MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[mwunder]

I actually don't think IWU should be ranked that high either.  I've watched or attended all the games.  Yes, taking down Platteville bigtime was by far their highest moment so far, but in other games they've played somewhat to the level of their weaker opponents.  I would have them at something like 10-12 in the rankings.  Not 4th.  No hype from me.  IWU has depth, some really nice players, but they also have weaknesses with inconsistency and not the normal good three point shooting of top IWU teams of the past.  They will have a good season, especially if they continue to emphasize and play good defense, but running the CCIW schedule is very unlikely.  Probably some losses on the road to Carthage or Carroll.  We'll see   I was a student when our Titans were undefeated in conference play. That team was worth hyping. 

IWU'70

The good 'ol "aww schucks, we're not that good" post...who didn't see this one coming?

[Gregory Sager]

North Park 72
Anderson 64

Davante Robinson: 18 pts
Rico Powell: 13 pts, 8 rebs
Lance Nelson: 8 rebs
D.J. Wallace: 7 rebs, 3 blks
T.J. Gardner: 4 stls

Big-time win over a really good Ravens team, the fourth 2024 D3 tourney team that NPU has played thus far in its first five games. The Vikings outrebounded an opponent for the first time this season, came away with 15 steals, and held Anderson superstar Tate Ivanyo, a 23.2 ppg scorer,to 14 points on 6-19 shooting from the field.

[sac]

That is a good win.

[lmitzel]

NCC 86
Benedictine 78
OT

This one probably shouldn't have gone to the extra session, as North Central missed its final 12 attempts from beyond the arc in the final 15 minutes of regulation (and a few were not taken in rhythm of the offense). Thankfully, the Eagles went 12-21 from the free throw line in the second half and 20-32 for the game. Terrance Moncrief hit a layup to tie the game at 71 with 49 seconds left after BenU took its first lead a few seconds earlier. But a 10-1 run to open overtime helped seal the deal.

Moncrief: 18 pts,  6 reb, 4 ast
Tyler DiSilvio: 14 pts, 6 reb
Alejandro Diaz: 13 pts, 8 reb
Tyler Swierczek: 13 pts
Ethan Helwig: 6 pts, 9 reb

[Gregory Sager]

So North Central goes on the road and takes national power UW-Platteville, the team that came within three points of winning the national championship last March, to overtime on its own floor. Three days later the Cardinals are at home to face lowly Benedictine, 1-4 and losers of four in a row ... and again they go to overtime.

College basketball is weird.

[Gregory Sager]

Tonight's scores
UW-Platteville 77, Augustana 60
MSOE 88, Carroll 80
Carthage 76, Ripon 66
Elmhurst 82, St. Mary's MN 68
Millikin 49, Aurora 45
North Central 86, Benedictine 78 (ot)
North Park 72, Anderson 64
Hope 73, Wheaton 46

The CCIW is now 27-20 (.574).

[lmitzel]

So North Central goes on the road and takes national power UW-Platteville, the team that came within three points of winning the national championship last March, to overtime on its own floor. Three days later the Cardinals are at home to face lowly Benedictine, 1-4 and losers of four in a row ... and again they go to overtime.

College basketball is weird.

Strange stuff happens in the Battle of Chicago-Maple Avenue. You know the old cliche about "Throw out the records when these teams meet"? Applies here.

I'll let other folks touch on some of the other games in our league, but I got to make a College of Faith callback when I saw that Wheaton fell behind 25-0 at home to Hope tonight. The Thunder ultimately did end up surpassing the Mighty Believers' 20 points on that fateful November afternoon, but still fell 73-46.

[Gregory Sager]

I'll let other folks touch on some of the other games in our league, but I got to make a College of Faith callback when I saw that Wheaton fell behind 25-0 at home to Hope tonight. The Thunder ultimately did end up surpassing the Mighty Believers' 20 points on that fateful November afternoon, but still fell 73-46.

Halftime scores read on the Viking Sports Network this evening:

GREGORY: And ... with a little time left, a little under three minutes remaining in the half, Hope is crushing Wheaton in King Arena in Wheaton, 41 to 7, now that's ...
AARON: Wow.
GREGORY: ... that truly sounds like a football score.
AARON: Forty-one to seven?
GREGORY: Yeah, 41-7, except that if it was a football game the score would be the other way around ...
AARON: Yeah, yeah, that's so ...
GREGORY: Wheaton against Hope.

[GusD]

I'll let other folks touch on some of the other games in our league, but I got to make a College of Faith callback when I saw that Wheaton fell behind 25-0 at home to Hope tonight. The Thunder ultimately did end up surpassing the Mighty Believers' 20 points on that fateful November afternoon, but still fell 73-46.

Halftime scores read on the Viking Sports Network this evening:

GREGORY: And ... with a little time left, a little under three minutes remaining in the half, Hope is crushing Wheaton in King Arena in Wheaton, 41 to 7, now that's ...
AARON: Wow.
GREGORY: ... that truly sounds like a football score.
AARON: Forty-one to seven?
GREGORY: Yeah, 41-7, except that if it was a football game the score would be the other way around ...
AARON: Yeah, yeah, that's so ...
GREGORY: Wheaton against Hope.

