MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Gregory Sager]

Don't get your knickers in a twist, Mark. The men's schedules and the women's schedules have always functioned as interdependent parallels, and with the times shifting the way that they are, it's easy for someone to mistake the early men's time for the late women's time. That's why I distinguished betweeen the two. It has absolutely nothing to do with posting anything about women's basketball content on this board, so save your scolding for your Illinois Wesleyan diatribes.

[USee]

Mike Schauer's post game Augie comments:

https://youtu.be/JFqNz4bTxNo

He is always interesting and insightful to listen to. He previews the Saturday matchup with Calvin as "two clearly top 25 teams" and says Calvin will be the best team they will have played thus far.

[iwu70]

IWU goes to 4-3, 2-0 with two nice away wins in CCIW play.

Almost getting to 78:   IWU 73 Carroll U: 59

Carroll:
Steinike 10
Hudgens 10
Wofford 9
Simpson 8

IWU:
Wilmsen 18
(A new name on the scoring ledger) Trey Bazzell 14 with 4-6 from three
Heflen 13
Mitchell, a double-double at 12 and 11

IWU controlling the glass 38-19, shooting 52% from the field to Carroll's 42%.

A good win . . . two away wins to start out the CCIW campaign.  IWU still dealing with some injuries . . A bit banged up now, with Roper out, several others not at full strength for some games ahead.

IWU'70

[Gregory Sager]

Final from Faganel:

Carthage 89
Elmhurst 85

The wheels are starting to come off of the Bluejays bandwagon, at least for now. Opening conference play with two home losses is not a good look for a team that was #11 in the nation coming into the week.

Carthage, who trailed the vast majority of the game, is definitely looking more formidable now than it did at the start of the season. I tell you, that big Campbell kid (6'8,280 pounds) for the Firebirds has about as sweet a shooting touch as I've ever seen from a D3 player that big.

[Gregory Sager]

Final from the airplane hangar:

North Park 90
North Central 56

Kolden Vanlandingham: 20 pts (8-14 FG, 4-8 trey)
Shamar Pumphrey: 18 pts (6-9 FG, 3-4 trey), 6:1 a:to
Jalen Boyd: 16 pts (6-12 FG, 3-6 trey)
Marquise Jackson: 14 pts (5-9 FG), 3 stls
Jordan Boyd: 7 rebs

Matt Helwig: 14 pts (6-10 FG)
Ethan Helwig: 14 pts (5-10 FG)

It's getting increasingly difficult to deny the fact that Sean Smith's put together a pretty good team at Foster & Kedzie. And they're improving every time that they take the floor.

It was already a 9-9 game a mere three minutes in, and it was readily apparent that that was a pace that was unsuitable for the Cardinals. So the Vikings went on an 11-0 run by shifting to an even higher gear that the Cardinals simply couldn't counter, and NPU never looked back. The Cardinals were able to cut what had been an 18-point deficit down to 12 with twelve and a half minutes remaining in the game, but the Vikings again kicked it up a notch and turned the contest into a boatrace. Just great end-to-end energy by the Vikings all night long.

The Vikings shot poorly at Millikin on Wednesday and won that game with their defense. Tonight the offense came along for the busride as well, as the royal blue and gold posted a shooting line of .533/.522/.824.

NPU improves to 6-1, 2-0, while NCC drops to 4-3, 1-1.

A good win . . . two away wins to start out the CCIW campaign.

I like the sound of that. I think I'll borrow that as my sign-off for this report as well.

[Gregory Sager]

Wheaton closed out an instant-classic 74-73 nailbiter in King Arena over Calvin in a game in which the Sonic Atmospheric Disturbance trailed most of the second half, at one point by double digits. I'll let the Wheaton guys pore over the details of that game in their posts, but I just wanted to say that, while I love their enthusiasm, the Wheaton student broadcasters were giving me an earache with their screaming into their headsets down the stretch.

[Gregory Sager]

Augustana was the lone home team to prevail tonight in any of the four CCIW games, as the Rock Islanders knocked off Millikin at Carver, 68-58. Another game, another Daniel Carr double-double. Ho-hum.

[GoPerry]

Wheaton 74, Calvin 73

Eli Considine, 21 pts, 6 steals
Nick Schiavello, 14 pts
Tyson Cruickshank, 12 pts, 8 rebs, 8 assts (3 tos)

Jalen Overway   22 pts, 8 rebs
Uchenna, Egekeze    21 pts  5 rebs
Marcus Bult    14 pts, 11 rebs

This was a great win by Wheaton in front of a pretty large crowd at King and over a very talented Calvin Knights team.  They played Cruickshank very closely on the defensive end where he couldn't get many open looks.  But Overway played off of the smaller and more mobile Considine which allowed Eli to take 18 total shots, 12 of which were three pointers.  That might be the most of both he has taken in his four years at Wheaton.  When it counted, however, Cruickshank came through and hit the critical trey to win it with 14 seconds left

Both teams trailed by double digits at one point during the contest.  Calvin led by 12 with about 10 mins remaining in the game when the Knights finally started to miss shots and Wheaton was able to dig into the lead. CU still shot 57.1% from the field for the game.  The Center-Guard combo of Overway and Egekeze is hard to stop, with Bult doing lots of damage too.  What's amazing is that there's only one senior on the roster.  Overway looks very comfortable for a freshman and has some great touch around the rim.

