MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Next Man Up]

It appeared Elmhurst's Wesley Hooker is not playing today.

The 'jays didn't need him. They beat Carthage in Tarble without him, 70-64, behind double-digit-scoring performances by Elmhurst's entire starting five: John Ittounas (16), Tagen Pearson (15), Matt Woloch (12), Ocean Johnson (10), and Jonathan Zapinski (10). Fillip Bulatovic had 20 and 12, Antuan Nesbitt contributed 18, and Julian Campbell had 12 for Carthage, which has suddenly gone into free-fall with three straight losses, the last two in Kenosha.

Millikin held serve in Decatur against Augie, 79-73, to draw within a game of the Rock Islanders for seventh place. Nate Straughter had 19, JT Welch added 17, and Noah Livingston recorded 10 points to lead the way for the Big Blue, while Augustana was paced by Tyler Knuth with 22 (including 9-11 from the field and 4-6 from downtown). Matt Hawkins added 15, Matt Hanushewsky 11, and Dan Carr 10 in the losing cause.

I understand Elmhurst was able to win without Hooker today. However, he will likely be a repeat All-Conference player this year, and is usually an important cog on both ends of the floor for EU. Accordingly, inquiring minds might be wondering if anyone is aware of the reason for his absence.

[kiko]

Wednesday
Augustana @ North Central
Carroll @ Carthage
Wheaton @ North Park

Millikin at Elmhurst also on Wednesday, though your rendering of an otherwise complete schedule begs the existential question, if we suppress all mention of this one, did it really happen?   

[GoPerry]

I thought the last play was definitely a foul (and a replay seems to confirm there was contact on Tyson's arm on the shot), but given the way the game had been played, it was probably the least amount of contact I had seen most of the game so wouldn't have been surprised if it wasn't called.

I've watched it about ten times now on Twitter, and it looks less and less like a foul to me every time that I watch it.

"Bad call" seems to be the D3 Twitterati consensus as well, even among those who aren't part of the IWU/Yeshiva Axis of Cross-Cultural Bonhomie.

But the Titans missed two good looks in the last minute that would've broken the 69-69 tie in their favor, and Cody Mitchell missed his last three free throws of the game. The Titans had their chances to win it without the game coming down to an iffy foul call, and they couldn't take advantage of them.

Nah, there's no way that was a foul.  I didn't see any contact on Cruickshank's shooting hand at all.  Plus, the shot got all the way to the back board suggesting that nothing impeded the shot.  The two green defenders were doing all they could to avoid contact.

[WUPHF]

"Bad call" seems to be the D3 Twitterati consensus as well, even among those who aren't part of the IWU/Yeshiva Axis of Cross-Cultural Bonhomie.

[sac]

Its because Bob has spent alot of twitter time decrying flopping calls.   The Wheaton Gods were watching.



2 cents, not a foul, and this happened between these two teams pretty recently under the same scenario I think.

[USee]

Regardless if it's a foul or not (there was contact with the left, non shooting, hand), why is Wilmsen jumping from behind Cruikshank towards him? He is in no position to affect that shot and it's his movement that gave the official the opportunity to blow the whistle. He had multiple teammates in front of Cruikshank contesting the shot.

[blue_jays]

Give me all those salty Twitter tears, tastes delicious. W in the books for Wheaton, glad to see it. Keep it rolling.

[Next Man Up]

North Park 79
North Central 65

Shamar Pumphrey: 17 pts, 6:4 a:to, 3 stls
Kolden Vanlandingham: 16 pts, 3 stls
Davante Robinson: 11 pts (3-4 trey)
Jordan Boyd: 5:0 a:to, 3 blks
Marquise Jackson: 4 stls

Mitch Lewis: 27 pts (9-9 FT), 12 rebs

This was an impressive win by NPU, not only in that the Vikings beat a good team, but because they had to stave off multiple Cardinals runs in order to do so. NPU enjoyed a double-digit lead for most of the middle of the game, but NCC cut it to two at one point and to four in a couple of other instances, due in large part to the phenomenon that is Mitch Lewis.

