MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[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?

Well since nobody mentioned it either, Tim McCrary won CCIW player of the week honors for the 2nd time this season LAST week:
http://athletics.wheaton.edu/news/2011/2/7/MBB_0207111707.aspx?path=mbball

I guess we just focus on the team accomplishments when it comes to the Thunder....




(post #1)

I'll bite.  2 championships since 1999..shouldn't be a lot of posts from Wheaton fans in this forum as far as team accomplishments go if the above is indeed a true statement.

[mwunder]

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.

Seeing that post was probably the reason I asked the question.  I don't think this is as close a race as it was two season's ago when Kent Raymond got his third award in a row, but it certainly is a race.

[mwunder]

Wrong link on the Carthage website regarding live scoring for tonight's game.  Correct link is :

http://resources.northpark.edu/athletics/2009mbb/xlive.htm

[devildog29]

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.

Greg, I don't disagree with any of your assertions, and I do fully acknowledge if anyone understands a dramatic fall from grace in CCIW basketball, it is the folks from the Park.  I perhaps should have expanded my thoughts a little more, as I certainly didn't mean to leave the impression that I don't acknowledge the increased competitiveness of the league overall.  Additionally, I certainly wouldn't deny Coach Bridges left impossible shoes to fill upon his retirement.  I think my point, which I obviously didn't properly detail/expand on was more an X's and O's argument.  My question is more along the lines of 'is Coach Rose getting the full potential out of his players.'  To look at the talent on his teams, is Coach Rose achieving results in the wins and losses column comparable to the results he achieves in the recruiting contests?  Is he underperforming relative to the talent level of his players when compared to the talent level of the rest of the CCIW?  Instead, maybe we can say popular opinion has misjudged the talent level of his recruiting classes, and maybe we just aren't as talented as we think? 

Please understand that these are legitimate questions looking internally at the program, and not meant to give some air of pretentiousness or superiority relative to the other teams in the CCIW.  I'm just getting the feeling that with the talent Coach Rose has on the team, that he should be getting better results than what he has/is. 

[mwunder]

Carthage wins 79-70 at NP.

I will let Greg recap the game only as he can, but North Park made a few runs in the second half that cut the game from 15 at the 16:54 mark to 6 at multiple times as late as 00:46 left.

Carthage was led by Mitch (where the heck have yo been all season) Thomson with 22 and 19.  Steve D added 30 and 8 assists.

NP's Clayton Cahill had a number of big 3's in the second half going 6-9 from behind the arc on his way to 23.  He also had 6 assists.  Crosby went for 15 and 12.  Gabriel had 13 pts in 16 minutes.

Turning point in the game COULD have been the David Mariani technical foul at the 11:48 mark that allowed North Park to make 4 consecutive free throws and cut the lead to 7.  Carthage missed the next shot and NP could have cut it to 4, but never got closer than 6.

[WheatonFanChris]

Tonight almost gave something I don't remember ever seeing. The Thunder were 1:12 from finishing the game with 0, yes zero, turnovers. But as usual after the benches are emptied the game becomes a tad bit more sloppy and a Millikin forced a turnover. Just an odd stat, but props to Wheaton for executing their offense tremendously tonight and avoiding any let down on the way to the conference tournament.

Final-
Wheaton 78
Millikin 55

[Gregory Sager]

North Park may be the happiest school in the CCIW to see Steve Djurickovic graduate this May. If Steve D. had played 25 games a year against NPU rather than only two, he'd probably have passed Pete Maravich's 3,667 points record by now.

Djurickovic and Mitch Thompson were a two-man wrecking crew for the Red Men tonight. NPU couldn't slow Djurickovic down at all, and it seemed like every time that Thompson released the ball it found the bottom of the net. What surprised me, though, was his nineteen rebounds. I've never seen him that active on the boards before. Even though NPU won the rebounding battle on the night, those 19 boards still hurt.

Carthage wins 79-70 at NP.

I will let Greg recap the game only as he can, but North Park made a few runs in the second half that cut the game from 15 at the 16:54 mark to 6 at multiple times as late as 00:46 left.

The Vikings cut the Carthage lead to six on no fewer than seven occasions, all widely scattered throughout the final ten minutes of the second half. This was after digging themselves that 15-point hole three minutes into the second stanza that made me wonder at the time if NPU was going to simply lie down and die. Give credit to Carthage for finding a way each time NPU cut it to six to keep the Park at bay; I kept sitting there waiting for something that felt like a turning point for the Vikings, but it never came.

