MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[mr_b]

A few observations from the NPU-Elmhurst boxscore: Elmhurst went 15-for-17 from the charity stripe, while the Vikings were 13-of-20.  North Park also lost the turnover battle, giving up 24 to the Bluejays' 14.

[augiefan]

A few more details from Augie. Shaun Rose led Augie in scoring with 19. Delp had 18 and Wessels 9. Dain Swetalla did not start but got 7 points in 24 minutes on the floor. Millikin actually cut it to 6 with 3 minutes to go, but Augie took charge from there on out making the FTs needed as time ran down.

[augiefan]

#42 on Millikin is Zach Ott. For what it's worth he was called for only 2 fouls.

[augiefan]

Kent Raymond scored 44 points with 20-20 from the FT line. Apparently, that is a Shirk single game scoring record.

[tuvwxyz]

Springtein

Springsteen..... haha

[jojotheclown]

Sorry, I meant Springsteen.  I did know you did not spell Springsteen- John Cougar Meelencamp. 
Douche.

[Jim Matson]

I'll be looking forward to Bob's report on the Wheaton/Wesleyan game and Raymond's record setting performance.  

Here are the standings.  As Greg said earlier, it looks like things are more clear for the CCIW Tourney after tonight's games. but we still have 3 games yet to go.

1. Augustana.....10-2
2. Elmhurst.....8-3

3. Wheaton.....7-4

4. Carthage.....5-6
4. North Central.....5-6
4. North Park.....5-7

Ill. Wesleyan.....3-8
Millikin.....2-9

[dansand]

Not great but good enough tonight at Carver. Jordan Delp and Shaun Rose pretty much carried the Vikes. Delp started off red hot, was quiet during the middle of the game, and heated up again down the stretch. Rose's play was particularly important with Dain Swetalla playing under the weather again.

I haven't complained about the officiating this year, but I will tonight. The officials let a very physical game get away from them a little tonight. There were some very bad calls, no calls and make-up calls (both ways). It was definitely the most poorly-officiated CCIW game I've seen this year.

Not a very pretty win, but we'll take it as Augie inches closer to another CCIW regular season title. Also good news with Wheaton winning and Carthage losing, both of which help Augie in the event of a tie with Elmhurst.

[Pat Coleman]

Douche.

Hey clown: Let's lose this word from the board's vocabulary. Thanks.

[cardinalpride]

Huge win for the Cards tonight!  Here's the boxscore for tonights game:

http://www.carthage.edu/athletics/index.cfm?page=19

[dogtired]

Kent Raymond was tremendous at Shirk tonight.
Congrats Kent on a truly memorable performance.
I put Raymond, Freeman and Ruch in the top three for MOP consideration.

That said, 20 free throws was a bit much. One official made sure Raymond went to the line on every drive.
Once a fan in the second row inhaled and Raymond went to the line for a shooting foul.

[AndOne]

The primary ingrediants in tonight's North Central win over Carthage were heart, guts, and determination which was best personified in the form of defensive intensity. The Cardinals refused to let either the specture of the earlier loss to the Red Men or the fact that they entered the game with a less than full strength Brandon Smith and with Chris Drennan totally unavailable and still as nattily attired at the time of the opening tip as when he stepped off the bus in the parking lot.

North Central just seemed to want it more than the Carthage contingent, who were perhaps slightly overconfident based on their earlier victory over the Cardinals. They held Carthage to a rather woeful 34% shooting. Two of the prime contributors to this less than glowing statistic were superstar Brian Schlemm who, at 4 for 16, was neither super nor a star this evening, and stellar freshman Sean Fendley who checked in (or more correctly out) at a "robust' 2 for 11, far below his usual standard.

Two of the other factors largely influencing the final outcome were the usual superior officiating job, and Chief Bosko's "curious" substitution rotation.

Its a fact that the vast majority of us who post here on a regular basis have raised many questions about the quality of the officiating this season. Tonight, they allowed Brian Schlemm, who could have been whistled for about 10 fouls, to continue to remain on the floor. This reprieve ultimately, oddly enough, helped the Cardinals as Schlemm was able to subsequently continue to lob bricks at the backboard. A large portion of said bricks were retrieved by the Cards in the form of defensive rebounds.   This helped NCC win the rebounding battle 37-31.

