MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[titanfan]

So far, I have the CCIW at 10 and 3 on the season (Not counting Millikin or NP).  That's not a bad start.

[augie_superfan]

Augie    72
Beloit    52


Harrigan:  20 pts, on 8 of 16 shooting, 2-4 from 3pt.
McAdams-Thornton:  13 pts, on 6 of 12 shooting

Otherwise points were spread out between about 6 other guys

Nate Swetalla did not play due to an injury from the Clarke game (dislocated shoulder I believe)...supossedly was back practicing already but was just held out of the game

Beloit's Josh Hinz was held to just 16 pts on only 9 shots...don't know how that was achieved

Augie shot 70% in 1st half, 59% for the game
Beloit shot 33.3% in both halves

Augie held the rebounding edge 35-28

Good win for Augie

[augiefan]

Jordan Delp started for Augie in place of Nate Swatella. Also, of interest is the fact that Mike Kolze scored 8 points in 11 minutes of playing time. The full stats are up now on the Beloit College website.

[augiefan]

Millikin beat Blackburn tonight 81-72. No details available as yet.

[mr_b]

North Park dropped their home opener, 83-73, to Concordia.

[bluejaybacker1]

Elmhurst 87
St. Norbert 56

Martin-20 pts on 10-12 shooting in 23 mins.
Ihlenfeldt-18 pts on 7-8 shooting, 3-4 from the arc in 19 mins.
Patchett-13 pts, 3-4 from the arc.
Michael-14 pts.

Never really a contest, largest lead was 39. Everyone saw the floor. Brian Lee followed up a really strong game at Hope with another solid night. I hope we found our answer at point guard.

[Gregory Sager]

Concordia (IL) 83
North Park 73

No box score available, but Jason Gordon had 26 for NPU, and Brett Mathisen was well into double figures when he cramped up and left the game for good with about seven or eight minutes left. Mr. B informed me that CURF knocked down 15 three-pointers on the evening, which sounds about right. They shot the lights out from downtown, and almost all of their trey attempts were open looks. NPU didn't rotate on the perimeter at all, nor did they do a good job of fighting through screens.

This is rock bottom. I'm not going to get down on the Vikings individually, because the difference between tonight and last Friday is that they really put forth the effort in this one (more's the pity, I guess). The Vikings really did play with energy and effort. Down by 14 in the waning minutes, they fought back and got to within six. But they don't have the experience and the know-how necessary to make the good decisions a team has to make in order to close a gap late in a ballgame -- especially with Mathisen out.

The Vikings played hard, but they didn't play smart. They play "young". A lot of the things that come with repetition and experience -- rotating on defense, spacing on offense, rebound positioning -- are the things that this NPU team just doesn't do yet.

This is the best CURF team I've ever seen, but that's not saying anything. It's like calling them the most charismatic tech geek in the cubicle farm. No CCIW team should ever lose to CURF. Ever. I don't have the NPU recordbook handy, but I'm pretty sure that North Park can count all of their losses to their nearest D3 neighbor on one hand over the past five decades -- and they play CURF practically every season.

It's going to be a long year.

[mr_b]

Greg Sager will provide his usual incisive analysis, so I won't go into a lot of detail, but here are some numbers from tonight's contest:

The Vikings led 39-37 at the half, but that might have been one of their few leads of the half.  What's more, they had that advantage only because Eric Allen hit a 3/4 court shot with 00:00.7 left on the clock.

In the second half, the Cougars shot nine treys to follow up the six they had in the first half as they pulled away for a 14-point lead in the waning minutes.  The Vikings scrapped hard to whittle the deficit down to six, but CURF upped their lead to a definitive 10 points.

For North Park, Jason Gordon had 26, Brett Mathisen 14, Ed Whitaker 12, Eric Allen 11, and Jeremiah Sargent, 7.

For Concordia, Ryan Young had a big game with 17 -- most on threes -- and Justin Gray chipped in with 12.  Andre Smith, Bobby Smith, and Lafayette Bell each contributed 10.

[Mr. Ypsi]

The CCIW is universally regarded as one of the top two bball conferences in the country.

NPU has more national titles than the rest of the CCIW put together.

NPU just lost to CURF.

Greg, I don't know how much of Dennis's post is right, but I would have to agree with him that things have reached rock bottom.  I feel bad to have even teased TJC about his loyalty.

I came up to NP twice (I would guess '68 and '69, but not sure); I really enjoyed the games at the 'crackerbox' (I think we won them both, but since I'm not sure which years they were, I can't check it - they were close!)

I am TRULY saddened by the fall that NPU has taken - I truly hope a rebound is in the NEAR future (but, alas, it doesn't look like it will be this year).  My heart says 1-3 wins in the CCIW; my head says 0-14.

[Titan Q]

Here's the boxscore from the IWU/ONU game...

http://www.iwu.edu/~iwunews/sports/mbb2006/miwu3.htm

Adam Dauksas got the Titans back in it after they fell behind 12 early.  Dauksas scored 7 consecutive points when the Titans desperately needed them, and he had 14 total in the 1st Half.  Zach Freeman was really something in the 2nd Half - 22 points, and a career high 30 total for the game on 11-13 FG.  Keelan Amelianovich had his usual quiet, efficient performance - he finished with 20.

IWU has 3 really special players.

[Gregory Sager]

Greg, I don't know how much of Dennis's post is right, but I would have to agree with him that things have reached rock bottom.  I feel bad to have even teased TJC about his loyalty.

