MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[d3fan11]

I'll be in the stands wearing my blue and gold and supporting Augustana all the way to Salem! Go get 'em Vikings!

[augiefan]

I appreciate the support for Augie from the IWU regulars. DIII BB is all about the players not the coaches. Of course, armywife has to go with her daughter's school on Friday night, but after Augie beats MBH we'll need her full support on Saturday night.

I too have UW Stevens Point going all the way in the bracket challenge, but that's one contest I would love to lose come Saturday night. But first things first. Gotta win on Friday first.

[Gregory Sager]

Now that IWU is eliminated from the mens' tourney posts regarding the tourney seem to be few and far between. Where are the other 4 ASugie posters when we need them to hype up our team.

Too bad Augie and for that matter most of the other CCIW teams do not have the same loyal following on this board that the Titans do. I get the impression that the IWU regulars may outnumber the collective total of all of the rest of the teams' posters here.

That's quite an exaggeration. It only seemed that way because Illinois Wesleyan made the tourney, so, naturally, all of the IWU fans who post here either sporadically or regularly were very active while most of the rest of us stayed away.

These things go in cycles. I can remember a time not too many years ago when Bob, Larry, and Chuck were pretty much the only IWU regulars who posted here (although Lanny contributed much more back then than he does now). And I can also remember a time when Wheaton regulars were pretty thick on the ground in this room; now, with USee gone MIA and Jim not really posting anymore, we get very little Wheaton traffic in here. And the Carthage and North Central representation is down, too, for reasons I can't fathom -- you'd think that healthy programs that are winning CCIW games would draw more Internet attention, not less.

The only constant in this room is that Millikin remains a posting desert. How ironic is it that the one steady Big Blue poster we've ever had for more than a season in the thirteen years that this room has existed is now the assistant coach at North Central?

I am usually an observer as well but will be taking the trip with some of the guys that I played with at Augie under Coach G.  Good luck this weekend!

And to all the Coach G haters.......everyone always hates the guy on top!

That's simply not true. The antagonism expressed in this room towards Grey Giovanine over the years has absolutely nothing to do with his success, and I think that you know that very well.

Personally, I think that TitansIWU's post today summed up how a lot of us non-Augie fans (and perhaps some silent Augie fans, too) feel about his sideline comportment. And my dislike of the way that the Augustana head coach behaves on the sideline is certainly not going to get in the way of my rooting for his team this coming weekend. As augiefan said, it's about the players and not the coaches ... although, in my case as far as a rooting interest is concerned, it's about the league and not the school.

[Gregory Sager]

Over a week has gone by since Millikin announced it (and d3hoops.com duly reported it), and still nobody in this room has mentioned that, to absolutely nobody's surprise, Marc Smith is out as the head coach at MU. His chief assistant coach, former Big Blue defensive stopper Anthony Figueroa, is out, too.

I'm interested in seeing some speculation here as to:

1) who Millikin might hire to take Smith's place;
2) what Millikin will have to do to rebuild the program; and/or
3) how long it might take a new coach to restore MU to at least a modicum of competitiveness in the CCIW.

I have my own thoughts on these questions, but I don't want to monopolize this conversation by asking the questions and then answering them before anybody else gets a chance to do so.

Good luck and best wishes to Smith and Figueroa. I never heard a single negative word uttered about either one of those guys; the consensus around the league is that they're both class acts. I sincerely hope that they're both able to catch on as coaches somewhere else.

[cciwrabblerouser]

sorry that i missed this, if it was talked about here, but i see on the online ncaa career center that north park is looking for a head men's basketball coach.  what's happened with coach brenegan?

if someone can tell me the date(s) this may have been mentioned on this thread, i'll read it for myself.  greg? dennis? mark?  thanks.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Over a week has gone by since Millikin announced it (and d3hoops.com duly reported it), and still nobody in this room has mentioned that, to absolutely nobody's surprise, Marc Smith is out as the head coach at MU. His chief assistant coach, former Big Blue defensive stopper Anthony Figueroa, is out, too.

