MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Thunder Dutch]

Any idea when Wiele is coming back? Did Coach Harris mention anything in the WETN interview after the game?

While the Thunder should be able to beat NPU Saturday with or without Wiele, beating Augie in a week would be a huge challenge without Wiele, even though it's at home and the students all being back.

[thunderstruck88]

Hey Dutch, Wiele has a stress fracture in his left foot. Doc estimated a 4-5 week recovery, and Wiele is in his fourth week right now. I am all but certain he won't play against NP, and a week from now against Augie may be questionable. Wheaton needs him for that game, to be sure, but there is a lot of season left to play and losing an early conference game is much worse than losing an All-American center for the season.

[Gregory Sager]

Hey Dutch, Wiele has a stress fracture in his left foot. Doc estimated a 4-5 week recovery, and Wiele is in his fourth week right now. I am all but certain he won't play against NP, and a week from now against Augie may be questionable. Wheaton needs him for that game, to be sure, but there is a lot of season left to play and losing an early conference game is much worse than losing an All-American center for the season.

You got that last sentence backwards, methinks.

The slender reed upon which NPU is leaning with regard to its chances on Saturday night will greatly depend upon getting a big game out of Phil Schniedermeier in the absence of his Wheaton counterpart. That's a big load to put on the shoulders of a sophomore center who doesn't have a lot of varsity experience, though.

[thunderstruck88]

Hey Dutch, Wiele has a stress fracture in his left foot. Doc estimated a 4-5 week recovery, and Wiele is in his fourth week right now. I am all but certain he won't play against NP, and a week from now against Augie may be questionable. Wheaton needs him for that game, to be sure, but there is a lot of season left to play and losing an All-American center for the season is much worse than losing an early conference game.

You got that last sentence backwards, methinks.

You know what, the more I think about it, you're right    

Whoopsie...

Titan Q, iwumichigander and others... your boys played an excellent game tonight, and I have a feeling they'll still be in the mix at the end of the conference season. IWU's balance offensively tells me that they are going to find the hot hand(s) in every game and be able to put up points against good defenses, and they're own hard-nosed defense will keep them in games. We've talked a lot about balance in this conference, but even if it does come down to Augie and Wheaton, you know IWU won't be far behind.

[cardinalpride]

At least Kendall Greer made his season debut for North Park lineup a game earlier than the doctor was previously going to allow -- Greer did play tonight, didn't he? His number is correct in the box score.

Greg,
Kendall Greer did indeed play tonight!  The boxscore is correct.  I'll let Andone give his analysis of the game because he is better at it than I am!

[andrewmp]

I must say I was surprised at the amount of fans at the Wheaton-IWU game.  I know IWU travels well, but I did not expect a big crowd of wheaton fans with classes having not started yet...although as a group we were a little too quiet for my liking in such a close game.
I had thought that Wheaton would win if someone other than Raymond had scored more than 16 tonight...that didn't happen, but a 38 impressive performance did.  There were very few shots that he had that were not heavily contested, and I don't think IWU could have done much else to slow him down tonight.
I am not sure how many second chance points IWU got, but I think it was a fair amount.  The defensive rebounding for wheaton is what I think that not having Wiele in there affected the most.  Raymond himself made up the lost offense.  With Wiele, I think Wheaton would have been in control most of the game, but it still would have been close.

Greg, this is the second time in three years that NPUs home game against Wheaton has occured before the semester begins.  I would think that NPU would want to make sure that their home games against Wheaton would be at a time when lively student fans would be there.  Do they not have control over this at all?  When I was at the game two years ago, it was pretty empty and quiet.  I think that this is an advantage for the Thunder that they wouldn't have in a week.

[markerickson]

Regarding NP's current starting center, do not succumb to the "soft bigotry of low expectations," unless you are the opponent ->  I believe his upside is absolutely huge.  Wheaton lacks an adequate defender v N. Williams, but the more glaring mismatch is at guard with K. Raymond.  He is the CCIW's best passer so he does not need to rack up 38 at Foster and Kedzie to secure a Wheaton W.

Curious:  what are Raymond's career FG% and attempts from both two and three point land?

[Gregory Sager]

Greg, this is the second time in three years that NPUs home game against Wheaton has occured before the semester begins.  I would think that NPU would want to make sure that their home games against Wheaton would be at a time when lively student fans would be there.  Do they not have control over this at all?  When I was at the game two years ago, it was pretty empty and quiet.  I think that this is an advantage for the Thunder that they wouldn't have in a week.

Conference games are scheduled by the CCIW office, and follow a preset pattern. Unless the two coaches mutually agree to move their game to an alternative date (e.g., last Saturday's NPU @ Augie game), the teams are stuck with the schedule dictated to them by the league office. Therefore, NPU has no choice but to play Wheaton on a night in which the students won't be there.

Of course, the NPU administration could make it easier by opening the dorms a day earlier, since I bet that a number of students would like to come back on Saturday in order to see the game, rather than wait until Sunday to drive back to campus. But, alas, that's not an option, since the North Park administration has refused to open the dorms until Sunday. That's a shame as far as the basketball team is concerned, but I can't be too hard on the people who run the school; NPU took a $2,000,000 hit for repairs this school year due to the massive flooding this fall, and this follows in the wake of a really bad year for the endowment fund (a phenomenon experienced by a lot of schools who, like a lot of us individuals, saw their investments take a nosedive in this economy). NPU's administrators feel that they have to save costs wherever they can, and not opening the dorms until they absolutely have to is one way to do that.

