helped Raridon land the North Central job with the idea in mind that Raridon might someday make a great coach for the Titans. That's strictly speculation and needs to be taken with a serious grain of salt, of course, but I've heard it from several people and it does match the time frame. My suspicion is that Bridges has known for quite some time that Scott Trost was not going to put in a long tenure at Illinois Wesleyan.

Greg, I'd encourage you to be a little more careful on the wild speculation.  It's one thing to say you heard Dennie Bridges helped Todd Raridon get his job at North Central...I'm pretty sure Dennie was a solid reference for Raridon during that process.  Bridges has always been a big fan of his.  But it is another thing to post a rumor that Bridges did so to stash away a potential future Titan head coach.   That is just irresponsible, in my opinion, and it is not fair to Raridon or Bridges.

And I don't think hearing a rumor "from several people" makes it any more true...it just means the one person who started it told a bunch of people, who told a bunch of people, etc.  I've had a whole bunch of rumors floating around the CCIW get back to me this season about IWU, Trost, Bridges, etc that are just absolutely laughable when compared to the truth.  This is yet another.

Todd Raridon may get the IWU job for all I know, but it won't be because Dennie Bridges executed his plan of getting Raridon to NCC, waiting for Trost to leave, then getting Raridon to IWU.

[David Collinge]

Oh, come on, Q.  This is CCIW Chat, not the Congressional Record.  Speculation is not only allowable, it's more or less the foundation of the room.  So long as a comment is not libellous, I don't see any reason to suppress it, even if it is "absolutely laughable" and "not fair to Raridon or Bridges."

As far as being "a little more careful" is concerned, I think

That's strictly speculation and needs to be taken with a serious grain of salt,

pretty well covers that.

[Ralph Turner]

Oh, come on, Q.  This is CCIW Chat, not the Congressional Record.  Speculation is not only allowable, it's more or less the foundation of the room.  So long as a comment is not libellous, I don't see any reason to suppress it, even if it is "absolutely laughable" and "not fair to Raridon or Bridges."

As far as being "a little more careful" is concerned, I think

That's strictly speculation and needs to be taken with a serious grain of salt,

pretty well covers that.

+1 David! 

This site is becoming the lifeblood of D3 sports.  Here is where the ideas are floated, genuine criticism expounded and the most loyal fans in the world can come for the discussion from the finest cohort of the followers of amateur athletics in the world!

[Outnthewoodsman]

Does anyone in here  know for sure of applicants.  I have heard tons of people have applied.  I am wondering if any Michigan coaches have applied

[True Basketball Fan]

Although I think Scherer is a fantastic coach and would hate to lose him, I have said for a long time (since I met Baines while he coached the tennis squad at EC back in 2000) that losing Baines may actually be a larger hit to the EC team.

I would question your basketball know-how, by saying that losing as assistant would be a bigger loss than losing the head coach.  That's a very arrogant statement, considering that Coach Scherer's coaching record is very good, and Baines doesn't even have one yet.  Also, Coach Scherer was turning around a dead program at Valpo with his great recruiting and winning games at Elmhurst when Baines was still a teenager.  I'm sure he's a good assistant coach and will make a good head coach someday, but it sounds like you fell victim to the common assistant-player relationship (liking the assistant better than the head coach, mainly because they don't have to make the decisions that make people upset, thus hardly ever upsetting the players).  Anyway, if Baines does leave for Wesleyan, I'm sure Coach Scherer will find a very good replacement and continue winning at Elmhurst, like he was before.

[bluejay5]

Well True Basketball Fan I would question your knowledge, as the poster you referenced didn't even play for Coach Baines he met him while he was the coach of the Tennis team, therefore he didn't even have the relationship you spoke of.   I however played for both and played for two schools in college and I think there are many players who will admit that losing an assistant could be just as valuable as losing a head coach.  Coach Baines is a great coach who has been able to keep many kids at that school who were thinking about leaving and it is not because of his GREAT BUDDY, BUDDY relationships but the ability to get through to student athletes.  So if you are going to post about the traps that players get into with player, assistant coach relationships you need to get your facts straight. 

[Gregory Sager]

Oh, come on, Q.  This is CCIW Chat, not the Congressional Record.  Speculation is not only allowable, it's more or less the foundation of the room.  So long as a comment is not libellous, I don't see any reason to suppress it, even if it is "absolutely laughable" and "not fair to Raridon or Bridges."

As far as being "a little more careful" is concerned, I think

That's strictly speculation and needs to be taken with a serious grain of salt,

pretty well covers that.

Exactly. I think I'm being plenty careful when it comes to this sort of thing. In fact, I didn't even concede Augiedad's statement that Mike McGrath is now a candidate for the Illinois Wesleyan job, as there has been no corroboration of that yet. He may very well be right about McGrath, but that's how careful I am with rumors. If "serious grain of salt" isn't enough of a hedge, I don't think I can come up with any qualifier or warning that'll work. Raridon's interest in the job gets a little more credence from me than the McGrath rumor at this point, since Raridon was listed as a possible candidate in the Pantagraph, which is practically the house organ of the Titans.

I just do not see IWU hiring an assistant coach though for the best Division III head coaching job in the country,

Whether the Illinois Wesleyan job is "the best Division III head coaching job in the country" or not is open to debate. I think it's pretty obvious that it's one of the best D3 jobs in the country. But there are other schools that have big fanbases, great traditions, and a pattern of national success (e.g., Calvin, Hope, Wooster) and there's one school with an amazing tradition of winning that has also been a cradle of future D1 coaches over the years (Wittenberg). The "best D3 job" issue seems fairly subjective to me.

