MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Drake Palmer]

Wow - I thought I 'd be reading page after page discussing the game between the Illini & IWU last night, but it seems I've wondered off into a new room called CCIWSoccer.com.    

By my count there have been 46 posts (post # 641-687), 3 gallant, yet futile  attempts to steer the topic back to hoops, but the soccer head-"er"s seemed to have momentarily prevailed.  So I guess I'll just have to side with the  underdogs in this situation - "Go git em North Park!" 

[Jim Matson]

Come on Drake, I mentioned basketball in my earlier post...

[True Basketball Fan]

Didn't listen or watch last night.......I was wondering if IWU played zone or man or both.  Last year they struggled to guard man to man on several occassions, and they resorted to zone (not that there is anything wrong with that, I feel that Trost wants to play man more than not).  One of the few weaknesses, if there is one, is their man to man defense.  Does it look like it could be improved from last season, or are we going to see a lot of zone in the future?

I know last night's game is probably not a great indicator, but I'm sure someone was able to draw a decent conclusion.

[usee]

it took my first visit of the year to d3hoops.com to realize that Mr. ypsi is the former Cabonney.


great work by the titans the other night! this football fan appreciates the d3 representation.

[dansand]

Wow,

I've learned a couple new things about this board. In the past, the conversation, particularly in the off-season, has occasionally drifted off to soccer, but I've never seen cyber-fistfights breaking out over it. I appreciate the passion, if not the sport. We still, to my knowledge, haven't answered the question of how many quote boxes can be fit inside one another. Is it infinite, like images in two mirrors facing each other? And, as heated as it's been, the discourse here is still well above the level of the NAIA boards, where they call each other things like "retard" (politically incorrect as well as just plain stupid and immature and  "dumbass." And, believe, that's the rule rather than the exception.
As far as basketball goes, what happened in Champaign Thursday was pretty much what every poster on this board had predicted. An excellent effort by IWU, which sounds like it could have been even better if they had shot better from the line.

[Gregory Sager]

Drake and Dan, I don't think that last evening's CCIW Chat posts were dominated by soccer per se. Nobody mentioned headers or offsides or back-line breakdowns or anything else actually related to the sport (unless you count my rhetorically asking Paul Carr how much trouble it is to set up goals and corner flags in preparation for the CCIW championship game, or Chuck's digression about his son playing soccer on a field covered in goose guano). It was more a matter of last night being dominated by a discussion of conference rules, soccer merely being the pretext for the discussion.

That was evidenced by the passion you saw from those of us who are sons of the Park; Dennis Prikkel, for one, couldn't give a flying rip about the sport of soccer, but when it comes to defending his alma mater in the face of a perceived injustice he's just as passionate as TJCummingsfan or Gotberg or Mark Erickson or me. I don't think Mark's all that much of a soccer aficionado, either (he follows NPU football and basketball, and his non-NPU sports passions are Minnesota pro teams and the Oklahoma Sooners), but he actually took the time in the middle of yesterday's CCIW Chat discussion to e-mail NPU AD Jack Surridge in order to clarify the conference rules in question. Dan, I would hope that you would be just as passionate in Augustana's defense if Augie had a major and legitimate grievance similar to the one that NPU has, or that any of the other regulars on Pat's two sites would've stuck up for their school as well under those circumstances.

And, Drake, I talked about basketball in my posts # 635 and 638 Friday morning, so my butt was covered for the day. 

[tjcummingsfan]

Hiker Jim

Yes, North Park has won the last two meetings between the teams, both at Wheaton, but what kind of logic are you using to suggest that North Park is somehow better off playing there than at home?  And please don't use the "last chance for a men's conference victory in a long time card."  North Park hasn't won a conference game in a major men's sport (Football, Basketball, Baseball) in over a year, so this is just as likely North Park's last chance for a men's conference win.  

For a while I felt a little bad that I even brought this issue up, but now reading everything I've been reading I can't get around the fact that North Park got screwed, and Wheaton fans and allies are spinning in circles trying to come up with one BS answer after another trying to justify this travesty.  Plain and simple this is unfair, and unfortunately (I say unfortunately because it has lit a fire under Greg, and KD that I never thought possible concerning soccer) for Wheaton, and the Wheaton fans the Thunder was a direct benefactor of an unjust rule.  

[Gregory Sager]

Incidentally, regarding how many quote boxes can fit inside each other, I'm pretty sure that this is the board on Posting Up where we're most likely to actually find that out.  

[devildog29]

TBF, IWU played man the first half and then switched to zone in the second half.  A bit ironic that they held their own in man, but the freshman kid from Peoria, Jameer Smith I think, lit up the house from 3 in the second half against IWU's zone.  I think the prevailing thought was IWU would play a lot of zone to pack it in against U of I's bigs and make the Illini beat them from outside, where Illinois has some question marks.  The irony of the night seemed to be that Chris Jones and Zac Freeman held their own against the Illini bigs while in man, and if memory serves me correct, IWU even had a rebounding edge (by 1 board I think) in the first half.  The zone, the fouls, and conditioning (also a result of lack of equal depth) in the second half is what made the difference.

I'm not saying that switching back to man would have made the outcome different, but that's how it unfolded.

[Gregory Sager]

Yes, North Park has won the last two meetings between the teams, both at Wheaton, but what kind of logic are you using to suggest that North Park is somehow better off playing there than at home?  And please don't use the "last chance for a men's conference victory in a long time card."  North Park hasn't won a conference game in a major men's sport (Football, Basketball, Baseball) in over a year, so this is just as likely North Park's last chance for a men's conference win.  

