MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[sac]

+k for Ypsilantiesque, I'd fast track it to the Supersweetness Hall of Fame if this were on the MIAA page.

[Gregory Sager]

I'd be fine with NPU taking out Carthage on Wednesday, so I don't have to even wait around for the weekend!

(Gee, Greg, everyone's suddenly rooting for the Vikings! )

I'm not sure that I can handle the psychic burden of having both Wheaton and Illinois Wesleyan fans rooting for my alma mater's team on the same night.

[Mr. Ypsi]

On November 27, IWU was 5-0 and ranked #2 in the country (though EVEN I thought that way too high).  NCC was 0-4.

I wonder if anyone (even in Naperville) would have honestly imagined the current conference standings?!

[Gregory Sager]

+k for Ypsilantiesque, I'd fast track it to the Supersweetness Hall of Fame if this were on the MIAA page.

Alas, our $13,000,000,000 state debt is probably going to keep an Illinois version of the Hall of Fame of Supersweetness from being built for quite some time.

[Gregory Sager]

On November 27, IWU was 5-0 and ranked #2 in the country (though EVEN I thought that way too high).

It was kind of a squishy 5-0, though. The Titans were having trouble putting away some comparatively weak teams during their initial six-game winning streak to start the season. Those chickens came home to roost in the seventh game, when the Titans lost in the Shirk Center to a Chicago team that has an uphill battle ahead of it to reach the double-digit mark in wins for 2010-11.

NCC was 0-4.

I wonder if anyone (even in Naperville) would have honestly imagined the current conference standings?!

AndOne is NCC"s biggest booster in this room, and I highly doubt that even he could've foreseen this.

What North Central has done in January and February is absolutely remarkable, and I'm stumped for a comparison to any team that I've seen in my thirty-plus years of following the CCIW. To go 4-7 in non-conference play and then finish in second place in the CCIW standings flies in the face of everything that we've all come to know about this league.

[petemcb]

+k for Ypsilantiesque, I'd fast track it to the Supersweetness Hall of Fame if this were on the MIAA page.

Alas, our $13,000,000,000 state debt is probably going to keep an Illinois version of the Hall of Fame of Supersweetness from being built for quite some time.

I'm sure Gov. Quinn can cover it if/when he gets his loan dream squeezed through.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Uh oh.  I just realized that even if NPU holds home court against Carthage, IWU STILL has to beat both NPU and Augie.  (Let's face it Wheaton won't lose to either Millikin or Elmhurst, and Carthage won't lose to Millikin.)  So if IWU failed to beat both NPU and Augie (but NPU beat Carthage), IWU and Carthage would tie for 4th.  They split (tie break one - fortunately it is irrelevant that IWU was crushed in Kenosha, while needing OT to win in B'town )  But Carthage would instantly win on tie break two, since they beat Augie.  (IF IWU beat Augie but lost to NPU, we'd have to go to a different tie break, but that seems sufficiently unlikely I'm not gonna even check it until such time arises.)

[sac]

+k for Ypsilantiesque, I'd fast track it to the Supersweetness Hall of Fame if this were on the MIAA page.

Alas, our $13,000,000,000 state debt is probably going to keep an Illinois version of the Hall of Fame of Supersweetness from being built for quite some time.

I'm sure Gov. Quinn can cover it if/when he gets his loan dream squeezed through.

Corn is $7.00+ a bushel, that's 1.85 billion bushels to get $13,000,000,000.  Surely all the corn in Manito can cover that in one growing season.  Problem solved.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Geez, at the start of the season almost everyone in here thought IWU and Carthage (in whichever order) were the favorites to win the conference.  Now they are locked in a steel cage match to see who even makes the conference tourney.

[Gregory Sager]

Uh oh.  I just realized that even if NPU holds home court against Carthage, IWU STILL has to beat both NPU and Augie.  (Let's face it Wheaton won't lose to either Millikin or Elmhurst

Don't put next Saturday's game at King Arena in the W column for the Sonic Atmospheric Disturbance prematurely. The Bluejays are undermanned, but they're very scrappy. Let's not forget that they took your Titans right down to the wire ten days ago, and Wheaton only beat them by a single point back in January in a game that saw the 'jays miss what would've been a game-winning jumper and then a putback attempt at the final buzzer.

Yes, it'd be a huge upset, but it's certainly within the realm of possibility. Millikin, on the other hand? Not a chance in the world that the Big Blue could forge a victory over either Wheaton or Carthage.

and Carthage won't lose to Millikin.)  So if IWU failed to beat both NPU and Augie (but NPU beat Carthage), IWU and Carthage would tie for 4th.

No, they wouldn't. Two more losses to end the season would put IWU at 7-7; a loss to NPU and the inevitable win over Millikin would put the Red Men at 8-6 and give them fourth place.

