MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[A Lover of the Game]

It is always interesting to hear comments from family members of players who aren't playing as much as they think they should

Being that I use my personal email address, you can see my real name in my email address, and make the last name association; it's not hard to figure out that you are referring to me. You can address your comment directly to me. 

In responds to your comment, I am not that type of parent.  My son has been playing ball for many years.  My belief has always been a player earns his/her right to be on the floor. Stay tuned.

P.S I never hide behind fake email address, nicknames, or the like.

[CCIWchamps]

It is always interesting to hear comments from family members of players who aren't playing as much as they think they should

Being that I use my personal email address, you can see my real name in my email address, and make the last name association; it's not hard to figure out that you are referring to me. You can address your comment directly to me. 

In responds to your comment, I am not that type of parent.  My son has been playing ball for many years.  My belief has always been a player earns his/her right to be on the floor. Stay tuned.

P.S I never hide behind fake email address, nicknames, or the like.

I just want to say I'm impressed that a mother of a player would venture into this realm, and continue to stick around.  The small college basketball junkies who have a monopoly on the basketball talk for this little corner of the world can be quite off-putting at times. 

[iwu70]

Good for you, Lover of the Game.  You are right.  I've seen your son play and he will indeed have his day on the Shirk hardwoods, and around the league, I have no doubt.  Many other of the fine Titan freshmen will as well.  I have great optimism for the future of the Titans program for next year especially, and several years following.

I'm still pulling for this year's fine group of Titans . . . and our hopes for the rest of the season and the Conference tourney.  You never know what will happen.  It's not over 'til the Fat Lady sings . . . as they say.  I'm truly hoping the Titans can bounce back after two very tough, heart-breaking OT losses and a tough situation with Travis' injury.  That was scary and very worrying, concerning, to say the least. 

All my support to Coach Rose and the Titans for NP and Augie, upcoming.

[A Lover of the Game]

Thanks, CCIWchamps and iwu70

My parents were sports nuts. They watched basketball, football, baseball, tennis, swimming, and the roller derby (my father and I's favorite). I'm not much of a football fan but as a kid I was in love with Fran Tarkenton and my Tarkenton 10 football jersey. 

I will soon celebrate my 20th year of marriage to a former high school/college b-ball player, who is still very much tied to the world of basketball. My niece graduated from North Central College two years ago and she played b-ball for them.  After graduation she signed with an agent and went overseas to play. My nephew attended IWU about four or five years ago. He really wanted to play basketball for them, but didn't. My great-nephew is a freshmen player at U of I and as you already know my son is a freshmen player for the Titans. I guess one could say that basketball is in my families' blood. I'm a bit of a basketball nut, although my sport of choice as a teenager was track and field. I was a killer on hurdles.  I love pro-ball (you can tell who my favorite team is by looking at my profile picture) but have been getting into college ball over the last few years.  I like frequenting this board to get recaps on the games and learn more about the world of D3 basketball. 

By the way, I am my son's #1 fan and #1 critic so I don't mind the comments.  You will more than likely see some of my own constructive criticism in the years to come. When he steps on the hardwood he is a player, who isn't exempt from what I have to say and he respects that.   
 
GO TITANS!!

[iwumichigander]

A Lover of the Game - welcome!  Your posts are appreciated anytime!

[TitansIWU]

A Lover of the Game,

I value everything you have written, except...

I would urge you to become a Bulls fan instead!

GO TITANS!

GO BULLS!

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

Week 3 Regional Rankings are out: http://www.d3blogs.com/d3hoops/2011/02/16/ncaa-2011-regional-rankings-week-3/

[mwunder]

Since no one else has mentioned it yet, the sun came up again on Monday, and Steve Djurickovic won CCIW player of the week honors for the 4th time this season and 14th time in his career. 

If Carthage doesn't make the conference tournament, is there any way he doesn't get the MOP?

[Gregory Sager]

I do know we were a win from the Final Four last year.  At this point though, that's starting to feel a little more like the exception, not the rule in the Rose era.  I'm not going all OurHouse here, I really do like Coach Rose and want him to succeed.  Perhaps attending IWU during the Simich/Crabtree/Neibrugge/etc. era has overly inflated my expectations for IWU basketball, but consistently fighting to merely make the CCIW conference tournament is not what most Titan fans expect from this program.

I think that your "overly inflated expectations" surmise is apt. No offense at all to those great IWU teams of your student era, but the '90s were, for the most part, a downer of an era for the league as a whole. Lots of teams struggled from one year to the next, and the CCIW frequently was barely able to keep its head above water in terms of non-conference play -- and this was in a decade in which fewer and fewer scholarship schools were scheduling CCIW teams than had historically been the case.

With the exception of Wheaton, IWU didn't really have a consistent challenger in the CCIW during the balance of the Simich/Crabtree/Niebrugge era (i.e., after the end of the Augie run with Kirk Anderson, Aben Cooper, etc.). I think that you may have thus developed a somewhat skewed idea of what the CCIW is usually all about, just as a lot of my school peers are perpetually baffled as to why North Park can't rule the world in basketball anymore.

It's an intensely competitive league, with no quarter asked or given, and if you have a single down year in recruiting you may end up paying for it for quite awhile. It's very, very hard to stay on top, and it's easy to get stuck at the bottom because the league is so deep. For example, it may take Millikin five or six more years before the Big Blue are able to compete again, just because the overall strength of the league amplifies the inertia of any program that has fallen upon hard times. As an NPU fan, I've ruefully witnessed that syndrome take place with my alma mater since Bosko left. Bosko's current program is proof of what I'm talking about; as we discussed last week, Carthage went into a trough after the Wiertel/Garnes/McDaniel/Ktistou/Powell era ended, and it didn't re-emerge until Bosko's son started suiting up for the Red Men. Bill Harris is one of the best coaches this conference has ever seen, and yet he went an entire decade without Wheaton winning a CCIW title. Staying on top in this league is extraordinarily difficult.