NPU played hard, but, as usual, there were too many 25-footers attempted. I dunno; I guess that Paul Brenegan needs to explain to his team that they don't get four points if the shot goes in from NBA range. And, since NPU had a difficult time garnering all those long rebounds, there were too many one-and-dones for the Vikings to sustain a rally.

NP's Clayton Cahill had a number of big 3's in the second half going 6-9 from behind the arc on his way to 23.  He also had 6 assists.  Crosby went for 15 and 12.  Gabriel had 13 pts in 16 minutes.

Cahill's yo-yo season continues. Speaking of yo-yo seasons, Ro Russell only got four minutes of PT tonight after his sterling 20 pt / 6 ast night against Elmhurst on Saturday led me to believe that he was back in the good graces of the coaching staff. He didn't even attempt a shot this evening. Crosby was a warrior, although he missed a few too many inside shots, and Christian Alsing turned in another solid effort. Mike Gabriel's 13 points and 7 boards in only 15 minutes of action speaks volumes. He needs to play thirty minutes a game, minimum; he's too good to moulder on the bench.

Turning point in the game COULD have been the David Mariani technical foul at the 11:48 mark that allowed North Park to make 4 consecutive free throws and cut the lead to 7.  Carthage missed the next shot and NP could have cut it to 4, but never got closer than 6.

Rob and I were unable to broadcast the game tonight due to technical difficulties -- the hamster running on the wheel dropped dead of a heart attack -- but when Mariani got that tech I said to Rob, "What are the odds that someone from Christian Life Academy is the guy who get's T'ed up?"

It was Old Shrunken Track & Field Uniform Night for the Carlson Crazies, which was entertaining. A very funny, and totally random, moment came when one of the Crazies leaped out onto the court in his too-tight ancient NPU track warmups during a timeout and did a crazy dance with a large poster of NPU President David Parkyn in one hand and a large poster of Bosko in the other.

The Crazies gave the large poster of Bosko to the man himself after the game. He seemed to appreciate it.

The other amusing moment came in the JV game. The Carthage bus was an hour late getting to the crackerbox, so the JV game ran very late -- in spite of the fact that its halftime was cut to only three minutes. When regulation ended 55-55, the coaches agreed to do something I've never seen in a basketball game before: Sudden death. First team to score wins. Carthage won the tip, couldn't score, and when NPU came down the floor with the ball the Carthage JV coach blew a gasket because the shot clock was turned off. Well, of course the shot clock was turned off -- there was no game clock, since it was sudden death, therefore there was no shot clock. Sitting there at the scorer's table keeping the book, I just looked over at the Carthage coach and said, "Old-time basketball, coach."

(NPU's Stephawn Woodley ended up getting fouled in the act of shooting and made the second FT to win the JV game for the Park.)

Old North Park legends always seem to show up when Carthage visits the crackerbox, so it was good to see Vikings immortals Mike Barach and Alex Dimitrijevic in the gym tonight.

[CCIWchamps]

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?

Well since nobody mentioned it either, Tim McCrary won CCIW player of the week honors for the 2nd time this season LAST week:
http://athletics.wheaton.edu/news/2011/2/7/MBB_0207111707.aspx?path=mbball

I guess we just focus on the team accomplishments when it comes to the Thunder....


(post #1)

I'll bite.  2 championships since 1999..shouldn't be a lot of posts from Wheaton fans in this forum as far as team accomplishments go if the above is indeed a true statement.

Touche!  But to be fair (to myself), the comparison was between an individual MOP award and conference tournament team participation, which would provide Wheaton with a higher number than 2.  That, and I was just stirring the pot.

[Gregory Sager]

Just as I thought might happen, North Central had a devil of a time pulling out a 68-64 win over Elmhurst at Faganel tonight. The Bluejays actually had a chance to tie in the final minute, but James Robertson couldn't connect on a trey; that makes twice in the past couple of weeks that Elmhurst has missed a trey that would've either tied the game or put them in the lead in the final minute (the loss to IWU being the other). Landon Gamble and Derek Raridon worked the same sort of two-man magic for NCC that Djurickovic and Thompson worked for Carthage in the crackerbox, as they scored 54 of NCC's 68 points. Gamble had a 30 and 7 night, while Raridon scored 24.

