MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Titan Q]

Wheaton recruits...

https://athletics.wheaton.edu/news/2019/7/8/the-thunder-mens-basketball-program-announces-nine-newcomers-for-the-2019-20-season.aspx

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Wheaton recruits...

https://athletics.wheaton.edu/news/2019/7/8/the-thunder-mens-basketball-program-announces-nine-newcomers-for-the-2019-20-season.aspx

I guess making the final four helped a little.  Some good resumes on that list, for sure.

[iwumichigander]

Wheaton recruits...

https://athletics.wheaton.edu/news/2019/7/8/the-thunder-mens-basketball-program-announces-nine-newcomers-for-the-2019-20-season.aspx

I guess making the final four helped a little.  Some good resumes on that list, for sure.

Resume not only look good but that is a large recruiting class!  Enough for a JV team all by themselves!  I'm guessing a few will be on the varsity sooner than later.

[GoPerry]

Wheaton recruits...

https://athletics.wheaton.edu/news/2019/7/8/the-thunder-mens-basketball-program-announces-nine-newcomers-for-the-2019-20-season.aspx

I guess making the final four helped a little.  Some good resumes on that list, for sure.

My impression was the same.  Seems like a little more scoring heft and rebounding stats in this class vs recent classes.  But I make no assumptions on next level ability since you don't know all the details.  I have heard however that the Sinek kid can fill it up - a 53 pt game on his sheet.  (He's undersized at 6'1" but I thought the same of a certain 6'1" transfer 3 yrs ago that ended up working out ok.)

Final four sure didn't hurt.  Seems to me that benefit should really kick in the next couple recruiting classes.  Hoping anyway.

[AndOne]

NCC has now scheduled it's 9th and final non-con game vs. Rose-Hulman on 11/25. Rather unusual for the Cardinals to be playing two non-tournament games on consecutive days.

North Central will kick off it's 2019-2020 schedule by hosting National Champion Wisconsin-Oshkosh on Tues., Nov 12th at 7 PM. NOTE, this game may be moved to Wed., 11/13.

The Cardinals non-conference schedule is now as follows;

Tues, 11/12 — Wisconsin-Oshkosh (May be moved to Wed, 11/13)
Fri, 11/15 — Greenville U
Mon, 11/25 — Rose-Hulman
Tues, 11/26 — Benedictine
Sat, 11/30 — Vs TBA Olivet @ Kalamazoo Tournament
Sun, 12/1 — Vs TBA Kalamazoo @ Kalamazoo Tournament
Wed, 12/11 — @ Aurora
Sat, 12/28 — Vs Concordia (TX) @ Texas Shootout in Austin, TX
Sun, 12/29 — Vs Sul Ross St. @ Texas Shootout

The Cardinals opponents @ the Kalamazoo Classic/Tournament have now been determined, and are indicated above.

[kiko]

That slate had a pretty healthy OWP last year:

Wisconsin-Oshkosh 29-3 **
Greenville U 17-9
Rose-Hulman 17-9
Benedictine 13-12
Olivet 13-14
Kalamazoo 7-18
Aurora 17-12 **
Sul Ross State 10-15
Vs Concordia (TX) 13-14

Overall 2018-19 record: 136-106 / .562

** - tourney qualifier

Oshkosh may not provide as much of a SOS boost as last year's record would have, but the Bennies have typically been a little better than .500, so perhaps they will mitigate any regression from the defending champions.

[Titan Q]

The Titans have had a schedule change for '19-20. Instead of playing in Phoenix over the holidays they are heading to Austin, TX for Concordia Classic.  IWU will face Concordia (TX) and Sul Ross State.

https://www.iwusports.com/schedule.aspx?path=mbball&schedule=268&

All that debate over the floor at the Phhacility was for naught.

[Titan Q]

The Titans started practicing yesterday for their upcoming Italy trip...they leave in 9 days.

[Gregory Sager]

The Titans have had a schedule change for '19-20. Instead of playing in Phoenix over the holidays they are heading to Austin, TX for Concordia Classic.  IWU will face Concordia (TX) and Sul Ross State.

https://www.iwusports.com/schedule.aspx?path=mbball&schedule=268&

All that debate over the floor at the Phhacility was for naught.

It'll come up again if that place keeps hosting a D3 tourney. We can just paste in the last argument when it does.

[hopefan]

The Titans have had a schedule change for '19-20. Instead of playing in Phoenix over the holidays they are heading to Austin, TX for Concordia Classic.  IWU will face Concordia (TX) and Sul Ross State.

https://www.iwusports.com/schedule.aspx?path=mbball&schedule=268&

All that debate over the floor at the Phhacility was for naught.

The Concordia tourney matchup dates as posted by NC and IWU are in error... by someone...

