MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Titan Q]

Final from Platteville...

UW-Platteville 67
Elmhurst 66

What a finish to this one. 

Elmhurst led by 2 at the half, but Platteville got the lead very early in the 2nd and controlled the entire.  Chris Martin did his usual thing and led a big push in the final minute or so of play...after being down 8 with just 3 minutes left, the 'jays actually got it to 63-62 with :30 to play. 

Platteville in-bounded the ball with :30 to go and Martin fouled a Pioneer player, but the Platteville player was whistled for a tecnhical foul on the play for shoving Martin back.  Martin made 1 of 2 FT to tie the game, then on the other end Mike Jamerson made 2 FT to make it 65-63 UW-Platteville.

Elmhurst came down with about :20 to play and missed a 3, but Nick Michael got the rebound, kicked to Martin who buried an enormous 3 to put Elmhurst up 1, 66-65.

Platteville, after a timeout, had 8 seconds to go the length....they got into the frontcourt and Elmhurst fouled Jamerson while shooting a 3!!   He made the first two and missed the second on purpose.

So Elmhurst had 6 tenths of a second to go the length, and for some odd reason they had Chris Martin in-bound the ball.  He threw the pass off the rafters...Pioneer ball, game over.  Crazy.

The Platteville radio team was really on Chris Martin the entire 2nd Half and with a couple minutes left, the color guy went as far as to call him a "dirty player."  Not sure what was going on and if there was an incident, but they wouldn't let it go.  Martin had about 32 points I think.

[bluejaybacker1]

Excellent write up Titan Q....things to add I believe Chris Ihlenfeldt shot the techincals at the end and went 1 of 2...It seemed Brian Lee had another solid game with 12 pts. Heartbreaking loss, but we fought back and we have Hanover on Sat. at home.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Dang!  On the pick 'ems I had Platteville, then switched to Elmhurst with the note (VERY nervous) - guess I SORTA got it right!  Sounds like a heckuva game!

The game that surprised me tonight was Wheaton EASILY handling Chicago.  Is Chicago really down this year, or is Wheaton not going to be hurting nearly as badly as most of us thought considering the incredible personnel losses they endured?  Comments?

[augie_superfan]

Why would you ever have your best player, and one of the best players in the country taking the ball out of bounds on the last play with no chance of getting it back?  That makes no sense to me.

As for the "dirty player" comments...they aren't the first and most likely not the last to comment on Martin's play as being a bit dirty or something of that nature.  That's at least the second time this has come up this year and I know it has come up in past years also.  I don't know if he is a dirty player as these announcers described or if he just plays harder than the average player.  Would be curious to know what got these guys so fired up about it tonight.

[cardinalpride]

NCC 84  benedictine 58!!!

The Cardinals win going away.  The game was over at the jump ball.  NCC raced out to a 10-0 lead.  Led 47-22 at the half, and played the JV the last 6 or 7 minutes of the game.  Simmons finished with 19 pts and 10 boards and Walton finished with 19 also.  These two are forming quite the 1-2 punch inside.  NCC recaptures the Chicago/Maple Ave. trophy in honor of the two former coaches of the schools.  Bill Warden for NCC and Tony LaScala for BU.  For those of you who are not familiar with the campuses, Chicago/Maple Avenue is the road that connects the two campuses about 2-3 miles apart.   The road belongs to the Cards for the 05-06 season!

Cardinal Pride starts with me!!!
Go Cards!!

[Titan Q]

The Platteville radio guys were shocked that Martin was the in-bounder, and I was too.  If you put him at the other free throw line or somewhere in the Elmhurst frontcourt, at least there is a chance they foul him as he gets himself open.  And if they play soft, avoiding the foul, and the ball does get down there on the catch and shoot, don't you want one of the best players in the country - who has 31 in the game - to be the guy taking the shot??  If IWU is in that same situation and Keelan Amelianovich is the one Titan on the floor guaranteed not to be able to shoot, I'd be a salty Titan fan.

The boxscore...

http://www.uwplatt.edu/athletics/basketball/mens/05-06/stats/2006m-6.htm

Again, Elmhurst with 12 assists to 20 turnovers.

[nochoresmartin11]

Wow...what a disappointing loss in Platteville.  To the Platteville announcers....SHUT UP!....broadcast the game, and keep your personal opinion of Chris Martin bottled up.  Not once, or twice or three times, but atleast 5 times they referred to him as a "dirty Player," and also they said Chris martin is leading Elmhurst in scoring, but isn't being a leader, and he's playing the game the way it's not supposed to be played.  Also, at the end of the game Chris Ihlenfeldt fouled a kid right as the clock expired, they said "I'm disgusted by that act by Chris I." Come on!!!  It's the end of the game, players are rushing to foul, and probably hit somebody hard, everybody has seen it!  my advice to UW-Platteville would be to get some announcers that know an ounce about the game, and keep their mouths shut about the players.  What a devastating loss to foul when the shot had zero chance of going in!  Back in the gym for Hanover...wow

[Jim Matson]

Wheaton defeats Chicago 68-57 in Wheaton.

Wheaton was up 30-19 at the half and won easily.  John Mohan (soph) had 21 points, while Tony Bollier had 16.  Chicago had Wheaton both ways on the rebounds, but everything else went Wheaton's way.  Nice win for this young team.

Bollier has now made 36 straight FTs.  He was 6 for 6 tonight.

Now a road trip to Michigan for some character building experiences...

