MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Viking Mike]

Not sure what you mean by a different vibe?  Could you elaborate more on this thought?

Not sure if we've been complemented or insulted?

[Gregory Sager]

Depends. Do you want to have the same vibe as IWU fans or not?

[Gregory Sager]

Elmhurst polished off Olivet this evening at Faganel, 87-71. Jake Rhode checked into the Hotel Francis tonight, as he exploded for 37 points on 10-13 shooting, including 6-8 from beyond the arc, and 11-14 from the line. He also had four steals.

The more I watch Rhode, the more he impresses me. IWU and Augie fans will no doubt scream bloody murder about this, but I think that Rhode belongs in the conversation with Brady Rose and Nolan Ebel if you're talking about the best guard in this league who doesn't wear a jersey with an orange #1 on it. Rhode is now second in the league in points per game behind Francis, eighth in field goal percentage at .518 (the only guards ahead of him are Jason Gregoire and Charlie Soule), third in assists per game behind Kienan Baltimore and Luke Peters, and he leads the league in steals by a country mile.

Derek Dotlich chipped in for 12 and 9 tonight, and Jeremy Ireland also had nine boards. Nick Perry played a really solid floor game with 5:0, as the Bluejays washed the bad taste out of their mouths from their trip to Indiana the other day.

[Titan Q]

Depends. Do you want to have the same vibe as IWU fans or not?

Yes, we are really awful.

[AndOne]

Depends. Do you want to have the same vibe as IWU fans or not?

Yes, we are really awful.

Please sign where indicated below attesting to the fact that your admission was made of your own free will and accord, and was not coerced in any way.

———————————————
Titan Q

[voxelmhurst]

Elmhurst polished off Olivet this evening at Faganel, 87-71. Jake Rhode checked into the Hotel Francis tonight, as he exploded for 37 points on 10-13 shooting, including 6-8 from beyond the arc, and 11-14 from the line. He also had four steals.

The more I watch Rhode, the more he impresses me. IWU and Augie fans will no doubt scream bloody murder about this, but I think that Rhode belongs in the conversation with Brady Rose and Nolan Ebel if you're talking about the best guard in this league who doesn't wear a jersey with an orange #1 on it. Rhode is now second in the league in points per game behind Francis, eighth in field goal percentage at .518 (the only guards ahead of him are Jason Gregoire and Charlie Soule), third in assists per game behind Kienan Baltimore and Luke Peters, and he leads the league in steals by a country mile.

Derek Dotlich chipped in for 12 and 9 tonight, and Jeremy Ireland also had nine boards. Nick Perry played a really solid floor game with 5:0, as the Bluejays washed the bad taste out of their mouths from their trip to Indiana the other day.

Rhode is great and I look forward to watching him for a few more years. I worry though about the extent that Elmhurst relies on him this year. It seems like last years jays were a bit more balanced in the scoring department.

[Gregory Sager]

Depends. Do you want to have the same vibe as IWU fans or not?

Yes, we are really awful.

I was hoping that the Augie people were going to say that.

[BobbyO]

Taking a break on preparation for Income Tax Season I played with the Massey Ratings and current Records for the CCIW schools and have come up with what I believe the Massey predictions would be today for the season.

School                       Conference           Overall

Augustana                    16-0                   24-1
North Central                13-3                   21-4
Wheaton                       12-4                  20-5
IWU                             10-6                  17-8
Carroll                           8-8                  12-13
Elmhurst                       6-10                 9-16
Carthage                       4-12                 9-16
Milliken                         3-13                 8-17
North Park                    2-14                 5-20

Now I know the last time a team made it through the conference undefeated was 1973.  I was in school then and it was tough.  However, If Augie keeps their heads on and avoids the upset, this year's team's can do it.  However I expect a couple of losses.

The big question is how will North Central be without Chang?  I could see them losing a few more games perhaps 3 more.

Wheaton has to determine if they are real contenders or want to bee's.  By far I think this is the team that can beat Augie for the championship.  A little luck and more teamwork they could be there.

IWU has got to get it together they have to win out and probably win the CCIW tournament to go to the dance.

Carroll can upsets but they just don't have the consistency.

Elmhurst schedule for November and December were a blessing for them.  I don't see them continuing their play in January and February.

Carthage, Milliken and North Park are out of it but they can do the big upset and just mess everything up.

I see most likely three bids to the D3 tournament.  I doubt there is enough for four.  So anyways will see what will be and in the meanwhile I will be making my reservations for Fort Wayne.

I know analytics can only tell you so much (and I'm a fan of them), but I'd be thrilled if North Central won ten of its final 12 CCIW games.