What Dennis says is irrelevant, since he hardly ever goes to NPU games anymore and he hasn't seen this team play. F'rinstance, it's not a "Shuffle The Deck" lineup that NPU is playing; it's a patchwork lineup that's an attempt to make do with some key people out with injuries.

But injuries are not an excuse for losing to CURF, nor is the team's youth. I was the one who said that the Park hit rock bottom tonight, and I meant it. I hold out hope that the young Vikings as individuals and the team as a whole can improve by increments as the season goes along, but such improvement is certainly not a given. Just because a team is young doesn't mean that they are bound to get better. The Vikings are going to have to work their tails off, maintain their focus, and keep their heads high if they are to move forward through what will be yet another very difficult season at Foster & Kedzie.

Brenegan has shown a willingness to bench players who were expected to be a mainstay of the rotation but who haven't put forth the effort thus far in practice or in games. I believe that this is the right way to do things -- set the tone for a young team by rewarding effort and punishing the lack thereof, regardless of the talent and/or skill level of the players affected and in spite of possible short-term setbacks. You have to start somewhere, and the proper place to start is by instilling a work ethic.

I came up to NP twice (I would guess '68 and '69, but not sure); I really enjoyed the games at the 'crackerbox' (I think we won them both, but since I'm not sure which years they were, I can't check it - they were close!)

North Park beat Illinois Wesleyan in Chicago both those seasons. The 1968-69 Vikings won the CCIW title with a 13-3 record, with all three losses coming on the road.

I am TRULY saddened by the fall that NPU has taken - I truly hope a rebound is in the NEAR future (but, alas, it doesn't look like it will be this year).  My heart says 1-3 wins in the CCIW; my head says 0-14.

As ugly a loss as this was, I am not giving up on this team, on the players as individuals, or on the coaching staff. There are still some pieces missing in terms of raw material, but talent is there upon which to build. It's a question of whether or not the players will dedicate themselves to the task of getting better both as individual players and as a team. And I still have plenty of confidence in Paul Brenegan, Steve Schafer, and the rest of the coaching staff. I've never seen a staff that works harder than those guys. They know the game, and they're determined to rebuild the program the right way, with the right kind of players. I believe in those guys. But, yeah, they do have to start proving themselves with wins. That's the bottom line in the coaching business, like it or not.

This adversity is just going to make it all the sweeter when the NPU program turns around and starts winning. Go ahead and mock me for believing that if you like. I don't care. I have lived and died with the Vikings for 26 years, and I will never turn my back on them.

[joehakes]

Is it just me, or is Sager turning into Winston Churchill?

[augiedad]

North Park is 10 years into a 3 year rebuilding plan.

[Ralph Turner]

Must be something about those Northside Chicago fans...  

Has Mr B assumed a new handle?

Ouch, Gregory!  This looks like it will be a long season.  Thanks for the insight.  The injuries are really impacting this team.

Hopefully, the extra playing time will develop the healthy players, and this experience will not be the futile exercise where only very mediocre players get lots of playing time but not improve their games.

[Gregory Sager]

Is it just me, or is Sager turning into Winston Churchill?

I've already got the wordiness down. I just need to work on the jowls.

North Park is 10 years into a 3 year rebuilding plan.

Well put, sadly. The first post-Bosko coach was an unmitigated disaster. The second did not live up to his pre-NPU reputation, and should've retired a couple of years before he actually did.

Greg - we've had this discussion before - take off your blue and gold covered glasses, get off the X the coaching staff placed behind the bench because they think you're such a nice guy - and come over to the dark side.

Just because he's a disciplinarian, it doesn't make him a winning basketball coach.

Every year its the same thing - no continuity of players - no player development - we hope for some transfer to be the savior - no jv program, not enough players - Bosko never had a jv program and he won - blah, blah, blah, blah - bottom line is, GS, this coaching staff would find a way to lose with IWU's lineup.

You have an extremely bizarre concept of what constitutes "blue and gold glasses", Dennis. I dressed down the team on CCIW Chat on Friday night, calling out each of the Vikings who played by name. It was an unprecedented show of anger for a Posting Up regular towards his team. I don't ever remember another partisan poster doing such a thing. You don't see Sac calling out Hope players like that, or JeffP calling out Grinnell players like that, or Titan Q calling out Wesleyan players like that, or Ralph Turner calling out McMurry players like that. I spent two days wracked with remorse due to worry that I had gone too far in lashing out online at the Vikings. And then last night I was the one who said that they struck rock bottom. I was the one who pointed out the infamy of losing to CURF. Not you. Me.

And yet I have "blue and gold glasses"? I have no idea what color the sky is in your world, Dennis, but I'm pretty sure that whatever it is it's very dark. You would consider Socrates to be an unrealistic and incurable optimist even as he put the cup of hemlock to his lips.

I never called Brenegan a "winning basketball coach". In fact, I pointed out here last night that, in spite of my ongoing faith in him, he would ultimately be measured by wins and losses just like any other coach. And right now he's 4-23 as a head coach. Nobody would be stupid enough to call him a "winning basketball coach" until he actually proves that he is one. Your astonishing capacity for putting words in my mouth continues apace.

Also, this year NPU has a JV team. They played last night, beating the CURF JV by three. Just one more fact you'd get right in your screeds if you ever bothered to show up at the gym anymore.

The difference between us is that I care about NPU basketball. You care about being able to say "told you so". To each his own, I guess.