MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[USee]

Well Q was accurate. The Thunder shot 9-33 from the arc against Hope's zone today up in Kenosha and lost

Hope 66
Wheaton 55

[GoPerry]

Let's see if the Thunder can take care of Hope tomorrow and win both MIAA/CCIW challenge games, which it seems like they can never do(except when it's at King Arena).

Not to be I'm afraid.

Wheaton goes down to Hope 66-55.  The Dutchmen played zone pretty much the whole game and Wheaton had no creative answer except to shoot jumpers from the outside and do so poorly at that (33% FG including an eye popping 33 3-point attempts).   The 2-3 basically negated Teuscher who had 10 pts at half and finished with 11.  Hope played pretty steady the entire game, basically had the lead for 39/40 minutes, and answered the bell each time the Thunder made a run and got within 2 or 3.  Might have been a different story if Wheaton could've gotten the lead and force Hope out of the zone, but they couldn't get a key stop or convert a key bucket to get there.

[Gregory Sager]

After the board was recently treated to several rather grandiose statements by Coach G, it seems Bosko is now taking the same tact in expressing angst at the thought that his team could finish seventh in CCIW. His primary reason for being unable to comprehend this is even a remote possibility is that it has never happened before. After all, no team he has ever coached has finished seventh, so that evidently means it can't happen this year. Makes perfect sense. Very logical. 

You're way off on this, Mark. First of all, I think that Carthage is better than a seventh-place team.

Unless I'm missing something, Carthage is staring at 7th or 8th.  The Red Men are just not a good team.

This was my first look at the Red Men this season. I'm a little hesitant to judge a team based upon one observation, but Carthage seems to be a team desperately searching for a savior. Reese Herth was supposed to be the bell cow for the Red Men this season, but, as awful as he looked tonight (1-10 from the field, five points total for the game), he really hasn't put up stud numbers all season long. He might not have it in him to be The Man, or, equally as bad, he might have it in him but he might not want to be The Man.

I always expect a Bosko team to have two or three guys who've really stepped up noticeably from one season to the next, but that doesn't appear to be happening at all this season. To take some recent examples, guys like Senior, Van Wyck, and Sykes improved either noticeably or dramatically last season. Herth, Kastel, Matthews, McNellis, Valentine -- I thought these guys would be better this year, but they don't appear to be. I thought that Donte Logan would be more assertive this year at the point, and he isn't. The only guy who looks to me like he's actually gotten better from last year is Mike Kjeldsen.

(And how spooky is this -- as I am typing these words, Bosko tells John Weiser in the postgame interview how much the Carthage program has always prided itself upon the improvement players make from sophomore to junior years and from junior years to senior years during his tenure, and how this team isn't exhibiting that tendency. After all these decades, I am apparently channeling the Serbian Prince now. )

I agree with Bob. This looks like a bottom-level CCIW team right now.

Greg,

We all, myself included, occasionally err in our assessment of teams. 

However, back on 11/11, when I brought up the possibility of this year's Carthage team finishing as low as 7th, you seemed to think I had lost my mind. I'm not sure why you thought there would be that much improvement in the Carthage returners. Perhaps you thought Bosko possessed some type of magic wand, or maybe it was his very logical explanation that it couldn't happen because it never occurred before. At any rate, its nice to know that you've apparently come over to the dark side with regard to your current analysis of the Redmen's talent level. 

Yes, we've all erred on our assessment of teams on occasion. This may very well be one of those times for me. However, the calendar for today reads "December 6" rather than some date in February, so I'm not quite ready to bury Carthage just yet after one viewing. But they certainly didn't look good at all.

I didn't react to your prediction of Carthage finishing seventh as much as I reacted to your disrespect of Bosko. Yeah, I get it, you don't like him. That's fine. He's an acquired taste, although I think he's a much more affable and approachable human being than you seem to think. More to the point, you seem to put no stock in the fact that he's the only man in this division who owns five national championship rings. He's head-coached two national championship teams and has taken a third team to the Final Four -- and he's done it at two very different schools. He's closing in on 600 career wins. He didn't achieve those things just by being quotable.

The hallmark of Bosko's coaching is that he's a great teacher of the game. Ask any coach in this league, or anybody who's ever played for him, and that's the first thing they'll say. And it's because of that that his players have had that tendency that I mentioned, the tendency to make those big jumps from soph to junior and from junior to senior. It's not a coincidence. It's also not because of a magic wand. It's because Bosko knows how to teach the game, and he knows how to get his players to unlock the innate ability within them to make those jumps. It obviously doesn't work with every kid -- probably not even with most of them -- but it's worked with enough kids for Bosko to have had the kind of career he's had.

I know about those kids on his roster. I know that other CCIW schools wanted several of them, and that tells me that their potential was well-recognized. Yes, Bosko has apparently hit a wall with most or all of them. It can happen. He's not a miracle worker. But his track record very logically led me to think that those players would make that leap, or at least some of them.

[WUPHF]

Hey, why did Bosko leave North Park?

[unanimous22]

First game I've streamed for IWU this year and one thing that stood out to me almost immediately is the way Alec Bausch moves around on the floor. Seems to be very athletic for his size.

[izzy stradlin]

Let's see if the Thunder can take care of Hope tomorrow and win both MIAA/CCIW challenge games, which it seems like they can never do(except when it's at King Arena).

Not to be I'm afraid.

