MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[bopol]

Unable to attend the Carthage game Saturday, what was the dedication ceremony like before the game? 

Classy.  The flag at the arena is from the funeral of a former Carthage student that was killed in service in Vietnam.  His family was there to present his metals to the college.  A relative (and Army officer) explained what each metal met.  There was a nice brief prayer for the dedication.

Anyone else go to the game?  I was very impressed with Malcom Kelly, who really stepped up and Mitch Thompson who played good D for about 24 minutes.  Max Cary looked a bit quieter than I am used to (it's the first game I've seen with him since he came back from mono). 

[veterancciwfan]

Regarding the Panner vs. Twyman discussion, since Wheaton is not going to be the CCIW Champion, it would be unusual if it lands 2 players on the CCIW 1st team all conference. NCC won't get both Raridon and Twyman on the 1st team. Clearly, McCrary is Wheaton's best player and will make 1st team. I saw Twyman play once at IWU and I saw Panner play twice. If I had to pick only one for my 5-player team, it would be Twyman. In the 3 games I saw, I think Twyman had an overall higher positive impact than Panner did. If Twyman were 3 inches taller, he could probably play at a higher level. I think Twyman is a more versitile and complete player. Rebounding is such an important part of the game and Twyman excells at it. Having said all that, I think Raridon will make 1st team and Twyman won't. I think the last spot on the 1st team will be Sean Johnson or Panner. Their stats are very similar.

[usee]

I have to laugh because I just remembered a discussion last fall on the football board after the NCC/IWU game. I was arguing that North Central was a better team than IWU and their QB was the best player in the conference and should have won, blah, blah, blah,. Q comes on and called me out for making a fairly audacious and unprovable statment about NCC's QB.

The irony is amusing.

[Titan Q]

I have to laugh because I just remembered a discussion last fall on the football board after the NCC/IWU game. I was arguing that North Central was a better team than IWU and their QB was the best player in the conference and should have won, blah, blah, blah,. Q comes on and called me out for making a fairly audacious and unprovable statment about NCC's QB.

The irony is amusing.

Here is that post...

NCC was playing without their 4 senior Captains and the 4 best players at their respective positions in the cciw las saturday. While I think what they have done with their backups is admirable the 4 backups to those plays aren't the best players in the conference at their positions. Lest you forget the wheaton/ncc game was 7-7 at half and Fanthorpe went on to earn player of the week honors with his 2nd half performance (which also secured the game). I think its pretty simple....if Fanthorpe plays in the second half last saturday NCC wins that game easily. Anyone who thinks otherwise is delirious.

Lesson learned for all us is that absolute/definitive-type statements like AndOne's about Ben Panner not deserving more 1st Team votes than Twyman - or like USee's above regarding the IWU/NCC football game - about things are just not absolute/definitive, are going to cause some controversy.  As long as you're OK with that, more power to you...if not, maybe just find a softer way to make your point.

And by the way, credit to USee for calling himself out!

[Titan Q]

I think the last spot on the 1st team will be Sean Johnson or Panner. Their stats are very similar.

Sean has had a great season, but that scoreless performance vs Wheaton is going to be tough to overcome.  He certainly has two big road games left to show otherwise though.

With two games to go, I'd put my money on Kyle Nelson or Ben Panner...with Nelson as the favorite.  (I just don't see NCC getting 2 on the 1st Team with a 6th place finish.)

[Dennis_Prikkel]

i think ALL of you guys are TOO sensitive to YOUR feelings.

everyone has different ways of expressing themselves.  To some speaking in black and white (and not gray or beige) is more of their style.  So be it.

You sensitive types need to get over it - there's just too much arguing over semantics on this board.

This is a very different year in CCIW because of the lack of seniors across the board in the league.   Everyone has had a ton of close games this year - and other than Stevie D and Tim McC there are no clear cut "stars" in the league this year.  Some players such as Panner, Nelson, Sexauer, Raridon, Twyman, Johnson & Williams have had their moments, leaving a good taste in our senses as to their accomplishments.  This is going to be one of the most interesting all-conference discussions at the coaches' meeting in recent memory.

