MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Gregory Sager]

Thanks, Bully. They throw me a few shekels here and there.

[iwu70]

Greg, I take your point.  The Titans have not been dominant.  But, as a greenie, of course, I fantasize about "ghost wins" and am always in denial about "ghost losses."  Good seasons are often put together with a number of very close games -- tipping positive or negative on the basis of a very few key plays.  Seems that's the Titan's fate so far this year.  They surely let Wheaton slip away, though Augie, as I said earlier, played better in the final few minutes at home at Carver, leading to the 67-60 loss by IWU.  Seems no one is really going to be dominant this year and consistently blow out the opponents, surely not in most CCIW games.

I welcome men's volleyball to the CCIW -- and hope IWU gets on board with it at some point too.  IWU's women's program has been grand, very fun to watch and highly successful. 

IWU'70

[Gregory Sager]

North Central 83
Aurora 73

[WUPHF]

The Platteville box score stats must be malfunctioning because it says Francis has 54 points.

A malfunction right?

[Gregory Sager]

Wheaton 99
UW-Platteville 77

Forget about breaking that death grip that Aston Francis has on the POTW award, CCIW players, at least for another week. He had 54 points tonight.

[duckfan41]

The Platteville box score stats must be malfunctioning because it says Francis has 54 points.

A malfunction right?

He had every bit of 54 points unfortunately for the Pioneers. 16-27 from the field, 7-15 from three and a perfect 15-15 from the free throw line.

[Gregory Sager]

Francis was really efficient tonight. He shot 16-27 (.593) from the field, 7-15 (.467) from long range, and a perfect 15-15 from the charity stripe. By contrast, his teammates collectively shot 15-36 (.417) from the field, 3-11 (.272) from long range, and a solid 12-15 (.800) from the line.

In the first half (I don't know about the second, as UWP's camera operator turned the sound off on his camera at halftime), the UWP student section was chanting, "One-man team! One-man team!" at Francis every time that he touched the ball. And the more that they did it, the more Francis burned their Pioneers. As a student section, you have to know when you're being counter-productive and to back off and try taunting somebody else.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

I had some misgivings about NPU adding the sport, given that, of the eight sports for which I already do play-by-play, women's volleyball is by far the most difficult to call. But when I shared my trepidation with North Park's new head men's volleyball coach about calling his team's matches, he assured me that calling men's volleyball is much easier than calling women's volleyball. That's because there typically aren't long volleys in the men's version like there are in women's volleyball -- men are too tall, jump too high, and are too powerful, so points tend to be scored pretty quickly.

Does Jay call women's volleyball for Wash U?

When I call volleyball (mainly for Navy), I treat it like tennis. Let it play out without saying anything unless I have to in the middle of the play. There are times I might say more, but I try and limit it as it is more interesting to watch.

[Gregory Sager]

I was impressed by what North Central did tonight in the airplane hangar. The Cards couldn't make a bucket to save their lives in the first four minutes of the game, while Aurora was running them out of the gym to the tune of an 11-0 start. But the Cards didn't flinch; instead, they imposed their will upon the much smaller Spartans by slowing the game down and forcing a halfcourt pace, which the Spartans are not equipped to handle against a bigger team. The change of pace forced them to lose their shooting rhythm from downtown, and, where North Park was able to find seams in the NCC defense and drive to the rim on Saturday, the Spartans instead just put their heads down and drove right into the chests of the Cardinals. That charge-a-thon really racked up a lot of first-half fouls for Aurora and took the steam out of the Spartans. NCC caught up with them at 23-23 with 6:17 to go in the half, went ahead for good at 29-26 on a Blaise Meredith trey with four minutes to go, and never looked back from there.

The Cardinals are still plagued by inconsistent defense, as the Spartans shot an even 50% on the night both from the field as a whole and from downtown, but the much bigger hosts clobbered Aurora so badly on the glass (44-24, including 19-7 in offensive rebounds) that it didn't really make a difference. Connor Raridon (23 and 9) was very solid, while Meredith fouled out with an even 20 points. Matt Cappelletti had an 11 and 13 double-double.

