MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[AndOne]

IMO---No way IWU goes to Naperville and wins on Tuesday---Wheaton wins at Carthage on Wednesday---Tourney matchups---EC vs Wheaton, NCC vs Augie

I also see Wheaton and NCC winning this week.  I really think Carthage is going to be on the outside looking in when all is said and done.

I tend to agree with Late nite & knarocky that NCC and Wheaton will win their games this week.

NCC is on a mission that has resulted in their taking down 3 top 15 rated teams in the last 8 days. They are not about to stop now.

I think WC has slightly more weapons available than does CC.

The things that make me waiver a little in picking Wheaton over Carthage are:
a) The games I have seen WC play this yr were the 2 against NCC and WC didn't look very good in either. I know they have had some great games. I just haven't seen them. 
b) Carthage won today without its best player.
c) Carthage will have the home court advantage.

[Gregory Sager]

Saturday night's Titans @ Vikings tilt at the crackerbox was certainly exciting, but it was a terrible game to watch from an aesthetic point of view. While Bob raved about the intensity of the contest -- and, yes, it certainly was intense -- I was left thinking that neither team did much to grace the considerable basketball legacies of their respective schools.

The first half, especially, looked like two middle school teams trying to make a go of it on the court after their cafeterias had each served Meatloaf Surprise during lunch period. NPU made a whole raft of unforced turnovers and, for some inexplicable reason, refused to attempt to penetrate Wesleyan's athletically-challenged perimeter, even after the Titans dropped their zone and the NPU long-distance jumpers stopped falling with regularity. I thought that Paul Brenegan was going to tear out his hair over the passivity of his team, especially since they're usually such a drive-first, ask-questions-later outfit. But, to be fair, the motion offense was working well enough for the Vikes to get some nice looks from the outside. Still, you can't go away from your strength that much, and NPU's strength is in dribble penetration, not outside shooting.

Wesleyan? They simply looked like a shell of the Titans teams that in the past were as often as not the most feared teams in the CCIW. It was as if Zach Freeman had been tacked onto some other CCIW school's JV squad.

The second half was equally dreadful, but for a completely different reason: Neither team could stop the other if their lives had depended upon it. The Titans shot 64.7% from the field in the second stanza, the Vikes shot 61.3%. It wasn't basketball, it was a full-court game of H-O-R-S-E. Now, I know that the vast majority of basketball fans prefer lots of scoring to tough defense, and most players are the same way. Still, even if you're an offense-oriented fan, unless you think the NBA All-Star game is good basketball you must believe that there has to be some defense played in a basketball game, right? Well, you wouldn't have seen any of it on display on Saturday night. Not even bare minimum. The D was so bad on both sides that it all came down to whichever team got the ball into the basket last, and it happened to be Illinois Wesleyan. But give NPU a few more seconds, and they would've won the game. Both defenses were that bad.

And that ain't right, folks. Basketball isn't just about scoring in crunch time. It's also about getting stops in crunch time. Bob's posted chronicle of the back-and-forth scoring at the end of Saturday's game is as much of an indictment of the ineptitude of the two teams' defense as it is a testimony of the see-saw excitement in the gym.

Paul Brenegan called a timeout with 3:48 left, and the first words out of his mouth were, "They've scored 21 times on 25 possessions in this half! When are you going to start playing defense?!" The Vikings never did; Wesleyan ended up scoring on 25 of their 30 possessions in the second half.

And it wasn't all Zach Freeman, either -- not by a longshot. Everyone knew he'd get his points, especially without the bulk and physicality of Stephano Jones to get in his way, and he only ended up topping his CCIW average by two points. Andrew Gilmore and Darius Gant each scored 11 in the second half, and while they both deserve a lot of credit for how well they played at the east end of the gym over the final twenty minutes, it's not as though the Vikings were making it tough on them.

I knew coming into the game that Elias Washington would be a factor for Wesleyan, simply because of his track background. The Titans seriously needed someone athletic on the perimeter to counteract NPU's superior speed and quickness, and he was the best guy they had available. What surprised me was how well he rose to the challenge in spite of his relative lack of experience. I don't know how well he fits into Ron Rose's future plans, but given NPU's roster orientation I have to think that there's at least two games a year in which Washington will get a lot of tick for the Titans until he graduates.

[Gregory Sager]

NPU had some bright spots as well. Uriah Rice ended his career with a serious bang, continuing his streak of big second halves with 18 points to finish the night with a career-high 26, most of it on 6-10 shooting from downtown. Nick Williams continued to show why he's one of this league's rising stars with his 14-point performance, and Jason Gordon, who has struggled all season long to regain his form from the first half of last year (I'm told that it often takes anywhere from a year to eighteen months to fully recover from ACL surgery, and Jason Gordon is proof of that), finished the season with his third strong game in a row.

