MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Next Man Up]

Couple observations from being at the Carthage game tonight.

*.  The game turned as soon as Lewis came in the game.  He hit a number of nice jump shots and Campbell just couldn't guard him (part of the reason for lack of minutes)
*.  Bulatovic had a poor game tonight.  He didn't score in the first half and the majority of his shots were taken off balance.  He did end up in double figures, but not a great game.
*.  NC went 25 for 28 from the FT line vs. 9 for 15 for Carthage.  Hard to overcome that advantage and efficiency.
*.  Carthage cut the lead to 4 twice in the second half, but couldn't get a big stop to get it down to one possession.
*.  Nesbitt started out hot with I think the first 8 points and then didn't really get going again until middle of second half.  Not flashy, but a real nice player who is provides good defense, scoring and very unselfish play.

* Carthage shot 45.5% overall, and 32.0% from beyond the arc, while North Central shot 43.4%, and 31.6% respectively, so their really wasn't a large advantage for Carthage as far as shooting accuracy went.
* As kiko said earlier, it's highly likely this wasn't one of CC's better games. One of the primary reasons for this was that the Cardinals often interrupted the Carthage offensive flow, chiefly through excellent help defense. The Firebirds offense could frequently be described as herky-jerky.
* North Central cemented the game from the foul line. In shooting 25 of 28 (89.3%), the Cardinals made 10 more FTs than the home team even attempted. They hit their last 11 in a row!
* Bulatovic is a great scorer (and rebounder), but he can't shoot either from distance (7 three pointers all year) or from the FT line (54%).   

* The Carthage announcer referred to the Carthage Pep Band as "the finest in the CCIW." Obviously, he wasn't at The Hangar Wednesday night.   
* Does every young lass who matriculates at Carthage automatically make the dance team??   

[Gregory Sager]

Standings at the turn:

WHE	7-1
NPU	6-2
CAR	5-3
IWU	5-3
NCC	5-3
AUG	3-5
ELM	3-5
MIL	1-7
CRL	1-7

That's a pretty good top five.

I'd say it's a pretty good top six.

Or seven since two teams are tied for sixth? 

No. As I said, tonight's game in Rock Island was some kind of fluke. The Bluejays are a much better outfit than they showed tonight.

Augie's played better ball over the past ten days, but the Doggies are 5-12 for a reason.

[USee]

IWU70,

Still skeptical about NPU's improvement? Only 2 CCIW teams have won at the Shirk this year and those would be the the two atop the standings.

I watched the last 8 minutes of that game and IWU finally took a lead with about 6.30 left and extended it to 4 at the 5.47 mark, it felt like the Titans might pull away. But NPU was gritty and fought back to tie at the 4.33 mark and then took a lead they never relinquished down the stretch. I was impressed with NPU on the road.

[Gregory Sager]

His skepticism regarding the Vikings is nothing compared to the way that Ken Massey's HAL 9000 regards them.

At the start of the season the Massey 2022-23 projection for North Park was 5-20, 1-13. OK, that's harsh, but given how poorly the Vikings performed last season it was somewhat understandable. Then, when NPU got to five wins only six games into the season, the Massey projection shifted to 9-16, 2-14. Still harsh. Then the Vikings won their three December CCIW games, one by a blowout over a team that was (according to Ken's computer) supposed to beat the Vikings by double digits. And so the Massey projection shifted again --- to 14-11, 7-9, and that's where it has stayed ... except when North Park loses a game, when it dips down to 13-12.

So, now the Vikings are 13-4, 6-2. And guess what Massey's HAL 9000 foresees for the Vikings in the second round-robin of CCIW play? A 2-6 record, that's what, with the Vikings only beating Millikin at home and Carroll on the road. That adds up to a 15-10, 8-8 regular season, which means that the HAL 9000 continues to refuse to budge, giving NPU no credence whatsoever until the Vikings reach whatever low-ball marker the computer's already set for them.

Ken's HAL 9000 thinks that North Park is the basketball Frank Poole.

[Pat Coleman]

That's an interesting tracking of how Massey hangs onto previous years' performance.

[Gregory Sager]

I gotta tell you, it's been pretty disillusioning. I've always put a lot of stock in Ken's algorithm once we get to mid-January or so. To see it stubbornly continue to allow last season to contaminate a team's projection as late as January 19 makes me think that I've been seriously overrating the Massey Ratings, to coin a phrase.

As I posted here on Monday, Massey had IWU as a better than 3-to-1 favorite over NPU last night, with a projected outcome of IWU 76, NPU 67. By contrast, Drew Pasteur had North Park winning by a point in his Bubble Watch tweet. The Vikings won by four, so he was pretty close.

Massey Ratings projections are a nice conversation starter -- that's more or less the reason why I've always posted them here -- but I think that anyone who takes them more seriously than what Drew Pasteur or Matt Snyder are projecting is making a mistake.

[Next Man Up]

Maybe Massey's HAL 9000 is overdue for its 45,000 mile tuneup? 

[Next Man Up]

North Central's Mitch Lewis, who last night put up 20 points in 22 minutes in the Cardinals win at Carthage, now has 118 points in 131 minutes of PT since joining the team 8 games ago.

[Pat Coleman]

I gotta tell you, it's been pretty disillusioning. I've always put a lot of stock in Ken's algorithm once we get to mid-January or so. To see it stubbornly continue to allow last season to contaminate a team's projection as late as January 19 makes me think that I've been seriously overrating the Massey Ratings, to coin a phrase.

As I posted here on Monday, Massey had IWU as a better than 3-to-1 favorite over NPU last night, with a projected outcome of IWU 76, NPU 67. By contrast, Drew Pasteur had North Park winning by a point in his Bubble Watch tweet. The Vikings won by four, so he was pretty close.

