MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[iwu70]

I was delighted to see Pete Lambesis back on the floor last night vs. Chicago.  He played limited minutes, but I'm sure he'll be back to full strength very soon.

A great win over Chicago, coming out of the gate with excellent shooting, defense and pace.

Titans now 6-0, a great start.

Here comes conference play = the gauntlet.  And Wash U and Yeshiva, too.  What a schedule!

IWU'70

[markerickson]

No better description than "clankitude."  NP's loss to Greenville?  See FT%.  Last night, more clankitude.  Several times within three minutes we saw Johansson enter the game.  Presumably, to get a better FT shooter on the court.  However, he did not see the charity stripe all night.

I believe Earlham's best player is Jr. G Jaden Terry out of Lawrence Central (IN).  He led both teams in scoring before fouling out with <two minutes.  NP could not stop his easy buckets after he entered the paint.  NP's Izaiah Sanders blew his guy away towards the end of the game 2X for buckets similar to Terry.  Sanders needs to learn from this game and be more aggressive with the ball. 

I thought the lead should no doubt expand when Terry exited, but it did not.  Earlham never got a crack at heaving a game-winning trey as NP stole the ball from the Quakers in the backcourt on their last two possessions.

Far too queasy of a victory.  But they won and I had good company with two NP students.

[Gregory Sager]

No better description than "clankitude."  NP's loss to Greenville?  See FT%.  Last night, more clankitude.  Several times within three minutes we saw Johansson enter the game.  Presumably, to get a better FT shooter on the court.  However, he did not see the charity stripe all night.

No, Johansson's not put out there to get free throws, because he's neither a ballhandler nor a driver, nor is he a big who is going to elicit opponent fouls by working close in to the basket. He's a spot-up shooter, pure and simple. He's out there to stroke threes for NPU, not ones.

I believe Earlham's best player is Jr. G Jaden Terry out of Lawrence Central (IN).  He led both teams in scoring before fouling out with <two minutes.  NP could not stop his easy buckets after he entered the paint.

Terry is ultra-quick; quicker, in fact, than any guard I have seen in the CCIW this year. He was a maroon blur on the floor last night. There isn't much else to his game other than driving, because he's too small to linger inside the arc, he's an undisciplined defender (as his five-foul disqualification demonstrated), and he doesn't have a good jumper, nor is he looking to kick out or dump off to an open big upon penetration ... but, man, can that kid get to the basket. Even Izaiah Sanders, who is very quick himself and is an expert defender, had a lot of difficulty in staying in front of Terry. Terry can do one thing well, really, and he did it so well that he nearly brought his team back all the way from sixteen points down to upset NPU. I breathed a sigh of relief when he finally fouled out.

  NP's Izaiah Sanders blew his guy away towards the end of the game 2X for buckets similar to Terry.  Sanders needs to learn from this game and be more aggressive with the ball. 

Izaiah is a team player. He's the glue that holds the Vikings together. He knows that what NPU needs more than anything is a stopper on defense, a reliable rebounder, and a guy who will keep the offense moving, and so he provides those things. I, too, wish that he wouldn't shy away so much from driving to the basket, and his shooting has improved over the years to the point where there's no need for him to pass up open shots when he gets them. But his thinking is unselfish, and he sets a great tone for his teammates -- and, as we saw last night, he's perfectly capable of stepping into a phonebooth and emerging in his Superman outfit when the need arises.

I thought the lead should no doubt expand when Terry exited, but it did not.  Earlham never got a crack at heaving a game-winning trey as NP stole the ball from the Quakers in the backcourt on their last two possessions.

I honestly can't remember the last time I saw a team get so many chances to salt away a game at the free-throw line in crunch time, only to rim out all of their freebies, one by one, and squander each of those chances. But the basketball gods smile upon a team that can force turnovers, and NPU can certainly force them.

The Vikings have found themselves in close games all five times that they've taken to the floor this year. In the first one they pulled away in the last couple of minutes. Of the other four, one turned into a heartbreaking loss at the buzzer and another nearly did because NPU could not perform with even minimal competence at the charity stripe. It's a recipe for disaster in the future, because there's going to be a lot less margin for error against CCIW teams.

[kiko]

CCIW in non-conference regular season play:

2017-18:    54-27 (.667)
2018-19:    52-28 (.650)
2019-20:    54-27 (.667)
---
2021-22 to date: 40-15 (.727)

Still a ways to go and some challenging games littering the schedules for various teams, but if the trend holds, this will help a bit with SOS and whatnot at year end.

