MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[GusD]

Anyone know why they started at 11 AM? 🤔
Such a weird time to begin. Never heard of an 11 AM start except maybe in a tournament. Strange, very strange.

[iwu70]

Maybe a volleyball tournament?   Maybe they wanted to let IWU get back to B/N from such a long drive up to Menominee -- likely at least 5-6 hours drive.  ?   Not sure.

IWU has a tournament in St. Louis next weekend -- vs. Westminster on Friday and Webster on Saturday.  Let's hope for two more wins.

'70

[GusD]

Final from the beautiful Pacific Northwest;

North Central 69
Willamette    50

Despite shooting just 41.2, 5.3, and 80.0 the Cardinals took down the Bearcats of Willamette by 19 points this afternoon in Salem, Oregon.

Drew Gaston    15 points, 7 rebounds
Sean Molloy    14 points
Tyler DiSilvio 10 points
Tyler Swierczek 9 points
Ethan Helwig    8 points, 12 rebounds, 4 assists

NCC won this one with defense, pressuring Willamette into shooting 29.1, and 21.1 while forcing 17 turnovers compared to their own 10. They also won the board battle 43-35.

A successful trip to Washington State and Oregon for the Cards, winning both games to move to 3-0 on the season following their opening game victory over Aurora.

[petemcb]

Well, with tonight's Wheaton win over Concordia-WI, the CCIW moves to 17-7, for a winning percentage of almost 71%. I wonder what's improved over last year: our teams or our scheduling?

[Stertorous Thunder]

I will let Mike Schauer provide the analysis after Wheaton's 78-71 win over Concordia Wisconsin: "I don't know that we could guard my sister... We are so bad defensively, but here's the thing, we are pretty good offensively."

My less humorous analysis: Sophomore Soren Richardson will be all-CCIW and could contend for the league scoring title. Senior Noah Hedrick has leveled up his game over last season and can draw some attention away from Richardson. Junior Kyle Neibch hasn't shot well yet, but he's going to rain a handful of threes on most nights. The three freshmen, Martin, Veirs, and VanderWoude, look pretty good for players still getting adjusted to the college game. In particular, Martin has shown signs already that he could develop into a dangerous scoring threat and Coach Schauer has raved about the defensive ability of Veirs. Nathan Clark and Steven Schultz are getting most of the remaining minutes as solid program seniors that know how to do what Schauer wants in an eight-man rotation. With 14 freshmen on a roster of 24 players, this isn't a conference contending team, but they're going to have stretches where they can hang with better teams and I think they could even sneak into the CCIW tournament.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

To be fair, we do not know how good his sister is.

[GusD]

Final from Chicago

NPU  73
Loras 64

Park was led in scoring by Davonte Robinson with 12. TJ Gardner and Rico Powell both had 11.
For Loras, it was Jack Haynes with 22, and Tyler Bass with 14.

I only saw parts of this game, but from what I saw, I'd say North Park's defense was largely responsible for tonight's win. They were definitely the quicker team. In fact, their overall quickness and pressure was somewhat reminiscent of the NPU squad of two seasons ago.

I'm sure Gregory Sager will provide a more in-depth analysis after he's finished with his post game activities.

[GusD]

Other Finals tonight;

In OT
Augie  84
DePauw 73

Platteville 85
Carthage    72

Oshkosh 83
Carroll    64

Il College 65
Millikin   53

[Gregory Sager]

North Park 73
Loras 64

Davante Robinson 12 pts (4-5 trey)
Rico Powell: 11 pts, 7 rebs
T.J. Gardner: 11 pts
Lance Nelson: 6:0 a:to, 4 stls
Taijon Barry: 4 stls

As Gus said, it was at times reminiscent of the Vikings team of two seasons ago. Loras turned the ball over 20 times, 15 of those turnovers courtesy of Vikings steals. There were a couple of flurries of takeaways in the press, but the bulk of them came in the halfcourt with the Vikings jumping into passing lanes, knocking the ball away on the dribble, or digging the ball out of the hands of the Duhawks guards. They also shot the ball much better tonight than they had in the first two games; there's still some bad decision-making there on occasion, but the Park definitely played smarter this evening.

Good win over a good opponent. Guess I can come in from off the ledge now.

[iwu70]

Greg, don't jump (yet).   It's only basketball.   

A long season ahead.

'70

[markerickson]

Despite watching a disastrous two quarters during the opener and seeing box scores that revealed two opponents accumulated 205 points, I attended North Park's home opener.  Coach McGee deployed a man-to-man D with applied back court pressure the entire first half.  The Vikings actually responded with intensity; how refreshing!

Thru 30 minutes, Loras got whistled for only 8 fouls despite repeatedly grabbing offensive boards with clear "over-the-back" fouls. Not one foul.  By contrast, refs repeatedly whistled NP for ticky-tack fouls.  The Duhawks went to the stripe 29 times.  NP attempted only 11 FTs, but the team's love for the trey (sigh) also contributed to their lack of free throws.

NP could have feasted on driving to the hoop for easy bucket after bucket, and did so a few times against a passive Duhawk D.

North Park's D paved the way to victory.

[GU1999]

If Coach Martin would have thrown on a jersey at halftime and played the second half, would that have been enough for a DuHawk victory?   

[Greek Tragedy]

Good win for the North Park Sagers. Loras picked 3rd in the ARC, even got a 1st place vote.

[Gregory Sager]

If Coach Martin would have thrown on a jersey at halftime and played the second half, would that have been enough for a DuHawk victory?   

Be serious. Chris looks like he's still in pretty good shape, but he's a middle-aged man.

Every long-time reader of this board who's followed it for at least twenty years knows what a big Chris Martin fan I am, but his presence in uniform wouldn't have made a positive difference for Loras even if he'd brought his old Faganel Hall running mates Nick Michael, David Gershenzon, Evan Patchett, and Andrew Mohney with him.

[GU1999]

Serious is WAY overrated. 

The Martin brothers are a few of my favorites.  Just wish we could have held on to Chris.  What a great player.