MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Warren Thompson]

Aaaarrgh! Are we about to witness another Nordic-Punic war in this room?

[Gregory Sager]

I said there were folks who attended games before Bosko and there was basketball before Bosko. I take nothing away from Bosko, I simply ask that Carthage hoops history not be altered by baseless claims and assertions. Put the record book away and accept the fact both upper gym bleachers had to be used to accommodate home game fans and yes, Carthage did play respectable ball.

The fact you attended a few games at Carthage says nothing. I was there for almost four decades and attended most home games. I did not sit there alone.

I did not say that you sat there alone. Don't say I did.  

I don't claim to be the final word on Carthage attendance during the eighties and early/mid nineties. I was usually only there for North Park games. But considering that the Vikings were one of the CCIW's powerhouses during that period, one would think that if indeed Carthage was drawing a lot of fans that those games against the Vikings would have at least average attendance. I don't know what Carthage averaged during that period, but I can state for a fact that the attendance at those North Park @ Carthage games was dismal, and the upper bleachers were never used at any game I saw prior to the Bosko era.

If using the record book to prove a point constitutes "baseless claims and assertions", then what, pray tell, constitutes a legitimate one? Call me a radical, but I've always been of the opinion that wins and losses are a pretty good indicator of how well a basketball program is doing.

You and I have significantly different ideas of what constitutes respectability. We're undoubtedly going to be at loggerheads over this, but in my opinion a basketball program's respectability is measured by winning percentages, titles, NCAA appearances, things of that nature. I don't think I'm alone in considering the .348 overall winning percentage, the .246 CCIW winning percentage, and the eight last-place finishes in the league in the sixteen seasons prior to Bosko to be something less than "respectable". Hamilton's career might qualify, if you consider breaking even over eleven seasons to constitute respectability. Swift was well short of breaking even both overall and in league play over his eleven seasons, and I strongly doubt that a lot of people would consider his numbers to qualify as "respectable".

Aaaarrgh! Are we about to witness another Nordic-Punic war in this room?

No, it looks like it's shaping up to be a pro-records versus anti-records war this time, WT. 

[Warren Thompson]

Greg:

Does that mean it won't be a full-scale conflict this time around, but merely a "brush-fire war" or a tidy little "police action"?

[True Basketball Fan]

College coaching is hard to measure.  The ability to recruit can overcome many shortcomings as a teacher of the game.  The LACK of ability to recruit can overshadow the superb teaching of the game.  And every situation at every school is different (location, tuition, standards, history, coaches, facilities, fan and booster support, etc.).  It is basically impossible to truely compare the abilities of coaches based on records alone, or really anything else.  Somewhat acceptable asssumptions are about all that can be made, and that's what makes this such a compelling subject.

"That coach gets the most out of his players"  That is a popular statement for people to say when referring to a superb coach.  They made this assumption based on a variety of factors, most likely derived by direct observation over a long period of time.  Any claims made otherwise have no merit.  Also, only people who totally understand the whole situation to which a coach and a program are existing in (which is about less than 1% of the population) have the proper variables and the extent of their influence as tools for measurement. 

I guess I'm saying we all are full of #@$%, unless one of us is the coach of that team being focused on, and unfortunately, that person may also be full of #$%&! 

[Gregory Sager]

except for the last three years of the Dave Rosenbalm era in the mid-seventies, Carthage was woeful from 1972-1997.  I don't have time to search the record books, but take those three Rosenbalm years out and I doubt you'd find more than one or two winning seasons

Of those 26 seasons to which Dennis refers, Carthage had a winning overall record in six of them ('75, '76, '78, '79, '80, and '91). They went 13-13 in 1989. In four of those six winning overall seasons, Carthage also sported a winning record in the CCIW. In the other two, they finished 8-8.

In terms of the CCIW standings, Carthage finished second once, third once, fourth twice, and fifth once during that 26-year span. The other 21 CCIW campaigns saw them wind up with a sixth-place or lower finish. They finished in last place eight times.

[robberki]

I base whether a coach is a good coach on what his winning percentage looks like. All that other stuff is just fluff, everybody has advantages and disadvantages with regards to student support, location, tuition, facilities, resources, etc. but it's how that coach melds everything together to create a winner that makes or breaks whether he can coach or not.

Not to say that it exists in a vacuum, I believe a coach should get 4 years (one whole recruiting class through) before you judge the merits of the coach (with the exception of Bill Callahan who should be fired immediately for destroying Nebraska football, but I digress) adn then decide if he is good or not.
When it comes to the sport itself, the wins are all that matters as long as we're keeping score. There are other things that make a coach a good person, a good teacher, a good whatever (graduation rates, work in the community, general attitude [i.e. do people "like" him/her], etc) but talking about just coaching, good=wins, bad=losses.

[Pat Coleman]

(Congrats to Andrew Freeman as well, who is pictured on the frontpage as Keelan Amelianovich...this can only be some sort of good omen for Andrew.)