Wheaton scored all of 11 points in the first half tonight. For the game, they shot 23.6%. If this keeps up, Mike Schauer might even come close to uttering a cuss word!   

[GusD]

NCC 86
Benedictine 78
OT

This one probably shouldn't have gone to the extra session, as North Central missed its final 12 attempts from beyond the arc in the final 15 minutes of regulation (and a few were not taken in rhythm of the offense). Thankfully, the Eagles went 12-21 from the free throw line in the second half and 20-32 for the game. Terrance Moncrief hit a layup to tie the game at 71 with 49 seconds left after BenU took its first lead a few seconds earlier. But a 10-1 run to open overtime helped seal the deal.

Moncrief: 18 pts,  6 reb, 4 ast
Tyler DiSilvio: 14 pts, 6 reb
Alejandro Diaz: 13 pts, 8 reb
Tyler Swierczek: 13 pts
Ethan Helwig: 6 pts, 9 reb

A review of the statistics from this games readily reveals that the NCC victory tonight resulted primarily from two factors. First, and this is something the Cardinals don't often do, they out rebounded the Eagles by a 49-34 count. This provided them with several second chance opportunities. Secondly, while they were frequently unable to find the basket from beyond the arc, they literally pummeled it from the foul line, hitting 85.2% from the charity stripe compared to BenU's 62.5%.
Having missed their last 12 trey attempts in the second half, the Cards completely eschewed that strategy in the OT period. Instead they went to Plan B which mainly involved the ball frequently finding itself in the hands of Drew Gaston, and him getting fouled. Following 2 FTs by Terrance Moncrief, Gaston hit 9 of 10 down the stretch to nail down the W.
His one miss in OT is the first attempt he's missed all year. He's now 30 of 31 so far this season.

[lmitzel]

NCC 86
Benedictine 78
OT

This one probably shouldn't have gone to the extra session, as North Central missed its final 12 attempts from beyond the arc in the final 15 minutes of regulation (and a few were not taken in rhythm of the offense). Thankfully, the Eagles went 12-21 from the free throw line in the second half and 20-32 for the game. Terrance Moncrief hit a layup to tie the game at 71 with 49 seconds left after BenU took its first lead a few seconds earlier. But a 10-1 run to open overtime helped seal the deal.

Moncrief: 18 pts,  6 reb, 4 ast
Tyler DiSilvio: 14 pts, 6 reb
Alejandro Diaz: 13 pts, 8 reb
Tyler Swierczek: 13 pts
Ethan Helwig: 6 pts, 9 reb

A review of the statistics from this games readily reveals that the NCC victory tonight resulted primarily from two factors. First, and this is something the Cardinals don't often do, they out rebounded the Eagles by a 49-34 count. This provided them with several second chance opportunities.

The numbers bore that out; NCC outscored Benedictine in second chance opportunities 18-5. But the rebounding stat on the whole you mentioned is a little misleading. They've won the rebounding battle in 3 of their 5 games so far. The issue has been that the season margin of -2 in total is largely from their opener against Aurora when they were -18. The only other game they were outrebounded was by Platteville, who's won the battle on the boards in four of their five games so far (the one they lost was to that green team down south). Not saying the Cardinals are masters of the boards or anything like that, but they're doing all right through five games. (Benedictine, by comparison, is getting outrebounded by about seven a game on average so far.)

[iwu70]

IWU at Chicago later today.

IWU in its current level of play is not #4 in the country.  No "aww shucks" about it.  If you watch them carefully, you will agree with me.  Are they a good, deep team?  Yes.  Could they win the CCIW?  Perhaps.  Are they #4 in the nation?   No. 

If any IWU team deserves the hype, it is the IWU women, taking down #3/4 Whitewater last night on the Warhawks home floor.  Great game.

'70

[Greek Tragedy]

So North Central goes on the road and takes national power UW-Platteville, the team that came within three points of winning the national championship last March, to overtime on its own floor. Three days later the Cardinals are at home to face lowly Benedictine, 1-4 and losers of four in a row ... and again they go to overtime.

College basketball is weird.

Uh?

[Gregory Sager]

North Park is finally going to catch a break in the schedule. After playing five teams that have a combined record of 20-3 (.870) in their non-NPU games, the Vikings will face 0-6 Alma on Saturday. But, pessimist that I am, I'm already steeling myself for a letdown ... although there's different levels of letdown, and even my glass-half-empty self thinks that the darkest level of letdown by the Vikings isn't very likely.

[iwu70]

In a game that proves my point that IWU should not be so highly ranked, they struggle to put away U of Chicago at Ratner.  And I mean struggle.  Only really having the game in hand in the last 2 minutes, winning 80-74.  They started out 0-14 and trailed at the half. 

Well, as I always say, get to 78 and win the game.  They did today, barely.  The UC commentary guy kept saying that IWU is "#4 in the nation, " over and over and over again. 

IWU must improve, play better, to live up to this ranking.

For Chicago:

Kurowski 21
Kenah 14
Cochran 11

UC shoots 47%,, 32% from three, and 73% from the line.

For IWU:

Roper 18 and a key three at the end
Wilmsen 14
Bazzell 12

IWU shoots 51%, 40% from three, and 74% from the line.

Just enough better.

IWU remains undefeated and for now will remain "#4 in the nation." 

IWU'70