Regarding Augie, I wonder what their Massey win probabilities are over the course of the rest of the season in terms of what the odds of running the table is. I'm sure a lot of their games are probably at least a 2-1 proposition of them winning, but basic math tells me that the odds are going to be pretty astronomical.

Meanwhile, some good news from Aiden Chang this afternoon:

"Was able to remove the partial cast and gauze today, ankle looks great considerably with minimal swelling and bruising! Thank you all for your continued support and I will keep you updated as the process continues! Tough times don't last, tough people do!"
-2:42 PM - 20 Dec 2018

For some reason I keep getting kicked out trying to make this reply.  I guess I am going to have to RTFM!

Great news about Aiden Chang!  I hope he is able to recover 100%.  Does anyone know if he can still Red Shirt?  Is he schedule to graduate this May?

As far as the Massey's % they are 80, 73, 93, 82, 92, 67, 61, 90, 81, 62, 96, 78, 95 and 87.  North Central at home is the 62%, while Wheaton is 67% at home and IWU is 61% at home.  Carver's lowest percentage is North Central at 73%.

Statistic don't lie but they do not include intangibles and off nights so yes there is probably a 25% chance for a 16-0 season but I am not holding my breath.

I do remember the 73 season and this year's team has the talent to repeat the 73 season's record.  The 73 team had two 7 footers but Dunking was not allowed and no shot clock.  This year's team is faster!

[sac]

massey gives Augustana a 5.86% chance of running the table in the CCIW.  By contrast massey gives Duke a 2.7% chance of running their ACC table

But massey has not factored in this weeks results.

[Gregory Sager]

Elmhurst polished off Olivet this evening at Faganel, 87-71. Jake Rhode checked into the Hotel Francis tonight, as he exploded for 37 points on 10-13 shooting, including 6-8 from beyond the arc, and 11-14 from the line. He also had four steals.

The more I watch Rhode, the more he impresses me. IWU and Augie fans will no doubt scream bloody murder about this, but I think that Rhode belongs in the conversation with Brady Rose and Nolan Ebel if you're talking about the best guard in this league who doesn't wear a jersey with an orange #1 on it. Rhode is now second in the league in points per game behind Francis, eighth in field goal percentage at .518 (the only guards ahead of him are Jason Gregoire and Charlie Soule), third in assists per game behind Kienan Baltimore and Luke Peters, and he leads the league in steals by a country mile.

Derek Dotlich chipped in for 12 and 9 tonight, and Jeremy Ireland also had nine boards. Nick Perry played a really solid floor game with 5:0, as the Bluejays washed the bad taste out of their mouths from their trip to Indiana the other day.

Rhode is great and I look forward to watching him for a few more years. I worry though about the extent that Elmhurst relies on him this year. It seems like last years jays were a bit more balanced in the scoring department.

Thing is, though, Elmhurst's scoring balance isn't abnormal when you look around at those other teams I mentioned that have a superstar guard. Like Elmhurst, for example, Illinois Wesleyan has a featured guard who puts up twenty-plus points per game, a pair of players hovering around the 11 or 12 ppg range, and then everybody else much farther down in the single digits. Looking at some of the other non-Grinnell Central Region teams with winning records that have 20+ ppg scorers, they have similar breakdowns. UW-Stout has a 20+ ppg guy who has a teammate who scores 13.5 ppg and another one who averages 11.1 ppg. MSOE has a guy at 20.7 and a guy at 10.7, but also three players who are in the 8-10 range. Lake Forest is a little bit different in that it has a 20+ scorer, another guy at 14.8, and then three guys who are in the 10-12 range, but the Foresters are top-heavy with regard to their starters scoring all of their points; nobody off the bench who has played in at least half of LFC's games is averaging better than 3.8 ppg.

Of all of the winning teams in the region that have a player who averages an Andrew Jackson, Wheaton is far more imbalanced than anybody else when it comes to scoring; Francis is at 31 ppg, and none of his teammates are close to averaging in double digits. And if we're looking at the other CCIW team with a superstar guard that I've named, Augie is the opposite, as Ebel's 16.2 ppg is well complemented by three teammates who are also averaging double-digit points. In fact, Ebel only scored four points in Augie's rout of Rhodes the other day, and nobody blinked an eye. (He only played 13 minutes.)

So in actuality the Bluejays aren't abnormally imbalanced with regard to scoring. I think that it may feel that way for Elmhurst fans because he does so many other things for the 'jays in terms of bringing the ball up the floor, dishing out assists, being the team's best perimeter defender, grabbing long rebounds, etc.

[Gregory Sager]

Great news about Aiden Chang!  I hope he is able to recover 100%.  Does anyone know if he can still Red Shirt?

No, he's played too many games this season to qualify for a medical hardship waiver.