Barring a CCIW tournament meet-up, this will be the first and last time that North Park will ever face Mitch Lewis. And good riddance, I say. That man is a beast.

Since joining the Cardinals team 9 games ago, Mitch Lewis has now played 153 minutes.
In those 153 minutes, he has scored 145 points. 

[Gregory Sager]

The North Park program record for steals is 223, set by the 1995-96 edition of the Vikings. That particular team wasn't very good overall, but it did feature two All-CCIW guards in Keith Born and Octavius Parker who were outstanding defenders; Born finished the season with 55 steals and Parker pilfered 51.

This season's Vikings already have 221 steals after a mere 18 games. North Park was ranked seventh in D3 in steals per game with 12.3 going into yesterday's contest ... and it wouldn't surprise me if the Vikings move up in that category when the new stats are released by the NCAA tomorrow, since that's a difficult number to maintain and yet NPU got an even dozen off of North Central yesterday. (For comparison's sake, the next-highest total of steals by a CCIW team this season belongs to Carthage, which has 138.)

That 1995-96 NPU team, incidentally, averaged 9.3 spg.

[markerickson]

Great stats, Greg!  NCC obviously did not adjust its game to counter the likelihood of thefts.  Batters and teams adjust after seeing a pitcher goes through the lineup.  The double-digit theft department is not a sufficient reason to change the O scheme, but now the league knows NPU plays man-to-man.  A wrinkle in the second half would be a hard back-court press more often to produce time violations/TOs.  The Vikings can deploy at least 18 lungs to do so. 

[Gregory Sager]

The Vikings already press far more often than does anybody else in the league -- or anybody else I've seen thus far in 2022-23 this side of Grinnell and Greenville, and I've seen a pretty good chunk of D3 by now. I can't and won't speak for Sean Smith, but my suspicion is that his trust level just hasn't quite been there in terms of reducing the minutes of the starters (Jordan Boyd aside; he only plays half the game, as Sean has two veteran post players at hand on his bench in Karl Polk and Adam Bulwa). The minutes that the other four starters are playing are pretty modest by CCIW standards (by contrast, Wheaton and Carthage each have three players apiece whose minutes per game rank among the top ten in the CCIW), but they're still too high to allow Sean to employ the aggressive ballhawking halfcourt defense he wants, out-quick the opposition at the offensive end of the floor, and press for forty minutes. Something's gotta give, and that means either reducing the amount of pressing or giving more minutes to the non-center reserves.

I think that Sean may be slowly moving in the direction of giving more of a breather to his starters and handing more minutes to Quillin Dixon, Lance Nelson, Davante Robinson, and Preston Bax so that he can get down to the level of about 26 or 27 minutes per game per starter that he wants in order to press full-time. That's because Dixon, Nelson, Robinson, and Bax are playing well enough to earn that trust. That's really what it all comes down to.

The hardest decision he'll have to make along those lines is reducing Shamar Pumphrey's minutes. I think it's pretty obvious by now that Shamar is the second-best all-around guard in the CCIW after Tyson Cruickshank.

Sean has to walk a tightrope. He wants to overwhelm opponents with quickness and frenetic pace at both ends of the floor, but even with a team as superbly conditioned as the Vikings that is a style that reaches diminishing returns if you leave your starters in too long. It really requires at least nine, preferably ten, guys per game to play double-digit minutes in order to work -- and do you have ten guys whom you can trust with double-digit minutes against a CCIW opponent, with all of the ability and all of the physicality that the words "CCIW opponent" connote, without suffering too much of a talent dropoff between starters and subs?

[Stertorous Thunder]

Sean has to walk a tightrope. He wants to overwhelm opponents with quickness and frenetic pace at both ends of the floor, but even with a team as superbly conditioned as the Vikings that is a style that reaches diminishing returns if you leave your starters in too long. It really requires at least nine, preferably ten, guys per game to play double-digit minutes in order to work -- and do you have ten guys whom you can trust with double-digit minutes against a CCIW opponent, with all of the ability and all of the physicality that the words "CCIW opponent" connote, without suffering too much of a talent dropoff between starters and subs?