I'm interested in seeing some speculation here as to:

1) who Millikin might hire to take Smith's place;
2) what Millikin will have to do to rebuild the program; and/or
3) how long it might take a new coach to restore MU to at least a modicum of competitiveness in the CCIW.

I have my own thoughts on these questions, but I don't want to monopolize this conversation by asking the questions and then answering them before anybody else gets a chance to do so.

Good luck and best wishes to Smith and Figueroa. I never heard a single negative word uttered about either one of those guys; the consensus around the league is that they're both class acts. I sincerely hope that they're both able to catch on as coaches somewhere else.

Greg, I'm NOT gonna be the first to weigh in on this (and maybe not even the 47th ).  In my day, Millikin was the absolute TOP rival (not JUST geography; Jesse Price was just one year ahead of me, so they were also DAMN good - and they were also a top 4 back on the days of big 4, little 4 in football).  Millikin has been so down in so many sports for so many years, I doubt that rivalry exists anywhere near what we felt.

Is Millikin still a competitor in anything except women's basketball (where we kick their butt)?

Sorry, but I'm of the era where Millikin is the mortal enemy!

[pgkevin]

As opposed to the preseason number 4 ranked in the country Titans, who undoubtedly entered the season with LOFTY EXPECTATIONS given that they are a VETERAN DOMINATED team. But, who finished not tied for FIRST like the Cardinals, but in FOURTH PLACE, and who had to struggle to even make the conference tournament. The same team that when the current seniors entered 4 years ago, we were told multiple times would likely win the conference championship each of the next 4 years, contend for the national championship every year and, in fact, almost assuredly win at least 1 national crown if not more. The same team I'm betting that would love to switch places now with the Cardinals, have an 11-3 conference record rather than a truly "pedestrian" 9-5 mark, be the co-league champion rather than the FOURTH PLACE TEAM, and be HOSTING the conference tournament RATHER THAN DRIVING TO IT. You know, all those things that were EXPECTED of the Titans BUT THAT THEY FAILED TO ACHIEVE.            

I know you are very excited about your Cardinals, Mark...but please stop being an assclown.  You were so much more fun to read when NCC was losing non-conference games (when you weren't posting).

Got your wish by the way Q.  Ever since the opening round loss, we haven't had a single post from everyone's favorite Cardinal fan

[robberki]

sorry that i missed this, if it was talked about here, but i see on the online ncaa career center that north park is looking for a head men's basketball coach.  what's happened with coach brenegan?

if someone can tell me the date(s) this may have been mentioned on this thread, i'll read it for myself.  greg? dennis? mark?  thanks.

I've been watching closely, the news has not hit d3boards until now. Coach Brenegan is no longer the head coach at North Park.

[TitansIWU]

sorry that i missed this, if it was talked about here, but i see on the online ncaa career center that north park is looking for a head men's basketball coach.  what's happened with coach brenegan?

if someone can tell me the date(s) this may have been mentioned on this thread, i'll read it for myself.  greg? dennis? mark?  thanks.

I've been watching closely, the news has not hit d3boards until now. Coach Brenegan is no longer the head coach at North Park.

Maybe he is going to Millikin.

[Gregory Sager]

Paul Brenegan was let go by North Park on Friday morning. I was out of town this past weekend and out of cell phone range (I was up in da U.P., eh), so I didn't hear about it until Monday. I was going to hold off on saying anything here until NPU announced it, but, for reasons unknown, the school has to this point declined to release a public statement similar to Millikin's. This doesn't make much sense to me, since the NPU athletic department is already advertising the job vacancy on the NCAA website (as discovered by our Sleuth of the Week cciwrabblerouser ) and it is therefore public knowledge.

Anyway, now that the cat's out of the bag ...

I wasn't surprised that it happened. I thought for a moment that Paul might get a reprieve, since it took almost two full weeks after NPU's season ended for the axe to fall, but I had a pretty good idea that this was going to happen. I had no hard evidence to support my hunch (although the coaching staff, in retrospect, knew that something was up while the season was still in progress), but Paul's cumulative record over his seven years as head coach, and the way that this season turned out with a very experienced team of which much was expected, led me to think that this was going to be it for him.