I don't think that Jim was actually suggesting that, Eric. I think it was more a matter of Jim suggesting that NPU is a good enough team that it might not make much of a difference where the game is played. That's not quite the same thing as suggesting that the Vikings are better off playing at East McCully Field in Wheaton than at Hedstrand Field in Chicago.

Oh, and the Park beat Millikin in a baseball game last year, so let's not sell our sad-sack 2004-05 major men's sports teams any shorter than we have to.  

I think that you and I are very much in agreement about this being a legitimate issue for CCIW Chat discussion. It's a conference matter, for one thing, and it touches upon the same sort of governance, institutional relations, and rivalry aspects of the league that are also pertinent to basketball. Plus, CCIW soccer has been an ongoing thread in this room for a couple of months now, so there's precedent at work here as well. In fairness to those CCIW Chat regulars who don't bleed blue and gold as you and I do, however, I think it's less a matter of their trying to spin the situation by making excuses in order to justify the tandem-championships rule than it is their trying to find a silver lining to an unfair rule.

In other words, however misguided you and I think they are in this discussion, at least their intentions are good. Jim seems to be the only one who actually sees some bona-fide justification for the rules as they are currently set up. And in Jim's defense, I don't think that his motives are impure in doing so. I think it's less a matter of his trying to spin this afternoon's injustice Wheaton's way than it is a matter of his trying to co-opt North Park's grievance. And I fully understand why. He's absolutely right, after all, that the conference tournament was set up because Wheaton was so dominant in soccer for so long that the other schools in the league had to set this up in order to circumvent Wheaton dominance. Put yourself in his shoes. You and I would be pretty apt to give short shrift to someone else's gripes about the CCIW soccer tournament if we were Wheaties.

It doesn't make this situation any fairer, and you and I are still very much entitled to our anger. But I'm just saying that I can empathize with Jim, too.

[usee]

Anyone, who calls themselves a Christian, should be ashamed that this perversion of sportsmanship is being condoned by the self-anointed keepers of Christian righteousness.  It just really stinks, and no sugar-coated jokes by the former Wheaton assistant coach living in Massachusetts is going to make it right.

as a football fan who probably dislikes soccer more than dennis, and as someone who is the least likely person to be discussing soccer on a basketball board, i must say this tirade from dennis is ridiculous and uncalled for.

let me first say that from what i have read it is absolutely wrong that north park is playing for the title at wheaton. whatever system was set up that allowed for this is in need of serious revision. that said, i don't think it was wheaton that set these rules.  to use this injustice as a platform to bash people calling themselves christian is just as wrong as anyone who thinks this loophole in the rules is fair.

[Gregory Sager]

as a football fan who probably dislikes soccer more than dennis, and as someone who is the least likely person to be discussing soccer on a basketball board, i must say this tirade from dennis is ridiculous and uncalled for.

let me first say that from what i have read it is absolutely wrong that north park is playing for the title at wheaton. whatever system was set up that allowed for this is in need of serious revision. that said, i don't think it was wheaton that set these rules.  to use this injustice as a platform to bash people calling themselves christian is just as wrong as anyone who thinks this loophole in the rules is fair.

I won't argue with you, usee, because I happen to agree with you. But that's Dennis. Anyone who's followed CCIW Chat for any length of time understands his propensity to try to drive home penny nails with a sledgehammer. The man is a maestro of hyperbole and overstatement, and I guess in some nutty way that's kind of his charm. Calling out other people's integrity as Christians is a little too far over the top for me as well. But your fellow Wheaties who've been around for awhile understand Dennis pretty well, too. I thought that Paul Carr's terse reply to Dennis's tirade about "self-anointed keepers of Christian righteousness" -- "Soccer's still just a game, right?" -- was the wittiest and most elegant riposte anyone's sent Dennis's way in ages.

(And, incidentally, I didn't see anyone giving Dennis credit for using proper soccer terminology when he referred to Wheaties being "self-anointed keepers of Christian righteousness" instead of being "self-anointed goalies of Christian righteousness", as a soccer novice would've been prone to do. )

You have to give Dennis his props, though. How many other people can provoke football fans into posting about soccer on a basketball board? Love him or hate him, the Prike has some serious mojo when it comes to getting under people's skin.

[Jim Matson]

In light of Greg's earlier post, I think we've exhausted this topic for now.  It's been a good conversation though!

I'm now more interested in:  the actual North Park/Wheaton match at 4:30, and the North Central/Augie football game at noon.

Put it this way, the CCIW has become a more powerful conference overall in football and in soccer (men's and women's).  And CCIW basketball continues to be nationally competitive.  North Park playing Wheaton for the conference title on the last day of the season, and discussing whether North Central will remain ranked ahead of Mount Union in football?  These discussions mean good things for CCIW athletics.

[tjcummingsfan]

Agreed Hiker Jim.  This was good discussion, and I appologize if I took what anyone said the wrong way.  It was probably unwise of me, as a North Park fan to read all of that discussion in one sitting, I got fairly riled up by the end.  Good luck to North Park soccer today, and North Park basketball in their scrimmage against a ranked UWW soon (as in the next couple hours) I imagine.  Greg I'm hoping we'll get some good observations from you.  I know you're as curious as I am as to how the North Park team is looking this year. 

[usee]

gregory- i am well aware of dennis' lack of charm and propensity for offensive filibuster. but as a self proclaimed representative of the conference i think a little more discretion is occasionally in order. (anyone who has engaged me on the football board knows i say all this because it takes one to know one).

good luck to north park, ncc, augie, wheaton and all other cciw schools playing for conf titles today in various sports. (thanks hiker for your post, it is timely and well said)