MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Titan Q]

The Pantagraph's story on the tournament change:

http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2007/01/31/sports/doc45c16588cc7e0154784553.txt

After speaking with Chris Martin, I don't think he'd sign off on the statement...

"All eight College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin men's basketball teams will participate in the CCIW Tournament beginning in 2009..."



Again, the play-in day is not officially part of the tournament.  (But for all intents and purposes it is an 8-team tournament!)

The Wednesday games give the Pool C candidates a chance to add another "W" vs the teams at the bottom of the standings, but the way the CCIW is moving you also have to consider that it puts these teams in jeopardy of getting upset, not making the tournament, and seriously hurting their tournament chances (see Millikin's win @ Elmhurst tonight).  This isn't the NCAC where the 1 and 2 could never lose to the cellar dwellers.

[David Collinge]

Fascinating.

So Greg, is this "play-in game" going to be postseason or postconference? 

[diehardfan]

David, you troublemaker you.

Obviously I missed out by listening to the Elmhurst halftime... thanks for the scoop Bob, I will have to listen to the archived broadcast. (Which I thought was quite good, just less shockingly newsworthy.)

So I'm doing the spreadsheet for the CCIW fantasy league and I stumble on stomething absolutely incomprehensible. Can one of the Noth Park faithful explain to me why Nick Williams is getting so few minutes? Does he play the worst defense in the history of the CCIW or something? He scored 20pts on 8-11 shooting, and grabbed 4 boards and 2 steals in.... 10 minutes tonight! Against Augie defense! How do you not play this guy more?

[sac]

What on earth could the reasoning be for not makeing it an 8 team tournament and adding that extra game as exempt?

This seems like silly semantics to me.

[Titan Q]

What on earth could the reasoning be for not makeing it an 8 team tournament and adding that extra game as exempt?

This seems like silly semantics to me.

I would agree that it is "silly semantics."  It just sounds like they want to say that every sport has the same 4-team conference tournament setup...I have no idea why really.

I will post the link to the archived interview with Chris as soon as it is up on WJBC2.com.

[Pat Coleman]

Just incase the Augie Link doesn't work tonight does anyone know what the NPU Radio Link is?

Ha! That's hilarious.

[Pat Coleman]

Almost as hilarious as the concept of a play-in to a four-team conference tournament. I should've read the whole board first.

Hare-brained, cockamamie ... pick your own word here. Sheesh.

[tjcummingsfan]

Well the game at the crackerbox was interesting tonight.  Frustrating, to be sure.  I have pretty much kept my mouth shut for the last couple years about reffing, and considering the recent happenings at North Central maybe I should consider us lucky for the reffing job done tonight.  However, I have never seen such a poorly called game.  I know its not easy to ref, I certainly could not do it, but these guys are getting paid (probably not much, but something), and are reffing currently the best D3 conference in the country.  All I want is some consistency.  It happened for both teams tonight (obviously in my eyes NP was more often the victim) that a called was made, and then the same scenario happened at the other end of the court and it wasn't called, sometimes in the same minute.  Of course I want to blame the shooting frustrations on the poor reffing, but that just isn't true.  North Park needs to play with some consistency, and some urgency when they're down by one, or two, not nine or ten.  Hopefully we can get a win on the road this Saturday agains Wheaton and keep the baffling road winning percentage up, and keep ourselves in the hunt for a conference tourney slot.  

Regarding Nick, I'm not sure.  I wonder the same thing sometimes.  Hopefully Greg will have a better answer.  

[BeastMaster]

Great win for Millikin tonight!!! That makes it two years in a row knocking off the Bluejays at Elmhurst.  Gensler had a big 2nd half getting with 18 and 23 overall.  55 points in the second half?!?!  A great team victory for the Blue with everyone playing a huge part in the victory.  Let's get hot and go for a win Saturday in Naperville!

[veterancciwfan]

79jaybird: I'm not sure that you should use "great" and the 06/07 version of Elmhurst in the same sentence.

