MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Gregory Sager]

Wheaton did a nice job of staving off any comeback tries from an all-flash-no-substance Heidelberg team. In case nobody on CCIW Chat has said it yet, I'll be the first: Juco transfer Aston Francis (27 pts tonight) is the real deal. He hit seven of his 13 trey attempts tonight, as Wheaton actually shot 6% better from beyond the arc than it did overall.

Luke Peters had a near triple-double (10-9-8), while Kobe Eichelberger scored 13 and Ricky Samuelson had 11 for Wheaton. The Sonic Atmospheric Disturbance also got good grunt work out of Trevor Gunter (13 rebs).

Between their incredibly poor shot selection, reach-in fouls galore (some of them late in the shot clock), and a ridiculous number of unforced turnovers, I'd have to call the Student Princes one of the most undisciplined teams that I've seen in recent years. They make some of the North Park teams of the Rees Johnson era look like a Pete Carrill Princeton squad.

[Gregory Sager]

Tonight's pinball contest basketball game at the Griz not only broke the MU school record for combined points, it annihilated it. The previous high was 240, amassed by Millikin and Wheaton in a 1970 game that went to overtime. Tonight? There were 273 points scored between the Panthers and the Big Blue.

Greenville also broke the MU record for opponent points, erasing the old record of 137 set by Eastern Illinois all the way back in 1959.

I noticed that the teams also combined for 76 fouls.  Did they finish the game with cheerleaders, or random fans pulled from the stands?!

Two Panthers fouled out of the game and so did three of the Big Blue. Unfortunately for MU, one of the three DQs was Jack Simpson, the Big Blue's leading scorer, who put in 27 points in 27 minutes of action. Thirteen of his 27 points came from the free-throw line.

Freshmen Zach Fisher and Jordan Cunningham had 19 points apiece for Jimmy Millikin. (Cunningham got his in only 14 minutes, as he made eight out of ten layups either as the finisher off the press or as the garbageman against much smaller Greenville bigs ... nice work if you can get it. He also collected nine boards in those 14 minutes to lead his team.) Leighton Lark had 14 and Tyler Pygon 13 to round out the double-figure scorers for MU, which drops to 0-3 at the outset of what looks to be a very difficult campaign upcoming for Matt Nadelhoffer.

[Gregory Sager]

One game on tap for tomorrow to close out the weekend, as Carthage (1-0) entertains Robert Morris-Peoria (1-3) at Tarble. RMUP lost by ten today to the same Olivet team that the Red Men pummelled by 35 points yesterday. The Comets had a 32-point lead at the half and still led by 25 with nine minutes and change remaining before they took their foot off the brake and let RMUP make it respectable.

I think that Bosko could bypass Stevie D. and let his daughter Amanda run the team tomorrow while he ran the video camera, and the game would still be over by halftime.

[Titan Q]

IWU 85
Loras 64

http://www.iwusports.com/boxscore.aspx?id=4062&path=

http://www.pantagraph.com/sports/college/basketball/men/fast-start-lifts-iwu-to-tourney-championship/article_a3d7e451-40fc-5a3d-bdde-03584d1a85b5.html

* Colin Bonnett: 19 pts
* Trevor Seibring: 15 pts, 10 reb, 3 assists
* Alec Bausch: 13 pts, 2 reb
* Brady Rose: 10 pts, 7 reb


IWU faces MacMurray Tuesday at the Shirk Center.

[gordonmann]

Greenville 145
Millikin 128

Southern Maine and Wheaton (Mass.) played five extra periods, both scored over 100 points and they still didn't outscore these two teams.

[hopefan]

Greenville 145
Millikin 128

Southern Maine and Wheaton (Mass.) played five extra periods, both scored over 100 points and they still didn't outscore these two teams.

The thing that is surprising is that Greenville is doing this without any really good 3 point shooter... they're averaging 128 points per game, but shooting only 31.8% from 3 point range, or 16 for 50 per game... if they shot say 37.5%, that would be another 3 hoops from beyond the arc per game, or another 9 points per game and they'd be averaging close to 140 points!!  What impressed me against Elmhurst was their quickness on the defense... when someone was doubleteamed, ANY pass Elmhurst made seemed to be up for grabs. 

[AppletonRocks]

In case nobody on CCIW Chat has said it yet, I'll be the first: Juco transfer Aston Francis (27 pts tonight) is the real deal. He hit seven of his 13 trey attempts tonight, as Wheaton actually shot 6% better from beyond the arc than it did overall.

I guess I didn't get up early enough to be the first to say it.   

[lmitzel]

Greenville 145
Millikin 128

Southern Maine and Wheaton (Mass.) played five extra periods, both scored over 100 points and they still didn't outscore these two teams.

The thing that is surprising is that Greenville is doing this without any really good 3 point shooter... they're averaging 128 points per game, but shooting only 31.8% from 3 point range, or 16 for 50 per game... if they shot say 37.5%, that would be another 3 hoops from beyond the arc per game, or another 9 points per game and they'd be averaging close to 140 points!!  What impressed me against Elmhurst was their quickness on the defense... when someone was doubleteamed, ANY pass Elmhurst made seemed to be up for grabs.

Such is the nature of The System. I notice it with North Central's women all the time. They only hit 27.7 percent of their threes on Friday night and still scored 101 points and won by 34. With teams like that, it's a matter of quantity overwhelming everything else. The defensive aspect, when you have a team that has practiced that press, it seems like they have more than five players out there sometimes, and you're going to turn the ball over a ton.

