MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Titan Q]

Per some tweets, IWU received a recruiting commitment from Charlie Bair today.  Bair is a 6-6 PF from Glenbard South.

https://twitter.com/dhrecruits/status/830878206924378114

https://twitter.com/dhrecruits/status/830880774115188739

https://twitter.com/scottybscout/status/830904564304007168

I don't know anything about Bair but I've heard from a few people unaffiliated w/ IWU today that he has a really nice upside as a CCIW low post player...strong, physical, high motor post...nice touch around the basket and strong rebounder.

Bair is a great student and his final two included U. of Chicago.

[iwu70]

Thanks for all the numbers, Q.  And, looks like a good pick-up for the Titans, as top quality posts are all seniors.  We need a few more recruits like Blair to bolster up the paint area for Beasley and Burdine for next year.  I guess Curry will be down in that area some too.

Let's hope the Titans can keep it rolling, win out.  They surely played very very well in that second half at CC. 

IWU'70

[kiko]

Kiko,

IIT is in the third year of provisional membership so the SOS numbers are irrelevant.  The Scarlet Hawks won't be eligible for NCAA tournament play until 2018-19 at the earliest.  IIT games are countable for opponents. Being provisional and independent makes scheduling a strong schedule pretty difficult.

Thank you.  I saw them on the regional ranking data sheet and assumed that anyone there would be eligible.  Clearly not.

Independent alone would be challenging; provisional I'm sure makes it a triple-lutz rather than just a double.

[Gregory Sager]

I'm still trying to process how a team can shoot twenty more field-goal attempts than its opponent, not to mention six more free-throw attempts as well, and still lose the game. It takes some mightily wretched shooting for that to happen -- and it happened last night at King.

The Vikings did all of the peripheral things necessary to come away with the win. In spite of the fact that they're the worst rebounding team in the league, they outboarded Wheaton, 41-38 (including an incredible 19-7 on the offensive glass), and were the recipients of 14 Wheaton turnovers while only turning it over five times themselves. That all put them in a position to attempt 71 shots to Wheaton's 51, and 20 free throws to Wheaton's 14. And they played good defense, too; in spite of Aston Francis's white Globetrotter exhibition from 25 feet or more, the Sonic Atmospheric Disturbance were under their FG% average in CCIW play at 47%, which is also below what NPU's defense had been allowing in league play. Wheaton really had to work for most of its points.

However, the best word to describe North Park's shooting was, as they used to say in MAD magazine back in the day, blecch. The Vikings were an abysmal 35% from the field, and they somehow found the sub-basement in the Abysmal Building in terms of their shooting from beyond the arc, going 6-33 (18%). This is a team that was ranked second in the nation behind UW-Whitewater in team trey percentage not too many weeks ago. It'd be one thing if every trey that the Vikings attempted came with a Wheaton hand in the shooter's face (didn't happen), or was taken while on the move (didn't happen, either), or if it was the team's less-accurate or less-experienced players who were hoisting 'em up from long distance (also didn't happen). But when four guys who are normally aces from long range -- Jordan Robinson, Colin Lake, Joe Biko, and Billy Kirby -- combine to go 5-26 (19%), what's a coach to do? And on top of that, the 11-20 (55%) performance at the FT line, which is 15% below the NPU season average, just added insult to injury.

In spite of all that, and in spite of the fact that the Vikings never held the lead, they somehow managed to make it a close game.  After trailing by 13 on three widely-separated occasions in the third quarter, they climbed back into a tie at 62-62 with 5:36 to go when Robinson sent a beautiful pass down the lane to a wide-open T.J. Cobbs under the basket for an easy layup. From that point onward, however, the Vikings would go an exasperating 2-13 from the field (including 0-7 from treyland, almost all of those seven shots being open looks) and 1-4 from the line, as I found myself coming close to breaking the plastic chairback in front of me in half. Aston Francis restored the Wheaton lead with a trey from the right elbow that would've been generous by NBA standards, and then, after Cobbs got another layup to knock the Wheaton lead back down to one, Francis hit the one that really stung, the trey about which Mark Erickson posted earlier today. It was a fadeaway (like almost all of Francis's shots) from 25 feet out on the right, in front of the Wheaton bench, and with Cobbs bearing down on him the shot was well off-target by two feet to the right ... except that it banked in. There's no way in the world you're going to convince me that Francis intended to go bank on that shot. Don't get me wrong, he's quite obviously a good shooter. But sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

(I was much more impressed by the trey he made at the 9:41 mark of the second half, in which he was literally only three steps over the midcourt line when he launched one that caught nothing but net.)