Regarding the IWU/NCC game at Shirk: It is mindboggling to me how a team that was so good last year and had so many talented juniors returning could go downhill to the extent NCC obviously has this year. NCC looked listless. IWU played an excellent first half and a poor second half and still won by 14. NCC played poorly both halves, scoring only 23 in the 1st half and 28 in the second. Can any NCC fan explain what the reason is for NCC's collapse this year? In my opinion, they are the biggest disappointment in the league, even more so than IWU.

Andrew Gilmore, who is playing in pain, asked to be taken out several times tonight. A healthy Gilmore would have made a huge difference for IWU this year. In a year when IWU's depth was at all time low, injuries to starters are magnified. Gilmore doesn't practice, he only plays on game days. But he's a tough kid who can be a difference maker when healthy.

[Titan Q]

79jaybird: I'm not sure that you should use "great" and the 06/07 version of Elmhurst in the same sentence.

Regarding the IWU/NCC game at Shirk: It is mindboggling to me how a team that was so good last year and had so many talented juniors returning could go downhill to the extent NCC obviously has this year. NCC looked listless. IWU played an excellent first half and a poor second half and still won by 14. NCC played poorly both halves, scoring only 23 in the 1st half and 28 in the second. Can any NCC fan explain what the reason is for NCC's collapse this year? In my opinion, they are the biggest disappointment in the league, even more so than IWU.

Andrew Gilmore, who is playing in pain, asked to be taken out several times tonight. A healthy Gilmore would have made a huge difference for IWU this year. In a year when IWU's depth was at all time low, injuries to starters are magnified. Gilmore doesn't practice, he only plays on game days. But he's a tough kid who can be a difference maker when healthy.

Vet, you seem to forget that through 8 CCIW games last season, IWU - which returned everyone and was the preseason #1 - was 5-3 with a 1-point win @ Carthage, an overtime win @ Millikin, an overtime win at home vs Wheaton.  The Titans certainly could have been the 3-5 North Central is right now.

http://www.iwu.edu/~iwunews/sports/mbb2006/TEAMSTAT.HTM

Also, North Central lost their very solid senior backcourt of Adam Teising and Ray Vicario.  As you should know very well, it is real hard to win with backcourt issues.

I will say this about NCC -- for preseason All-American Anthony Simmons to come into tonight's game averaging 10.7 ppg in CCIW play is ridiculous.  He is way too talented for that production.  During the game tonight (and he had a very big game) it seemed like Simmons played hard when he wanted to, then mentally checked out for stretches.  I'm guessing he's been that way all season long from looking at his numbers.  Anthony Simmons is as physically talented as Zach Freeman, but no Division III coach in America would take him over Freeman.

[Mr. Ypsi]

vet,

Ah, what might have been!  If Gilmore was not only healthy but playing his normal 2, and Sean Dwyer was healthy and all he's cracked up to be at the point, this could have been the sort of season Zach deserved for his senior year.

Alas, the saddest words: what might have been.

[Gregory Sager]

Tonight's game in the crackerbox was a classic example of a team with mental toughness outlasting a team that lacks it. NPU hung with Augie just fine until about six minutes had gone by in the second half. At the 13:44 mark Jason Gordon hit a trey that brought NPU to within five at 45-40. However, it would take forever and a day for the host Vikings to slog their way through the forties; by the time they hit 50 on a Nick Williams bunny after a beautiful down-the-lane pass by Joe Capalbo, there was only 1:58 left on the clock and Augie was enjoying a 65-48 lead.

During that twelve-minute stretch of agony for NPU, the Park went 4-18 from the field with six missed treys. And the worst part of it was that Augie wasn't playing very good defense. We're all used to seeing Augie's opponents score as few as 56 points and shoot as badly as 37.7% from the field; but Augie actually played much, much better D in the first half when the game was still close. Of the 18 shots NPU took in that twelve-minute stretch, only four or five were contested. NPU missed open treys, open midrange jumpers, floaters, layups, putbacks, you name it. The proverbial lid was on the basket.