[WUPHF]

Not to mention, there were 10 more free throws in the Greenville-Millikin game and those two teams shot significantly better...

[AndOne]

Wow. Mike Schauer just got T'ed up for protesting a bad call in the Pfund title game against Heidelberg. He pretty much boogied a bona-fide buck-and-wing all the way down in front of the Wheaton bench and halfway to the King Arena exit. You'd never know that he attended Wheaton in the era when dancing was verboten at that school.

Mike Schauer is one of the CCIW's most corybantic coaches. I'm not talking complaining about calls. I'm talking about unrestrained abandon. I'd rank him 3rd on the conference wild-o-meter. 

* If you were caught dancing at Wheaton when Coach Schauer attended, you had the choice of getting married or being expelled! 

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Greenville 145
Millikin 128

Southern Maine and Wheaton (Mass.) played five extra periods, both scored over 100 points and they still didn't outscore these two teams.

The thing that is surprising is that Greenville is doing this without any really good 3 point shooter... they're averaging 128 points per game, but shooting only 31.8% from 3 point range, or 16 for 50 per game... if they shot say 37.5%, that would be another 3 hoops from beyond the arc per game, or another 9 points per game and they'd be averaging close to 140 points!!  What impressed me against Elmhurst was their quickness on the defense... when someone was doubleteamed, ANY pass Elmhurst made seemed to be up for grabs.

The original five principles that Arsenault had analyzed involved a lot of numerical targets.  I'll have to go track them down, but from memory, I think it's something like "take at least 90 shots per game, at least 2/3rd of which should be threes, making at least 1/3rd of those."  There's also an offensive rebound target and a turnover margin target, I think.  As for shooting, if those are the numbers, they're getting pretty close.

I remember Grinnell saying at one point they only lost five games over a 15 year period when they hit all five target numbers.

[ChicagoView]

Just followed you on Twitter.  Thanks for all the content.  I blinked and 6 of my guys went D3 and I am able to keep up with them better than all my D1, D2 and Juco kids. It looks like 2 of my guys are JV for Elmhurst and Aurora, could be more but won't know until North Central starts play.  Is there much JV reporting or will I have to bounce around in their respective websites?

Thanks

[AndOne]

In case nobody on CCIW Chat has said it yet, I'll be the first: Juco transfer Aston Francis (27 pts tonight) is the real deal. He hit seven of his 13 trey attempts tonight, as Wheaton actually shot 6% better from beyond the arc than it did overall.

Aston Francis looks to be an excellent spot-up shooter. If you don't fight through the screen and let him run to an open spot, he'll likely catch, shoot, and score. The best defense appears to be to body him up as much as possible, and make him put it on the floor because he is going to be a lot less dangerous if he is made to put it on the floor. He is not going to be anywhere near as successful when he is made to try to create off the dribble as he will be when he is allowed to catch and shoot. This was personally observed at the Ben U game, and noticed again while catching the stream of part of last night's game.

[Gregory Sager]

Wow. Mike Schauer just got T'ed up for protesting a bad call in the Pfund title game against Heidelberg. He pretty much boogied a bona-fide buck-and-wing all the way down in front of the Wheaton bench and halfway to the King Arena exit. You'd never know that he attended Wheaton in the era when dancing was verboten at that school.

Mike Schauer is one of the CCIW's most corybantic coaches.

Ooh, nice! I had to look that one up. I'm filing it away for future use. Thanks!

I'm not talking complaining about calls. I'm talking about unrestrained abandon. I'd rank him 3rd on the conference wild-o-meter. 

I might rank him second on that list, with #1 being an obvious choice. Of course, Mike's younger and more nimble than most of his peers.

A CCIW ref and I were talking the other day about a similar list, the conference yell-o-meter. Where do coaches rank in this league in terms of the amount of yelling that they do, whether it's at their players or at the refs? That's an interesting debate.

* If you were caught dancing at Wheaton when Coach Schauer attended, you had the choice of getting married or being expelled! 

The old joke at North Park was that Wheaton had really short visiting hours in their women's dorms because they strongly believed that premarital sex led to dancing.

In case nobody on CCIW Chat has said it yet, I'll be the first: Juco transfer Aston Francis (27 pts tonight) is the real deal. He hit seven of his 13 trey attempts tonight, as Wheaton actually shot 6% better from beyond the arc than it did overall.

Aston Francis looks to be an excellent spot-up shooter. If you don't fight through the screen and let him run to an open spot, he'll likely catch, shoot, and score. The best defense appears to be to body him up as much as possible, and make him put it on the floor because he is going to be a lot less dangerous if he is made to put it on the floor. He is not going to be anywhere near as successful when he is made to try to create off the dribble as he will be when he is allowed to catch and shoot. This was personally observed at the Ben U game, and noticed again while catching the stream of part of last night's game.

Francis can put it on the floor a bit, but I agree with you that he hasn't had to try to do it against a CCIW-level defense yet.

[AndOne]

Just followed you on Twitter.  Thanks for all the content.  I blinked and 6 of my guys went D3 and I am able to keep up with them better than all my D1, D2 and Juco kids. It looks like 2 of my guys are JV for Elmhurst and Aurora, could be more but won't know until North Central starts play.  Is there much JV reporting or will I have to bounce around in their respective websites?

Thanks

There are no published reports of the JV games. There is a little mention of JV action here, but this is really primarily a varsity related forum. You probably hear the most about JV stuff from the IWU and NPU posters.