Still, NPU never quit fighting. After Francis made his bank deposit, Ricky Samuelson made a shot to push the lead back up to six in the waning minutes. That led to this sequence:

\GOOD! JUMPER by Samuelson, Ricky                02:27  70-64  H 6
FOUL by Peters, Luke (P3T6)                     02:06              MISSED FT SHOT by Biko, Joe
                                                02:06              REBOUND (OFF) by (DEADBALL)
                                                02:06              MISSED FT SHOT by Biko, Joe
                                                02:06              REBOUND (OFF) by Brown, Darius
                                                02:06              SUB IN : Kirby, Billy
                                                02:06              SUB OUT: Brown, Darius
                                                01:56              MISSED 3 PTR by Biko, Joe
                                                01:56              REBOUND (OFF) by (TEAM)
                                                01:54              SUB IN : Brown, Darius
                                                01:54              SUB OUT: Kirby, Billy
                                                01:37              MISSED 3 PTR by Lake, Colin
                                                01:37              REBOUND (OFF) by Cobbs, T.J.
                                                01:35              MISSED TIP-IN by Cobbs, T.J.
                                                01:35              REBOUND (OFF) by Cobbs, T.J.
REBOUND (DEF) by Samuelson, Ricky               01:34              MISSED JUMPER by Robinson, Jordan

The Vikings had the ball for 53 seconds, and got nothing out of it. That fruitless possession was marked by two missed FT attempts by Biko, a wide-open missed trey attempt by Biko from the top of the key, a missed midrange jumper by Robinson, and a missed tip-in attempt by Cobbs. There was an incredible amount of hustle in that 53 seconds by the Vikings, but it ended up being empty hustle.

In the final minute Wheaton did look like it was trying to give the Vikings one last chance. Aston Francis threw a length-of-the-floor inbounds pass that was picked off by Lake at the far baseline, and then Francis fouled Robinson with 21 seconds left after the NPU star had grabbed an errant Kirby trey attempt from the left corner. Robinson, in an echo of Wednesday night's double-OT loss at Carthage, only made one of the two FTs. Still, that got the Vikes to within three, and after Francis missed the front end of a one-and-one with nine seconds left, the Park had one last chance. But Lake, in a fitting end to the game, missed a trey attempt with two seconds left.

In spite of Francis's big scoring numbers, I thought that the two key players for Wheaton were Samuelson and Luke Peters. I've already said that there should be a CCIW Most Improved Player award and that Mike Stevenson should win it, but Samuelson would be a worthy second-place finisher for that award. Peters may never be the star that his big brother was, but he does a lot of the same things that his elder sibling did in a Wheaton uni, and he does them well.

For NPU, Cobbs was magnificent. He has taken on a much bigger role at the offensive end of the floor over the past couple of weeks, and his 15 points, six rebounds, and four steals don't begin to do justice to how well he played. Aston Francis is an incredibly difficult player to guard, and yet Cobbs picked Francis's pocket one-on-one at midcourt twice last night. As for Francis's shooting ... well, what are you going to do when the guy you're guarding, who is already three inches taller than you, is launching fadeaway trey attempts from NBA range? You can't blame Cobbs for that. All you can do is tip your cap to Francis for making several of those Meadowlark Lemon shots. You certainly can't hold Cobbs responsible for NPU's late-season slide; on the contrary, he's a big reason why the Vikings have been in it right to the end in each of these three losses. I've said this before, but T.J. Cobbs is one of my all-time favorite North Park players. Lake's outside shooting was awful, but he still found a way to make himself useful by fearlessly hurtling down the lane into traffic with that 5'7 frame of his to make things happen. Chris Freeman, who has been languishing at the end of the bench all season long, got the call for heavy minutes from Tom Slyder last night and did not disappoint. He was a real burst of fresh energy for the Vikings at both ends of the floor. Robinson had an off night; as 4samuy said yesterday, one of the great things about Robinson is that he usually doesn't force the issue, but last night he did. He's clearly feeling the pressure of trying to carry the team on his back through this rough patch, and it showed. Nevertheless, how many guys in D3 can give you 22 and 12 (not to mention a 4:0 floor game) on an off night?