The quintessential moments of failure for NPU came early in that bad second-half stretch. With the score 53-46 at the 9:40 mark, Uriah Rice got an open trey look from the top of the key in which there wasn't an Augie player within five yards of him. He shorted it off of the front of the rim. Less than a minute later, with the score now 55-46, Rice got the ball in the same exact spot at the top of the key, and again Augie's perimeter D had broken down and he was all by himself. This time Rice went too long, banging the ball off of the back of the rim and into the arms of a waiting Augie defender. I'm not singling out Rice, as the twelve-minute breakdown was a team effort by the Park; I'm simply citing those shots because they were turning points. Had either one gone down, NPU's confidence might've returned and the Park might've hung in there. As it was, the misses only added to the team's general frustration.

And that's where the mental toughness aspect comes into play. When good looks don't produce and open shots aren't falling, you play through it and keep your focus. When NPU would miss those open shots during that stretch, though, you could see the players muttering to themselves as they went back down the floor. I hate to see that, because it tells me that they're allowing their shooting misfortunes to get into their heads. Sure enough, North Park started having defensive lapses. The Doggies, meanwhile, played like the experienced hands that they are -- slowly, methodically, working both the two-man game and motion sets to great effect and, most importantly, taking what the host Vikings gave them. NPU had been burned by Dain Swetalla in Rock Island, so the Park took Swetalla out of the game tonight (only nine points and two boards). But other players -- Shaun Rose, Drew Wessels, Pat Brusveen -- stepped up and picked up the slack. Meanwhile, with every failed possession and every mental lapse at the defensive end, NPU became a little more unglued.

The Vikings simply need to do a better job of keeping their wits about them. They don't react well to adversity, and they have difficulty maintaining concentration at crucial spots in a ballgame.

So I'm doing the spreadsheet for the CCIW fantasy league and I stumble on stomething absolutely incomprehensible. Can one of the Noth Park faithful explain to me why Nick Williams is getting so few minutes? Does he play the worst defense in the history of the CCIW or something? He scored 20pts on 8-11 shooting, and grabbed 4 boards and 2 steals in.... 10 minutes tonight! Against Augie defense! How do you not play this guy more?

The minutes are totally wrong on the NPU side of the box score. Jay Alexander didn't play anywhere close to 40 minutes, and Nick Williams played a heckuva lot more than 10. In fact, Williams played over half the game. As April said, the freshman forward was a real bright spot for NPU offensively; apart from Stephano Jones, Williams was really the only NPU player who was consistently effective. Unfortunately, all 12 of Jones's points came in the first half; Augie did a better job of denying the entry after halftime, but it was mostly a case of NPU simply forgetting to look for Jones in the post in the second stanza.

[Gregory Sager]

What on earth could the reasoning be for not makeing it an 8 team tournament and adding that extra game as exempt?

This seems like silly semantics to me.

I would agree that it is "silly semantics."  It just sounds like they want to say that every sport has the same 4-team conference tournament setup...I have no idea why really.

I will post the link to the archived interview with Chris as soon as it is up on WJBC2.com.

It's not "silly semantics", because it's going to cost everybody a regular-season game that they could certainly use either to fatten the regional record by taking on a NAthC, MWC, or SLIAC opponent or to toughen up the team by taking on a quality opponent in a setting that wouldn't necessarily have to hurt one's tournament chances. That's a very tangible difference, not a semantic one.

The reason why the league is doing this seems obvious to me: Equity. The men's half of the league can't be allowed to get more than the women's half gets, and basketball can't be allowed to get more than soccer or baseball gets. Therefore, if the men's basketball coaches want eight teams to vie for the CCIW automatic bid, the league is going to make them pay a penalty in order to allow it ... and the penalty is to extract a game from the schedule. It smacks to me of cutting off your nose to spite your face, but keep in mind all of the athletic department politics (times eight!) that're involved every time there's a CCIW rules change that affects season length and scheduling.

[dansand]

If it looks like an 8-team tournament, and it walks like an 8-team tournament, and it smells like an 8-team tournament...

So, if #8 knocks off #1 (unlikely, but not inconceivable), the four tournament participants head off to the home of the regular season champion, who won't be playing?

While I've said that an 8-team tournament would be interesting, I still don't think this is a good idea.