I think that a lot of the blame being hurled Ron Rose's way is unfair. As Pat implied, any IWU coach is likely to take the fall for not being Dennis Bridges (although Scott Trost earned himself a fund of goodwill among the green-clad faithful with that remarkable Dauksas/Amerlianovich class that he was later able to cash in when his recruiting dried up prior to his departure for Lewis).

But the fact of the matter is that this is not the 1990s anymore. This league is filled with coaches that really get after it who do not coach for Illinois Wesleyan. Your alma mater's program does not operate in a vacuum.

[Gregory Sager]

Also, what are the odds the CCIW gets in 2 teams to the tourney if Augie wins the conference tournament?

Slim and none, and slim is on its way out the door.

[Gregory Sager]

I was there, I saved my ticket stubs for my scrapbook, and I have now filed them under...

"the night that the NCC defense shut down, dominated, and completely locked down Sean Johnson, and yet even during this total and complete lock down, Coach Rose saw fit to play Sean for 43 minutes"

How did you fit all that onto the little tab?

[Gregory Sager]

Since no one else has mentioned it yet, the sun came up again on Monday, and Steve Djurickovic won CCIW player of the week honors for the 4th time this season and 14th time in his career.  

If Carthage doesn't make the conference tournament, is there any way he doesn't get the MOP?

As I said last week, I think that Tim McCrary has at least an outside chance at filching the award that presumably had Steve's name engraved upon it before the 2010-11 season even started. But, while I'd hate to have to predict what the collective wisdom of the CCIW's eight head coaches will come up with in any situation, if I was a betting man I'd say that Steve still has the inside track.

I'm also monitoring where Steve ends up on the all-time scoring list (all games), as he's closing in on Wheaton's Mel Peterson for third place and has an outside chance at catching Carroll's Dave Shaw for second. Barring a CCIW tourney championship and some games in March for Carthage, however, I doubt that Steve'll leapfrog Millikin's Leon Gobczynski and become the all-time scoring leader among CCIW programs. Gobo's scoring record is looking more and more like Joe DiMaggio's 1941 56-game hitting streak every year.

[TitansIWU]

I just feel like if you watch Steve D. play a few times, he just has an extra gear and can take over a game more times than not.

The questions I ask myself to determine who I think is the player of the year are:

1. Who in the league do I most not want to see with the ball when my team is up by 1 with 12 seconds left.

2. What player just does things that make me think... "How did he?"

He has to be the player of the year.

[Titan Q]

AndOne, these are some post you made about Edmond O'Callaghan when he was in IWU's rotation...

In limited action against North Central, O'Callaghan looked like a deer in headlights, inconspicuous in the offensive flow, and totally lost on defense, committing 4 fouls in about 6 minutes. Chamernik is a nice low post weapon, and presents a solid defensive presence.

As I'm not a big fan of O'Callaghan, and as there are really no battle tested players available at the center position, why not start The Student Body and see what he can do?

2. If we're ranking the 5s, I think Demby may be the most athletic of the bunch, and Carwell the most accomplished and best overall. Keep in mind that his scoring and rebounding were no doubt held down by the presence last season of Raymond, Wiele, and to some extent, McCrary. Also, for a "big" he had great stats as far as assists and steals.  
To rank Schneidermeier, and especially a slug like O'Callaghan ahead of him is sheer folly.

I took in the Sean Johnson show Wesleyan-Aurora scrimmage Tues night in Aurora. Wesleyan won the 1st half 56-40 with Aurora taking the 2nd, 46-45

IWU started Rosenkranz, Johnson, Sexauer, Koschnitzy, and for some reason O'Callaghan.
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As far as O'Callaghan, i think he rebounds pretty well, but thats about it.

To top things off, Schouten is a much more hard-nosed and tougher player than O'Callaghan who often plays soft, especially in avoiding contact rather than going up strong underneath with the ball.    

As far as O'Callaghan being the 5th leading rebounder in the conference, I can only surmise that many missed shots must be caroming off the rim directly into his hands.

I believe O'Callaghan was replaced in the lineup by a better player who Ron Rose thought gave his team a better chance to win. Furthermore, wouldn't the change  likely have come sooner if Koschnitzky didn't need as much time to recover after an injury?

And then some posts since he has been out of the rotation...

One IWU player that has not been mentioned much, especially in light of the amount of time he has played over the past seasons is Edmund O'Callaghan. His stock seems to have taken a downturn and it appears to an outside observer that he has fallen behind Ryan Connolly and now, perhaps Nick Anderson. Never a big scorer, O'Callaghan has been a good rebounder. Over the last couple of regular season games and continuing through the playoffs last year he saw almost no PT. Perhaps he was injured?

After starting 24 of 27 games last season, senior Edmond O'Callaghan seems to have fallen off the edge of the earth, seeing a total of only 8 minutes of action all season.

And what of senior Edmund O'Callaghan (24 games, 5 starts in 08/09 and 27 games, 24 starts in 09/10) on whom rumor has it a missing person report was recently filed with the Bloomington Police Department?

It seems like you thought O'Callaghan was not good enough to play when he was in there, but when Ron Rose went a different direction (which you obviously agreed with based on your posts) you seemed to become the champion of Edmond's cause.

Do you find that interesting?  Is there a chance you just like the drama of controversy, and of stirring the pot?

[Titan Q]

Busy moving week here in Lincoln, NE.  The movers unloaded us Monday and since then it's been non-stop box opening and purchasing stuff. 

I was disappointed to hear the Titans lost @ NCC...tough season.  2 must win games left for IWU.