MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Pat Coleman]

Or, if newspapers still employed copy editors, the desk would have caught it.

[iwumichigander]

To get to the game, the IWU JV team walked 3 miles down Main St. to Highland Park Golf Course, where they boarded 6 golf carts (courtesy of the city of Bloomington).  They drove the carts single file down I-55 to Lincoln on the shoulder.  Getting home was a bit dicey since golf carts don't have headlights.

Of course, it was environmentally friendly trip to Lincoln (just not Nebraska)

[BlueJay21]

North Park 65
Millikin 37

Looks like this one was over at half. Nice game for North Park that might get them back on track. Millikin needs some offensive help.

[Dennis_Prikkel]

North Park 65
Millikin 37

Looks like this one was over at half. Nice game for North Park that might get them back on track. Millikin needs some offensive help.

1= That might be North Park's biggest winning margin ever versus Millikin.

2- Millikin's 37 points is definitely amongst the 10 lowest scorers in CCIW history.  The record is 6.

[mr_b]

North Park 65
Millikin 37

Looks like this one was over at half. Nice game for North Park that might get them back on track. Millikin needs some offensive help.

1= That might be North Park's biggest winning margin ever versus Millikin.

2- Millikin's 37 points is definitely amongst the 10 lowest scorers in CCIW history.  The record is 6.

6 points?  Was the extra point blocked?

[Dennis_Prikkel]

North Park 65
Millikin 37

Looks like this one was over at half. Nice game for North Park that might get them back on track. Millikin needs some offensive help.

1= That might be North Park's biggest winning margin ever versus Millikin.

2- Millikin's 37 points is definitely amongst the 10 lowest scorers in CCIW history.  The record is 6.

6 points?  Was the extra point blocked?

consecutive nights in wisconsin in 1973
augustana 37, carthage 33
augustana 12, carroll 6 (it was 4-2 at half)

[usee]

Final in Naperville
Ncc 83
Wheaton 75

Ncc scores 21 pts off 15 thunder turnovers. Ncc bench accounts for 28 pts to 7 from the Wheaton bench. Mcrary w 27 and 9.  Raridon and gamble had 18 pts, goldthree w 15 and evans had 8 and ax

[Mr. Ypsi]

Final in Kenosha: Carthage 73, IWU 52.

Steve D. got his 27.  Sean Johnson got 20, but got no help.  Sexauer and Rosenkranz combined for 2 points on 1 for 10 shooting.

[mwunder]

The Carthage / IWU game was close for about 10 minutes, but that was it.  The Red Men out-everything'd IWU in this game.  Carthage had 13 offensive rebounds against a bigger team and out-rebounded the Titans by 12.  There was no way going into the the game that I thought that would happen.

Nick Bauch had a very good game off the bench for the Red Men.

Train wreck game for the Titans.  They certainly didn't look like a 10-2 team in this game.

[Gregory Sager]

Caught my first CCIW men's two-fer in quite awhile; broadcasted the afternoon Millikin @ North Park game, and Pete McBride and I got to sit in the VIP section of the airplane hangar for the Wheaton @ North Central game, thanks to AndOne.

Paul Brenegan played all sixteen Vikings who suited up in NPU's 65-37 romp over the Big Blue, but he could've suited up the people behind the counter at Charcoal Delights instead of his players and the result would've been the same. It was eerie; North Park won by 28 points, and spent much of the game with a score double the size of Millikin's, and by the way that NPU fans filed out of the gym with downcast looks after the game was over you'd think that the Vikings had lost. The overwhelming feeling was, "How did we only win by 28?" Folks, I am telling you that Millikin is beyond bad. The Big Blue are epically bad. I've seen some bad CCIW teams before, but in my thirty-plus years of following this league I've never seen a team nearly as bad as 2010-11 Millikin. NPU didn't play well at all, and still won in a laugher. Millikin shot less than 29% from the field (13-45), 50% from the line (6-12), and got outrebounded by the Vikings -- who are not a very good rebounding team -- to the tune of 34-19. I'm willing to wager all the corn in Manito that Millikin goes 0-14 in league play this season.

D.A. Robinson had 13 and Clayton Cahill had 11 for NPU.

The Wheaton @ NCC game was great fun to watch. (It was also the only competitive game of the day in the CCIW.) Wheaton never looked mentally in the game; even though Tim McCrary put up his usual numbers he just never looked like he was all there upstairs. I mean, when's the last time that McCrary fouled out of a game? And his fellow vets Andrew Jahns and Spencer Schultze played pretty poorly for Wheaton as well. Jahns did score 13, but he turned the ball over five times and didn't play all that well at the defensive end, and Schultze looked like he was out there solely to help provide footage for Landon Gamble's highlight reel. NCC looked very sharp. The Cardinals, for such a young team, displayed a lot of composure in: a) fighting back from an early 8-2 deficit that had the makings of evolving into a runaway Wheaton win -- NCC outscored Wheaton 15-4 after that opening WC flurry; and: b) never letting Wheaton close the gap, fighting off each run that the Sonic Atmospheric Disturbance threw at them. From the 9:24 mark of the first half on, NCC refused to let Wheaton get within one possession of tying the game. When you consider the fact that the Cards were unable to pull away -- they had a couple of 13-point leads, but for most of the final thirty minutes their lead was in single digits -- that's pretty remarkable. It was really a classic bend-but-don't-break performance by NCC.