As far as the Massey's % they are 80, 73, 93, 82, 92, 67, 61, 90, 81, 62, 96, 78, 95 and 87.  North Central at home is the 62%, while Wheaton is 67% at home and IWU is 61% at home.  Carver's lowest percentage is North Central at 73%.

The cutoff point for when Massey goes from being distorted by small-sample bias to being a viable indicator of probability seems to vary from person to person. Me, I'm not really sanguine about using Massey for anything until the meat of the conference season begins in earnest (or altogether) for most leagues in early January.

Statistic don't lie but they do not include intangibles and off nights so yes there is probably a 25% chance for a 16-0 season but I am not holding my breath.

No, it's not 25%. As sac said, it's closer to 6%. But, as you said, Massey doesn't factor in the intangibles -- the relative increased intensity of conference play being the biggest one, I'd argue -- so I suspect that in reality the odds of Augie running the table in the CCIW are significantly lower than 6%.

Every year Bosko Djurickovic, who has been a part of this league much longer than the other members of CCIW coaching staffs and who played against the 1972-73 Augustana team as a North Park senior, makes a little speech (usually on a Carthage gamer) when the last remaining undefeated team loses about how it's next to impossible to go undefeated in the CCIW. It's sort of our league's version of the mythical annual champagne toast of the '72 Miami Dolphins when the last remaining undefeated NFL team loses. Bosko, who knows this league better than anyone, is exactly right when he says that the season is too long and this league is just too tough and too competitive to get through it unscathed. Remember, we've had six CCIW teams win the D3 national championship since that 1972-73 season -- and none of those six got through this circuit's double round-robin without a blemish, either. If a team that had four NBA draftees couldn't get through a CCIW season without a loss, despite having three cracks at it, then I certainly doubt that anybody else could.

I do remember the 73 season and this year's team has the talent to repeat the 73 season's record.  The 73 team had two 7 footers but Dunking was not allowed and no shot clock.  This year's team is faster!

While it's fun to speculate about such things, I honestly think that this is in pipe-dream territory. I think it's more realistic for Augustana fans to look ahead to March and to how far the Greymen might be able to go in the tourney.

[voxelmhurst]

Elmhurst polished off Olivet this evening at Faganel, 87-71. Jake Rhode checked into the Hotel Francis tonight, as he exploded for 37 points on 10-13 shooting, including 6-8 from beyond the arc, and 11-14 from the line. He also had four steals.

The more I watch Rhode, the more he impresses me. IWU and Augie fans will no doubt scream bloody murder about this, but I think that Rhode belongs in the conversation with Brady Rose and Nolan Ebel if you're talking about the best guard in this league who doesn't wear a jersey with an orange #1 on it. Rhode is now second in the league in points per game behind Francis, eighth in field goal percentage at .518 (the only guards ahead of him are Jason Gregoire and Charlie Soule), third in assists per game behind Kienan Baltimore and Luke Peters, and he leads the league in steals by a country mile.

Derek Dotlich chipped in for 12 and 9 tonight, and Jeremy Ireland also had nine boards. Nick Perry played a really solid floor game with 5:0, as the Bluejays washed the bad taste out of their mouths from their trip to Indiana the other day.

Rhode is great and I look forward to watching him for a few more years. I worry though about the extent that Elmhurst relies on him this year. It seems like last years jays were a bit more balanced in the scoring department.

Thing is, though, Elmhurst's scoring balance isn't abnormal when you look around at those other teams I mentioned that have a superstar guard. Like Elmhurst, for example, Illinois Wesleyan has a featured guard who puts up twenty-plus points per game, a pair of players hovering around the 11 or 12 ppg range, and then everybody else much farther down in the single digits. Looking at some of the other non-Grinnell Central Region teams with winning records that have 20+ ppg scorers, they have similar breakdowns. UW-Stout has a 20+ ppg guy who has a teammate who scores 13.5 ppg and another one who averages 11.1 ppg. MSOE has a guy at 20.7 and a guy at 10.7, but also three players who are in the 8-10 range. Lake Forest is a little bit different in that it has a 20+ scorer, another guy at 14.8, and then three guys who are in the 10-12 range, but the Foresters are top-heavy with regard to their starters scoring all of their points; nobody off the bench who has played in at least half of LFC's games is averaging better than 3.8 ppg.

Of all of the winning teams in the region that have a player who averages an Andrew Jackson, Wheaton is far more imbalanced than anybody else when it comes to scoring; Francis is at 31 ppg, and none of his teammates are close to averaging in double digits. And if we're looking at the other CCIW team with a superstar guard that I've named, Augie is the opposite, as Ebel's 16.2 ppg is well complemented by three teammates who are also averaging double-digit points. In fact, Ebel only scored four points in Augie's rout of Rhodes the other day, and nobody blinked an eye. (He only played 13 minutes.)