I see only two unanimous choices - with as many as six or seven players having a realistic shot at the last three spots - the final two games of the season will go a long way towards clarifying who gets what.

[Dennis_Prikkel]

Ben Panner CCIW Player of the Week - congratulations.

[cardinalpride]

AndOne,

Here is a little different spin on this discussion.   I wasn't at the game last night nor have I seen Raridon play this year so I only can go off of what has been written.   Is it possible that maybe Twyman deserves the first team spot over Raridon?   I looked over the ten categories you used for comparison and this is split evenly at five each.   

I don't really care who makes the final spot on the first team but I do agree wholeheartedly that where one ends in the standings does play into the voting.   With that said, NC will only have one player but could it be Twyman?   I guess that is really the question I'm posing to you?

I know i don't post much anymore but did I miss something.  I only went back a few pages but I do believe AO was talking about Twyman all along and not Raridon.  Am I right?

[Gregory Sager]

"That was a fortuitous shot," admitted Thunder coach Mike Schauer. "My theology does not believe in luck, but that pushes the outer edge of my theology."

Best quote by a CCIW coach this season ... and in a season in which Bosko's had some good ones that's really saying something.

Panner is a complete player who any CCIW coach would absolutely love to have.  It wouldn't be any slight to David Twyman or Kyle Nelson if Ben Panner ends up on that 1st Team.

... or Doug Sexauer, either.

AndOne,

Here is a little different spin on this discussion.   I wasn't at the game last night nor have I seen Raridon play this year so I only can go off of what has been written.   Is it possible that maybe Twyman deserves the first team spot over Raridon?   I looked over the ten categories you used for comparison and this is split evenly at five each.   

I don't really care who makes the final spot on the first team but I do agree wholeheartedly that where one ends in the standings does play into the voting.   With that said, NC will only have one player but could it be Twyman?   I guess that is really the question I'm posing to you?

Good points, and the shame isn't that North Central might only get one player on the first team -- it's that NCC might only get one player onto the All-CCIW team as a whole. Don't believe me? Well, only once in the last dozen years has a team that finished sixth or worse put two players onto the All-CCIW team (NCC did it in '05 when Anthony Simmons made second team and Mike Wilson made third team; the Cardinals finished 5-9 and wound up sixth that year). I'm not saying that the precedent will hold up again, but it could certainly happen.

I tend to agree with Kenoshamark....Twyman is a top candidate for 1st team ...but not in place of Panner...but in place Rairdon's.  A team's place in conference play will always be a deciding factor.  Finishing 6th out of 8th will not get 2 players on 1st team in any conference, at any level.

One factor which you're all leaving out is age. Given the subjectivity involved in how the All-CCIW team is selected, you have to consider every possibility that might be involved in choosing one player over another, and one of those factors is seniority. It's very difficult for a freshman to make first-team All-CCIW. Only three players in the last two decades have made the All-CCIW team as freshmen (all of them played for Carthage, coincidentally: Jason Wiertel in '99, Rob Garnes in '00, and Steve Djurickovic in '08).  Not even such dominant players as Kent Raymond or Chris Martin managed the feat. The coaches may elect to slot David Twyman ahead of Derek Raridon based upon the fact that Twyman is a senior and Raridon is a freshman -- especially since there's such a dearth of All-CCIW-worthy seniors this year.

Incidentally, for those interested in how the team is actually selected, here's the guidelines. They're from Article V of the CCIW Men's Basketball Sports Guide:

V.   ALL CONFERENCE

A.   A first team of five players, a second team of five players and a third team of five players shall make up the all-conference team.  An outstanding player shall be selected from the first team.  This award is named the Fred Young CCIW Most Outstanding Player Award. 

B.   Each coach may nominate players from his team as candidates for the all-conference team.

C.   Each coach must vote for a five-member first team, a five-member second team and a five-member third team.

1.   After nominations the five players receiving the greatest number of points will be designated as first team.  In case of a tie for the fifth position, a separate vote will be taken with regard to the players involved in the tie and the loser placed on the second team.

2.   The remaining players will be nominees for the second team.  Coaches will be allowed to also nominate additional players for the second team and then vote.  In case of a tie for fifth position on the second team, a separate vote will be taken with regard to the players involved in the tie.  The player receiving the greatest point total will be selected. 