Wheaton goes down to Hope 66-55.  The Dutchmen played zone pretty much the whole game and Wheaton had no creative answer except to shoot jumpers from the outside and do so poorly at that (33% FG including an eye popping 33 3-point attempts).   The 2-3 basically negated Teuscher who had 10 pts at half and finished with 11.  Hope played pretty steady the entire game, basically had the lead for 39/40 minutes, and answered the bell each time the Thunder made a run and got within 2 or 3.  Might have been a different story if Wheaton could've gotten the lead and force Hope out of the zone, but they couldn't get a key stop or convert a key bucket to get there.

As has been the case for several years, Wheaton's offensive scheme against the zone is methodical and just plain bad.  I think opposing coaches sorta know this and will often use some zone against Wheaton but they often get nervous and come out if it if Wheaton strings together a couple jump shots.  Today there were several times when Wheaton did hit a few jumpers to make a run to tie the game (Riley Teuscher had a few good 3s) but Hope stuck with the zone and it payed off.

It's counter-intuitive to use a zone against a perimeter oriented team that has good shooters and not much post threat, so I give the Hope coaches credit for having a good scouting report.  Problem for Wheaton is many of the 3-point looks they did have were from the 23 foot range. 

 

[WUPHF]

I swear this is the last time I will say this, but this Chicago team desperately needs a Royce Muskeyvalley.

[WUPHF]

The Illinois Wesleyan PA announcer sure gets excited about time outs; a departure from his otherwise staid Bob Dole-esque announcements.

[WUPHF]

The Maroons rush a shot with 15 seconds left on the clock that would have evened the game.  They had a player who was particularly good at late game situations, but alas...

Dang...

[WUPHF]

The Maroons are forced to foul and Illinois Wesleyan pushes the lead to five.  The final from Shirk: Titans over the Maroons, 61-56.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

So, I'm curious how well the IWU fans think the team played today.  This was the first game of theirs I watched, but I did see Chicago play earlier this year at the Hoopsville Tournament.  This seemed like a pretty similar performance from Chicago - disciplined and solid.  IW?U came across as a better team overall, but obviously not by much.  Was this a pretty typical IWU performance so far?  Better?  Worse?

[Titan Q]

So, I'm curious how well the IWU fans think the team played today.  This was the first game of theirs I watched, but I did see Chicago play earlier this year at the Hoopsville Tournament.  This seemed like a pretty similar performance from Chicago - disciplined and solid.  IW?U came across as a better team overall, but obviously not by much.  Was this a pretty typical IWU performance so far?  Better?  Worse?

IWU came in a 39% 3-point shooting team and had a really rough afternoon shooting the 3 -- 5-24.  So from that standpoint, it was not a "typical" IWU performance.

Chicago and IWU both have good low post games and want to play inside/out, so going in it was clear this would be a "CCIW style", physical, grind-it-out type game.  In games like this it's kind of hard to take a lot away from either team.  Basically IWU survived in what was definitely a grind.  The Titans will "look" a lot better vs Wash U - I'm pretty sure of that.  It will be an up and down kind of game with a flow.

Chicago has some serious talent in the two Whitney Young guys and Waller Perez.  Really athletic and talented nucleus there.  I have to believe Chicago contends in the UAA this year.

[Gregory Sager]

North Park 61
Kalamazoo 47

Juwan Henry: 21 pts, 5 rebs, 7:2 a:to
Colin Lake 17 pts, 6 rebs, 4 stls, 4:1 a:to
Jordan Robinson: 12 pts, 12 rebs
T.J. Cobbs: 5 rebs

NPU was ice-cold from the field today, shooting only 36% and an abysmal 9-31 (29%) from downtown, which helps explain why the score seems to show a game that was played at Kazoo's slower pace than at North Park's. But the quickness of the Vikings wore down the Hornets over the course of the second half, and NPU pulled off what was in the end a pretty convincing win. NPU improves to 4-1, while Kazoo drops to 3-2.

[Titan Q]

IWU 61
Chicago 56

http://www.iwusports.com/boxscore.aspx?id=2892&path=mbball

Ron Rose - http://www.stationcaster.com/player_skinned.php?s=711&c=3911&f=3714503

* Dylan Overstreet: 12 pts, 7 reb
* Pat Sodemann: 12 pts, 5 reb
* Alec Bausch: 10 pts, 4 reb
* Trevor Seibring: 9 pts, 8 reb

* Jordan Smith: 15 pts, 3 reb
* Nate Brooks: 13 pts, 9 reb


The Titans certainly didn't look great today, but I thought they grinded out a nice win over a Chicago team that can cause you all kinds of problems.  Jordan Smith is an all-American in the making and Nate Brooks is a load down low - the Whitney Young guys are good.  The Maroons also have several other weapons, including Waller Perez, who has become a very good player.

IWU got huge baskets down the stretch from Trevor Seibring (a rebound put-back to put IWU up 2 with 1:19 to play) and Dylan Overstreet (a little 8 footer in the paint to put IWU up 2 with 0:44 to play.

Not pretty, but I thought IWU did a nice job in pulling that game out.

The Titans play @ Wash U one week from today.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Chicago has some serious talent in the two Whitney Young guys and Waller Perez.  Really athletic and talented nucleus there.  I have to believe Chicago contends in the UAA this year.

Yeah, I also noticed they have few Seniors.   They're going to be very good next year as well.  I saw them play WPI and I thought both squads would be better next year than this.