MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[4samuy]

It was all Augustana from the Carver Center 85-66 over Carroll.  Vikings led by 32 five minutes into the second half and played every player on the night.  Carroll was able to cut the lead down to 13 against Augustana's reserves, so Giovanine had to go back to his starters for the final 3 minutes.

Augustana

Johnston. 15 pts
Orange.   14 pts
Wofford.  14 pts  6 reb
Ebel.       10 pts

Carroll

Keranan. 24 pts
Ingebrigtsen 14 pts
Soule.         11 pts

i doubt having to put the starters back in made Coach G happy.  It maybe a long practice Monday for the reserves.

Yup, I would bet he wasn't too pleased. Players 11-15, Although young, didn't look comfortable or confident which should probably be expected.  It's the 19 turnovers and 15 Carroll offensive rebounds that will have everyone running on Monday is my guess.

[Titan Q]

IWU 77
Carthage 74

http://www.iwusports.com/boxscore.aspx?id=4075&path=mbball

http://www.pantagraph.com/sports/college/basketball/men/no-iwu-back-in-the-win-column/article_9a2a8e1d-3057-5b05-9a53-245689eeec35.html

* Brady Rose: 25 pts, 2 assists
* Alec Bausch: 13 pts, 11 reb, 5 assists
* Colin Bonnett: 11 pts

* Jordan Thomas: 18 pts, 3 reb, 3 assists
* Mike Stevenson: 17 pts, 3 reb,
* Brad Kruse: 9 pts, 7 reb, 5 assists


I was only able to catch about the last 10 minutes of the game and this one was a tense, grind-it-out affair that whole time. 

Carthage battled back from a 6-point deficit at 10:19 to go up 5 with 5:42.  The Red Men had 3 bad possessions after that - a turnover and 2 (what felt to me at the time) really bad 3-point attempts.  IWU got a 3 from Bonnett and a then a layup from Rose on a really impressive move to the basket to tie the game.  The Red Men went back up 2, but Rose hit a huge 3 to put IWU up 1 with 2:06 to play. The Titans survived from there for the win.

This was a nice win for the Titans, who played without Trevor Seibring again.  It kept IWU in the CCIW title race. 

Brady Rose is becoming a very good player for IWU.

[Gregory Sager]

In every game that NPU has played this season aside from the opener at Chicago -- thirteen straight games, in other words -- the Vikings have had a double-digit lead in the second half. In ten of those thirteen games, including all four games since New Year's Day, that double-digit lead in the second half has evaporated to a one-possession lead or worse.

The Vikings simply have to learn how to put people away. It's that simple. It's about intensity, it's about execution, and it's about trusting the process and staying with the game plan.

Last night the Vikings saw the first zone that they've seen since they traveled to Bloomington back on Pearl Harbor Day. The reason for that is simple: NPU was the second-leading team in all of D3 in trey percentage coming into Saturday night's game, trailing only UW-Whitewater. The last time that anybody zoned North Park, Jordan Robinson lit up Illinois Wesleyan for four quick treys in the first few minutes of the game to give the Vikings a 16-4 lead that they would never relinquish. Last night John Baines gambled on a 2-3 zone for much of the game, reasoning perhaps that his struggling team had nothing to lose. But he may also have been betting on the idea that, if he could not only take away the NPU drive game but also eliminate open trey looks via kickouts, the Vikings' offense would stall out from having to get its treys via either ball movement or manufacturing. It worked. The Vikings, having gone for so long without seeing a zone, did an awful lot of standing around and looking at it. They didn't circulate the ball through the high post effectively, which they had done very well against the two previous teams that had zoned them (Alma and Illinois Wesleyan), they went away from the cut-and-pass game that they had used so effectively against Wheaton on Wednesday, and they also tended to let their frustration get the better of them by attempting a fair amount of treys in which they were not squared up for the shot.

