MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[AndOne]

That is what happens when you can spell, but can't type! Likely another occasion when my fingers got going faster than my brain. A not uncommon occurrence. 

[Titan Q]

Final from Pella, IA...

Central 89
#1-Augustana 78

[Dennis_Prikkel]

Final from Pella, IA...

Central 89
#1-Augustana 78

How many jacket throws?

[Titan Q]

Final from the south side...

Wheaton 62
#17-Chicago 51

[GoPerry]

Wheaton begins a 7 game stretch of road games thru December with a hard fought 62-51  win over the Univ of Chicago Maroons.  Not a particularly pretty game for either team but still a welcome road win for a now 4-2 Thunder team looking for some wind in their sails.  Would be nice to build the win column some before CCIW play begins.

[AndOne]

Speaking of an extended road trip:

http://www.d3hoops.com/columns/around-the-nation/2014-15/north-central-putting-last-year-in-the-past

Unfortunately for North Central fans, they will have to travel to see Rosenberg and the rest of his teammates. The (11/29) game against UW-Stevens Point was the start of an eight game, four state, three time-zone road trip for the Cardinals, who will not play at home again until Jan. 3 when they host conference playmate and last season's national runner-up Illinois Wesleyan.

The Cardinals are in California this weekend to meet Pomona-Pitzer (Thursday) and Redlands (Saturday).

Following that, the Cardinals will fly to the other side of the country to compete in Juniata's tournament next weekend. Waiting for North Central when it arrives in the Keystone state will be 12th-ranked Dickinson in the opening round of the Juniata tournament. The Cardinals will also compete in the Mount Union tournament after Christmas.

"We're going to have to grow up quickly," Raridon said. "This trip wasn't by design. We like to have as many home games as you can get. We couldn't find as many as we would've liked to. Fortunately, we have an administration that encourages us to take trips every year somewhere. Our schedule will help us get ready for conference play."

[AndOne]

Final from the south side...

Wheaton 62
#17-Chicago 51

Wheaton getting it done with almost no help whatsoever from the bench, which accounted for only 3 points. 

[AndOne]

Final from Pella, IA...

Central 89
#1-Augustana 78

How many jacket throws?

Reports out of Iowa indicate TWO.
After ripping the sport coat off, Stomper Giovanine apparently tore it in half, and fired one half in one direction, quickly followed by the other half in the opposite direction.     

[AndOne]

Final from Pella, IA...

Central 89
#1-Augustana 78

Does this Augie loss bring the western Vikings down to the level of the Green Team, and put the 2 clubs on equal footing as far as the battle for CCIW supremacy goes?

[Titan Q]

Final from Pella, IA...

Central 89
#1-Augustana 78

Does this Augie loss bring the western Vikings down to the level of the Green Team, and put the 2 clubs on equal footing as far as the battle for CCIW supremacy goes?

I'd say we'll know what to make of IWU after the next two games - vs Chicago and @ Wash U. 

[sac]

Central, Ia. won the IIAC and made the tournament last year at 21-8, beat a good St. Olaf team in round one and lost to Stevens by 5 in round 2. 

[markerickson]

I am sorry to have missed North Park's victory last night as I attended the Opeth concert, which was underwhelming in contrast to the first time I saw the prog-metal Swedes totally rawk at the House of Blues.

[Gregory Sager]

North Park 72
Alma 71

Jordan Robinson: 20 pts, 6 rebs
Juwan Henry: 19 pts, 5:3 a:to, 4 blks, 5 stls
Colin Lake: 11 pts
T.J. Cobbs: 11 pts
Michael Hutchinson: 6 rebs, 3:1 a:to

North Park escaped with a very narrow win last night at the crackerbox. It wasn't until Alma's last shot rimmed out that the Vikings faithful were able to breathe a sigh of relief.

After blowing a 14-point first-half lead and going into the locker room down by a point after Alma took its first lead of the game with three seconds remaining before the intermission, the Vikings found themselves in a struggle in which neither team could get any real separation. NPU did pull ahead by seven with 9:05 remaining, but a 9-2 Alma run over the next two and a half minutes wiped that out.

T.J. Cobbs was the unsung hero of the night for the Vikings, and then almost became the goat. After the Scots pulled ahead by three with 2:20 to go, Cobbs drove baseline and was fouled. He made one of two FTs (the miss was his only clank of the night in seven FT attempts), and then, following a Juwan Henry steal, Cobbs made a three-point play in amongst the trees with 1:39 left to give the Park a 67-66 lead. Following a Jason Beckman trey 21 seconds later -- the Scots were a lights-out 11-23 from downtown last night -- Cobbs got his hand on the ball after a missed Henry trey and saved the possession by throwing it off of an Alma leg as he was falling out of bounds. After an NPU timeout, Henry took the inbounds pass and got it to Cobbs in the far corner, who electrified the crowd by downing a triple at the 00:41 mark to put North Park back in the lead at 70-69. It was a pretty impressive performance in the space of less than two minutes by the sophomore from south suburban Evergreen Park.

Alma answered right back with a layup with 22 seconds remaining in the game to take a 71-70 lead. I think everybody suspected that Juwan Henry would be called upon to take the last shot, and indeed he did -- but he missed a fadeaway nine-footer in the lane with nine seconds to go. He fell backwards on his butt as a result of the shot, but God loves small children, the U.S. Navy, and Bogan High graduates -- the rebound went right to Juwan while he was down on the ground. He quickly got to his feet, rose up, and knocked down the go-ahead jumper with 3.8 seconds remaining on the clock.