Massey Ratings projections are a nice conversation starter -- that's more or less the reason why I've always posted them here -- but I think that anyone who takes them more seriously than what Drew Pasteur or Matt Snyder are projecting is making a mistake.

I've always said that those algorithms are tuned to make sense in D-I and not D-III. Now that we have D-III people tuning ratings to D-III such as Matt and Drew, and Logan Hansen in football, Massey is not something I really ever reference.

[WUPHF]

I am not sure about football, but with the arrival of the Spring, Drew has been compiling the computer rankings and d3hoops.com rankings for the top 50 teams.  I think he has done this for a few seasons.

I am not a Math professor, but I'll assume there is a reason why he has included Massey with the others.

[markerickson]

I am currently digesting crow because NPU has easily surpassed my pre-season pessimism.

[Pat Coleman]

I am not a Math professor, but I'll assume there is a reason why he has included Massey with the others.

Because it exists/is the OG?

[WUPHF]

Because it exists/is the OG?

That may well be true.

[USee]

His skepticism regarding the Vikings is nothing compared to the way that Ken Massey's HAL 9000 regards them.

At the start of the season the Massey 2022-23 projection for North Park was 5-20, 1-13. OK, that's harsh, but given how poorly the Vikings performed last season it was somewhat understandable. Then, when NPU got to five wins only six games into the season, the Massey projection shifted to 9-16, 2-14. Still harsh. Then the Vikings won their three December CCIW games, one by a blowout over a team that was (according to Ken's computer) supposed to beat the Vikings by double digits. And so the Massey projection shifted again --- to 14-11, 7-9, and that's where it has stayed ... except when North Park loses a game, when it dips down to 13-12.

So, now the Vikings are 13-4, 6-2. And guess what Massey's HAL 9000 foresees for the Vikings in the second round-robin of CCIW play? A 2-6 record, that's what, with the Vikings only beating Millikin at home and Carroll on the road. That adds up to a 15-10, 8-8 regular season, which means that the HAL 9000 continues to refuse to budge, giving NPU no credence whatsoever until the Vikings reach whatever low-ball marker the computer's already set for them.

Ken's HAL 9000 thinks that North Park is the basketball Frank Poole.

I was super impressed with how NPU finished that game in Bloomington. IWU has had injuries and hasn't been playing at their expected level to this point, but they are still a very good D3 team. And the Shirk is one of the toughest places to play in all of D3. Since 2010 the Titans are 136-31 at home. Very few teams can count a victory @IWU among their accomplishments. North Park was trailing late and made shots and defensive plays to win that game. That's the sign of a good team....winning a close game in a tough venue on the road. Outside of Wheaton's big win down there, I count NPU's victory as one of the best wins this season.

[Gregory Sager]

IWU has had injuries and hasn't been playing at their expected level to this point, but they are still a very good D3 team.

IWU fans have been leaning hard into that "oh, so many injuries" narrative this season, but the reality is that only one player from last season's rotation -- Nick Roper, who appeared in 25 of IWU's 30 games last year and averaged 9 minutes played per game -- has been sidelined by injury. Grant Hardy and Pryce Punkay, two other injured players whose absence has been bemoaned by Titans faithful, saw a grand total of 52 and 7 minutes of varsity floor time last season.

Obviously, IWU lost four starters from last season's team to graduation, so scads of minutes opened up this season for the Titans, and the guys named above (plus incoming freshman Nathan Boldt) were expected to grab some of them. But you can't make any assumptions about players who've seen little or no playing time in terms of their future success when they're directly thrusted into prominent roles; IWU's Harrison Wilmsen and Hakim Williams, for example, have not exactly set the world on fire this season upon being asked to play much bigger roles for the Titans. And when you have a bunch of young guys collectively being asked to step up all at once, your team thus by definition becomes a wild card -- which is one reason why I thought that the Titans were overrated going into this season, even before all of those injuries became an IWU talking point. (And I wasn't alone in thinking that, either.)

The mainstays for the Titans this season have been their rotation holdovers from 2021-22: Cody Mitchell, Ryan Sroka, and Lucas Heflen. That's what people should've been expecting. That's not to say, of course, that some guy from any generic team who played seven minutes of varsity time last year couldn't step up and become the team's star this year. That happens all the time in college hoops. But you can't bank on it happening, especially in a league this tough. The CCIW is a prove-it-to-me league -- and many IWU fans foresaw big accomplishments in 2022-23 for a whole bunch of guys who hadn't proven anything whatsoever to date at this level. I suspect that this comes from the whole "if IWU recruited him, he must be a future star" syndrome, the hubris of which never ceases to amaze me.

I thought that the Titans would be a pretty good team this year, and thus far they've been a pretty good team. Very good? Nope. Too slow -- this past Wednesday night was a classic example that the reigning mathematical formula in D3 hoops right now is (speed > size), too lacking in ball protection, and -- most oddly, given IWU's tradition of having more good shooters than anybody else in the league -- not very good when it comes to shooting. With one round-robin in the books, the Titans rank fifth in shooting percentage in CCIW play despite being by far the league's tallest and longest team (i.e., the team most likely to benefit from pounding the ball into the post for high-percentage shots), dead last in three-point shooting, and dead last in free-throw shooting. Again, these are CCIW stats, not overall stats, so nobody can argue that the dismal shooting of the Titans is reflective of the fact that they've played better overall competition than have the other eight CCIW teams. What success the Titans have had this season (8-7, 5-3) has been because of their defense.

Like I said ... pretty good team? Sure. Very good team? No way, José.

I have a very strong suspicion that Wheaton, a quick team full of high-motor guys that can shoot, is going to wipe the floor with Wesleyan tomorrow in King Arena.