They split (tie break one - fortunately it is irrelevant that IWU was crushed in Kenosha, while needing OT to win in B'town )  But Carthage would instantly win on tie break two, since they beat Augie.  (IF IWU beat Augie but lost to NPU, we'd have to go to a different tie break, but that seems sufficiently unlikely I'm not gonna even check it until such time arises.)

Since I rather relish the idea of NPU beating IWU and sweeping the season series, I'll check it for you.

If IWU loses to NPU but beats Augie (finishing 8-6), while Carthage loses to NPU but beats Millikin (also finishing 8-6), the Titans would win the tiebreaker, since Wheaton split with IWU but swept Carthage. The "mirror team" (i.e., the team that swept IWU but split with Carthage) would be NPU, and Wheaton is going to finish ahead of NPU. Since the CCIW uses a descending ladder rather than an ascending ladder as the tiebreaker, the record that teams compile against Wheaton has precedence over the record that teams compile against North Park.

[Gregory Sager]

Geez, at the start of the season almost everyone in here thought IWU and Carthage (in whichever order) were the favorites to win the conference.  Now they are locked in a steel cage match to see who even makes the conference tourney.

Every year I remark on how the coaches usually manage to get it all wrong as far as the preseason poll is concerned. This year, however, as you say, I think every one of us felt that Carthage and IWU, in whichever order, had to be seen as the top two picks going in .... so we can't really mock the coaches for blowing it with their prognosticating.

There's no doubt that the relative failure of Carthage and IWU -- at least to this point, and as you note we are very late in the season -- is one of the four major stories of the CCIW this season, the other three being the remarkable dominance of Augustana, the heretofore-mentioned miracle run of North Central after the Cards went 4-7 in non-conference play, and the dubious slog to epic disaster on the part of a Millikin squad that threatens to set the all-time-worst record ever logged by a CCIW team. I suppose that we can spend quite a bit of time once the smoke clears dissecting just what has gone wrong with these Red Men and Titans teams of which so much was expected back in November. No sense in doing so now, though, since both teams still have at least a glimmer of hope of salvaging their respective seasons.

It's a shame that Pat doesn't have his Top 25s archived yet since the move to the new format, since I'm curious as to how many teams that were ranked in the Top Five in the preseason poll failed to make the tournament that particular season.

[CCIWchamps]

Don't put next Saturday's game at King Arena in the W column for the Sonic Atmospheric Disturbance prematurely.

Out of curiousity, where did the moniker "Sonic Atmospheric Disturbance" start?  I notice nobody else uses it and am curious why only Wheaton gets a special mention in your posts. 

[Mr. Ypsi]

Greg, I specifically changed "failed to beat either NPU or Augie" (which would mean lost both games) to "failed to beat both NPU and Augie" (which means means lost one or the other of the games).  I'm fully aware that if they lose both games, the season has been a disaster (compared to expectations).

A rare failure of your reading skills!

[cardinalpride]

Don't put next Saturday's game at King Arena in the W column for the Sonic Atmospheric Disturbance prematurely.

Out of curiousity, where did the moniker "Sonic Atmospheric Disturbance" start?  I notice nobody else uses it and am curious why only Wheaton gets a special mention in your posts. 

THUNDER!

[AndOne]

On November 27, IWU was 5-0 and ranked #2 in the country (though EVEN I thought that way too high).

It was kind of a squishy 5-0, though. The Titans were having trouble putting away some comparatively weak teams during their initial six-game winning streak to start the season. Those chickens came home to roost in the seventh game, when the Titans lost in the Shirk Center to a Chicago team that has an uphill battle ahead of it to reach the double-digit mark in wins for 2010-11.

NCC was 0-4.

I wonder if anyone (even in Naperville) would have honestly imagined the current conference standings?!

AndOne is NCC"s biggest booster in this room, and I highly doubt that even he could've foreseen this.

What North Central has done in January and February is absolutely remarkable, and I'm stumped for a comparison to any team that I've seen in my thirty-plus years of following the CCIW. To go 4-7 in non-conference play and then finish in second place in the CCIW standings flies in the face of everything that we've all come to know about this league.

To be perfectly honest, at the beginning of the season I thought that NCC would have at least as good a record as they do at this time. However, I did think that they would do much better in the non conference portion of the schedule, and not quite as well as they have done in conference. Some may scoff at this, but remember, I am around the team a great deal of the time and I could see their potential which first began to emerge over the summer and continued to develop in open gym even before formal practice started in October. Where I was wrong was in thinking they would be further advanced offensively at this point, while not being as defensively adept as they have become. I remember telling people that NCC would win several games 90-85. I thought NCC had the offensive firepower, and that the problem would be in stopping  the other team from scoring more. I would have bet a million that they would score more that 35 vs Adrian, 43 vs. Edgewood, or 56 against Bluffton.