Three really tough close losses in a row, and this month is beginning to give me an ulcer. And it's not going to get any easier on Wednesday night in Van Male, either, especially since the Pioneers still have a glimmer of playoff hopes themselves.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

I'm still trying to process how a team can shoot twenty more field-goal attempts than its opponent, not to mention six more free-throw attempts as well, and still lose the game. It takes some mightily wretched shooting for that to happen -- and it happened last night at King.

I forget which game it was now, but I saw that just like two weeks ago somewhere.  Outshot by 20 and still won the game.

[hopefan]

Kiko,

IIT is in the third year of provisional membership so the SOS numbers are irrelevant.  The Scarlet Hawks won't be eligible for NCAA tournament play until 2018-19 at the earliest.  IIT games are countable for opponents. Being provisional and independent makes scheduling a strong schedule pretty difficult.

Thank you.  I saw them on the regional ranking data sheet and assumed that anyone there would be eligible.  Clearly not.

Independent alone would be challenging; provisional I'm sure makes it a triple-lutz rather than just a double.

FWIW   IIT is 5th in Div 1 USCAA power rankings on USCAA site... just about a lock for the 8 team USCAA National Tourney... hoping they and the SLIAC's Iowa Wesleyan (yes, the OTHER IWU) get a shot in that tourney.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Kiko,

IIT is in the third year of provisional membership so the SOS numbers are irrelevant.  The Scarlet Hawks won't be eligible for NCAA tournament play until 2018-19 at the earliest.  IIT games are countable for opponents. Being provisional and independent makes scheduling a strong schedule pretty difficult.

Thank you.  I saw them on the regional ranking data sheet and assumed that anyone there would be eligible.  Clearly not.

Independent alone would be challenging; provisional I'm sure makes it a triple-lutz rather than just a double.

FWIW   IIT is 5th in Div 1 USCAA power rankings on USCAA site... just about a lock for the 8 team USCAA National Tourney... hoping they and the SLIAC's Iowa Wesleyan (yes, the OTHER IWU) get a shot in that tourney.

I thought the "other" IWU was Indiana Wesleyan.

[GoPerry]

I'm still trying to process how a team can shoot twenty more field-goal attempts than its opponent, not to mention six more free-throw attempts as well, and still lose the game. It takes some mightily wretched shooting for that to happen -- and it happened last night at King.

The Vikings did all of the peripheral things necessary to come away with the win. In spite of the fact that they're the worst rebounding team in the league, they outboarded Wheaton, 41-38 (including an incredible 19-7 on the offensive glass), and were the recipients of 14 Wheaton turnovers while only turning it over five times themselves. That all put them in a position to attempt 71 shots to Wheaton's 51, and 20 free throws to Wheaton's 14. And they played good defense, too; in spite of Aston Francis's white Globetrotter exhibition from 25 feet or more, the Sonic Atmospheric Disturbance were under their FG% average in CCIW play at 47%, which is also below what NPU's defense had been allowing in league play. Wheaton really had to work for most of its points.

However, the best word to describe North Park's shooting was, as they used to say in MAD magazine back in the day, blecch. The Vikings were an abysmal 35% from the field, and they somehow found the sub-basement in the Abysmal Building in terms of their shooting from beyond the arc, going 6-33 (18%). This is a team that was ranked second in the nation behind UW-Whitewater in team trey percentage not too many weeks ago. It'd be one thing if every trey that the Vikings attempted came with a Wheaton hand in the shooter's face (didn't happen), or was taken while on the move (didn't happen, either), or if it was the team's less-accurate or less-experienced players who were hoisting 'em up from long distance (also didn't happen). But when four guys who are normally aces from long range -- Jordan Robinson, Colin Lake, Joe Biko, and Billy Kirby -- combine to go 5-26 (19%), what's a coach to do? And on top of that, the 11-20 (55%) performance at the FT line, which is 15% below the NPU season average, just added insult to injury.