A couple of the NCC freshmen looked very good. C.J. Goldthree is going to be a serious force in this league; he has both the athleticism and the jump shot to make his presence felt on the offensive end. Like a lot of freshmen, though, his shot selection leaves something to be desired. Landon Gamble showed that his strong performance against Illinois Wesleyan on Wednesday was no fluke. He gave McCrary a good run for his money in terms of being the most dominant inside player in the game. But in the end it was the veterans, Kevin Gillespie and Brian Evans, who made the big plays in the final two minutes to hold off Wheaton and win the game.

This makes seven wins in a row for NCC over Wheaton in the airplane hangar. I used to joke about Todd Raridon having a Bill Harris voodoo doll in his desk drawer in which he used to stick pins prior to every visit by Wheaton to Naperville. Looks like Raridon's witch doctor has fashioned a similar talisman of Mike Schauer with which Raridon can continue to work his anti-Wheaton juju hand.

[wheaton.thunder]

Bench points-WHEATON 7, NCC 28

[iwumichigander]

This maybe a long CCIW season with Augie at 2-0 ; Millikin at 0-2; and, all other teams at 1-1.  Augustana has a competitive advantage at 2-0 that may be hard to overcome to get the #1 spot.  The rest is up for grabs it seems to me.

[usee]

Augie still has to play a lot of road games. I don't think there is much of an advantage. They are the only team to win a cciw road game so far after  week of league play. They are +1 and everyone else is zero (except npu who is -1). Lots ob ball to play. Defending home court and winning road games is how you win this league. Everone is still in it.

[coebball70]

I must admit I am absolutely "stunned" by the Carthage win over Illinois Wesleyan.  It is obvious that there is trouble in the Titan world right now.  My hunch is it's team harmony and confidence in coaching decisions.  Let's look at the box score.  Two key Carthage starters, Cary and Thompson, combined for 6 points!  Raul Guzman, a third starter for Carthage did not play!  And the Kenosha bunch still ran the Titans off the court by over 20 points!
So what happened?  First off, the Titans must not have been mentally prepared.  Is that a team responsibility or a coaching error?  I say both.  Second, when you look at the Titan's box score you find a rotation, or maybe a lack thereof, of several key players with much experience not playing as much as earlier in the season.  Specifically, Schouten, Rudnicki, Shick and Lawson combined play 16 minutes.  Are there some frustrations beginning to surface or is it just a "poor shooting" day on the road?  I would be interested in other Titan followers' comments.
But Titan fans don't despair.  Millikin and Elmhurst are up next.  There is time to steady the ship and the conference season is still young.  It is also time for some Senior leadership and coaching reflection.

[TitansIWU]

I was in Kenosha last night, and it was pretty awful.

I do not have the basketball analyzing skills of many posters on here, and I usually just read the comments and go on my way. I have learned so much from the posters on here and I have seen, listened to, or watched online every Titan game for the last five or six years.

My observations from last night:

Sexhauer must still be struggling with an injury more than we know? He seems like a great kid with a lot of heart, talent and character, but a much less athletic kid from Carthage pushed him around like a rag doll. I think Doug went 0-3 last night. Hard to win when he plays like that. I do not know the answer to this one.

Sean Johnson played just an ok game for him and scored his average, but with him as your only offense at all, it is frustrating to watch.

Zimmer is kind of a streaky player. Some nights you want to clone him and face anyone with 5 Zimmers, and other nights he gets lost in the rotation and just seems unable to even play at the CCIW LEVEL. In my opinion, it is a coach's job to know what night he is having and figure out what it takes to get a better performance more consistently. Seems like Jordan plays with an incredible desire, but maybe gets frustrated easily when shots are not falling.

BC is a ton at times, but for his size, he sometimes gets pushed around and has too light of a touch when it comes to the put back. He is a really big guy and can be instructed to TAKE IT TO THE HOOP at times.

In my truest opinion, if I had to find one major issue with the team, it would be this. I am not even sure I can think of how to say this tactfully.

There is a ton of talent on this team. It is not always "on" for each player. It is a coach's job, in my opinion, to know what 5 guys at any one time represent your best chance at a win. Once again, I do not know if I am correct on this, BUT it seems to me that when there is the slightest resistance or in adequacies at any position, Coach Rose all of a sudden changes the entire flow of the game by substitutions that seem random and poorly planned with respect to the "chemistry" that is needed at this level.

Just seems that he gets in a panic mode and messes with the rotation and pretty soon you have 5 players who haven't logged many "real game" minutes together on the court at a crucial time. I think that the core team has enough poise to"play through" a few minutes of momentum on the part of another team. Instead, substitutions are made, they come off looking like they are playing the Harlem Globetrotters, when in reality, Carthage is not that great.

To the credit of Carthage, they fed off of the IWU floundering and put them away. They did exactly what they needed to do to get a convincing win. they are a better team than their record shows. But they are just good, not great.

I am not an expert on getting a team ready for a game, BUT, I can tell you with so much expectation on them, and so much on the line mentally, last night in Kenosha, a very talented IWU team got embarrassed.

In my opinion, that is 90% coaching and 10% team.

I have seen Ron Rose do a lot of good things, but I am just putting this out there, for whatever it is worth.

There, I said it.