NCC made its first 22 free throws of the game, prompting me to look up the D3 team record for most FTs made without a miss to refresh my memory. (The Cards didn't get close, as Albany set the record by going 28-28 against Potsdam State in a 1994 game.) They ended up the night 24-26 (.923), which is still crazy good.

North Central and Wheaton should provide us with their usual barnburner on Saturday night.

[WUPHF]

He had every bit of 54 points unfortunately for the Pioneers. 16-27 from the field, 7-15 from three and a perfect 15-15 from the free throw line.

Poetic justice maybe for the fact that Platteville had the Wheaton mascot listed as Thunders plural on the live stream.

[Gregory Sager]

Perhaps that's because the UWP folks think that Aston Francis looks like a clean-cut version of the late, lamented lead guitarist of the New York Dolls:

[Mr. Ypsi]

He had every bit of 54 points unfortunately for the Pioneers. 16-27 from the field, 7-15 from three and a perfect 15-15 from the free throw line.

Poetic justice maybe for the fact that Platteville had the Wheaton mascot listed as Thunders plural on the live stream.

Would make my dog hate Wheaton even more.  She's terrified by Thunder; Thunders would totally blow her mind!

[WUPHF]

Applauded you guys already today.

Where is that Aston Francis button?

[lmitzel]

I was impressed by what North Central did tonight in the airplane hangar. The Cards couldn't make a bucket to save their lives in the first four minutes of the game, while Aurora was running them out of the gym to the tune of an 11-0 start. But the Cards didn't flinch; instead, they imposed their will upon the much smaller Spartans by slowing the game down and forcing a halfcourt pace, which the Spartans are not equipped to handle against a bigger team. The change of pace forced them to lose their shooting rhythm from downtown, and, where North Park was able to find seams in the NCC defense and drive to the rim on Saturday, the Spartans instead just put their heads down and drove right into the chests of the Cardinals. That charge-a-thon really racked up a lot of first-half fouls for Aurora and took the steam out of the Spartans. NCC caught up with them at 23-23 with 6:17 to go in the half, went ahead for good at 29-26 on a Blaise Meredith trey with four minutes to go, and never looked back from there.

The Cardinals are still plagued by inconsistent defense, as the Spartans shot an even 50% on the night both from the field as a whole and from downtown, but the much bigger hosts clobbered Aurora so badly on the glass (44-24, including 19-7 in offensive rebounds) that it didn't really make a difference. Connor Raridon (23 and 9) was very solid, while Meredith fouled out with an even 20 points. Matt Cappelletti had an 11 and 13 double-double.

NCC made its first 22 free throws of the game, prompting me to look up the D3 team record for most FTs made without a miss to refresh my memory. (The Cards didn't get close, as Albany set the record by going 28-28 against Potsdam State in a 1994 game.) They ended up the night 24-26 (.923), which is still crazy good.

North Central and Wheaton should provide us with their usual barnburner on Saturday night.

It being crazy good still didn't make those of us at the table any less upset when Aiden Chang clanked that 23rd free throw. My dad even texted me saying he blew the perfect game with 2 outs in the 9th (he actually said 8th, but I'm assuming he meant the 9th).

I became aware of the Francis thing scrolling through Twitter around halftime and seeing Ryken's Rowdies tweet out that with like 3 minutes to go in the first half, Francis was leading Platteville 28-26, then peeked in periodically as time allowed in the second half. Really, all I have to say is, "Holy South Haven Iced Tea." Well, that, and hopefully he got a big chunk of his scoring for the week out.

I wonder what the Rowdies will have on their cheat sheets this year...

[Gregory Sager]

I wonder what the Rowdies will have on their cheat sheets this year...

That still makes me laugh ... not so much Sorenson's tweet in response, but the mere fact that the Wheaton student section produced a cheat sheet for a basketball game, complete with a logo for their nickname. That's worthy of a first-ballot induction into the Hall of Lame.