In spite of all that, and in spite of the fact that the Vikings never held the lead, they somehow managed to make it a close game.  After trailing by 13 on three widely-separated occasions in the third quarter, they climbed back into a tie at 62-62 with 5:36 to go when Robinson sent a beautiful pass down the lane to a wide-open T.J. Cobbs under the basket for an easy layup. From that point onward, however, the Vikings would go an exasperating 2-13 from the field (including 0-7 from treyland, almost all of those seven shots being open looks) and 1-4 from the line, as I found myself coming close to breaking the plastic chairback in front of me in half. Aston Francis restored the Wheaton lead with a trey from the right elbow that would've been generous by NBA standards, and then, after Cobbs got another layup to knock the Wheaton lead back down to one, Francis hit the one that really stung, the trey about which Mark Erickson posted earlier today. It was a fadeaway (like almost all of Francis's shots) from 25 feet out on the right, in front of the Wheaton bench, and with Cobbs bearing down on him the shot was well off-target by two feet to the right ... except that it banked in. There's no way in the world you're going to convince me that Francis intended to go bank on that shot. Don't get me wrong, he's quite obviously a good shooter. But sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

(I was much more impressed by the trey he made at the 9:41 mark of the second half, in which he was literally only three steps over the midcourt line when he launched one that caught nothing but net.)

Still, NPU never quit fighting. After Francis made his bank deposit, Ricky Samuelson made a shot to push the lead back up to six in the waning minutes. That led to this sequence:

\GOOD! JUMPER by Samuelson, Ricky                02:27  70-64  H 6
FOUL by Peters, Luke (P3T6)                     02:06              MISSED FT SHOT by Biko, Joe
                                                02:06              REBOUND (OFF) by (DEADBALL)
                                                02:06              MISSED FT SHOT by Biko, Joe
                                                02:06              REBOUND (OFF) by Brown, Darius
                                                02:06              SUB IN : Kirby, Billy
                                                02:06              SUB OUT: Brown, Darius
                                                01:56              MISSED 3 PTR by Biko, Joe
                                                01:56              REBOUND (OFF) by (TEAM)
                                                01:54              SUB IN : Brown, Darius
                                                01:54              SUB OUT: Kirby, Billy
                                                01:37              MISSED 3 PTR by Lake, Colin
                                                01:37              REBOUND (OFF) by Cobbs, T.J.
                                                01:35              MISSED TIP-IN by Cobbs, T.J.
                                                01:35              REBOUND (OFF) by Cobbs, T.J.
REBOUND (DEF) by Samuelson, Ricky               01:34              MISSED JUMPER by Robinson, Jordan

The Vikings had the ball for 53 seconds, and got nothing out of it. That fruitless possession was marked by two missed FT attempts by Biko, a wide-open missed trey attempt by Biko from the top of the key, a missed midrange jumper by Robinson, and a missed tip-in attempt by Cobbs. There was an incredible amount of hustle in that 53 seconds by the Vikings, but it ended up being empty hustle.

In the final minute Wheaton did look like it was trying to give the Vikings one last chance. Aston Francis threw a length-of-the-floor inbounds pass that was picked off by Lake at the far baseline, and then Francis fouled Robinson with 21 seconds left after the NPU star had grabbed an errant Kirby trey attempt from the left corner. Robinson, in an echo of Wednesday night's double-OT loss at Carthage, only made one of the two FTs. Still, that got the Vikes to within three, and after Francis missed the front end of a one-and-one with nine seconds left, the Park had one last chance. But Lake, in a fitting end to the game, missed a trey attempt with two seconds left.

In spite of Francis's big scoring numbers, I thought that the two key players for Wheaton were Samuelson and Luke Peters. I've already said that there should be a CCIW Most Improved Player award and that Mike Stevenson should win it, but Samuelson would be a worthy second-place finisher for that award. Peters may never be the star that his big brother was, but he does a lot of the same things that his elder sibling did in a Wheaton uni, and he does them well.

For NPU, Cobbs was magnificent. He has taken on a much bigger role at the offensive end of the floor over the past couple of weeks, and his 15 points, six rebounds, and four steals don't begin to do justice to how well he played. Aston Francis is an incredibly difficult player to guard, and yet Cobbs picked Francis's pocket one-on-one at midcourt twice last night. As for Francis's shooting ... well, what are you going to do when the guy you're guarding, who is already three inches taller than you, is launching fadeaway trey attempts from NBA range? You can't blame Cobbs for that. All you can do is tip your cap to Francis for making several of those Meadowlark Lemon shots. You certainly can't hold Cobbs responsible for NPU's late-season slide; on the contrary, he's a big reason why the Vikings have been in it right to the end in each of these three losses. I've said this before, but T.J. Cobbs is one of my all-time favorite North Park players. Lake's outside shooting was awful, but he still found a way to make himself useful by fearlessly hurtling down the lane into traffic with that 5'7 frame of his to make things happen. Chris Freeman, who has been languishing at the end of the bench all season long, got the call for heavy minutes from Tom Slyder last night and did not disappoint. He was a real burst of fresh energy for the Vikings at both ends of the floor. Robinson had an off night; as 4samuy said yesterday, one of the great things about Robinson is that he usually doesn't force the issue, but last night he did. He's clearly feeling the pressure of trying to carry the team on his back through this rough patch, and it showed. Nevertheless, how many guys in D3 can give you 22 and 12 (not to mention a 4:0 floor game) on an off night?