Here's where it gets weird. Having to go the length of the court down by one, Alma nearly lost the ball when Henry made a diving stab at the inbounds pass in front of the North Park student section, knocking it out of bounds and getting a faceful of hard bleacher plastic for his efforts. It brought the clock down to 2.5 seconds, and it meant that Alma would now inbound from the north sideline at three-quarters court. The ball was inbounded straight up the north sideline to Jason Beckman, but the whistle blew just as Colin Lake pushed Beckman. But referee David Cronin ruled that Beckman had stepped on the sideline before Lake made contact, resulting in a turnover that gave NPU the ball with eight-tenths of a second left. The Alma bench was furious.

Cobbs tried to inbound the ball by throwing a leading pass to Lake across the court, but Cobbs failed to rein in his adrenalin and heaved the ball too far, as it bounced out of bounds and into the Alma bench. That meant that the Scots got the ball back in the same spot on the north sideline, about thirty feet from the basket, with 0:00.8 left on the clock. To Alma's credit, the Scots actually got a semi-decent shot off of the inbound, a twisting, turning fadeaway from the arc by D.J. Beckman that hit the side of the rim and bounced harmlessly up and away from the cylinder as the backboard lit up.

The Scots fans were pretty salty about the loss, due to the out-of-bounds call by Cronin with 0:00.8 left. They felt that Colin Lake should've been called for a foul there instead of Jason Beckman being called out of bounds, and they have a case. (I couldn't make a definitive assessment of the call from where I was sitting on the other side of the gym, and after having seen three replays of the incident I still can't tell if it was a good call or a bad call by Cronin.) Alma head coach Sam Hargraves even pursued the refs out of the gym afterwards to argue the call. Nevertheless, the bottom line is that it wouldn't have made any difference. NPU only had four team fouls in the half, so the Scots would not have shot free throws if Lake had been called for the foul. And, since Cobbs tossed the ensuing inbounds pass out of bounds and thus gave the ball right back to Alma without any time coming off of the clock, the Scots ended up with the exact same situation in terms of inbounding spot and game clock that they would've had if Lake had been called for the foul.

Alma's a much better team than the 0-6 record of the Scots would seem to indicate. They lost by two to a 7-2 Spring Arbor team, lost by 15 to #14 Ohio Wesleyan in a game that the Scots led with seven minutes and change remaining, and played #3 UWW tough for 40 minutes before losing to the Warhawks by 13. Nobody's saying that Alma is going to challenge Calvin or Hope at the top of the MIAA standings this year, but it's not your typical hangdog 0-6 outfit, either. The Beckman brothers are top-notch shooters, and, while it's not an athletic Scots team, it's deep and has a lot of length.

NPU was without the services of senior co-captain Garrett Gatz, who is day-to-day with a leg injury, and the Vikings clearly missed him. He's the leader and the glue of this team.

Nevertheless, the young Vikings showed a lot of composure and grit last night in finding a way to pull out a victory. Nobody's saying that it was a great victory, but that hardly matters. Winning is the ultimate deodorant.

[Gregory Sager]

I'm fascinated by Augie's situation at the moment. Not so much last night's loss, as I don't think it's a terrible loss. As sac noted, the Dutch were a second-round D3 tourney team last season. Plus, Central was 3-0 going into the contest and was playing at home, and that seems like a good scenario for a possible upset.

But what fascinates me is Grey Giovanine's quote in Josh Smith's Around the Region column today on d3hoops.com:

"We're not the same team we were two weeks ago," Augustana head coach Grey Giovanine said, prior to Wednesday's 89-78 loss at Central. "We lost our best, most experienced front line player for the season. So the team that was ranked No. 1 in the country, well, that team isn't here anymore.

"Losing Kevin Schlitter for the year is a major blow, so we're really kind of having to redefine our team."

C'mon, Grey. Kevin Schlitter is your best front-line player? Is that why you weren't starting him and why you were only giving him fewer than 13 minutes of playing time per game this season? Heck, in his final game Schlitter got a whopping six minutes off of the bench in a 22-point thrashing of Rust. Who are you trying to kid, Grey? Everybody and his uncle knows that your best front-line players are your starters: PF Ben Ryan, SF Tayvian Johnson, and C Nick Hoepfner. Two years ago you had to play without Schlitter, and Augie finished 19-8 with what was basically a sophomore-dominated team that is almost identical in roster makeup to this season's senior-dominated team.

I'm not saying that Schlitter is chopped liver. He's a good player, and any CCIW team would be happy to have him. But Grey Giovanine hardly has to "redefine" his team in Schlitter's absence, since, as I said, the Doggies played almost the entire season two years ago with Schlitter out for the season. The Augie coach will almost certainly do the same thing that he did in 2012-13, which is to plug Alex Dziagwa and/or Brandon Motzel right into Schlitter's spot in the rotation and continue on as though nothing had happened.

I'm not trying to pile on Giovanine here, given the constant coat-throwing gibes that are starting to get a little redundant. But this really seems to me to be a less-than-honest response to the media regarding the as-yet-unexplained loss of Kevin Schlitter for the year. Perhaps some Augustana fan can point out what it is that I seem to be missing in Giovanine's comments, but it reads to me as a case of truth-bending poor-mouth on his part.

[Pat Coleman]

Central, Ia. won the IIAC and made the tournament last year at 21-8, beat a good St. Olaf team in round one and lost to Stevens by 5 in round 2.

But was a very senior-dominated team and was picked fifth in an eight-team league this year.