So in actuality the Bluejays aren't abnormally imbalanced with regard to scoring. I think that it may feel that way for Elmhurst fans because he does so many other things for the 'jays in terms of bringing the ball up the floor, dishing out assists, being the team's best perimeter defender, grabbing long rebounds, etc.

Good point. My concern though maybe is not so much in the "balance" of scoring, but rather that many of Elmhurst's key contributors are scoring below their 2017/18 average. Now, this has been partially offset by Rhode's increased scoring this year, and their current record of 6-4 is only one game behind where they were at this point last year, 7-3. I'll agree that having a star player becoming an even greater star player is not a bad thing. I expect though that throughout the CCIW season Elmhurst will need their supporting cast to produce at a higher level than what they've done in the first 10 games.

[kiko]

Every year Bosko Djurickovic, who has been a part of this league much longer than the other members of CCIW coaching staffs and who played against the 1972-73 Augustana team as a North Park senior, makes a little speech (usually on a Carthage gamer) when the last remaining undefeated team loses about how it's next to impossible to go undefeated in the CCIW. It's sort of our league's version of the mythical annual champagne toast of the '72 Miami Dolphins when the last remaining undefeated NFL team loses. Bosko, who knows this league better than anyone, is exactly right when he says that the season is too long and this league is just too tough and too competitive to get through it unscathed. Remember, we've had six CCIW teams win the D3 national championship since that 1972-73 season -- and none of those six got through this circuit's double round-robin without a blemish, either. If a team that had four NBA draftees couldn't get through a CCIW season without a loss, despite having three cracks at it, then I certainly doubt that anybody else could.

This framing makes it sound like an undefeated conference champion is Never Ever Gonna Happen Again... I'm gonna push on this.

Having an undefeated team is highly, highly, highly unlikely in almost every season based on the factors you mention as well as others.  I don't expect the Augie Doggies to run the table this year.  But unlikely is different from impossible, and if they did navigate into March without a conference loss, I wouldn't say 'Where did THAT come from?!?'.

Fully agree with you on the usefulness of Massey at thus juncture in the season.

[kiko]

Not sure what you mean by a different vibe?  Could you elaborate more on this thought?

Not sure if we've been complemented or insulted?

I'll answer your question this way: there's a reason the Meme around here is 'Congratulations to Illinois Wesleyan!' and not one of the other conference members.

[lmitzel]

Every year Bosko Djurickovic, who has been a part of this league much longer than the other members of CCIW coaching staffs and who played against the 1972-73 Augustana team as a North Park senior, makes a little speech (usually on a Carthage gamer) when the last remaining undefeated team loses about how it's next to impossible to go undefeated in the CCIW. It's sort of our league's version of the mythical annual champagne toast of the '72 Miami Dolphins when the last remaining undefeated NFL team loses. Bosko, who knows this league better than anyone, is exactly right when he says that the season is too long and this league is just too tough and too competitive to get through it unscathed. Remember, we've had six CCIW teams win the D3 national championship since that 1972-73 season -- and none of those six got through this circuit's double round-robin without a blemish, either. If a team that had four NBA draftees couldn't get through a CCIW season without a loss, despite having three cracks at it, then I certainly doubt that anybody else could.

This framing makes it sound like an undefeated conference champion is Never Ever Gonna Happen Again... I'm gonna push on this.

Having an undefeated team is highly, highly, highly unlikely in almost every season based on the factors you mention as well as others.  I don't expect the Augie Doggies to run the table this year.  But unlikely is different from impossible, and if they did navigate into March without a conference loss, I wouldn't say 'Where did THAT come from?!?'.

Fully agree with you on the usefulness of Massey at thus juncture in the season.

We had a similar discussion over on the women's board last year when Illinois Wesleyan had started conference play something like 6 or 7-0, and there was talk then of 16-0. I expressed my doubt that it would happen just because it had been a while. And yeah, the historical parallels are often used as a "It hasn't happened since then; why would it happen now?" I'm ultimately hesitant to say someone will run the table, but I don't know that I want to count it out. I look at it more as a, "Get to 11 or 12-0 and we'll talk," especially if some of the tougher road games are behind this hypothetical CCIW team.

Not sure what you mean by a different vibe?  Could you elaborate more on this thought?

Not sure if we've been complemented or insulted?

I'll answer your question this way: there's a reason the Meme around here is 'Congratulations to Illinois Wesleyan!' and not one of the other conference members.

The weirdo in me is seriously tempted to just grab a random picture of IWU fans, caption it with "Congrats to Illinois Wesleyan," share it here, and just let the board do the rest.