MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[iwu70]

Nice season opening review piece on the TITANS and their prospects, comments by Coach Rose etc. in today's Pgraph.  He's saying PG by committee, and a very "formidable" front court with those coming back -- Seibring, Marietti, Bausch and Coyle.  9-10 guys clearly in the mix for major PT.  Perhaps some newbies breaking through, but I find that rather unlikely. 

IWU70

[iwu70]

At the Augie football game Saturday, the announcer announced the 11 p.m. opening of basketball season / practices for the Augie men and women.  So practices have begun all round -- esp. for the incumbent CCIW champs, pre-season #1 all 'round.

Looking forward to the season.  IWU opens with four home games in mid-Novermber so I'll get to see a bit of the early TITANS before heading back to Hong Kong for Spring Term, 2016 teaching.  When the snow flies, I fly . . . 

IWU'70

[Mr. Ypsi]

At the Augie football game Saturday, the announcer announced the 11 p.m. opening of basketball season / practices for the Augie men and women.  So practices have begun all round -- esp. for the incumbent CCIW champs, pre-season #1 all 'round.

Looking forward to the season.  IWU opens with four home games in mid-Novermber so I'll get to see a bit of the early TITANS before heading back to Hong Kong for Spring Term, 2016 teaching. When the snow flies, I fly . . . 

IWU'70

I hope you're willing to deal with the FIRST flurries, or you may have to fly before the season starts!

We've been talking about being 'snowbirds' ever since Mrs. Y retired (she's six years younger than me, and retired a year younger than I did), but never made it yet (the two most brutal winters of the last decade have come since she retired! ).  We'll see how this year goes (with El Nino the prediction is a mild winter).

[iwu70]

Chuck, escaping winter is a very good thing.  Why don't you come down to The Shirk in mid-November and see a few games. 4 home game right off at the beginning of the season.

We missed you at Homecoming -- had a hugely successful reunion and dinner, and a very meaningful Memorial Service.  About 120 classmates attended one or all of the weekend events and festivities. 

Be sure to come for the 50th, OK?

IWU70

[Mr. Ypsi]

Wow, 120!  I hadn't expected the 45th to be so big; I am planning on the 50th.

I'll see if I can talk my family into the OWU game on Nov. 28.  We'll be in Aledo (near the quad cities) for Thanksgiving, and Bloomington could be almost on the way home.

[iwu70]

Ypsi, we missed you.  Yes, very positive reunion, very huge turnout.  Overall, one of the best class reunions ever. 

Q, what are your thoughts about the IWU starting 5, and IWU rotation this coming year?  Little over three weeks now and the season will open, IWU @home vs. Benedictine on November 14th.  Here we go!


IWU70

[iwu70]

It must be about time for Q's Titan season review. 

'70

[Pat Coleman]

Preseason Top 25 is out. This one's a doozy!
http://www.d3hoops.com/notables/2015/10/mens-preseason-no-1

[joehakes]

Ypsi, please go to the 46th year reunion.  I don't think that the rest of us could bear the suspense of waiting until your 50th!

[iwu70]

Agreed, Joe, don't know who will still be kick'n by that 50th.  Enjoy each day of D3 hoops!

Pre-season poll has, as expected, Augie near unanimous #1, --  Elmhurst at #8, IWU at #24, and NCC in ORVs. 

IWU70

[Gregory Sager]

Agreed, Joe, don't know who will still be kick'n by that 50th.

... but we do know that five years from now you will still either be ignoring or missing altogether Joe's sarcasm.

Preseason Top 25 is out. This one's a doozy!
http://www.d3hoops.com/notables/2015/10/mens-preseason-no-1

First of all, as I said in the Top 25 room, I love the fact that Pat's broken down the ballots and put the combined results in a grid. Second, now that we're getting a peek behind the curtain at more than what D-Mac offers us by disclosing his own ballot in the Daily Dose each week, I have to say that there's some real eyebrow-raisers here. Pat names a couple: One pollster's got UW-Oshkosh at #4 (!), and one's got Virginia Wesleyan at #20 (!!). But there's some other really strange choices made as well. F'rinstance, two pollsters left Virginia Wesleyan off of their ballots altogether. (Count 'em up on the grid: VWC only got 23 votes.) One pollster snubbed St. Thomas, two snubbed Amherst, one said "not good enough!" to Catholic for his ballot, three didn't think Mount Union was worthy ... and Elmhurst got left off of somebody's ballot, which, for those of us who follow this league, constitutes a true "what were you thinking, dude?" head-scratcher.

It works in reverse, too. I can see how 23 of the 25 pollsters would opt to put UW-Stevens Point on their ballots, in spite of how hard UWSP was hit by graduation, given the facts that the Pointers: a) won the title last season; and b) are a proven reload-not-rebuild program year after year. But Wash U got 15 points in the poll despite losing most of last season's production to graduation and losing their best should-have-been-returning big man (Mitch Styczynski) for unknown reasons. Calvin got nine points, in spite of the fact that the Knights have a similar situation with regard to heavy graduation losses and the potential 2015-16 linchpin (Connor Vanderbrug, in their case) deciding not to return to the team.

But the reason why d3hoops.com has a preseason poll that far outstrips any of the other attempts at this (Sporting News, DIII News, etc.) is the fact that Pat's got 25 pollsters (including himself and D-Mac) contributing to his poll, and, just as importantly, those 25 pollsters are well distributed across the eight regions. That flattens out the anomalies that I listed above and makes this poll so much better than anything else that we have.

Of course, it's a preseason poll ... and even the best preseason polls are not going to be tremendously accurate in forecasting the end of February and on into March. But this poll, at least, is one that's worth taking seriously.

[John Gleich]

The only thing I've got for Oshkosh is that they were the last team to beat UWSP... So they must be good?



That's all I've got. That and the fact they were the only WIAC team that didn't wear purple and wasn't Platteville who was above .500 last year. Yeah, that wasn't a typo.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

Thanks for the kind words and worthy insight, Sager... I plan to release my ballot either tomorrow or Monday, depending on how long it takes for me to write thing up coupled with other responsibilities (that pay the bills). I will tell you this... that ballot may have been one of the most difficult preseason ballots I have ever had to mull over.

[iwu70]

ignoring.

'70

[veterancciwfan]

To illustrate just how tough and unpredictable the CCIW is, Augie was 27-5 last year and lost 2 non-league games, one to Central on the road in which the home team shot the lights out and to UWSP in the title game at Salem. But in the CCIW, Augie was 13-3 (including 2 very closely contested tournament wins at home) and lost 2 of the 3 at home to IWU and NCC. The other was on the road to NPU, a good team last year (and one which will probably be better this year) but not good enough to make the CCIW tournament. Ron Rose's record in the NCAA tournament (2009/10 through 2014/15 seasons--last 6 years) is 15-6 (.714 %) while his record in the CCIW for those last 6 years is 68-26 (.723). Conclusion: The CCIW regular season and tournament games are only slightly less challenging than the NCAA tournament during the last 6 years. Last year, the Augie's CCIW games (13-3) fell into the same pattern (Augie was 4-1 in NCAA tournament games last year).

One Brady Rose comment: He played point guard for Bloomington HS and has always had the reputation as a point guard who can also shoot (think Korey Coon who started every game in all 4 years).