I'll tell you what; Landon Gamble is making a serious bid for first-team All-CCIW. He's the second-leading scorer in the league behind Djurickovic, and he's taken over the FG shooting percentage lead from Emanuel Crosby. His numbers are better than Kyle Nelson's, and they're substantially better than Doug Sexauer's.

Just one more weird element to a weird season in the CCIW.

Getting back to the NCC @ EC game ... if I was Mike Schauer, I would move heaven and earth to make sure that my team takes Elmhurst very, very seriously on Saturday night. If Wheaton gives anything less than a sincere, hard effort, Elmhurst will win the upset that they've been threatening to pull off against somebody over the last few weeks.

[markerickson]

Someone please tell E. Crosby that when he gets the ball in the paint, there is a move where you do not dribble, but instead turn on the pivot foot.  Also, use the glass more often.  Even Pierce did the ole move for two.

Stevie D was in fine form tonight.  He passed crisply, but missed several assists because the teammate didn't execute.  He hit from inside and outside, drew the fouls, and actually missed two from the charity stripe.  Just like last year, Steve is the most chronic whiner in the league.  For example, after the technical, which happened under the basket while Steve was at the top of the key, he continued to jaw with the ref through both free throws.

Cayhill is a pure scorer.  He can create a shot from 15' and beyond.  He tried two layups where he switched to his left hand, but missed both.  I thought Robinson did an ok job guarding Steve.  Greer...mmmm...not as good.  Gabriel led the surge to cut the game to six.  Not only did the game get close, but the Vikings got into the double-bonus...perhaps after 12 minutes elapsed in the second half.
The taller, stronger Vikings should have won this game.  

The taller, stronger Vikings should have swept Elmhurst.  I think NP should have defeated NCC in Chicago.  Having said that, I believe NCC is the weakest CCIW second-place finisher in at least 20 years.

[CCIWchamps]

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.

Seeing that post was probably the reason I asked the question.  I don't think this is as close a race as it was two season's ago when Kent Raymond got his third award in a row, but it certainly is a race.

A race is probably fair: looking purely at stats, they split.  Tim gets Reb's (+5.8), blocks (+1.1), steals (+.4), and FG% (+8%).  Steve gets Points (+5.6), assists (+1.7), TO's (-.5), and FT% (+13%).  Tim's team has a better record (+2), and that's about all I can see looking entirely at paper.

In the end it looks like Steve's line will read like MJ's, and Tim's like Pippen's.    Not a bad shake for either of them.  

[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.

Greg, I don't disagree with any of your assertions, and I do fully acknowledge if anyone understands a dramatic fall from grace in CCIW basketball, it is the folks from the Park.  I perhaps should have expanded my thoughts a little more, as I certainly didn't mean to leave the impression that I don't acknowledge the increased competitiveness of the league overall.  Additionally, I certainly wouldn't deny Coach Bridges left impossible shoes to fill upon his retirement.  I think my point, which I obviously didn't properly detail/expand on was more an X's and O's argument.  My question is more along the lines of 'is Coach Rose getting the full potential out of his players.'  To look at the talent on his teams, is Coach Rose achieving results in the wins and losses column comparable to the results he achieves in the recruiting contests?  Is he underperforming relative to the talent level of his players when compared to the talent level of the rest of the CCIW?  Instead, maybe we can say popular opinion has misjudged the talent level of his recruiting classes, and maybe we just aren't as talented as we think? 

Please understand that these are legitimate questions looking internally at the program, and not meant to give some air of pretentiousness or superiority relative to the other teams in the CCIW.  I'm just getting the feeling that with the talent Coach Rose has on the team, that he should be getting better results than what he has/is. 

I understand the intent and the spirit behind what you're saying, dd29. To answer those questions at the bottom of your first paragraph, quite frankly, I don't think that IWU has cornered the market on talent in the recruiting wars over the past few seasons, contrary to the impression with which you were apparently left. There's an awful lot of good players in this league who don't wear green and white. Perhaps the amount of hype regarding IWU's recruits needs to be dialed down a bit -- and I'm not pointing the finger at anyone in particular -- since in the end that hype is really only setting up the Titans to fail. But that's not my department. People will say (or post) what they will, and everybody loves their incoming freshmen (and transfers). It's part of what college sports is all about, to the point where on the D1 level magazines and blogs even rank incoming recruiting classes. I've never understood the mentality behind that.