[markerickson]

Another game with the Vikings having a double-digit steals (12) and benefitting from a wide TO ratio (20-9).  With the game already out of reach, the camera caught the perfect view of a Shamar Pumphrey steal.  He read the entire play and spun a 270 to the left sooo quickly to grab the pass.  Amazing.  Moving forward:  keep stressing D b/c falling in love with a trey can come back to haunt.

[Gregory Sager]

Another game with the Vikings having a double-digit steals (12) and benefitting from a wide TO ratio (20-9).  With the game already out of reach, the camera caught the perfect view of a Shamar Pumphrey steal.  He read the entire play and spun a 270 to the left sooo quickly to grab the pass.  Amazing.  Moving forward:  keep stressing D b/c falling in love with a trey can come back to haunt.

I 100% agree. And that's exactly why I stressed that NPU beat Millikin in Decatur on Wednesday on a night when the same shots that the Vikings hit last night weren't falling. The Vikings won that one with their D.

The reason why "Defense wins championships" is one of those clichés with which nobody disagrees is because even a good offense can come and go from one night to the next, but good defense is a constant.

Incidentally, after seven games North Park's lead in the CCIW in turnover margin is absolutely humungous; the Vikings are +8.71 in turnovers per game, while the second-place team in that category, Wheaton, is a mere +3.75. After one week of CCIW play, the Vikings are at +12 per game, with second-place Elmhurst at +3. The Vikings are averaging 14 steals per game, with second-place Elmhurst at 9.29 (in CCIW play, the Vikings are averaging 13.5 and Elmhurst is second at 7.5), and in a:to ratio the Vikings are second behind Wheaton.

[Gregory Sager]

New poll is out. There's only one CCIW team that's ranked: Wheaton, which moved up from #21 last week to #11 this week.

Others receiving votes are Elmhurst, which managed to stay on enough ballots after its catastrophic week to garner 25 points; Illinois Wesleyan with 6 points; and North Park with 4.

NPU, which is on a pollster's ballot for the first time since Week 10 of the 2016-17 season, owes Bob Quillman a thank-you. By slotting North Park #22 on his ballot (which he shared on Twitter last night; I like the fact that more and more d3hoops.com pollsters are tweeting their ballots), Bob's responsible for all four of the Vikings' poll points.

[Next Man Up]

New poll is out. There's only one CCIW team that's ranked: Wheaton, which moved up from #21 last week to #11 this week.

Others receiving votes are Elmhurst, which managed to stay on enough ballots after its catastrophic week to garner 25 points; Illinois Wesleyan with 6 points; and North Park with 4.

NPU, which is on a pollster's ballot for the first time since Week 10 of the 2016-17 season, owes Bob Quillman a thank-you. By slotting North Park #22 on his ballot (which he shared on Twitter last night; I like the fact that more and more d3hoops.com pollsters are tweeting their ballots), Bob's responsible for all four of the Vikings' poll points.

Of course they now have to sustain the momentum, but on Sat night North Park played more like a Top 10 team than a ORV team. Athleticism, anticipation, speed AND quickness, and top notch shooting. While NCC didn't provide what could be considered anywhere near tough competition, the truth is NPU would have beaten any team in the conference on Sat night.

[iwu70]

Wheaton will be @ IWU on the 17th.   

Looking forward to seeing the seemingly much improved North Park team.

'70

[Gregory Sager]

Looking forward to seeing the seemingly much improved North Park team.

No "seemingly" about it, Mark; the Vikings are much improved. That is beyond dispute.

But that's mitigated by the fact that last season the Vikings were a thoroughly underwhelming 10-14, 5-11 team that finished dead last in the league in every shooting category -- and they didn't play very good defense at the other end of the floor, either. In other words, "much improved" isn't that high a bar to clear.

While we're still not deep enough into the season for Massey to be very accurate, I'm nevertheless intrigued by how Ken's computer algorithm has been adjusting the numbers for North Park as this season has gone along. Prior to opening night, Massey rated North Park #186 in D3 and projected a 5-20, 1-15 season for the Vikings in 2022-23. But at this moment the Park is sitting at #36, and Massey's predicted record for the Vikes is now 14-11, 7-9 -- which would get NPU to the verge of qualifying for the CCIW tourney. In other words, the Vikings have a long way to go before they're top-ten material.

This phrase:

Of course they now have to sustain the momentum,

... is very much on point as far as the Vikings are concerned. But even early-season Massey shows that North Park's improvement has been ... well, massive. 

[iwu70]

Greg, I'll stick with "seemingly" for now . . .  it's not like your guys have played a very tough schedule so far.   I'll wait until, say, the early January game with Wheaton to see how strong the NPU team actually is.   It looks promising so far, no doubt . . . but recent years haven't really proved much about "sustaining the momentum."   Maybe this year will be different for your lads.

IWU has a good start in CCIW play, esp. that win at Elmhurst.  Surprising to many, myself included.  Pretty clear that Elmhurst was not #11 or "top ten material either."  Now the claim in the poll is that Wheaton is up there?   However, our team is banged up, Roper out for some weeks, Wilmsen still in a boot and with limited minutes, several others with injuries but still struggling to play, two guys dropped off the team, etc.  We are deep, so maybe we can weather this and keep our momentum going . . .  Time will tell for the Titans too.  Two important home games upcoming vs. NCC and Wheaton.  If we get to 4-0 in CCIW play, I'll feel more confident, esp. when the injured guys get back to full health.  Bazzell's contribution vs. Carroll was pleasing and surprising. 

Happy Holidays to you and all the CCIW chatsters.

'70