MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Titan Q]

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.

Chicago could be a top 5 team preseason next year.  They will be loaded.

[iwu70]

Yes, Titans grind one out, a good win, but surely not their best performance, esp. from treyland.  Key was the Seibring O rebound and putback.  For sure.  A poor shooting night only 20% from three.  But, a win is a win over a quality opponent.  Scoring:  12, 12, 10, 9 and 9.  Bausch a big boost off the bench.  Overstreet with some nice drives to penetrate and score.  Nelson on the floor down the stretch with Dolan having an off night shooting.   It will be good to have Nelson get his stroke at some point and also have Marietti back to spell Seibring some minutes.  I agree that the Wash U pace and flow may be different than this rather slow, ugly affair.  Gotta improve FT shooting.  Seibring is the biggest, best surprise for the Titans so far this young season.  He's playing well on defence too and now making consistent, solid contributions on offense.  If he can go about 10 and 10 all year, this Titan team will have a great run. 

Look forward to the Wash U game.  Would be great to get that win on the road.

IWU70

[Gregory Sager]

Final from Cincinnati:

Augustana 51
Albion 47

(The game was tied at 26 at the half.)

Perhaps the western Vikings are not the juggernaut they were widely reputed to be. One fly in the ointment was the fact that neither the Augie starting PG nor his primary backup managed assist. A 3rd player at the position posted 1 helper. A strong superstructure, but a rudderless ship??
And whats with neither Hoepfner nor Schlitter starting? AC also shot a blistering 54.5 from the line.
Albion was picked to finish 4th in the MIAA.

It's like I said back in the opening weekend of the season: Albion has always been coached to ugly up the game by playing junkyard-dog defense, and the Brits are usually pretty darned good at it.

Case in point this evening:

Albion 64
Elmhurst 56

Elmhurst, which shot less that 36% from the field for the game, drops to 6-1 on the season.

[Gregory Sager]

Final from Madiganville:

UI-Springfield 89
Millikin 49

Nobody should be surprised by this, as UIS plays in a top-notch D2 league, the GLVC.

[markerickson]

North Park started the game by pressing 'Zoo.  The tactic worked for the first 10 minutes and then the Hornets finally took the lead at 23-21.  The Hornets lead 31-25 at half with their leading scorer (Peters, 15.2ppg) the only player for the visitors in double digits.  Of course, Juwan Henry led the Vikes at half.  North Park came out with a different D in the second half, kind of like a 1-3-1, with 5'7" Colin Lake standing in front of the 6' 9" Zoo center at the stripe.  The D seemed to confuse the O, and Zoo scored only 15 (or 17) second half points.  Coach Dugal didn't change his approach at all and the Vikes ended up coasting with Henry leading all scorers.  I thought it was impressive victory for the undersized Vikings.

[iwumichigander]

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.

agree. He does not move like 6' 6" 210; very athletic; another year in the weight room he will be a handful for most teams.   Trevor Sebring moves very well for a big, too.  Trevor has really improved his foot work.

[Gregory Sager]

North Park started the game by pressing 'Zoo.  The tactic worked for the first 10 minutes and then the Hornets finally took the lead at 23-21.  The Hornets lead 31-25 at half with their leading scorer (Peters, 15.2ppg) the only player for the visitors in double digits.  Of course, Juwan Henry led the Vikes at half.  North Park came out with a different D in the second half, kind of like a 1-3-1, with 5'7" Colin Lake standing in front of the 6' 9" Zoo center at the stripe.  The D seemed to confuse the O, and Zoo scored only 15 (or 17) second half points.  Coach Dugal didn't change his approach at all and the Vikes ended up coasting with Henry leading all scorers.  I thought it was impressive victory for the undersized Vikings.

You surrounded it, Mark: Kalamazoo scored 16 second-half points. And good call on the defensive adjustment that Tom Slyder made at halftime, because that really messed up Kazoo's modified Princeton offense. The Hornets never seemed to solve it.

That 6'9, 220 Hornets center you mentioned, Josh Miller, got so frustrated with Colin Lake at one point that he shoved Lake and got into his face and appeared to be verbally threatening him. That sparked Tom Slyder into going over towards the Kazoo bench to tell them to make Miller back off of the goon behavior. Lake certainly seems to have a knack for getting under the skin of his opponents -- something you love in your own point guard and hate in another team's -- and he's also tough as nails. He keeps taking nasty shots from opponents and getting knocked to the floor, but he springs right back up.

[iwumichigander]

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

also need another  big. Nate Brooks IMHO more a wing than a center. Crawford at the 5 with Brooks at the 4 could be dangerous but I certainly did not see tonight nor against Wheaton where you could afford to play both at same time given current bench.

[Gregory Sager]

I can't believe that nobody has mentioned this final yet:

Calvin 75
Carthage 73

The lead went back and forth in the final minute, with Calvin's superstar guard Jordan Brink -- who had hit a go-ahead trey with half a minute remaining -- hitting a spinning jumper with two seconds remaining to give the Knights the win.

