MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Gregory Sager]

Yeah, but in fairness to the other boards, Greg, Q, and I probably have 15,000 of those! 

(Of course, we've probably got at least 30,000 spread among the other boards as well!)

Me? I pass through this site from time to time. Not compulsively, though. That number of posts beneath my name is obviously a computer glitch.

Ironically, given the CCIW Chat topic du jour, NPU's women's team played a game yesterday (Sunday). The women's tourney at Marymount in northern Virginia had eight teams and was played with a Friday/Saturday/Sunday format. As I said, the Park frowns upon Sunday athletics, but in typical Covenant fashion doesn't actually have written rules against them. I doubt that this game will raise a ruckus, since the women's coach, Jack Surridge, is also NPU's athletic director.

Bob, NPU's starting lineup on Friday was:
G Jason Gordon (6'3", 200, SO)
G Eric Allen (6'3", 190, JR)
F Jay Alexander (6'6", 175, SO)
F Mike Ventura (6'7", 200, FR)
C Jeremiah Sargent (6'7", 240, FR)

Mark E.: To answer your question from the other night, Rob Eschmann is enrolled at Wheaton. However, he's not playing basketball. I'm quite surprised by that. I know that Wheaton could certainly use him; this is not a good year for the Wheaties to have a former Illinois all-stater on their campus but out of uniform.

I heard that Augie forward Nate Switella got hurt in Friday's game against Clarke. Any news, Augie fans?

[mr_b]

CCIW baseball games are played as Saturday twinbills and Sunday noon games, with the obvious exception of Wheaton, which requires a single game on Friday and a doubleheader on Saturday.  This has been the norm for several years; before the dissolution of the north/south divisions of the CCIW baseball standings (about 5 years ago), we used to play doubleheaders on both Saturday and Sunday.

[veterancciwfan]

Regarding the popularity of the CCIW Chat board, I was thinking of what factors might explain it's success: Here are a few:

1) Hard-core D3 fans rooted in CCIW history
2) Nothing else to do in IL during winter following another disappointing Cubs season
3) A majority of posters are not the trash talking college students who previously dominated on some other boards until Pat shut them down
4) IL always has been a basketball state as opposed to football, which dominates in the south, Ohio, PA, and some other states. Just look at the difference in U. of I. success in each sport to get a perspective of that.
5) The CCIW is a darn good league and usually unpredictable, as shown by many of the conference champs during the current decade, beginning with the Elmhurst championship of 2000/2001. It isn't a league like the NCAC where it's a forgone conclusion that Wooster and Springfield will finish first and second practically every year. That brings the fans of all of the CCIW  schools (excluding Millikin) to this board on a fairly regular basis.
6)There are a lot of clever/interesting/informative posters (myself excluded) on this board other than Q and Greg and the other regulars.
7) Pat Coleman is actually paying several posters including Mr. Yipsi to post here at least 6 times a day.

[hopefan]

dang vet/Pat,,,   sign ME up for some of that!!!!

[Gregory Sager]

I didn't realize that CCIW baseball played on Sundays. Thanks, Mr. B.

7) Pat Coleman is actually paying several posters including Mr. Yipsi to post here at least 6 times a day.

For Chuck's sake, I hope it's not a flat rate. If he's getting paid by the post, then he ought to be pulling into the Eastern Michigan faculty parking lot in a Rolls Royce any day now.

[John Gleich]

If he's getting paid by the post, then he ought to be pulling into the Eastern Michigan faculty parking lot in a Rolls Royce any day now.

Unless it's like the cash value of coupons... 1/100th of a cent per coupon...

Ya know, I've always wanted to collect coupons and actually turn them into 38 cents... ah, the fruits of my labor would be so sweet! 

I just wonder where you turn them in... hmm...

[Mr. Ypsi]

7) Pat Coleman is actually paying several posters including Mr. Yipsi to post here at least 6 times a day.

For Chuck's sake, I hope it's not a flat rate. If he's getting paid by the post, then he ought to be pulling into the Eastern Michigan faculty parking lot in a Rolls Royce any day now.

As exasperated as Pat gets with me from time-to-time, an offer to pay me NOT to post might be more likely!  I've afraid a Rolls is not in my future.

[Titan Q]

A quick 411 on the NAIA teams Carthage plays in Hawaii (Carthage plays Concordia of California twice for some reason and Westmont)...

Concordia (CA) and Westmont play in the Golden State Athletic Conference -- the best NAIA D1 conference.  The GSAC has 5 teams ranked or receiving votes in the NAIA D1 preseason poll: #1 Azusa Pacific, #12 Concordia, #21 Biola, San Diego Christian (RV), and California Baptist (RV).

Concordia, the 2003 NAIA D1 national champs and 2004 runner up, was 26-9 last season with two wins over Azusa Pacific...the team that lost in the NAIA D1 national title game.  It looks to me like Concordia lost 4 starters and 7 of its top 8 from last year's tournament team, but like most great programs you gotta believe they have plenty of talent ready to step in.