Pat has attempted to scrape the egg off of his face  by replacing that photo with the photo of Adam Dauksas that he used in last week's front-page story about the preseason Top 25. Problem is, he's captioned it this time as, "First-teamer Adam Dauksas has the rest of Division III guards chasing him" ... and the person chasing Dauksas in the picture is Nick Michael of Elmhurst.

If Nick Michael is a guard, then I am the Emperor of Japan.

Yeah, sorry folks. I looked at the photos on Q's site, then figured that he had captions beneath photos like ... you know, everyone else in the world. Apparently no, the captions are above the photos and I used the wrong one.

But I don't care if the photo has him being chased by a guard, forward, center, coach, spectator or referee: The fact is, all guards are chasing him because he's at the top of the heap.

[David Collinge]

But I don't care if the photo has him being chased by a guard, forward, center, coach, spectator or referee: The fact is, all guards are chasing him because he's at the top of the heap.

Tell that to Clark W. Griswold! 

[cardinal20]

"Personally I think the best D3 would have a hard time being competitive (night in and night out) in the worst D1 conference."

Roop, I don't think you are very familiar with the level of play in some of the worst D1 conferences then if you think last year's Stevens Point team or this year's IWU, UW-Oshkosh, etc couldn't compete.  Heck, the Ohio Valley Conference (which is not even close to the worst D1 conference) was won by Eastern Illinois in 2001.  The CCIW's 2nd place finisher (and D3 Elite Eight) played EIU in a real game that season...

Eastern Illinois 72
Carthage 71

http://www.carthage.edu/athletics/mens/basketball/eiu.htm

Theo Powell missed a wide open layup at the buzzer to win the game...I was there.

How would CCIW champion Elmhurst (D3 Sweet 16) have faired in the OVC that year?  Or 3rd place (D3 Final Four) Illinois Wesleyan? "Competitive"?  Yes.

The best Division 3 team would be more than competitive in D1 leagues like the Mid-Eastern Conference, the Patriot League, the Big South, and the Trans America Conference.  Illinois Wesleyan is in recruiting battles every year it seems with the Patriot League and Ivy League, and has come out on top quite a bit.  All-American Adam Dauksas was recruited by Colgate and I know Keelan Amelianovich could start for just about any team in that league...

http://www.iwuhoops.com/recruiting2002a.html#dauksas

I couldn't agree more with Q. The way I think about it is like this. Why go to a poor Division 1 school, when you can be a stud at a great Division III program? That's why I think the level of competition is similar.

[Mugsy]

I couldn't agree more with Q. The way I think about it is like this. Why go to a poor Division 1 school, when you can be a stud at a great Division III program? That's why I think the level of competition is similar.

Perhaps for a number of athletes the decision between a great D3 program and a poor D1 program comes down to the scholarship, not the level of competition?

[Gregory Sager]

I couldn't agree more with Q. The way I think about it is like this. Why go to a poor Division 1 school, when you can be a stud at a great Division III program? That's why I think the level of competition is similar.

Perhaps for a number of athletes the decision between a great D3 program and a poor D1 program comes down to the scholarship, not the level of competition?

I think that that's one reason. But I think a bigger one would be the prestige involved. A large number of ballplayers believe that there's more cachet involved in riding the bench in a D1 program -- any D1 program, really -- than in starring in a D3 program. Or that it's better to be a part of a bad D1 team than a good D3 team. We sometimes tend to forget here that a large chunk of American sports fandom considers D3 to be nothing more than glorified intramurals.

It's kids who think like this who are more apt to change their minds and transfer to a D3 program, once they taste how frustrating it is to be a part of a team and yet never get to play. That's when they discover how much their love of the game itself is more important than the prestige that comes with merely wearing a D1 uni. Or the kids who do get to play some at the D1 level, but for a really poor team, sometimes have an epiphany and discover how important winning is to them -- and so they transfer to a winning D3 program. The kids who are willingly riding the pines at a D1 school instead of starring for a D3 team (or who play for a really bad D1 team rather than a really good D3 team) because of the scholarship involved are less likely to transfer, because it's the scholarship itself that they value above the chance to play or the chance to win.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Bosko's record obviously speaks for itself, and is hardly likely to be diminished by anything I could say!  And, as I've stated several times in here as the scope of Wheaton's player losses climbed, no matter WHO he was to lose, I'll NEVER pick a Bill Harris team to finish last.

This leads to a fascinating (to me, anyway) discussion, Chuck. It's not one in which Wheaton people would care to indulge, I'd imagine, but I'm dying to get Bill Harris (or Paul Ferguson) alone for five minutes in order to pick his brain about this. And the crux of that discussion is: What circumstances truly define a good coach, or a good coaching job? Set aside for a moment the proposition that recruiting makes up a big chunk of the task of coaching (argue over the percentage of its importance all you like). When it comes down to the bare bones of the job -- the X's and O's, the work in the film room and on the gym floor during practice as well as what goes on on the sidelines during a game -- how is a coach best measured?