And, yes, Wheaton gets a decided advantage by not having to play this game when North Park is in session. To say that we Parkers past and present don't really have much in the way of fond feelings towards Wheaton would be putting it rather mildly. Playing Wheaton in basketball or soccer is like waving a red flag in front of a bull as far as NPU students are concerned; as anyone who has seen a WC @ NPU or a NPU @ WC game will attest, Wheaton brings out the best in the Carlson Crazies.

[Gregory Sager]

Regarding NP's current starting center, do not succumb to the "soft bigotry of low expectations," unless you are the opponent ->  I believe his upside is absolutely huge.  Wheaton lacks an adequate defender v N. Williams, but the more glaring mismatch is at guard with K. Raymond.  He is the CCIW's best passer so he does not need to rack up 38 at Foster and Kedzie to secure a Wheaton W.

The four games in which NPU will miss Antonio Stevens the most this year are:

vs. Wheaton on Saturday
vs. Carthage a week from Saturday
@ Carthage on 1/31
@ Wheaton on 2/7

It's not hard to figure out why.

Curious:  what are Raymond's career FG% and attempts from both two and three point land?

I'll spare you the "teach a man to fish ..." lecture I'm always giving to Chuck, and simply post these links for you:

http://athletics.wheaton.edu/index.asp?path=mbball

http://www.cciw.org/winter_bball_m/index.php

[thundermike11]

A great win for the Thunder tonight against a very good IWU team. Offensively it was all about Kent Raymond tonight, as the Titans simply had no answer for him. But defensively it was really a team effort and I thought that Wheaton's D was pretty good overall, and they got big stops at key times.

Sean Johnson and Travis Rosenkranz really give Wheaton problems on the perimeter, especially on pick-and-roll plays from the wing. I think a key point in the game was when Doug Sexauer fouled out for IWU. He was having a very good game, and after he went out Wheaton matched up with the Titans a lot better.

Word on the street is that Andy Wiele will play Saturday against North Park.

[usee]

Great game in King arena. I will say I am really disappointed at the league office for scheduling this game on a weekday when school is out. It was virtually a home game for IWU. This game has almost always been a saturday night in later january. bad move by the league.

IWU was impressive early. Their guards regularly broke down the wheaton defense for easy dish off layups to chamerink and sexauer and at 8.53 in the 1st stanze IWU led 22-9 and I think Raymond only had 4 pts. Wheaton somehow got off the defensive schneid and went on a 21-7 run to lead at the break 30-29. As Q mentioned Raymond reeled off 13 pts and the Thunder had numerous defensive stops/steals leading to Thunder buckets.

Wheaton's run continued through the early part of the second half and they led 41-33 to complete a 32-11 run at 15.55. IWU answered over the next 5 minutes with a run of their own to take a 48-43 lead led by 7 pts from Sexauer who was too much for Wheaton to handle. From that point it was game on until Raymond took over at the 8.26 mark. With Wheaton down 56-50 He scored 17 of Wheaton's next 24 pts to take charge and win.

I thought one of the biggest plays of the game was with 1.06 left and Raymond on a tear but IWU fighting at 67-65, Panner didn't look for Raymond and took a bad jumper but made it to get to a 4 pt wheaton lead. IWU didn't recover after that.

a couple of observations:

-Raymond was much more physical in posting up the smaller guards IWU was putting on him. He finished at the basket really well tonight after missing several shots early in the game.

-Sexauer and Chamerink were beastly. They got every offensive rebound and when IWU could get the ball to them in the post they scored at will.

-Sean Johnson was clearly not himself. Although he hit some huge shots including 2-3 from the arc he was hobbling on defense and late in the game Coach Rose was subbing him offense for defense on every possession. Likewise Wheaton really missed Wiele with the big dogs for IWU reigning in the post. This will be a different game at the Shirk with both those guys healthy.

-I really liked O'Callaghan. He played very well on offense and defense. Kotchnisky, McCrary and Pflederer all seemed to have the freshman deer in the headlights look about them.

-Phil Carr was huge for Wheaton in their run in both halves. He had 7 pts in 8 minutes and 3 boards, 2 of them on offense. His energy helped pick up the Thunder where McCrary couldn't. Carwell was steady and effective as a role player.

-The officiating was its usual awful performance for a midweek CCIW contest. There were a lot of bad calls and missed calls but there were probably 4 really bad calls, 3 of which went against IWU. Early in the second half they called an offensive foul on Rosnekranz driving to the basket. He made the basket but it was waved off. It was clearly a block by the Wheaton defender and should have been and AndOne. instead wheaton got the ball and converted. I also thought with wheaton leading 67-62 Sean Johnson made a long 3 and was fouled. He made the free throw but inexplicably was credited with only a 2pt field goal. He was well behind the arc.

IF this is indicative of the quality of play we will get this season it is going to be a wild ride in the CCIW.

[usee]

Everybody check out Ill Weslyan on the web they are taking to Wheaton 22-9. Wheaton looks totally like not even a Top 25 team they are going down.

CCIW watcher,

you posted this on the 'in game updates' board. You should really be careful what you say early in games. Regardless of the outcome of this game this was a pretty stupid post to make about a team that is hightly ranked. 

[thundermike11]

I also thought with wheaton leading 67-62 Sean Johnson made a long 3 and was fouled. He made the free throw but inexplicably was credited with only a 2pt field goal. He was well behind the arc.

Yeah, that was pretty terrible.

[Mr. Ypsi]

I realize this is terribly premature, but, barring injury or someone totally catching fire, is there really any competition for Kent Raymond being not just conference but national POY?

[cardinalpride]

I realize this is terribly premature, but, barring injury or someone totally catching fire, is there really any competition for Kent Raymond being not just conference but national POY?

We may have to let the season play out first before we crown Wheaton as Champs, CCIW or National!