Three really tough close losses in a row, and this month is beginning to give me an ulcer. And it's not going to get any easier on Wednesday night in Van Male, either, especially since the Pioneers still have a glimmer of playoff hopes themselves.

Nice backhanded swipe there Gregory.  You're obviously not 'tipping your cap' in any sincere way by referring to Aston Francis' performance as "white Globetrotters" or "Meadowlark Lemon" shots which basically says you don't take his game seriously.

I understand being upset about NPU's poor shooting performance.  I can even accept believing a hard working Wheaton team had nothing to do with the outcome(I disagree).  But if you don't wish to acknowledge the legitimacy of Aston Francis' talent, and his shooting range, then why not either say so or stay silent about him entirely?

[WUPHF]

I thought the "other" IWU was Indiana Wesleyan.

It was until the the Mount Pleasant Institute decided a few years ago that they needed to try to outrun their financial problems with graduate-level evening programs that have yet to develop.

[Gregory Sager]

Nice backhanded swipe there Gregory.  You're obviously not 'tipping your cap' in any sincere way by referring to Aston Francis' performance as "white Globetrotters" or "Meadowlark Lemon" shots which basically says you don't take his game seriously.

Wrong, GoPerry. Completely, utterly wrong. On the contrary, it's a huge compliment.

This should've been crystal clear when I said that T.J. Cobbs, who is about as highly-accomplished a defender as there is in this league, was basically put in a "just tip your cap" situation by Francis's shooting. If somebody says that a player rendered an outstanding defender powerless to stop him, how could that be anything other than high praise?

I understand being upset about NPU's poor shooting performance.  I can even accept believing a hard working Wheaton team had nothing to do with the outcome(I disagree).  But if you don't wish to acknowledge the legitimacy of Aston Francis' talent, and his shooting range, then why not either say so or stay silent about him entirely?

First of all, I didn't say that "a hard-working Wheaton team had nothing to do with the outcome." I made it a point, after all, to talk about how well Samuelson and Peters played, and I paid plenty of compliments to Francis ("an incredibly difficult player to guard") as well. But this stuff about not acknowledging the legitimacy of Aston Francis's talent and shooting range? For crying out loud, how do you deem "white Globetrotter" as an insult? It's about as high an accolade as anyone can give to a basketball player, because it implies that a player is not only one of the best basketball players on the planet -- if you've never seen the Globetrotters you may not appreciate just how athletic and skilled they are -- but also applies a fair bit of showmanship and the ability to make improbable shots (always a Globetrotter specialty) to that skill and athleticism.

I used to see the Globetrotters every year when I was a kid when they came to town. It was always a high point of the year. They were amazing basketball players and entertainers. Although I haven't seen them in years, I'll bet that they still are.

You're just way, way off on this one, GoPerry.

[kiko]

Kiko,

IIT is in the third year of provisional membership so the SOS numbers are irrelevant.  The Scarlet Hawks won't be eligible for NCAA tournament play until 2018-19 at the earliest.  IIT games are countable for opponents. Being provisional and independent makes scheduling a strong schedule pretty difficult.

Thank you.  I saw them on the regional ranking data sheet and assumed that anyone there would be eligible.  Clearly not.

Independent alone would be challenging; provisional I'm sure makes it a triple-lutz rather than just a double.

FWIW   IIT is 5th in Div 1 USCAA power rankings on USCAA site... just about a lock for the 8 team USCAA National Tourney... hoping they and the SLIAC's Iowa Wesleyan (yes, the OTHER IWU) get a shot in that tourney.

I thought the "other" IWU was Indiana Wesleyan.

Nah.  They don't sponsor an opera program.

[GoPerry]

Nice backhanded swipe there Gregory.  You're obviously not 'tipping your cap' in any sincere way by referring to Aston Francis' performance as "white Globetrotters" or "Meadowlark Lemon" shots which basically says you don't take his game seriously.

Wrong, GoPerry. Completely, utterly wrong. On the contrary, it's a huge compliment.