That was really the story of the game. Elmhurst actually didn't play all that well. The Bluejays came at North Park with lots of energy and spark, but not a whole lot of proficiency. Jalen Loving and Devin Tennant (who has a chance to evolve into a pretty good CCIW center) missed a bushel of shots right at the rim, and PG Marquis Carter, pressed into starting service now that Jake Rhode is done for the season, looked like a deer caught in the headlights. But EC got points from an unlikely source: Brian Kern, a freshman from Hinsdale South who was a mainstay of the Elmhurst JV lineup in Thursday night's junior varsity contest between the 'jays and Vikings in the crackerbox, and who had scored only six points in three previous varsity appearances. He led the 'jays with 21 points, garnered not only from behind the arc but also from driving hard to the basket against half-hearted defensive effort and from getting out in transition. He's a real energy guy, too -- I could see on Thursday night that his teammates fed off of him, and it was true in last night's varsity game as well. He could be a player with whom to be reckoned over the next three years in the CCIW.

Aaron Coleman and I spent a lot of time venting on the air in the postgame, forcing me to eventually say, "For those of you who joined us late and have listened to Aaron and I over the last five minutes, I have to remind you that North Park actually won tonight's game."

More of this blow-a-big-lead-late-and-then-hang-on stuff just won't cut it. The Vikings are not the Flying Wallendas. Sooner or later, they're going to fall off of the tightrope ... unless they decline to get on it in the first place.

[iwumichigander]

Putting teams away - Greg, your Vikings are not any different than some of my Titans teams over the years.  I completely agree with your analysis about what it takes to put a team away with one exception which is - the experienced and most talented players (usually upper class men / women) have to learn the joy and excitement which comes from not end game minutes but seeing the underclassmen finish the job at games end.
Over the years I have "coached up" players to be more efficient and productive per minute played rather than the amount of minutes played.  Why?  Two reasons - 1) play fewer minutes efficiently and productively  allows your body and mind to extend you into post season play 2) when you learn to finish a team early, nothing is more fun than seeing the underclassmen on the floor at the end a game closing it out.

[iwu70]

Q, enjoy the cruise.

Yes, best game yet for Brady Rose as a Titan.   Gaining confidence, shooting the three, taking the ball to the rim.   Nick Coleman continues to make important contributions as a many-minuted back up.  I think Coach Rose has to go with Bausch-Beasley and give up on the Burdine experiment for now.  Bausch played very solidly vs. CC, a double-double.   Let's hope bye week allows Trevor Seibring to return vs. Carroll. 

All just in my humble opinion.

IWU'70

[Gregory Sager]

North Park takes to the road again to face Manchester in northern Indiana this evening. Tipoff is 5 pm Central. I'm not sure if Manchester is going to supply a video feed tonight -- NPU's got a link to one, but Man U doesn't have one posted on the team's schedule -- but I'll be providing audio PBP, nevertheless.

[Gregory Sager]

Congrats to CCIW Player of the Week Juwan Henry. It's the first time this season that the North Park senior guard has won the award, but it's the eighth time he's been named CCIW POW over the course of his career.

[Mr. Ypsi]

New poll is up.  NPU jumps all the way from 18th to 9th.  Augie rejoins the poll moving up from (26) to 20.  IWU falls from 22 to (27).  Carthage retained only one point, after being (27) last week - strikes me as a bit harsh for a 3 point road loss to a team who was then ranked.

[titanfan]

North Park loses to 4-10 Manchester.  Wow. 

[Gregory Sager]

Manchester 89
North Park 77

Jordan Robinson: 31 pts, 8 rebs
Darius Brown: 13 pts, 7 rebs
Juwan Henry: 11 pts
T.J. Cobbs: 7:0 a:to

I keep saying that Manchester is a much better team than its record, and nobody seems to believe me. Well, tonight the Spartans proved it. In spite of their 4-10 record coming in, the Spartans only had a -4 in terms of scoring margin for the season. It's a team that has a real beast in defending HCAC MVP Tyler Alexander, who lit up the Vikes for 30 points in December's NPU win in the crackerbox. Tonight he was again unstoppable with 23 and 10, but he had lots of help. MU played hard and inspired, and the Vikings looked listless. MU just crunched NPU on the boards to the tune of 38-29, including 15-8 on the offensive glass. The rebounding disparity was so bad that the Spartans were simply releasing a guard early every time that the Vikings put up a shot, and MU got a lot of runout buckets off of it.