Mr. Sager's enthusiasm for North Park has made them my second-favorite CCIW team to watch, but what should scare my first-favorite team, and every other CCIW member, is the thought of what Sean Smith can accomplish next year.  As a new coach in a program with recent history that could charitably be described as mediocre, the quantity and quality of talent that he was able to infuse this season is amazing; he's on the short list, if not the frontrunner, for conference coach of the year.  And given this year's success, I would have to assume that recruiting will become easier for NPU and the odds are very good that the Vikings' ninth or tenth man in next year's rotation will be better than anyone else's deep bench players.

[Stertorous Thunder]

#8 Wheaton is likely moving up a couple of spots in the next Top 25; #4 Keene State, #6 Williams, and #7 Rochester have all lost a game since the previous list was posted.

However, Keene State and Williams were defeated by a #11 Middlebury playing on the road in both contests, so it wouldn't be unreasonable for Middlebury to move ahead of Wheaton, especially if voters poke into how the final seconds of Wheaton's Saturday game against Illinois Wesleyan transpired.

But I don't think North Park or Carthage care much about the details of the Top 25; both teams and fan bases are probably pretty hyped for their home games against the Thunder this week - and so am I.  I don't care what Massey says - both games are probably close to a coin flip.

[Gregory Sager]

Mr. Sager's enthusiasm for North Park has made them my second-favorite CCIW team to watch, but what should scare my first-favorite team, and every other CCIW member, is the thought of what Sean Smith can accomplish next year.  As a new coach in a program with recent history that could charitably be described as mediocre, the quantity and quality of talent that he was able to infuse this season is amazing; he's on the short list, if not the frontrunner, for conference coach of the year.  And given this year's success, I would have to assume that recruiting will become easier for NPU and the odds are very good that the Vikings' ninth or tenth man in next year's rotation will be better than anyone else's deep bench players.

This.

There will be plenty of time to look back on the 2022-23 Vikings when it's proper to do so. But even after only eighteen games it's obvious to anyone and everyone (aside from Ken Massey's computer, of course) that what Sean Smith has done in his first nine months as a college basketball head coach -- with a fair amount of help from Ed McGhee as well as Lou Griffith and Mark Smith --  is nothing short of astonishing. For the first time since the CCIW championship season of 2016-17 the Vikings are team to be reckoned with rather than written off. And, while due credit must be given to the holdovers -- the Boyd brothers, Karl Polk, and Adam Bulwa -- for sticking it out through the coaching change and for playing such big roles on this team, it's the guys that Sean and Ed managed to bring in from hither and yon on such short notice -- Shamar Pumphrey from Aurora, Georgia native Marquise Jackson from Lewis, Indiana native Kolden Vanlandingham from Earlham, Rockford native Quillin Dixon from now-defunct Lincoln College, Oklahoma City native Davante Robinson from Stetson, New Orleans native Preston Bax III from Houghton, and Bakersfield native Kenton Lei from a California juco, as well as the team's lone freshman, suburban Madison native Lance Nelson -- that have turned the Vikings longship around in terms of providing sufficient quantity and quality to the roster for Sean to play the style he wants as well as he's been able to thus far.

I have some insight into a few of the guys that Sean and Ed are pursuing on the recruiting trail right now, and I'm sure that there's more that I don't know about. This could be a pretty amazing recruiting class if things pan out. And, yes, it's much easier to sell a winning program to a prospect than what the Vikings coaching staff has had to try and sell over the past few seasons.

This looks like the start of very big things ahead for North Park men's basketball, and we owe that to a pretty special young coach -- and to John Born, the North Park AD who took a chance and hired Sean, despite the derisive scoffing of at least one (former) poster here and no doubt the silent skepticism of a lot of other CCIW observers. I've been around this program since the threepeat era of 1978-80, and the last time I was this excited about the program's potential was when Bosko Djurickovic was in charge of it; George Bush -- the original George Bush -- was still in the White House; Carroll had yet to depart for its quarter-century Babylonian captivity in the Midwest Conference; and Marc Horner, Chris Stanley, and the rest of the Vikings still ran out onto the floor fifteen minutes before tipoff to the strains of "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)" by the Beastie Boys over the crackerbox P.A.