This should've been crystal clear when I said that T.J. Cobbs, who is about as highly-accomplished a defender as there is in this league, was basically put in a "just tip your cap" situation by Francis's shooting. If somebody says that a player rendered an outstanding defender powerless to stop him, how could that be anything other than high praise?

I understand being upset about NPU's poor shooting performance.  I can even accept believing a hard working Wheaton team had nothing to do with the outcome(I disagree).  But if you don't wish to acknowledge the legitimacy of Aston Francis' talent, and his shooting range, then why not either say so or stay silent about him entirely?

First of all, I didn't say that "a hard-working Wheaton team had nothing to do with the outcome." I made it a point, after all, to talk about how well Samuelson and Peters played, and I paid plenty of compliments to Francis ("an incredibly difficult player to guard") as well. But this stuff about not acknowledging the legitimacy of Aston Francis's talent and shooting range? For crying out loud, how do you deem "white Globetrotter" as an insult? It's about as high an accolade as anyone can give to a basketball player, because it implies that a player is not only one of the best basketball players on the planet -- if you've never seen the Globetrotters you may not appreciate just how athletic and skilled they are -- but also applies a fair bit of showmanship and the ability to make improbable shots (always a Globetrotter specialty) to that skill and athleticism.

I used to see the Globetrotters every year when I was a kid when they came to town. It was always a high point of the year. They were amazing basketball players and entertainers. Although I haven't seen them in years, I'll bet that they still are.

You're just way, way off on this one, GoPerry.

I saw the Harlem Globetrotters live too.  Yes, they were all legitimately skilled players in their own right but as Globetrotters, they are best known for playing exhibition games, performing trick shots and other antics playing to the crowd - i.e, not serious basketball.  So c'mon- you think any seriously competitive player like Aston Francis, Jordan Robinson, Juwan Henry would relish being compared to a MeadowLark Lemon or any Harlem Globetrotter and take that as a genuine compliment – like that's the first metaphor that comes to mind?  That's a real stretch.

I know you gave some other praise of Francis, (and Peters and Samuelson) which is why the reference seemed incongruent to me. But you say you meant it as a compliment.  So ok.   

[Mr. Ypsi]

GoPerry, while today's Globetrotters are probably not good enough to play in the NBA (hard to believe they would spurn the $millions in today's NBA ), in Meadowlark's day he probably earned MORE with the Globetrotters than he could have in pro basketball (and probably had far more fun doing it! )  Had he chosen to go that route, I have zero doubt he would be in the NBA HoF.  To be compared to Meadowlark Lemon is a HUGE honor (and probably a greater one than ANY D3 player ever has truly deserved).

[Gregory Sager]

I saw the Harlem Globetrotters live too.  Yes, they were all legitimately skilled players in their own right but as Globetrotters, they are best known for playing exhibition games, performing trick shots and other antics playing to the crowd - i.e, not serious basketball.

Anybody who followed the Globetrotters back in the day knew full well that those guys could play serious basketball when called upon to do so. Heck, this doesn't even have to be a "get off my lawn" old codger reference; the last time that the Globetrotters were allowed to play an NCAA team, before the NCAA changed the rules about playing against professional teams, they beat the defending national D1 champion Syracuse Orange by 13 in the Carrier Dome back in 2003-04. Syracuse made it to the Elite Eight that season.

So c'mon- you think any seriously competitive player like Aston Francis, Jordan Robinson, Juwan Henry would relish being compared to a MeadowLark Lemon or any Harlem Globetrotter and take that as a genuine compliment – like that's the first metaphor that comes to mind?  That's a real stretch.

I can't speak as to how any of those three players regard the Harlem Globetrotters. This is keeping in mind that they're from a completely different generation than me. I doubt that any of them could distinguish Meadowlark Lemon from Liz Lemon. All I know is that when I see a guy make shots like Francis makes, the Globetrotters spring to mind -- because, first and foremost, you need to be a good basketball player to be a Globetrotter (that's still true today, although most likely to a far less degree when compared to other pros than when I was a kid); second, they're pros that play basketball for a living year-round; and, third, as I said in the original post, those kinds of shots were and are staples of the Globetrotters' repertoire.

I know you gave some other praise of Francis, (and Peters and Samuelson) which is why the reference seemed incongruent to me. But you say you meant it as a compliment.  So ok.   

Context matters. Why would I praise Francis's ability throughout the post and then counteract it by intending "white Globetrotter" to be read as an insult?