This makes twice now that the Vikings have cracked the top ten only to immediately lose their next game. I don't know if it's stage fright or complacency, but I don't like it. I've been saying the same thing for three years now -- this team is so undersized that it needs to outwork the opponent every night in order to succeed. Tonight they didn't even come close to matching MU's work ethic, and they paid for it.

[AndOne]

Watched about the last 15 minutes of the NPU/Manchester game.
Little doubt that Greg Sager will not go into more detail later, so I'll just provide the basics at this time.
It appeared NPU's main problems were:
1. Getting beat on the boards by a count of 39-28.
2. Shooting only 22% (4/18) from behind the line. Colin Lake was the only starter to sink a 3, and he was 2/6.
3. Very quiet nights from Lake (8 points), and Juwan Henry (11 points).

* Well, I got called upstairs mid post to help my better half with something and by the time I got back down to the man cave, finished and hit 'post,' Greg had indeed posted as I predicted, so see the above for a more detailed analysis.  😊

[iwu70]

Well, congrats to Juwan Henry on Player of the Week, but then again, ouch, on the loss to Manchester.  Guess you can't rest on your laurels any time in this season.

IWU 70

[markerickson]

Counting Wednesday's game at Millikin, NPU will have played six games in fourteen days.  That seems a little high.  I hope there isn't a letdown in Decatur after traveling to Manchester today!

If NPU had a deeper bench...I see that Jarvis Cannon's name has been scrubbed from NPU's website.  He was a senior transfer who lasted one semester.  Ray Rubio (Brother Rice) transferred from Loras and is not on the team as a junior.  Matt McNamara (Willowbrook) hustled for three years, but never improved.  Armahn Mooring transferred from CCC, failed to impress, and is now playing at some USCAA school called Laurel-Highlands.  All four would have been upperclassmen this year.

Congrats, Mr. Henry!

[GoPerry]

  But EC got points from an unlikely source: Brian Kern, a freshman from Hinsdale South who was a mainstay of the Elmhurst JV lineup in Thursday night's junior varsity contest between the 'jays and Vikings in the crackerbox, and who had scored only six points in three previous varsity appearances. He led the 'jays with 21 points, garnered not only from behind the arc but also from driving hard to the basket against half-hearted defensive effort and from getting out in transition. He's a real energy guy, too -- I could see on Thursday night that his teammates fed off of him, and it was true in last night's varsity game as well. He could be a player with whom to be reckoned over the next three years in the CCIW.

I saw Brian Kern play several times at Hinsdale South over the last 2 years.  He was always an impressive shooter and better than average scorer but somewhat overshadowed by 6'10" Barrett Benson (Freshman/Northwestern ).  He's a little undersized but wouldn't surprise me if he became a regular player for the 'Jays.

[AndOne]

  But EC got points from an unlikely source: Brian Kern, a freshman from Hinsdale South who was a mainstay of the Elmhurst JV lineup in Thursday night's junior varsity contest between the 'jays and Vikings in the crackerbox, and who had scored only six points in three previous varsity appearances. He led the 'jays with 21 points, garnered not only from behind the arc but also from driving hard to the basket against half-hearted defensive effort and from getting out in transition. He's a real energy guy, too -- I could see on Thursday night that his teammates fed off of him, and it was true in last night's varsity game as well. He could be a player with whom to be reckoned over the next three years in the CCIW.

I saw Brian Kern play several times at Hinsdale South over the last 2 years.  He was always an impressive shooter and better than average scorer but somewhat overshadowed by 6'10" Barrett Benson (Freshman/Northwestern ).  He's a little undersized but wouldn't surprise me if he became a regular player for the 'Jays.

As did I, GoPerry, and I agree completely. An impressive shooter. Not big, and not the fastest guy either, but makes up for it with a high level of court awareness.
I was somewhat surprised that it took John Baines this long to give Kern extended PT.