Harris has very little with which to work this year. He lost four starters to graduation, and his one returning starter -- a player around whom any D3 coach could build a team, a surefire future three-time All-American in my estimation -- pulled rank and cited a higher authority as his reason why he won't play basketball anymore. Top that with three other expected contributors declining to wear orange and blue this season, and you're left with the prospect of a coach who would've been expecting a rebuilding year even under optimal circumstances suddenly faced with the prospect of making a meal from a nearly empty cupboard.

So ... what is the measure of a good coach? What is the yardstick by which one measures a successful year of running a basketball program? Is it defined in championships won, or 20-win seasons, or tournament appearances? Or should a coach with almost nothing in terms of raw material get credit for finishing .500, above and beyond the coach will plenty of raw material who finishes about where his team was expected to finish?

These are the sorts of questions that really interest me. Speaking only for myself, I think that what a coach does with a team that gives him less with which to work says more about him that what a coach does with a talent-stocked team. But that's just my opinion. I'm interested to find out what other people think about this.

Greg,

I've thought about this question, too, and like you haven't reached any one conclusion. 

I can't fully agree with robberki - obviously that is an important component (W-L), but there are too many variables that go into that to settle on it as THE measure. 

Obviously, recruiting the talent in the first place is A major component of the 'good coach', but DEVELOPING the talent is also crucial.  If I were forced to select a single measure (which I don't think is the right approach, but...), I think I would go with 'how much better are your players as seniors than they were as freshmen?'  Naturally, that depends on the players as well as the coach, but it also is a measure of the ability to recruit players who WILL develop.  The unheralded players who became superstars in NP's glory days are an obvious case in point.

Bill Harris has one of the most clear-cut opportunities to show greatness this year that I can ever recall.  He DID the recruiting, but for various reasons (presumably not as a reflection on him), the cupboard is pretty bare anyway.  If he can somehow finish in the top half, I nominate him for COY even if IWU wins the national title!

[cardinal20]

I couldn't agree more with Q. The way I think about it is like this. Why go to a poor Division 1 school, when you can be a stud at a great Division III program? That's why I think the level of competition is similar.

Perhaps for a number of athletes the decision between a great D3 program and a poor D1 program comes down to the scholarship, not the level of competition?

I think that that's one reason. But I think a bigger one would be the prestige involved. A large number of ballplayers believe that there's more cachet involved in riding the bench in a D1 program -- any D1 program, really -- than in starring in a D3 program. Or that it's better to be a part of a bad D1 team than a good D3 team. We sometimes tend to forget here that a large chunk of American sports fandom considers D3 to be nothing more than glorified intramurals.

It's kids who think like this who are more apt to change their minds and transfer to a D3 program, once they taste how frustrating it is to be a part of a team and yet never get to play. That's when they discover how much their love of the game itself is more important than the prestige that comes with merely wearing a D1 uni. Or the kids who do get to play some at the D1 level, but for a really poor team, sometimes have an epiphany and discover how important winning is to them -- and so they transfer to a winning D3 program. The kids who are willingly riding the pines at a D1 school instead of starring for a D3 team (or who play for a really bad D1 team rather than a really good D3 team) because of the scholarship involved are less likely to transfer, because it's the scholarship itself that they value above the chance to play or the chance to win.

That's a good point about the prestige factor. That would be the only reason not to go to a great Divison III program opposed to a poor Division I school. It is really a shame that some people believe Division III is nothing more than intramurals. I just know that if it was me, I'd rather play than sit. I can sit later in life, but only have so little time to actually play.

On a different note, can't wait for the season to start. Tip-off tourney for the Cards next weekend. Curious to see how the team looks.

[emeritusprof]

Sager -- You're already into the revisionism.  You referred to pre-Bosko hoops players at Carthage being "Red Men."  Tell the truth!  At the time, they were Redmen.

I'm glad I was able to see Hamilton and Swift coached teams, and, besides Dave Rosenbaum, it was a pleasure to watch Jerry Parks, Johnny Butler, Brian Scheunemann, Curly Fackler, Larry Evans, Jack Lutz, and many more fine ball players.  Even Jack Sikma was largely shut down two years in a row at Carthage.

If the Sager measure of success is used, both the Cubs and the Red Sox have existed for most of their history as woeful, miserable, lousy, UNsuccessful examples of baseball teams.

Enuf.

[David Collinge]

If the Sager measure of success is used, both the Cubs and the Red Sox have existed for most of their history as woeful, miserable, lousy, UNsuccessful examples of baseball teams.

Your point being...?   

The history revisers vis-a-vis the nickname seems to be the Carthage administration; their logic seems to be that the important part of the name was the color red (ostensibly to distinguish them from the Blue Boys, as we have heard so often in this room), and the addition of a space in the name is merely to emphasize that point.  Using that "logic," the 7-character name could in fact be applied retroactively.