[Gregory Sager]

On a lighter note, I would love to know how many steps Coach Schauer gets in during a game, he is constantly pacing the sideline from one end of the bench to the other.   I saw him sit down one time for literally 2 seconds and he was up pacing again.

Yep. Similarly, I keep wanting to ask Mike if he's got a pedometer app on his phone, because I'd love to know the actual distance he travels on the sideline during the course of a game.

According to the box score there is no technical noted, but it sure looked like Steve got t'd up and Adom went to the line and shot two free throws.   Not sure what else could have happened.

Steve did get a T-bone from the refs last night. In his postgame interview he said that it's the first technical he's ever received in his life, either as a player or a coach. (Like father, like son; whenever Bosko got T'ed up it was a man-bites-dog story.) Steve doesn't know why he got it, either, since he didn't swear and he didn't think he said anything out of line. I got a laugh when John Weiser pointed out that if it had been Steve's brother Pete (a former football star for Carthage) running the team last night he'd have been T'ed up four or five times, and Steve quickly replied, "Most definitely."

Incidentally, I noticed that several of you were harping on John Weiser for mispronouncing Nyameye Adom's name last night. I'm not going to make excuses on John's behalf, since everybody knows how I feel about getting names right on the air. Plus, there's the fact that Adom is a four-year rotation player and a three-year starter. John should've gotten Adom's name right, end of story. Nevertheless, John is a terrific PBP broadcaster, and in checking out the wrap-up clips of Tim Bernero and Steve Djurickovic (audio only) last night I was reminded that John does a post-game interview better than any broadcaster I know in D3 basketball.

[PauldingLightUP]

It is very weird clicking on Region 8 thread and not seeing the WIAC thread as an option.  Good weird.

I feel the same about the CCIW when going to region 9 for WIAC boards. Lots to get used to for these new regions  .

[ziggy]

It is very weird clicking on Region 8 thread and not seeing the WIAC thread as an option.  Good weird.

I feel the same about the CCIW when going to region 9 for WIAC boards. Lots to get used to for these new regions  .

I updated the url for my bookmark to what is now the Region 7 page but I left the title Great Lakes. 

[Titan Q]

#2-Illinois Wesleyan (6-0) vs Carroll (3-3), 7:00pm at the Shirk Center...


#2-Illinois Wesleyan (6-0)
G - Luke Yoder, 6-0 Jr.  10.2 ppg, 3.3 rpg, 3.8 apg
G - Cory Noe, 6-2 Sr.  17.2 ppg, 4.0 rpg, 2.2 apg
G - Ryan Sroka, 6-5 So.  5.2 ppg, 3.7 rpg
F - Cody Mitchell, 6-7 Jr.  10.0 ppg, 6.8 rpg
F - Matt Leritz, 6-7 Sr.  17.5 ppg, 9.7 rpg
---
G - Pete Lambesis, 6-4 Sr.  10.3 ppg, 3.0 rpg, 2.3 apg


Carroll (3-3)
G - Justin Gruber, 5-11 Sr.  7.5 ppg, 3.0 rpg, 3.2 apg
G - Ethan Balinao, 6-1 Jr.  6.2 ppg, 4.5 rpg, 3.0 rpg
G - Justin Steinike, 6-1 So.  12.8 ppg, 4.3 rpg
G - Tyler Miller, 6-2 So.  6.0 ppg, 2.5 rpg
F - Paradisio Dante, 6-7 So.  9.7 ppg, 5.2 rpg
---
G - Ryan Mendoza, 5-11 So. 13.4 ppg


Pantagraph: https://pantagraph.com/sports/college/illinois-wesleyan/watch-now-illinois-wesleyan-hosts-carroll-in-cciw-basketball-twin-bill/article_89d89bdc-bbad-5632-bf66-be2d9de1c192.html

IWU Game Notes: https://s3.amazonaws.com/sidearm.sites/iwusports.com/documents/2021/12/2/mbb2122game07_Carroll.pdf

Video: https://www.iwusports.com/watch/?Live=224&type=Live

Live Stats: https://www.iwusports.com/sidearmstats/mbball/summary

[Gregory Sager]

North Park travels to downstate Charleston, IL to face Eastern Illinois this afternoon in one of those exhibition-for-us, real-game-for-you deals that characterize D3 @ D1 matchups nowadays. Despite the fact that EIU is horrible by D1 standards, I'm under no illusion that the Vikings are going to be able to hang for very long with the quicker and far bigger Panthers. My more realistic hope is that they fare better against the Panthers than Rockford did, as EIU drubbed the Regents by 32 points two weeks ago in a prior D3 @ D1 contest in Charleston.