GoPerry, while today's Globetrotters are probably not good enough to play in the NBA (hard to believe they would spurn the $millions in today's NBA ), in Meadowlark's day he probably earned MORE with the Globetrotters than he could have in pro basketball (and probably had far more fun doing it! )  Had he chosen to go that route, I have zero doubt he would be in the NBA HoF.  To be compared to Meadowlark Lemon is a HUGE honor (and probably a greater one than ANY D3 player ever has truly deserved).

Yes. This. Absolutely. Thank you, Chuck.

Wilt Chamberlain and Connie Hawkins, among other NBA stars and Basketball Hall of Famers, played for the Globetrotters. Back in the day there were a lot of great ballplayers who played for the Globetrotters, given that the NBA (and, for a while, the ABA) could only absorb just so many good players. (This was before the days when it became routine for college basketball players who were not quite NBA level to pack their bags after school and head to Europe or South America or Australia to play pro ball.) Considering that the Globetrotters typically pursued good (often undersized) D2 and NAIA players for the most part, and then spent 365 days a year on the road together, drilling and developing skills that went well beyond how to pants a referee or throw a bucketful of confetti or hit a free throw while facing away from the basket, yeah, their basketball ability was undeniable.

[AppletonRocks]

I'm still trying to process how a team can shoot twenty more field-goal attempts than its opponent, not to mention six more free-throw attempts as well, and still lose the game. It takes some mightily wretched shooting for that to happen -- and it happened last night at King.

The Vikings did all of the peripheral things necessary to come away with the win. In spite of the fact that they're the worst rebounding team in the league, they outboarded Wheaton, 41-38 (including an incredible 19-7 on the offensive glass), and were the recipients of 14 Wheaton turnovers while only turning it over five times themselves. That all put them in a position to attempt 71 shots to Wheaton's 51, and 20 free throws to Wheaton's 14. And they played good defense, too; in spite of Aston Francis's white Globetrotter exhibition from 25 feet or more, the Sonic Atmospheric Disturbance were under their FG% average in CCIW play at 47%, which is also below what NPU's defense had been allowing in league play. Wheaton really had to work for most of its points.

However, the best word to describe North Park's shooting was, as they used to say in MAD magazine back in the day, blecch. The Vikings were an abysmal 35% from the field, and they somehow found the sub-basement in the Abysmal Building in terms of their shooting from beyond the arc, going 6-33 (18%). This is a team that was ranked second in the nation behind UW-Whitewater in team trey percentage not too many weeks ago. It'd be one thing if every trey that the Vikings attempted came with a Wheaton hand in the shooter's face (didn't happen), or was taken while on the move (didn't happen, either), or if it was the team's less-accurate or less-experienced players who were hoisting 'em up from long distance (also didn't happen). But when four guys who are normally aces from long range -- Jordan Robinson, Colin Lake, Joe Biko, and Billy Kirby -- combine to go 5-26 (19%), what's a coach to do? And on top of that, the 11-20 (55%) performance at the FT line, which is 15% below the NPU season average, just added insult to injury.

In spite of all that, and in spite of the fact that the Vikings never held the lead, they somehow managed to make it a close game.  After trailing by 13 on three widely-separated occasions in the third quarter, they climbed back into a tie at 62-62 with 5:36 to go when Robinson sent a beautiful pass down the lane to a wide-open T.J. Cobbs under the basket for an easy layup. From that point onward, however, the Vikings would go an exasperating 2-13 from the field (including 0-7 from treyland, almost all of those seven shots being open looks) and 1-4 from the line, as I found myself coming close to breaking the plastic chairback in front of me in half. Aston Francis restored the Wheaton lead with a trey from the right elbow that would've been generous by NBA standards, and then, after Cobbs got another layup to knock the Wheaton lead back down to one, Francis hit the one that really stung, the trey about which Mark Erickson posted earlier today. It was a fadeaway (like almost all of Francis's shots) from 25 feet out on the right, in front of the Wheaton bench, and with Cobbs bearing down on him the shot was well off-target by two feet to the right ... except that it banked in. There's no way in the world you're going to convince me that Francis intended to go bank on that shot. Don't get me wrong, he's quite obviously a good shooter. But sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

(I was much more impressed by the trey he made at the 9:41 mark of the second half, in which he was literally only three steps over the midcourt line when he launched one that caught nothing but net.)