As a rule, I always aim to be extremely cautious when talking about newbies. As far as I'm concerned, an unproven player is not a player worth pinning all your hopes and dreams upon. For all the buzz around the NPU team regarding Mike Gabriel (rumors were flying around that he was going to join the team well in advance of his actual first appearance in royal blue and gold in the JV game at Elmhurst), I kept my mouth shut about him because I really didn't know what he was capable of until I actually saw him play on this level. Show me a blue-chip recruit, and I'll show you a guy who has never collected a single blessed point or rebound as a college player. I've seen far too many guys enter this league with a lot of ballyhoo and hoopla who never amounted to anything, and I've seen plenty of the opposite kind, guys whom nobody even acknowledged when they first arrived on campus who turned into great players.

It's a little different with IWU this season, because last year's team did prove something with its March run to the Elite Eight; plus, it was the most experienced team in the league coming into this season, and having a rotation filled with battle-tested seniors usually counts for a lot. What's going on with the Titans this season is a different issue than the whole recruiting-hype thing. Rather than focus upon the question of whether or not Ron Rose is getting the proper results out of the talent that he's recruited, perhaps the question should be whether the run to the Elite Eight last March was a true snapshot of what his current team really is or if it was just a hot streak by a team playing above its normal capabilities. (I'm not answering that question, by the way; I'm simply saying that it's a more relevant question than the is-Rose-a-better-recruiter-than-teacher/game-planner/game-manager question.)

I thought Robinson did an ok job guarding Steve.  Greer...mmmm...not as good.

I wasn't going to mention his name out of deference to the fact that it was his and Nick Hoekstra's senior night, but Shaun Collins, not D.A. Robinson or Kendell Greer, was the NPU player who had by far the most minutes guarding -- or attempting to guard -- Steve Djurickovic.

In the end it looks like Steve's line will read like MJ's, and Tim's like Pippen's.    Not a bad shake for either of them. 

You've gotta stop these NBA comparisons, CCIWchamps. This is a purist's room, and NBA chatter drives us crazy in here.

[CCIWchamps]

You've gotta stop these NBA comparisons, CCIWchamps. This is a purist's room, and NBA chatter drives us crazy in here.

I'm gonna go try some out on the SLIAC boards.  See how well my material plays there.   

[Gregory Sager]

You've gotta stop these NBA comparisons, CCIWchamps. This is a purist's room, and NBA chatter drives us crazy in here.

I'm gonna go try some out on the SLIAC boards.  See how well my material plays there.   

Here's a tip: Insult the cancer-stricken Fontbonne head coach. They love that sort of thing in there.

[AndOne]

Just as I thought might happen, North Central had a devil of a time pulling out a 68-64 win over Elmhurst at Faganel tonight. The Bluejays actually had a chance to tie in the final minute, but James Robertson couldn't connect on a trey; that makes twice in the past couple of weeks that Elmhurst has missed a trey that would've either tied the game or put them in the lead in the final minute (the loss to IWU being the other). Landon Gamble and Derek Raridon worked the same sort of two-man magic for NCC that Djurickovic and Thompson worked for Carthage in the crackerbox, as they scored 54 of NCC's 68 points. Gamble had a 30 and 7 night, while Raridon scored 24.

I'll tell you what; Landon Gamble is making a serious bid for first-team All-CCIW. He's the second-leading scorer in the league behind Djurickovic, and he's taken over the FG shooting percentage lead from Emanuel Crosby. His numbers are better than Kyle Nelson's, and they're substantially better than Doug Sexauer's.

Just one more weird element to a weird season in the CCIW.

Getting back to the NCC @ EC game ... if I was Mike Schauer, I would move heaven and earth to make sure that my team takes Elmhurst very, very seriously on Saturday night. If Wheaton gives anything less than a sincere, hard effort, Elmhurst will win the upset that they've been threatening to pull off against somebody over the last few weeks.

As a NCC fan, I must say I thought Elmhurst played a helluva game tonight. Every time the Cardinals landed a blow, the Bluejays struck back. Cardinals fans were nervous the entire night. I think EC's main problem was letting both Gamble AND Raridon get theirs. If they could have shut just one off a little, the victory would have fallen to the hosts.

Derek and Landon worked an almost magical 2 man game game tonight. Kevin Gillespie handled out 6 nice assists, feeding both Derek outside and Landon inside.
However, the fans choice for unsung hero of the evening was Aaron Tiknis who hit both of his FG attempts and a FT, pulled down 3 rebounds (one a put back), had 2 beautiful assists, and intercepted 2 passes down low.