Partial credit for the NCC victory must also go to Carthage Coach Bosko Djurickovic, whose "unorthodox" substitution patterns cost his team several opportunities. A prime example of this occured when the aforementioned Mr Fendley hit two quick baskets within the first few minutes of the game. His reward was to be removed by Bosko and allowed to chill on the bench. When reinserted into the lineup before being allowed to thaw completely, he was largly inconsequential over the course of the  remainder of the game. Throughout the game, Bosko's frequent, and seemingly random, substitutions prevented the Red Men from developing a cohesive unit and/or an effective offensive flow. If Bosko did not outcoach himself, he was surely outcoached by Coach Raridon. At no time was this more evident than during the final 8 seconds of the game when the Cards perfectly executed a play drawn up by Raridon only seconds before in the time out huddle. 

[wheels81]

"Kent Raymond was tremendous at Shirk tonight.
Congrats Kent on a truly memorable performance.
I put Raymond, Freeman and Ruch in the top three for MOP consideration.

That said, 20 free throws was a bit much. One official made sure Raymond went to the line on every drive.
Once a fan in the second row inhaled and Raymond went to the line for a shooting foul."
Hey dogtired,  How can you say on one hand Raymond was tremendous on the other hand 20 ft was a bit much.  Either he was that good or was handed the ball.  Enough about the rest Z(tjcummings) included who whine about the fact that Raymond gets to the foul line a lot.  He's a pure scorer who doesn't rely on the jump shot alone to score.  He takes it to the hoop and nine times out of 10 if there's contact the shooter gets the call.  It's also a strategy on opposing teams to "hammer" the "star" to try to deter his efforts.  I'm "dogtired" of the claim as well that the refs are givng him the edge that's totally rerichardulous.

[tjcummingsfan]

Not sure how having a great game, but getting sent to the ft line more than is warranted is mutually exclusive...

[tjcummingsfan]

The NP Elmhurst game was, not unlike the Wheaton game, a tale of 2 halfs for the Vikings.  They had only scored 27 at the end of the first half.  They looked sloppy, and lost on offense.  Luckily, they played pretty intense defense, and stayed within 9 at the break.  Park didn't look to really be in any kind of offensive flow until about mid way through the second half.  Antonio Stevens, a freshman defensive specialist, had 17, and didn't miss from the field (went 1-2 from the stripe), he was getting by defenders and taking the ball pretty easily to the rim.  (this one is for bgbully40...) If Stevens had been Raymond he would've been at the line at least another 10 times.  We finally got a real solid game offensively out of Capalbo (21pts 7-12fg, 5-8 3pt, 2-3 ft) which was nice to see.  He was playing off the ball, and so was able to get more open looks.  Jason Gordon also looked solid for North Park last night (17pts 6-8fg, and 5-6ft). 

Where we really got exploited was in the post (surprise, surprise), Michael and Ruch had a combined 40pts.    When you're 6'9 and 6'10 you can easily shoot over the 6'4 (which is a stretch) Jones, and the 6'6 Lenoir.  Burks had 18 also, but went ice cold with his jumper after hitting his first 3 3 pointers (one of which was pretty close to NBA range), which coincidentally was when Brenegan really switched for a bit to a man "d" and Stevens locked him down. 

The last 2 minutes were real intense.  North Park battled hard and had the game within 1 after a couple just amazing 3pt shots from Rice.  Ruch went 6-6 from the line in the last couple minutes and really that's what did it.  This wasn't a close game that North Park gave away (like the previous game, and the one against Carthage at the crackerbox).  Aside from a traveling call against Jason Gordon with 36 seconds left and Park down by 1 (which was perhaps the worst call of a fairly consistent night, it wasn't obvious enough a travel to call at that point in the game), North Park did what they could.  Ruch just didn't let them have it.  I was extremely impressed with the poise of this sophomore at the line with the game hanging in the balance and the North Park fans (who were often louder than the Elmhurst fans) going nuts. 

The Carthage loss helped us alot.  The #4 spot comes down to these last couple games, man it's nice to be in the conversation for the conference tournament.