[Gregory Sager]

I was at the Chicago @ Wheaton game this evening. Man, talk about a couple of anemic offenses. At the 12:30 mark of the first half the score was still stuck on 2-2. The first five shots of the second half were airballs, three by Chicago and two by Wheaton -- and two of those five shots were baseline bunnies. The points were so slow in coming over the first thirty minutes of the game that I had to keep looking at the shot clock to see if it was even turned on.

Eventually, Standard, Mohan, and Bollier managed to make enough shots from the perimeter to open up Wheaton's lead from the 30-19 football score that the two squads had posted at the half. Chicago never got closer than nine in the waning minutes. I was a little surprised that the Maroons didn't go to their estimable senior center Clay Carmody more; Carmody was easily the best big man on the floor for either team, and Wheaton had no one who could stop him. But he only took eight shots. Wheaton, to their credit, did a good job at the FT line down the stretch when the Maroons had to foul.

Wheaton did what they had to do to win, but they certainly didn't look pretty in doing so. Chicago was just plain bad. As one long-time CCIW Chat poster said to me at halftime, "I don't know why Scott Trost even bothered to show up and scout this game." Wesleyan can dictate whatever final score they'd like on Saturday afternoon at the Ratner Center. If they're not up by at least twenty at the half, it'll be a sure sign of the apocalypse.

Sounds to me like EC @ UWP was a classic tonight. Count me in among the chorus of people wondering why the heck Mark Scherer had Chris Martin inbound that final pass. I have no idea what he was thinking on that one. As Bob said, if you're an Elmhurst fan and you've got less than a second for a catch-and-shoot, you're praying that the Franchise is the guy who's at the receiving end of that inbounds pass ... not the guy who throws it.

[nochoresmartin11]

The Platteville radio guys were shocked that Martin was the in-bounder, and I was too.  If you put him at the other free throw line or somewhere in the Elmhurst frontcourt, at least there is a chance they foul him as he gets himself open.  And if they play soft, avoiding the foul, and the ball does get down there on the catch and shoot, don't you want one of the best players in the country - who has 31 in the game - to be the guy taking the shot?? If IWU is in that same situation and Keelan Amelianovich is the one Titan on the floor guaranteed not to be able to shoot, I'd be a salty Titan fan.

The boxscore...

http://www.uwplatt.edu/athletics/basketball/mens/05-06/stats/2006m-6.htm

Again, Elmhurst with 12 assists to 20 turnovers.

That doesn't surprise me..Just chalk that one up as a coaching mistake.  The only reason I would have to believe that Martin threw that in, is because he's got a great arm, being an all state high school qb, and pitcher....who knows

[augie22]

Anyone see the Augie vs. Ambrose game?

[Gregory Sager]

TitanQ:

Pat has another program (MS Streets?) that charts the shortest route between schools.  It's a little more accurate than MapQuest apparently.

With that said, it's possible this is a mistake either on our end or whichever school posted the game.

Gordon, MS Streets is the official software used by D3. That's why Pat uses it -- and, since I don't have it, it's why I don't second-guess Pat as to whether or not he puts the little plus sign next to an opponent on a team page. 

[Pat Coleman]

I've been out of town for most of a week and won't be back at my home computer until next Monday. (I think some of you know why.) I won't be able to confirm MS Streets and Trips distance until then but I believe I checked that one personally.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Greg,

No one has directly responded to my question in reply #1157 (is Chicago that bad, or is Wheaton not hurting as much as most of us assumed from their personnel losses), but from your report on the game, I'm assuming the answer would be A: Chicago IS that bad (status of Wheaton still up in the air) - correct?

[Gregory Sager]

Chicago's pretty bad, Chuck. As I said, I like Clay Carmody's game, and the Maroons have some promising inside talent in sophomores Nate Hainje and Tim Reynolds. Rebounding is the biggest asset for the boys from down on the Midway; the Maroons average over 11 boards a game more than their opponents. They outrebounded Wheaton, 36-29, although part of that is due to the fact that the Sonic Atmospheric Disturbance just doesn't have sufficient size. But Chicago doesn't appear to have anyone who can take his man off of the dribble, and on the few occasions where the Maroons did drive to the rim they finished poorly. And their outside shooting? They were 4-21 (.190) from downtown tonight, and they're 35-115 (.304) on the season. Not good. They played their basic set for most of the first half, and motion for most of the second, and neither really seemed to work well.

Mike McGrath is a good basketball coach. He always schedules a tough non-conference slate, and I have no doubt that he'll have the Maroons ready to compete in a league in which his team probably won't shape up too badly by January, relatively speaking. But his team did not give Wheaton much of a test at all tonight. Just as North Park fans can't take a lot of big-picture encouragement from NPU's narrow win over Judson (who'd probably go 4-10 or 3-11 in the CCIW) last night, I don't think that Wheaton fans can get too excited in the greater scheme of things about beating the South Siders this evening. It's always great to win, and any game means more experience for a relatively untested squad like Wheaton's, but Chicago just struck me as being very unimpressive tonight.

Interesting sidenote, especially since everyone's talking about map software on CCIW Chat this evening: Whenever I catch a game between Wheaton and Chicago, I always refer to it as "the Rand McNally game" due to the coast-to-coast nature of the two rosters. There were a lot of moments tonight when the only Illinoisian out of the ten players on the floor was either Jordan Kemper or Johnnie Standard -- and neither of them are Chicagolanders.