One of Concordia's losses last season was to Westmont College, located in beautiful Santa Barbara.  Westmont is also a perenially strong NAIA D1 program.  The Warriors lost 65-64 @ Metro State Saturday night.  Those who pay a little attention to NCAA Division II recognize Metro State as one of the great D2 programs - national champs in 2000 and 2002.  Westmont came within a basket of ending Metro State's 40-game home winning streak.  (Illinois Wesleyan is playing in the Westmont College Tom Byron Classic on 12/29-30.)

Carthage is playing two very strong small college basketball teams this week.


http://naia.collegesports.com/sports/m-baskbl/spec-rel/102605aab.html

http://www.gsacsports.org/gsacmbk.html

http://www.cui.edu/cui_shell.aspx?id=280

http://cgi2.westmont.edu/blogs/athletics/warriors/basketball/

[Titan Q]

Illinois Wesleyan also plays two strong NAIA D1 programs in the next 6 days -- Olivet Nazarene (receiving votes) tomorrow evening and #16 St. Xavier a week from today.  Both games are at the Shirk Center.  ONU and SXU are in the Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference along with NAIA D1 #4 Robert Morris (Chicago) which won at UW-Platteville Saturday night.

ONU is 3-3 currently.  The Tigers won by 19 @ NAIA D2 #15 St. Ambrose, and by 10 @ NAIA D1#14 McKendree.  Between those games, they played an Exhibition at D1 Eastern Illinois and lost 69-62.  Olivet has lost 3 in a row now - to Brescia (receiving votes), Daemen (NY), and Grace (IN).  As always, Olivet is up and down in the early going and you never really know what you're going to get with them.  IWU has played ONU ten years in a row now, winning 9 times.  The only Titan loss was in 2001-02, the year IWU went 12-12, and that was in OT.  I've often thought Titan fans take for granted how impressive the success over Olivet Nazarene has been, considering how good they are year-in and year-out, both in the CCAC and nationally.

#12 St. Xavier (3-2) was 30-7 last year, but they graduated 3 starters.  SXU returns two really good players, including Jabari Saunders, who will probably be the best post player IWU will face this year.  Saunders led NAIA I in FG% last year and is a preseason All-American.  Like I mentioned about Concordia, St. Xavier has all kinds of good talent ready to step in this year.  Guys like 6-6/215 freshman Adam Gregoriou (Brother Rice H.S.) who was recruited by a bunch of CCIW schools.

It will be interesting to see how IWU and Carthage fair against these strong NAIA's.


http://www.olivet.edu/athletics/basketball.asp?t=2

http://www.sxu.edu/athletics/mbb/

[Gregory Sager]

Olivet Nazarene is actually only 2-3. One of the three wins logged on their schedule was over a non-American team, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

[Titan Q]

Greg, I don't know anything about Memorial University of Newfoundland or what the NAIA rules are, but both ONU and St. Xavier have that game in their official stats/records...

http://www.sxu.edu/athletics/mbb/schedule.asp

http://www.olivet.edu/athletics/schedule.asp?t=2

[Gregory Sager]

Perhaps the NAIA does handle recordkeeping differently with regard to non-American teams, or perhaps it's just a matter of the stats people at SXU and Ollie Nazz not being aware of the distinction. NCAA teams don't recognize games played against non-American teams as counting towards their records. This happened back in 2001-02 when Illinois Wesleyan played a Canadian team (the Titans lost, but didn't have the game count against them), and the situation also crops up every year on the D1 level when teams go to Puerto Rico to play in tournaments down there (Puerto Rican universities don't seem to count as American in the eyes of the NCAA).

[Ralph Turner]

Greg, the Puerto Rican schools are almost all D2's.  Are they treated as the Hawaii Alaska schools are?

[kenoshamark]

Here is a preview on Carthage from the Kenosha News.   

http://www.kenoshanews.com/articles/index.php?articleNum=4130

Starting lineup for Wednesday:

Nav Thompson - Junior
Trey Bowens - Sophomore
Keena Johnson - Senior
Kyle Jeffery -Sophomore
"Big" Mike Hart - Junior

[Gregory Sager]

Greg, the Puerto Rican schools are almost all D2's. Are they treated as the Hawaii Alaska schools are?

At least in years past, games played against Puerto Rican teams haven't counted towards an American team's win-loss record. That rule might've changed; it's not something I've looked at in recent years. The situation with Alaskan and Hawaiian teams is different. Games played against them count towards win-loss records, of course, because Alaska and Hawaii are part of the United States and their institutions of higher learning are members of the NCAA, NAIA, etc. D1 has had specific rules that allow certain tournament games played in our 49th and 50th states to not count towards the maximum number of regular-season games allowed, even though those games count towards the win-loss records of those teams. Again, it's been several years since I followed the minutiae of D1 rules all that closely, so legislation on that level of the NCAA might've changed things in the past few years.