Mike Kjeldsen (26 pts) had another big night for the Red Men, and Reese Herth -- who probably got dressed down pretty heavily in the locker room last night -- bounced back to score 14 points, although he again shot poorly. Donte Logan (14 pts, 7:3 a:to) played well.

Interesting postgame quote from Bosko: "There was a time a few years ago, that I could tell you within one or two games what your record was going to be at the end of the season.  With this team, I still can't tell.  If we continue to get better, we have a chance to be a very competitive team in the CCIW.  On the other hand, if we play like we did against Washington (Mo.) or Hope, we'll struggle to win any games."

[iwumichigander]

Other quick impressions tonight of IWU bench.  Bausch has great upside.  Athletic, quick, shot well, needs a little more development in weight room.

Stempel and Pennington - these two guys get in your grill on defense.  They can definitively tell you what type of gum their opponent is chewing!

[sac]

Final from Cincinnati:

Augustana 51
Albion 47

(The game was tied at 26 at the half.)

Perhaps the western Vikings are not the juggernaut they were widely reputed to be. One fly in the ointment was the fact that neither the Augie starting PG nor his primary backup managed assist. A 3rd player at the position posted 1 helper. A strong superstructure, but a rudderless ship??
And whats with neither Hoepfner nor Schlitter starting? AC also shot a blistering 54.5 from the line.
Albion was picked to finish 4th in the MIAA.

It's like I said back in the opening weekend of the season: Albion has always been coached to ugly up the game by playing junkyard-dog defense, and the Brits are usually pretty darned good at it.

Case in point this evening:

Albion 64
Elmhurst 56

Elmhurst, which shot less that 36% from the field for the game, drops to 6-1 on the season.

I was at this game.  The Bluejays were under 30% for most of the game, made two good runs at the end of the first and under 10 in the second.  Otherwise the Britons had them tied up and confounded most of the night.  Albion is pretty small, but have quick guards and they play way above their size.  Albion also had a nice student crowd which amps ups the difficulty of playing in  Albion's now very purple band box of a gym.  The physical nature of the game seemed to catch Elmhurst off-guard early, affecting Crittendon the most who played only 6 first half minutes and eventually fouled out.  Once they adjusted themselves Elmhurst and Albion were pretty even.  On a neutral court Elmhurst probably wins.  Kresge Gym is decidedly not neutral.


At least one person in the gym who saw both believed Elmhurst was better than Augustana, take that for what its worth.   JMO but over the long run I can't see Elmhurst staying ahead of the likes of Augustana, North Central, IWU or Wheaton.  But they will likely beat someone big at some point.

Good game, glad I went.

[Gregory Sager]

Speaking of Augustana:

Augustana 116
Fontbonne 62

Always good to hear Chris and Dan call a game, even when the game's a laugher.

[Gregory Sager]

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.

... and, to respond to Izzy's point earlier about zoning Wheaton seeming to be counterintuitive, that's why you zone Wheaton: to take away Teuscher's dribble penetration.

Nobody who follows this league should be shocked that Wheaton is not strong down low this season. There was no heir apparent to Nate Haynes on the WC roster last season, and, when the seemingly-inexhaustible Haynes was out of the game, Wheaton turned into a doughnut team. Once I saw that Wheaton hadn't brought in either a big transfer or a ballyhooed freshman (although you never know with Wheaton freshmen, given the team's Rand-McNally recruiting ethos), I knew that Mike Schauer was going to have to go in-house to replace Haynes's role and production. That meant Michael Berg or Joel Smith, with Berg being the most likely candidate because of his overall skill set. AndOne (Mark) accurately pointed out several times over the past two years that Berg appeared to be allergic to paint, so I was skeptical that Berg could be converted into a back-to-the-basket player who would grind out low-post points and be the team's key rebounder. To his credit, he's averaging 7 rpg thus far against a very good early-season schedule, and from what I saw of him last night against Calvin he's certainly giving life as a low-post player the old college try. But that's a very, very big adjustment in roles to make. The long and short of it is that Wheaton is currently the only team in the league that has a negative rebounding ratio -- even badly-undersized NPU has a plus ratio at this point -- and teams that don't rebound don't win games.

[kiko]

North Central tops Redlands 64-47 in the late game in SoCal.  The Bulldogs shot just 30% (14 of 47) on the evening, and the Cards had a 44-27 advantage on the boards.

That puts the conference at an even 4-4 on the evening and 40-15 (.727) YTD.

[Gregory Sager]

North Central 64
Redlands 47

The Cardinals reversed their m.o. by playing a crappy first half and then lighting it up in the second half, coming out of the locker room with a torrid opening five minutes or so that more or less put this one away early.

After a weekend of watching full-sound games online and broadcasting one myself, it was strange to watch this one in total silence.