MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[robertgoulet]

North Park's roster is up.

This seems to be missing a name, Greg.

No, unfortunately it's not.

In a small world of small worlds, the open gym I used to go to when I first moved down here to Austin was at Waldorf...and Toby Marek used to be at those. Not that he'd know me from any other random person on the street at this point!

[AndOne]

North Park's roster is up.

This seems to be missing a name, Greg.

No, unfortunately it's not.

Nobody should really be surprised by his omission. 📚

[Gregory Sager]

North Park's roster is up.

This seems to be missing a name, Greg.

No, unfortunately it's not.

In a small world of small worlds, the open gym I used to go to when I first moved down here to Austin was at Waldorf...and Toby Marek used to be at those. Not that he'd know me from any other random person on the street at this point!

That truly is a weird coincidence.

[AndOne]

North Park's roster is up.

LOTS of names. The majority of them seem new, with some obscure returnees mixed in. The only readily recognizable name is that of Matt Szuba who I sense could very well be NPU's best player this season.

I love transfer (from renowned basketball powerhouse Northwest Kansas Technical College) Malachi Rocquemore's reason for choosing NPU!   
Being from Buffalo, NY, I can understand the allure of the 2nd city (I know, I know, technically the 3rd), but it would have been nice for him to include an accolade about NPU! 🤫

[AndOne]

It will be interesting to see the various sizes of the squads who report for the first day of official practice for the various conference member schools, especially the ratio mix of freshmen & transfers vs returnees.
Also, how many are still around to populate the opening game rosters. 🤷‍♂️

[Mr. Ypsi]

North Park's roster is up.

LOTS of names. The majority of them seem new, with some obscure returnees mixed in. The only readily recognizable name is that of Matt Szuba who I sense could very well be NPU's best player this season.

I love transfer (from renowned basketball powerhouse Northwest Kansas Technical College) Malachi Rocquemore's reason for choosing NPU!   
Being from Buffalo, NY, I can understand the allure of the 2nd city (I know, I know, technically the 3rd), but it would have been nice for him to include an accolade about NPU! 🤫

And predicted to fall to 4th within a decade - Houston is gaining rapidly (don't know if Harvey interrupted that trend or not).  Since the Improv group never changed their name to 'Third City', I won't hold my breath on a name change!

(It could be worse - Detroit was #5 in 1950; they are no longer in the top 20!)

[iwu70]

Practices starting next week.  Looking forward to a great season of CCIW hoops.

'70

[Gregory Sager]

North Park's roster is up.

LOTS of names. The majority of them seem new, with some obscure returnees mixed in. The only readily recognizable name is that of Matt Szuba who I sense could very well be NPU's best player this season.

"Obscure" and  not "readily recognizable" only if you're not paying attention. Aaron Reed played in all 25 games for NPU last season and started seven of them, averaging 15 minutes per game. Veggie Tangen played in 20 games, started 11 of them, and averaged 16 mpg. Antonio Gardner played in 19 games for NPU and Toby Marek got into 15 of them.

Billy Kirby called it a day due to a recurring hip injury. The Vikings will miss him badly, for a lot of reasons. Jack Gurvey just didn't want to play anymore.

I love transfer (from renowned basketball powerhouse Northwest Kansas Technical College) Malachi Rocquemore's reason for choosing NPU!   
Being from Buffalo, NY, I can understand the allure of the 2nd city (I know, I know, technically the 3rd), but it would have been nice for him to include an accolade about NPU! 🤫

Good grief, Mark.

[Gregory Sager]

North Park's roster is up.

LOTS of names. The majority of them seem new, with some obscure returnees mixed in. The only readily recognizable name is that of Matt Szuba who I sense could very well be NPU's best player this season.

I love transfer (from renowned basketball powerhouse Northwest Kansas Technical College) Malachi Rocquemore's reason for choosing NPU!   
Being from Buffalo, NY, I can understand the allure of the 2nd city (I know, I know, technically the 3rd), but it would have been nice for him to include an accolade about NPU! 🤫

And predicted to fall to 4th within a decade - Houston is gaining rapidly (don't know if Harvey interrupted that trend or not).  Since the Improv group never changed their name to 'Third City', I won't hold my breath on a name change!

Chicago's nickname did not originate due to the city's status as the population runner-up among American cities, although it was popularized as such following the 1889 annexations of much of the surrounding townships (and explicitly given the nickname once and for all in the American popular imagination thanks to A.J. Liebling's 1952 hatchet job, *Chicago: The Second City*).

As Harold Mayer's and Richard Wade's definitive history of the city, *Chicago: Growth of a Metropolis* (1969), states, the city's nickname originated in the wake of its rebirth from the ashes back in the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century. In other words, it was originally called "the Second City" because it is literally the second city to stand on the spot where the two branches of the Chicago River coalesce and meet Lake Michigan, the first having burned down in 1871. Something to do with an Irishwoman's cow, from what I understand.

[AndOne]

North Park's roster is up.

LOTS of names. The majority of them seem new, with some obscure returnees mixed in. The only readily recognizable name is that of Matt Szuba who I sense could very well be NPU's best player this season.