I have a lot of ambivalent feelings about this decision. Paul Brenegan is a friend, and he's always carried himself with dignity and class. He's been an outstanding representative of North Park University in many ways. However, even on the D3 level, wins and losses carry a lot of weight in terms of how a head coach's job performance is evaluated ... and there is no avoiding the fact that Paul has not met anyone's expectations (including his own) in terms of wins and losses in his seven years at the helm at Foster & Kedzie. The frustration surrounding the program is enormous -- as if readers of this room couldn't pick that up from my posts! -- and it wasn't going to be allowed to go on indefinitely. A school ultimately holds a coach accountable for that, just as a coach holds his players accountable.

I wish Paul much success in the future -- and I sympathize with him over the fact that this means that his fiancee can now expect him to do much more wedding-planning stuff than he was previously able to do. Paul will land on his feet and get a coaching gig somewhere. I hope it's somewhere where he is comfortable and happy and appreciated. I truly want the best for him. He's got a lot to offer to a basketball program.

For NPU this means a chance to start afresh and to get it right. There is a lot of potential for this program. The championship legacy need not be a burden. I think, and I certainly hope, that the search process -- which I expect to take about six to eight weeks -- will turn up some great candidates. I don't think that I'm looking at the situation through blue-and-gold-colored glasses when I say that it's a setting with more potential than Millikin's, and that it is perhaps the best opportunity available among D3 vacancies at the moment (although, if golf's your thing, perhaps the Trine job might sound better ).

I have a vague idea of how the search process is likely to work, and I have a pretty general idea of what the AD is looking for in a new head coach, although, naturally, everyone over in the NPU athletic department is pretty close-mouthed about the whole thing. I'm not going into any detail about such things, so please don't bother asking.

Chris Edquist is the acting head coach for the moment. He continues to recruit and to supervise such off-season stuff as lifting, study tables, etc. Whether he sticks around or not as the chief assistant coach depends upon whether or not the new head coach will want to retain him in the #2 chair or bring in his own man. I hope Chris gets the chance to stay, not just because he's a friend and, as a fellow North Park alumnus, a member of the "family," but because he's only had one recruiting class thus far with which to prove himself (and it was a pretty good recruiting class, at that).

It's a sad time for those of us who are close to the NPU men's basketball program, but it's a very exciting and hopeful time as well.

(Oh, and by the way, Rob and I will be back next year doing the webcasts, so our viewers are stuck with us. )

[Just Bill]

(Oh, and by the way, Rob and I will be back next year doing the webcasts, so our viewers are stuck with us. )

Like they always say, "You can't fire all the broadcasters, so you fire the coach."

[Gregory Sager]

(Oh, and by the way, Rob and I will be back next year doing the webcasts, so our viewers are stuck with us. )

Like they always say, "You can't fire all the broadcasters, so you fire the coach."

Don't shoot me, I'm only the piano player broadcaster!

[iwumichigander]

Sorry to see Paul Brenegan leave North Park.  I always thought Coach Brenegan to be a real class person (not just coach).  I thought he came oh so close the last two seasons of maybe putting it all together.

It is pretty tough for an assistant coach to take over under the circumstances Paul did. It is difficult for an assistant to take over a program that was obviously struggling.

I hope he finds a good opportunity.

[iwumichigander]

I'm interested in seeing some speculation here as to:

1) who Millikin might hire to take Smith's place;
2) what Millikin will have to do to rebuild the program; and/or
3) how long it might take a new coach to restore MU to at least a modicum of competitiveness in the CCIW.

I have my own thoughts on these questions, but I don't want to monopolize this conversation by asking the questions and then answering them before anybody else gets a chance to do so.

Some early thoughts
1) A profile not a candidate - young coach with some good basketball IQ; willing to work ridiculous hours; strong recruiter; smart enough to sit down with Joe Hakes and Lori Kerans - listen, learn and model a Millikin program not just a men's basketball team
2) Two seniors graduating; one junior; going to have to recruit hard; and, likely be prepared for at least two tough seasons
3)3-5 years

[Pat Coleman]

And probably not someone jumping straight from the NEAC to the CCIW. There are a little over 40 conferences in Division III and NEAC is in the 40s in conference strength while the CCIW is top five.