I watched Kelly play on TV in the state tournament both years and saw him in person 4-5 times. I was always shocked IWU was after him. He is big, but that is about it.

I've only seen Kelly play two or three times on TV, but I wasn't that impressed by him, either. More than being puzzled by Illinois Wesleyan's pursuit of Kelly, I was puzzled as to why two D1 schools (Dartmouth and Lafayette) and a D2 school (UMass-Lowell) were after him.

I agree with the last poster,

Good to hear from you again, Justin. Don't be a stranger here on CCIW Chat!

[Gregory Sager]

Check out this link, http://vikings.vcsu.edu/mensbasketball/, in particular #11. Look familiar?

I know that after he left NPU at the conclusion of the 2001-02 school year Maurice Vaughn went to play on scholarship for an NAIA-1 school in Georgia, Southern Polytechnic. I checked his stats from time to time -- he did fairly well at that level -- but he vanished from the roster after the 2002-03 season. Now it seems that he turned up three seasons later as a junior at Valley City State, a rather obscure NAIA-2 school in North Dakota where the men's basketball team is coached by former UW-Superior mentor Jeff Kaminsky. But Vaughn lasted only through the 13 games played during the first semester; after that he disappears from the VCSU box scores, in spite of the fact that he had started the last three games he played and at 11.2 ppg in a little over 20 mpg he was obviously the team's most potent offensive threat.

'rice was an enormously talented player, and he obviously still is. He may have been the most promising freshman NPU has turned out in this decade so far (OK, OK, so that sounds like I'm damning him with faint praise). But he was headstrong and a real handful to coach (it wasn't that he couldn't play defense; he simply didn't want to play defense) and he eventually forced Rees Johnson to boot him off the team. In spite of that, he was a nice kid and I had hoped that he would succeed at his next school.

He seems to be amassing a pretty checkered record: Three teams in five years, two of which he either quit or was dropped from in mid-season. I hope it all works out for him somehow; if he never does find a coach with which he can coexist, at least I hope he finishes his schooling somewhere. That's the most important thing, of course, and having once worked as a college transcript clerk I can say with certainty that the more academic stops you put in your rearview mirror, the less likely you are to actually stick it out and finish up your bachelor's degree.

(Hat tip to Mark Erickson for tracking down the latest twist in the Vaughn saga.)

[augiedad]

Raridon's interest in the job gets a little more credence from me than the McGrath rumor at this point, since Raridon was listed as a possible candidate in the Pantagraph, which is practically the house organ of the Titans.

Gregory, even if you have to admit there is a huge gap between saying, say, "I've heard Raridon is applying for the IWU job" and "I've heard...Dennis Bridges helped Raridon land the North Central job with the idea in mind that Raridon might someday make a great coach for the Titans."  For that reason, I am not sure why you are even listing the Pantagraph's inclusion of Raridon's name to support your point.  I mean, the Pantagraph sure didn't go on to say what you did.

But as the room's resident IWU applicant rumor spreader, I will try to stay out of this one!

[augiedad]

I feel confident in my Augustana/NCAA coaching/misc. D3-based sources about every name for the IWU job I have posted here, just as I was confident in the same sources who confirmed that Scott Trost was leaving for Lewis the day before it was announced.  I am sure of:

John Tharp (Lawrence)
Mike McGrath (Chicago)
Todd Raridon (North Central)
Ron Rose (Bloomington H.S.)
John Baines (Elmhurst, Asst Coach)
Rick Samuels (Eastern Illinois, former head coach)

Now this comes from a different source, so I do not yet know how reliable, but I recently heard another name --

Pat Cunningham (Trinity)

Not clear if Cunningham applied, or if the source was pretty sure he would.  Not very solid info.

I have heard from a pretty solid source that IWU has over 100 applicants for the job.  The real intrigue would be to know who are some of those 90+ guys we haven't identified.  Most of the names above were pretty obvious going in.

Would seem to me IWU is going to end up with a great coach.

[augiedad]

Going to be interesting to see how the IWU thing shakes up, that is for sure.

[Gregory Sager]

Those are two completely different points that you're conflating, Augiedad.

The first one (Raridon is applying, etc.) strikes me as eminently reasonable, and the Pantagraph mention is a big part of what makes it reasonable.

The second one (Bridges helped Raridon land the North Central job with the idea in mind, etc., etc.)  definitely strikes me as something of a reach as far as rumors go, which is why I red-flagged it with the "serious grain of salt" comment.

I never cited the Pantagraph article to support the second point, because: a) it doesn't support the second point, at least not enough to give that particular rumor what I would consider sufficient credence; and b) I have a high threshold of acceptance for anything that even remotely smacks of a conspiracy theory. I merely mentioned it, attached my red flags to it, and noted that it does match the time frame. I cited the Pantagraph article to support the first point in my 1:36 am post this morning.

As far as your sources are concerned, I am not impeaching them -- just as I didn't impeach Advoice's source(s) when he stated on CCIW Chat that the Lewis job had been offered to Scherer, who turned it down and then had a change of heart and called Lewis to accept the position only to be told that the school had given it to another candidate. I'm simply saying that I need more corroboration than one person's anonymous Internet tips (especially when the tipster is himself anonymous -- no offense intended).

I fully understand your position, because I too get insider info on occasion for which I am not at liberty to reveal the source. Lots of us -- Bob, Dennis, Rob, and several others who post regularly on CCIW Chat -- are subject to the same anonymous-source sanctions. What I'm saying is that there's no such thing as a totally trustworthy anonymous source. You can only have faith in someone's veracity when that person is willing to go on the record so that we can examine the source as well as the material, and you and I both know that that's not going to happen very often in here.