The North Park locker room wasn't quite as much of a morgue on Saturday as it had been on Wednesday after the crushing loss in Kenosha. Wednesday was the funeral; Saturday was the interment. But the air of despondency had a different feel to it than had the last-game-blues of the previous three or four seasons. Those final games had merely been concluding wallows in the hopeless feeling that had been present since fall practice, the feeling that the Vikings weren't good enough to hold their own with anybody on the basketball court. This year's feeling was the frustration that arises from expectations unmet. NPU began to taste what winning was all about this season, and winning begets higher aspirations.

In seven out of their 14 CCIW games the Vikes were in a situation where the game was decided either in the last ten seconds of regulation or in overtime. They only won two of those seven, and that's the season in a nutshell. North Park's on a different level now. The Vikes started winning a few, and they came within a whisker of winning a lot -- and until Wednesday's debacle in Kenosha, in which they gave away an 18-point lead and lost in overtime (again because they couldn't get any defensive stops against a less-than-fully-potent team), they were very much a CCIW tournament contender.

The Vikes have to learn how to win the close ones. But at least now they're in close ones, when they aren't actually winning comfortably, and they've reduced the blowout losses to a bare minimum. The only games all year in which NPU wasn't really in it down the stretch were the first game against Wheaton and the two Augie games -- and that includes the loss to Coe and the second loss to Wheaton in which brilliant free-throw shooting in the last two minutes padded the final margins into double digits in both instances.

I really like the guys NPU now has in the program, and I'm very excited about the prospects for next year's incoming freshman class. Paul Brenegan and Steve Schafer have already demonstrated their recruiting acumen, and no coaching staff in the league is going to outwork them in that department. As one longtime NPU fan said to me after Saturday's game, "I'd rather be Paul Brenegan looking around the North Park locker room at his freshmen, sophomores, and juniors than Ron Rose looking around his locker room at all the guys who aren't named Freeman."

The future's definitely looking up at the Park. But the present has a little too much of a bittersweet taste for my liking.

[Gregory Sager]

b) Carthage won today without its best player.

As I said earlier, Carthage also won last Wednesday without its best player -- and under more difficult circumstances, as well (down all of regulation, most of the time by double digits, to an NPU team that's clearly better than Millikin).

I don't know which team is going to win on Wednesday. It could very well be the game of the year. I certainly hope that both the Wheaton people and the Carthage fan base will come out to the Carthage PEC on Wednesday and treat it as though it's the game of the year. But I wouldn't sell either Wheaton or Carthage short. Which is why posts such as ...

Carthage will not lose to Wheaton with Schlemm back on Wednesday.  Take it to the bank and draw interest. 

... just strike me as empty bravado. I look at those two teams, the stakes (if NCC wins on Tuesday, then Wednesday's game, in a sudden-death sort of way, is the beginning of the national tournament for both teams -- the next game that either Wheaton or Carthage loses starting on Wednesday would be their last game of the season), and the considerable abilities of both coaches, and I have to say as a neutral observer that I think it can easily go either way.

[Titan Q]

I knew coming into the game that Elias Washington would be a factor for Wesleyan, simply because of his track background.

Coming into the game, Elias Washington had played 6 minutes all season long, including a combined zero minutes in IWU's previous 3 (vs Augustana, vs Wheaton, @ Millikin).  I'm not sure how you knew that, but maybe you should buy a lottery ticket.

[Late nite]

Does anyone know why Schlemm didn't play this PM -----injury, illness, suspension?

Hey, I posted this information on CCIW Chat four days ago. Schlemm twisted his ankle in practice last week and, as Bob said, missed the Wednesday home game against NPU as well as Sunday's contest in Decatur.

Everyone's throwing plaudits at NCC, as well they should -- it's absolutely remarkable the way that the Cards have come up off the mat and won three must-win games in a row against nationally-ranked teams. But how about a little love for the Red Men? They've been on the verge of elimination themselves, but they somehow managed to come back from an 18-point deficit to beat NPU in overtime and then followed it up with a tough road win at Millikin -- and they did it both times without their best player. Brian Schlemm may not be everyone's first choice around whom to build a team, but give credit where credit is due: He's averaging 18.0 and 7.1 for Carthage, and none of his teammates are even remotely close to those scoring and rebounding numbers.

What NCC has done down the stretch is pretty amazing -- but what Carthage has done is pretty amazing, too.

I wouldn't classify the play of NCC as amazing---I would say they are finally playing up to their lofty pre-season expectations---After all, they were the pick to win the league

[Late nite]

und63---The Vikes have "lucked" their way to back-to-back conference titles---That's 22 lucky nights---Hopefully, their luck continues---By the way---How's YOUR team doing?