NC  says playing Sul Ross on 28th, Concordia on 29th
IWU says playing Concordia on 29th, Sul Ross 0n 30th

[gordonmann]

Here's some offseason content for CCIW basketball fans.

https://www.d3hoops.com/notables/2019/07/north-park-center-piece-enters-hall

Thanks to Greg Sager for some very helpful insight that helped me prepare for my interviews with Harper and Coach Djurickovic. I enjoyed speaking with both of them.

[WUPHF]

From the story...

"When I went on campus, they were the nicest people and it was one of the first times I went to school with girls and they were really pretty, so I was like, 'I guess this is the place to be,'" Harper recalls.

[gordonmann]

Harper's a funny and candid guy. The interview is embedded in the story and it's long. But listen to the first couple minutes on why he went to North Park and and near the end where he talks about his NBA career. There's a good story involving a volcanic eruption.

[AndOne]

The Titans have had a schedule change for '19-20. Instead of playing in Phoenix over the holidays they are heading to Austin, TX for Concordia Classic.  IWU will face Concordia (TX) and Sul Ross State.

https://www.iwusports.com/schedule.aspx?path=mbball&schedule=268&

All that debate over the floor at the Phhacility was for naught.

The Concordia tourney matchup dates as posted by NC and IWU are in error... by someone...

NC  says playing Sul Ross on 28th, Concordia on 29th
IWU says playing Concordia on 29th, Sul Ross 0n 30th

Per the Concordia SID;

NCC Vs Concordia on 12/28
NCC Vs Sul Ross on 12/29
IWU Vs Concordia on 12/29
IWU Vs Sul Ross on 12/30

[Gregory Sager]

Here's some offseason content for CCIW basketball fans.

https://www.d3hoops.com/notables/2019/07/north-park-center-piece-enters-hall

Thanks to Greg Sager for some very helpful insight that helped me prepare for my interviews with Harper and Coach Djurickovic. I enjoyed speaking with both of them.

Thank you for a great interview, Gordon. It's always wonderful to hear Harps' voice again, as we don't see him often enough back here in Chicago. He's a larger-than-life character (literally as well as figuratively), and as you said he's a straight shooter and a really funny guy.

(Classic Michael Harper interview story: When I called my very first men's basketball game as North Park's broadcaster a decade ago, Harps happened to be in town to see his family. So NPU head coach Paul Brenegan talked Harps into coming to the game to give a pregame speech to the Vikings in the locker room, and I talked him into coming up to the top of the bleachers at halftime so that I could interview him. I thought that I had pulled off a major coup for my first-ever game as "the Voice of the Vikings", but five minutes into the interview Michael's cell phone rang. It was one of my classmates, who had played on the JV team as a freshman (Michael's senior year) and then had transferred out. He was watching the game online, heard that I was going to interview Michael Harper at the half, and had called up a mutual acquaintance and gotten Michael's cell phone number -- and then called him in the middle of our interview. They hadn't spoken to each other since 1980, so Harps, being his usual gregarious self, forgot that he was being interviewed on the air and immediately had to catch up on the last thirty years with his former teammate ... while I sat there holding the microphone, listening to one end of their conversation and watching my interview go down the drain.)

From the story...

"When I went on campus, they were the nicest people and it was one of the first times I went to school with girls and they were really pretty, so I was like, 'I guess this is the place to be,'" Harper recalls.

Sure, it's a shock when you go from an all-male high school of future Catholic priests to a coed college, but Harps was not exaggerating about the really pretty girls. Back in the day, when a very high percentage of North Park's resident undergrad population still consisted of students whose ethnic background was Swedish-American, the NPC campus was chock-full of amazingly good-looking young people. The reputation that people of Swedish heritage have for being physically attractive is not a myth. In the early '80s, back when the Chicago Tribune used to include a glossy publication called Tribune Magazine in the paper's Sunday edition, there was a cover story in one edition about the school, entitled "We Are North Park". The writer spent an entire paragraph talking about what extraordinarily photogenic students North Park had.

A couple of former Vikings assistant football coaches have told me that, given NPC's dismal football tradition and the school's terrible and antiquated weight room in the pre-Helwig Rec Center days, they felt that their best shot at landing recruits was to bring prospects over to the dining hall to let them see all of those pretty girls Harps talked about. I can remember numerous occasions in which I'd look up from the table at dinner and I'd see a knot of teenaged gridders standing in the doorway with mouths agape.

Of course, that recruiting ploy rarely worked. And when it did, those football players would arrive on campus the next year only to discover that they'd been sold a bill of goods; football players were regarded as pariahs at North Park, and virtually none of those pretty girls would give them the time of day. Hard to say whether that empty-pockets-in-the-candy-store snub or the relentless 59-0 bruisings at the hands of Augustana and Millikin and the like had the bigger effect upon NPC's awful football-roster retention.

The comely-coed situation is not the reason why I chose North Park over Wheaton (my other serious finalist for college) when I was a high school senior, but it certainly didn't hurt.