3.   Based on the voting, a third team will be chosen. 

D.   The player of the year will receive a special plaque provided by the conference office or official ball partner. 

E.   The coach of the year shall be from the team that is named regular season conference champion.

F.   The members of the all-conference team will receive plaques.

6. If you think all conference selection isn't at least partially affected by where your team finishes then your eyes aren't fully opened. This is a historical fact. If you don't believe me, ask Titan Q or Greg Sager or anyone else who has been on here for a while and is very familiar with the conference.

You are correct here, but this is the way it should be.   The best evaluation of an individual player to me is the number of wins he is able to get for his team.  NCC has won 4 of 12 (33%) of their CCIW.  That is simply not good.  Wheaton is 8-4 because of their defense.  Ben Panner is one of Wheaton's top two players and their best perimeter on-the-ball defender.   Obviously teammates matter in getting wins, but as has been mentioned many times on this board, Wheaton is extremely thin this year. 

A few years back, Keelan Amelianovich from a 12-2 Titan team was chosen over Joel Kolmodin from a 10-4 Thunder team for MOP when Kolmodin had a statistically better year.  My biased pick probably would have been Joel, but I had no problem with Keelan getting the award.  Chris Martin probably could've won multiple MOPs based on stats. 

Individual stats have too many confounders when relied upon for comparison of players.  A good supporting cast can impact a players stats positively or negatively.   The pace at which a team plays or overall poor defense can lead to more possessions per game and inflated per-game averages,  etc, etc.  Winning is the best tool we have to find the best players.

Excellent post, Izzy, particularly that last paragraph.

I think the last spot on the 1st team will be Sean Johnson or Panner. Their stats are very similar.

Given that the latter completely shut down the former in the former's gym Saturday night in one of the biggest games of the year for both teams, it looks pretty academic to me. Then again, as I said we're talking about a very subjective process.

[markerickson]

W/L records do influence AC selections as we had this same discussion last year when Nick Williams got third team instead of second.

What I do not understand is if a team has thin talent and one good player, does the opponent focus more on the one good player as means to ensure that he does not elevate the team to victory?  Re: bball, I'm simply an onlooker.  If the question related to football and the standout was a DL, then you double-team the guy.  Or, if your only weapon is Randy Moss, then you double team him.  But when you have Moss, Carter, and several other talented individuals, the opponent cannot double team Moss.

[CCIWFAN3]

That's the true test if they are a good player or a great player. If they are just a good player, then shutting them down and the team down can be done...but a great player finds a way to make his teammates better....example...SD.

[Gregory Sager]

* I do not think Wheaton has clinched a spot yet.  If Wheaton loses final 2 and NPU wins final 2, NPU would own the 8-6 tie-breaker due to the hypothetical win over Carthage.  Wheaton can clinch a spot with a win at home over Millikin Wednesday, or via Carthage home win over NPU.  (Wheaton is in great shape, but it is not quite official yet.)

Quite frankly, the fact that NPU is even mathematically alive for a playoff spot in the last week of the regular season is something of a triumph for a team that didn't win any conference games at all last year; lost two starters to injury and a third to a decision to take a year off; and was picked to finish last again by the CCIW coaches.

The naysayers will deny it, of course, but Paul Brenegan and his staff have done a good job with this Vikings squad, particularly given that horrific first week of the season.

[REDMENFAN]

Good article in the Racine Journal Times about Steve D. and the Red Men. Several quotes from Steve, Bosko, teammates, and Wheaton's coach. 



http://www.journaltimes.com/sports/basketball/article_287bbcfa-19fa-11df-bcd4-001cc4c03286.html

[Gregory Sager]

Related to the Twyman vs. Panner discussion of the past couple of days, I think that the most interesting CCIW stat this season is the one at the very bottom of the stats page on the league's website:

MINUTES PLAYED

##	Player-Team	G	Min	Min/G
1.	Raridon, Derek-NCC	12	458	38.17
2.	Djurickovic, Steve-CARTHAGE	12	442	36.83
3.	Barringer, Reid-NCC	12	436	36.33
4.	McCrary, Tim-WHEATON	12	429	35.75
5.	Panner, Ben-WHEATON	12	425	35.42
6.	Jahns, Andrew-WHEATON	12	412	34.33
7.	Evans, Brian-NCC	12	401	33.42
8.	Knapczyk, Jon-NCC	11	365	33.18
9.	Twyman, David-NCC	12	393	32.75

Of the nine players who've logged the heaviest workload in the league this season (including Jon Knapczyk, who's now presumably done for the season), eight of them play for either Wheaton or NCC. (It's no surprise that the odd man out is Steve Djurickovic; when you have Secretariat in your stable, you don't pick and choose your races and leave him in the barn on occasion.) The Sonic Atmospheric Disturbance and the Cardinals are two very thin teams, but they're two different kinds of thin.

North Central's thin in terms of bodies. Near as I can tell, Todd Raridon currently has thirteen active players. That should be enough for both practices and games under normal circumstances, of course, but what's interesting is that Raridon hasn't done what most coaches would do with such an attenuated roster: Cancel the remainder of the JV season. (At least, he hadn't as of last Wednesday night.) Around half of those thirteen are underclassmen who really aren't ready for CCIW varsity play yet, so Raridon has made it a point to keep getting them game experience via junior varsity games. Thing is, what that means is that he's had to play some of his second-string varsity players on the JV, which as far as I know is unprecented. At least, I don't think I've ever seen anything like it in the CCIW. After Knapczyk got hurt last Wednesday, Raridon put in Kevin Gillespie, who ran the point for NCC for the remaining eleven-plus minutes of the game at North Park. And Gillespie had started for the Cardinals JV team earlier that night! Gillespie seems to have stepped into Knapczyk's workhorse role for NCC, as he played 38 of the forty available minutes in North Central's near-upset of Carthage on Saturday (and did a good job, if the line score is any indication). He and two others among the eight Cardinals who played in Saturday's game, Tyler Bantz and Mike Winans, have spent most of the year on the JV team. In fact, Bantz played twenty of the 27 varsity minutes he's logged all season on Saturday night.

Given the risk of injury in a JV game, Raridon is really dancing on the edge of the volcano as far as his paper-thin roster is concerned. But you have to respect his dedication to player development.

Mike Schauer's situation is different. He's got plenty of bodies; he just doesn't have a lot of them that he feels comfortable using in a CCIW varsity game. Given his candid assessment of their talents earlier this season, I'm sure that Schauer must hold his breath every minute that he has members of his JV Lifer Society on the floor. But he's managed to use Eseke, Viars, Kvam, et. al., judiciously and get away with it, and he's been spared serious injury to his roster (Carwell's ribs problem notwithstanding).

Schauer's gotten more out of his thin corps of varsity-capable players at the defensive end of the floor than Raridon has out of his, plus Tim McCrary gives him a weapon in the low post that NCC doesn't really have. I think that both coaches have done a good job of working around the limitations of their teams, but Schauer may have done a great one. His problem is that his team was picked in the preseason poll to finish first, so the fact that Wheaton isn't going to win the league is going to make his inaugural campaign as the Wheaton head coach look less than successful -- when in fact that really isn't the case at all.

It's an interesting league this season. Three teams -- NPU, IWU, and Augie -- have displayed some pretty remarkable depth, while two others -- Wheaton and NCC -- have walked the razor's edge because of a shortage of useful players.

[Gregory Sager]

Good article in the Racine Journal Times about Steve D. and the Red Men. Several quotes from Steve, Bosko, teammates, and Wheaton's coach. 

http://www.journaltimes.com/sports/basketball/article_287bbcfa-19fa-11df-bcd4-001cc4c03286.html

I particularly liked the accompanying picture of Steve D. about to sideswipe a falling-backwards Colby Long of Millikin on a layup attempt. I bet that I can even pinpoint the moment of the game at which this pic was taken: At 14:22 of the second half in the MU @ CC contest on January 23, Long fouled Djurickovic, who was taking the ball coast-to-coast after rebounding a Long miss at the other end, and Djurickovic made both free throws. One almost feels sorry for the Big Blue freshman.