[theseguysaregood]

NPU had some bright spots as well. Uriah Rice ended his career with a serious bang, continuing his streak of big second halves with 18 points to finish the night with a career-high 26, most of it on 6-10 shooting from downtown. Nick Williams continued to show why he's one of this league's rising stars with his 14-point performance, and Jason Gordon, who has struggled all season long to regain his form from the first half of last year (I'm told that it often takes anywhere from a year to eighteen months to fully recover from ACL surgery, and Jason Gordon is proof of that), finished the season with his third strong game in a row.

The North Park locker room wasn't quite as much of a morgue on Saturday as it had been on Wednesday after the crushing loss in Kenosha. Wednesday was the funeral; Saturday was the interment. But the air of despondency had a different feel to it than had the last-game-blues of the previous three or four seasons. Those final games had merely been concluding wallows in the hopeless feeling that had been present since fall practice, the feeling that the Vikings weren't good enough to hold their own with anybody on the basketball court. This year's feeling was the frustration that arises from expectations unmet. NPU began to taste what winning was all about this season, and winning begets higher aspirations.

In seven out of their 14 CCIW games the Vikes were in a situation where the game was decided either in the last ten seconds of regulation or in overtime. They only won two of those seven, and that's the season in a nutshell. North Park's on a different level now. The Vikes started winning a few, and they came within a whisker of winning a lot -- and until Wednesday's debacle in Kenosha, in which they gave away an 18-point lead and lost in overtime (again because they couldn't get any defensive stops against a less-than-fully-potent team), they were very much a CCIW tournament contender.

The Vikes have to learn how to win the close ones. But at least now they're in close ones, when they aren't actually winning comfortably, and they've reduced the blowout losses to a bare minimum. The only games all year in which NPU wasn't really in it down the stretch were the first game against Wheaton and the two Augie games -- and that includes the loss to Coe and the second loss to Wheaton in which brilliant free-throw shooting in the last two minutes padded the final margins into double digits in both instances.

I really like the guys NPU now has in the program, and I'm very excited about the prospects for next year's incoming freshman class. Paul Brenegan and Steve Schafer have already demonstrated their recruiting acumen, and no coaching staff in the league is going to outwork them in that department. As one longtime NPU fan said to me after Saturday's game, "I'd rather be Paul Brenegan looking around the North Park locker room at his freshmen, sophomores, and juniors than Ron Rose looking around his locker room at all the guys who aren't named Freeman."

The future's definitely looking up at the Park. But the present has a little too much of a bittersweet taste for my liking.

No argument with most of what you say here, but the one thing that stands out to me is the very positive tone talking about a team that finished 5-9 in the conference.

That is not meant to be a knock on you or NPU, rather just an observation about how we evaluate a year when it is over based on expectations as much or more than the reality of that season.

The reality of the CCIW and Division III basketball in general is that it is usually 1-2 players that separate the top teams from the bottom.  In my opinion, there is little difference between the 3-8 players on most teams (although having depth with size helps).

I think you could shuffle 1-2 of those kids on each team in the league and the standings would basically stay the same.

[diehardfan]

I don't know which team is going to win on Wednesday. It could very well be the game of the year. I certainly hope that both the Wheaton people and the Carthage fan base will come out to the Carthage PEC on Wednesday and treat it as though it's the game of the year. But I wouldn't sell either Wheaton or Carthage short. Which is why posts such as ...

Carthage will not lose to Wheaton with Schlemm back on Wednesday.  Take it to the bank and draw interest. 

... just strike me as empty bravado. I look at those two teams, the stakes (if NCC wins on Tuesday, then Wednesday's game, in a sudden-death sort of way, is the beginning of the national tournament for both teams -- the next game that either Wheaton or Carthage loses starting on Wednesday would be their last game of the season), and the considerable abilities of both coaches, and I have to say as a neutral observer that I think it can easily go either way.

Man do I wish NPU had just beaten Carthage!!! Heck, I just wish my guys had made their layups in the last two games... a comment that was made by fans of the opposite teams! We'd be going into the conference with wins against the other top two seeds! Rar.

I agree though, these are two great teams with two great coaches going at it for all the cookies. Yes, I believe my team is better. But Kenosha is one heck of a tough place for us to play. Here's hoping that my guys bring their A-game... straight on through the conference tournament.

Get er done Wheaton!

[usee]

No argument with most of what you say here, but the one thing that stands out to me is the very positive tone talking about a team that finished 5-9 in the conference.

That is not meant to be a knock on you or NPU, rather just an observation about how we evaluate a year when it is over based on expectations as much or more than the reality of that season.

The reality of the CCIW and Division III basketball in general is that it is usually 1-2 players that separate the top teams from the bottom.  In my opinion, there is little difference between the 3-8 players on most teams (although having depth with size helps).