#8 Wheaton is likely moving up a couple of spots in the next Top 25; #4 Keene State, #6 Williams, and #7 Rochester have all lost a game since the previous list was posted.

However, Keene State and Williams were defeated by a #11 Middlebury playing on the road in both contests, so it wouldn't be unreasonable for Middlebury to move ahead of Wheaton, especially if voters poke into how the final seconds of Wheaton's Saturday game against Illinois Wesleyan transpired.

In the past I would say that the pollsters probably wouldn't be aware of it or wouldn't care. But nowadays, with so many of the pollsters active on Twitter and the clip from the end of the IWU @ WC game making the rounds on that particular social media platform, I'm not so sure that it won't be taken into consideration when mulling over where to put Wheaton on their ballots.

But I don't think North Park or Carthage care much about the details of the Top 25; both teams and fan bases are probably pretty hyped for their home games against the Thunder this week - and so am I.

Trust me, North Park needs very little reason to be hyped for this game -- although the high stakes, which are unprecedented for a North Park vs. Wheaton men's basketball game, as opposed to men's soccer, certainly ramp up the hype even further. It's Wheaton, and for over sixty years now playing Wheaton in anything is like waving a red flag in front of a bull as far as North Park is concerned. The favorite chant of NPU students whenever the Vikings take on the orange-and-blue team from DuPage County is, "We don't like you! [clap-clap, clap-clap-clap] We don't like you! [clap-clap, clap-clap-clap]", and, while that's not a shining example of Jesus's Great Commandment in action for one faith-based institution facing another, it's pretty heartfelt. For all of the crap I give to iwu70 and Mr. Ypsi (deserved or not) and to Bob Quillman, Illinois Wesleyan is not Public Enemy #1 on North Park's Most Wanted poster ... nor is it Augustana, which over the decades has created a lot of simmering resentment among Parkers as well for various reasons. It's Wheaton ... ironically, the one school where people are (usually) most likely to say nice things about us and treat us with respect.

I've told Sean before that one of the greatest victories John Born ever won as North Park's men's soccer coach was when Wheaton fans (especially Wheaton students) started regarding North Park as their school's main rival in men's soccer, and even started printing up orange t-shirts to that effect that were handed out at NPU @ WC soccer matches. I've challenged Sean to start pushing Wheaton to regard NPU in the same light in men's basketball (which I realize is the spot that Illinois Wesleyan currently holds in WC eyes, just as North Central is the main Wheaton bugbear on the football gridiron). A rivalry is always a lot more fun when it goes both ways. Here's hoping that it starts going both ways after Wednesday evening.

I don't care what Massey says - both games are probably close to a coin flip.

Not caring what Massey says about anything is looking more and more like the smart move.

[Gregory Sager]

The updated NCAA stats were posted today on ncaa.org. North Park still ranks seventh in the nation in steals per game at 12.3, trailing Hunter, Washington & Jefferson, Grinnell, Western Connecticut, Redlands, and Mitchell.

North Park is fifth in the nation in turnover margin at 7.7. In other words, NPU's opponents average almost eight turnovers more against the Vikes than do the Vikes themselves. The Park trails Grinnell, Western Connecticut, Washington & Jefferson, and WPI in this category.

North Park is also one of only ten teams from power conferences to be ranked among the top 50 in D3 in a:to ratio, the others being NYU, Wheaton, Case Western Reserve, Williams, Roanoke, Colby, Randolph-Macon, Tufts, and UW-LaCrosse. This is particularly gratifying, as I'm certain that a lot of people unfamiliar with NPU's style of play assume that it's selfish and sloppy ... when in fact, as this ranking demonstrates, it's the exact opposite on both counts.