Still, NPU never quit fighting. After Francis made his bank deposit, Ricky Samuelson made a shot to push the lead back up to six in the waning minutes. That led to this sequence:

\GOOD! JUMPER by Samuelson, Ricky                02:27  70-64  H 6
FOUL by Peters, Luke (P3T6)                     02:06              MISSED FT SHOT by Biko, Joe
                                                02:06              REBOUND (OFF) by (DEADBALL)
                                                02:06              MISSED FT SHOT by Biko, Joe
                                                02:06              REBOUND (OFF) by Brown, Darius
                                                02:06              SUB IN : Kirby, Billy
                                                02:06              SUB OUT: Brown, Darius
                                                01:56              MISSED 3 PTR by Biko, Joe
                                                01:56              REBOUND (OFF) by (TEAM)
                                                01:54              SUB IN : Brown, Darius
                                                01:54              SUB OUT: Kirby, Billy
                                                01:37              MISSED 3 PTR by Lake, Colin
                                                01:37              REBOUND (OFF) by Cobbs, T.J.
                                                01:35              MISSED TIP-IN by Cobbs, T.J.
                                                01:35              REBOUND (OFF) by Cobbs, T.J.
REBOUND (DEF) by Samuelson, Ricky               01:34              MISSED JUMPER by Robinson, Jordan

The Vikings had the ball for 53 seconds, and got nothing out of it. That fruitless possession was marked by two missed FT attempts by Biko, a wide-open missed trey attempt by Biko from the top of the key, a missed midrange jumper by Robinson, and a missed tip-in attempt by Cobbs. There was an incredible amount of hustle in that 53 seconds by the Vikings, but it ended up being empty hustle.

In the final minute Wheaton did look like it was trying to give the Vikings one last chance. Aston Francis threw a length-of-the-floor inbounds pass that was picked off by Lake at the far baseline, and then Francis fouled Robinson with 21 seconds left after the NPU star had grabbed an errant Kirby trey attempt from the left corner. Robinson, in an echo of Wednesday night's double-OT loss at Carthage, only made one of the two FTs. Still, that got the Vikes to within three, and after Francis missed the front end of a one-and-one with nine seconds left, the Park had one last chance. But Lake, in a fitting end to the game, missed a trey attempt with two seconds left.

In spite of Francis's big scoring numbers, I thought that the two key players for Wheaton were Samuelson and Luke Peters. I've already said that there should be a CCIW Most Improved Player award and that Mike Stevenson should win it, but Samuelson would be a worthy second-place finisher for that award. Peters may never be the star that his big brother was, but he does a lot of the same things that his elder sibling did in a Wheaton uni, and he does them well.

For NPU, Cobbs was magnificent. He has taken on a much bigger role at the offensive end of the floor over the past couple of weeks, and his 15 points, six rebounds, and four steals don't begin to do justice to how well he played. Aston Francis is an incredibly difficult player to guard, and yet Cobbs picked Francis's pocket one-on-one at midcourt twice last night. As for Francis's shooting ... well, what are you going to do when the guy you're guarding, who is already three inches taller than you, is launching fadeaway trey attempts from NBA range? You can't blame Cobbs for that. All you can do is tip your cap to Francis for making several of those Meadowlark Lemon shots. You certainly can't hold Cobbs responsible for NPU's late-season slide; on the contrary, he's a big reason why the Vikings have been in it right to the end in each of these three losses. I've said this before, but T.J. Cobbs is one of my all-time favorite North Park players. Lake's outside shooting was awful, but he still found a way to make himself useful by fearlessly hurtling down the lane into traffic with that 5'7 frame of his to make things happen. Chris Freeman, who has been languishing at the end of the bench all season long, got the call for heavy minutes from Tom Slyder last night and did not disappoint. He was a real burst of fresh energy for the Vikings at both ends of the floor. Robinson had an off night; as 4samuy said yesterday, one of the great things about Robinson is that he usually doesn't force the issue, but last night he did. He's clearly feeling the pressure of trying to carry the team on his back through this rough patch, and it showed. Nevertheless, how many guys in D3 can give you 22 and 12 (not to mention a 4:0 floor game) on an off night?

Three really tough close losses in a row, and this month is beginning to give me an ulcer. And it's not going to get any easier on Wednesday night in Van Male, either, especially since the Pioneers still have a glimmer of playoff hopes themselves.

I warned you CCIW vets about Carroll and Carthage.  Read this whole post, War and Peace has a better ending.