"Obscure" and  not "readily recognizable" only if you're not paying attention. Aaron Reed played in all 25 games for NPU last season and started seven of them, averaging 15 minutes per game. Veggie Tangen played in 20 games, started 11 of them, and averaged 16 mpg. Antonio Gardner played in 19 games for NPU and Toby Marek got into 15 of them.

Billy Kirby called it a day due to a recurring hip injury. The Vikings will miss him badly, for a lot of reasons. Jack Gurvey just didn't want to play anymore.

Sorry, Greg, but even to most close observers of the CCIW all four returning players you reference above strongly qualify as pretty "obscure," and not "readily recognizable" by most fans. Lake, Kirby, and Szuba were really last season's only Vikings that were normally in the forefront of any discussions relative to NPU games.
Due to your close association with the team and your broadcast duties, such certainly is not the case with you. However, in this particular case, I truly believe you are the exception.

[Gregory Sager]

Disagree. A close observer of this league should be familiar with at least the names of all of the regulars on each of the nine teams. And Reed and Tangen, especially, were regulars who played in most or all of NPU's contests and were part-time starters.

[AndOne]

I love transfer (from renowned basketball powerhouse Northwest Kansas Technical College) Malachi Rocquemore's reason for choosing NPU!   
Being from Buffalo, NY, I can understand the allure of the 2nd city (I know, I know, technically the 3rd), but it would have been nice for him to include an accolade about NPU! 🤫

Good grief, Mark.

Come on Greg. Loosen up a little. You honestly don't see even a little humor in Rocquemore's saying the reason he chose NPU was because he "wanted to check out the Windy City," with nothing whatsoever being said about the merits of NPU itself? 

[AndOne]

Disagree. A close observer of this league should be familiar with at least the names of all of the regulars on each of the nine teams. And Reed and Tangen, especially, were regulars who played in most or all of NPU's contests and were part-time starters.

I would submit that it's not solely the fact the players were in the regular rotation or even that some were part-time starters that identifies them as "readily recognizable." Instead, those players who can be said to enjoy a high level of recognition are usually those who either appear among the leaders in one or more statistical categories, or that have developed a league wide reputation for a particular non-statistical skill such as being a defensive stalwart. 

[Gregory Sager]

I love transfer (from renowned basketball powerhouse Northwest Kansas Technical College) Malachi Rocquemore's reason for choosing NPU!   
Being from Buffalo, NY, I can understand the allure of the 2nd city (I know, I know, technically the 3rd), but it would have been nice for him to include an accolade about NPU! 🤫

Good grief, Mark.

Come on Greg. Loosen up a little. You honestly don't see even a little humor in Rocquemore's saying the reason he chose NPU was because he "wanted to check out the Windy City," with nothing whatsoever being said about the merits of NPU itself? 

No, not really. There are dozens and dozens of player bios on the NPU athletics pages, and a large number of them say essentially the same thing: I came to North Park because of the city. Chicago is a big selling point for NPU. That's hardly an indictment of the school.

I'll bet that there are any number of schools out there that have player bios that name something other than the merits of the school itself (the location, the coaches, the chance for playing time, etc.) as the selling point. You can't necessarily expect every Vikings newbie to wax rhapsodic about a school that he or she has never attended before, especially if it's an out-of-state student-athlete such as Roquemore who had probably only visited the school once prior to his arriving in August and being handed the player biography form to fill out during the Orientation Week team meeting.

In other words, it's too commonplace and too easily explained to be funny. It's ho-hum, not ha-ha. It just looks to me like you were trying to stir some crap with that comment. Now, on the other hand, your joke about Buffalo was genuinely funny -- and I say that as someone who was born in Buffalo and who still holds a place in his heart for the Queen City. Bills fan for life!

Disagree. A close observer of this league should be familiar with at least the names of all of the regulars on each of the nine teams. And Reed and Tangen, especially, were regulars who played in most or all of NPU's contests and were part-time starters.

I would submit that it's not solely the fact the players were in the regular rotation or even that some were part-time starters that identifies them as "readily recognizable." Instead, those players who can be said to enjoy a high level of recognition are usually those who either appear among the leaders in one or more statistical categories, or that have developed a league wide reputation for a particular non-statistical skill such as being a defensive stalwart. 

I don't think that there's any qualifiers at all. I think that if you're a close observer of the league you know the names of the players who are getting the steady playing time for each team in the league, regardless of their level of competence. It's Box Scores Analysis 101.

If you were to ask me the names of the full- or part-time starters for, say, Carroll last February I would've rattled them off in fifteen seconds or less. That's what following the league at the close-observer level (as opposed to the casual-fan level) is all about.

[Titan Q]

Come on Greg. Loosen up a little. You honestly don't see even a little humor in Rocquemore's saying the reason he chose NPU was because he "wanted to check out the Windy City," with nothing whatsoever being said about the merits of NPU itself? 

It seems pretty clear the kid is just having some fun with the bio Q&A...

https://athletics.northpark.edu/roster.aspx?rp_id=3238

Q: What is an interesting fact about yourself?
A: "People say I am Kevin Hart's twin."

Q: Why did you choose North Park?
A:"I wanted to check out the Windy City."


I think you might be reading something into his response that isn't there.