[Gregory Sager]

Eastern Illinois 76
North Park 71

Gabe Johnson: 19 pts (3-4 trey, 8-8 FT), 10 rebs
Michael Osborne: 17 pts, 5:2 a:to
Jalen Boyd: 13 pts (3-5 trey)
Adam Bulwa: 10 rebs

Color me pleasantly surprised by the outcome, as this is the dictionary definition of a good loss.

The Vikings hung around through the first half, briefly led at 28-26 with less than two minutes to go, and were only down by three at the half. When I heard that as I was calling the NPU women's game in the crackerbox, I thought to myself, "I won't get too excited, because I know how these D3 @ D1 affairs typically go."

You see, in the locker room before the game each of the D1 guys talks big about how many dunks he's going to get, or how he's going to go off for thirty today, blah blah blah. Then they come out onto the floor and get slapped in the face by cold, hard reality as an undersized and slower but extremely motivated D3 team nips at their heels for twenty minutes and makes the scholie boys look bad.

Whatever remaining smirks the D1ers have on their faces evaporate back in the locker room at halftime as their coach tears into them, calls them out, and readjusts their thinking. Then they come out onto the floor for the second half, go on a big run, and salt the game away in time to let the walk-ons come on and get their two minutes of glory.

Today that didn't happen. The Panthers built up their lead to the 8-to-11 range in the second half, topping out with a bulge of twelve at 66-54 with 7:16 to go ... and got no further. The Vikings managed to hang tough, with a Karl Polk putback of his own miss cutting the EIU lead to four with 1:14 left. An Osborne steal with 49 seconds remaining put NPU in a postion to make it a one-possession game, but two blown layups and two missed free throws in the final 45 seconds meant that the Vikings would get no closer.

Of course, we are all aware that EIU is at or near the bottom of the D1 pile. Regardless, the Panthers are still D1 scholarship players, and they were competitive with a MAC team for most of the way last Wednesday evening in DeKalb (granted, Northern Illinois is nobody's idea of a MAC hoops powerhouse, but still ...). North Park outrebounded a vastly bigger team by a 43-31 margin (including 20-11 on the offensive glass) and had fewer turnovers than did the Panthers. In fact, NPU had a positive a:to ratio as a team this afternoon. The Vikings ended up losing because the Panthers have a pair of super-quick 6'1 or 6'2 guards who can get their own shots at will against D3 players, and did so to the tune of 9-17 from downtown. (Forcing a D1 team to beat you with three-point shooting is a victory in and of itself for a D3 team.)

Tom Slyder has a right to be pleased with how his team played today.

[Gregory Sager]

After forty years of watching CCIW basketball, it is so disorienting to see the benches at Faganel on the north side of the gym rather than the south.

[Gregory Sager]

Rhode with the halfcourt buzzer-beater!

[deiscanton]

Rhode with the halfcourt buzzer-beater!

After that 5 OT Brandeis vs Tufts game for the Mike Crotty Senior Cup and the New England Big 4 Challenge title today, I am surely glad this game did not go to 6 overtime periods!  I don't know if I could have even taken another OT game today.  I just tuned in for the finish.

[WUPHF]

I said I would be back for the Millikin upsets.  And basically every win from here on out is an upset.  The Big Blue beat Augustana by a lot.  More to come.

[Gregory Sager]

Yeah, that was an eye-opener. Millikin is obviously improved from last season, although it's hard to get a read on the Big Blue from game to game (and sometimes from half to half). But they absolutely leveled Augie today at the Griz, 70-45. Rebounds and turnovers were pretty close, but Augie shot only 31% from the field and 18% from downtown, compared to MU's 54% and 37%. Daniel Carr, who is listed as 6'8, 235 but sure seems a whole lot bigger than that to me, had three points on 1-7 shooting -- and the one shot he hit was a trey.

It snapped a 30-game losing streak to Augie for Millikin, as the last time that the Big Blue defeated the Doggies was back in the 2005-06 season.