I think you could shuffle 1-2 of those kids on each team in the league and the standings would basically stay the same.

While I think its true that the level of player in the CCIW outside of the top 1-2 is fairly even, I would argue the consistency of winning is with the teams that have experienced players and continuity of coaching. Look at IWU last year. Sr laden team with a consistency in philosophy for several years (plenty of talent helped). Look at Augie, Coach G has been stomping the sidelines for several years now and he now is in the position of "reloading" vs "rebuilding". NCC is approaching that. Wheaton's Coach Harris is the constant while the players change radically. the best teams are going to have consistency in their coaching and a steady stream of talent coming through the ranks.

In football wheaton has had the same coaching staff basically for 20+ yrs and over the past 10 or so they have consistently been winners.

In North Park I see a coach who is beginning to get the right kind of players and they are starting to figure out how to compete in a tough league. the improvement Greg reflects on is very real and logically I would expect NPU to be in the conf tourney next year. (i think they are headed in the right direction in football too after dozens of years as cellar dwellers.)

[und63]

und63---The Vikes have "lucked" their way to back-to-back conference titles---That's 22 lucky nights---Hopefully, their luck continues---By the way---How's YOUR team doing?

Not so good!  With a little better "LUCK" on injuries and shots that fell or didn't fall, they would have been in the top 4.
Back-to-back conference titles are soon forgotten if you can't then win the conference tournament and/or advance any further than their history reflects.  I still say it takes a measure of "LUCK" in close ballgames and the Vikes have had their share.  That measure of "LUCK" always runs out at some point!

[Late nite]

und63---The Vikes have "lucked" their way to back-to-back conference titles---That's 22 lucky nights---Hopefully, their luck continues---By the way---How's YOUR team doing?

Not so good!  With a little better "LUCK" on injuries and shots that fell or didn't fall, they would have been in the top 4.
Back-to-back conference titles are soon forgotten if you can't then win the conference tournament and/or advance any further than their history reflects.  I still say it takes a measure of "LUCK" in close ballgames and the Vikes have had their share.  That measure of "LUCK" always runs out at some point!

Back-to-back titles are forgotten by the teams who DON'T win them---They'll always be remembered by the teams and players that DO win them---Losing in the conference tournament to the nation's Pre-season #1 pick in the country was not a disgrace---Augie beat them 2 out of 3---Augie wasn't the team that under-achieved---They accomplished more than anyone expected from them---The Vikes haven't been picked to win the league either year, but somehow managed to find the formula during the conference that others lacked---The tourney this year provides a lot of similarities if there is an NCC matchup---Pre-season conference favorites, hitting their stride late and matched against Augie in the first round---Same as last season---Hopefully, the results will be different---Injuries??---Everybody has them

[Brick]

Yeah...the Vikes really lucked their way to the sweet sixteen last season....

[cardinalpride]

Carthage showed a lot of heart this afternoon, winning in Decatur with their best player in street clothes.  Trey Bowens got off to a fast start (and had a huge game) and the Red Men led almost the entire way. 

This sets up a great finish, with the IWU @ NCC and Wheaton @ Carthage games set to decide the tournament field. 

1. Augustana 11-3 
2. Elmhurst 9-4 (@Millikin Wed.)

? Wheaton 8-5 (@ Carthage Wed.)
? North Central  7-6 (vs IWU Tues.)
? Carthage 7-6 (vs Wheaton Wed.)


* If North Central beats IWU Tuesday and finishes 8-6, they are in for sure (they'd have the 8-6 tie-breaker over Carthage via the split with Elmhurst and the 8-6 tie-breaker over Wheaton via the season sweep of the Thunder)

* If North Central loses to IWU and finishes 7-7 and Carthage beats Wheaton, Carthage and Wheaton (at 8-6) get in

* If North Central loses to IWU and finishes 7-7 and Wheaton beats Carthage, NCC and Wheaton are in...Carthage would lose the 7-7 tie-breaker to NCC (since NCC split with Elmhurst and Carthage was swept)

* The winner of Wheaton @ Carthage is in for sure, no matter what NCC does vs IWU...Carthage wins an 8-6 tie-breaker vs Wheaton (via a split with Augie, while Wheaton was swept)


Wheaton fans need to put on their best forest green Tuesday evening, travel to Merner Fieldhouse, and hope Zach Freeman has a really big final collegiate game.  A Titan win puts Wheaton in the tourney.

Or----------------Wheaton could just beat Carthage. Then NCC and Wheaton are both in and Wesleyan can start enjoying the "off season" after their great 3rd place national finish last year. 

Dido, wheaton can just take care of their own business!

[cciw watcher]

DiehardFan, I remember the days when you came up to Carthage to cheer Wheaton to victory.  I hope all the CCIW posters can make it to K-town Wednesday night.