MBB: Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference

[RFMichigan]

Both division races are shaping up to be wild rides to the end. In the North, Edgewood, CUW, and Lakeland, (the best three teams in the conference) are separated by only one game and in the South, MSOE, Rockford, and Benedictine (who escaped with an OT win over Maranatha today) are separated by a half game.

[RFMichigan]

And so . . . the South Division tightens up even more as there are five teams within a game and a half of first. What's the over and under on the number of losses the division champ will have? I'm setting it at 5.5. (The leaders currently have four losses.)

I watched the last minute or so of the Marian-Edgewood game last night and it was a fun finish. Edgewood ran a sideline out-of-bounds lob to their post (who had gotten position behind Marian defender) with 3.3 seconds remaining who got off a clean layup attempt - only to see the ball roll off the rim. This put three teams in the North with two losses.

And Just Bill - will you make the trek to RF for CIT this year? I'm guessing the final will be CUW - CUAA - a matchup that I would look forward to if CUC can't pull off an upset of CUW. (By the way, isn't CUW sort of running CUAA now? So if CUAA wins it's really a CUW win? Whatever.)

[WLCALUM83]

My 1/28/12 in-conference guesses:

Aurora over WLC
Lakeland over MSOE
Edgewood over Dominican
Rockford over Maranatha

[BadgerFan42]

CU-AA is a subsidiary of CUW right now, so Concordia-Wisconsin could've won had Ann Arbor pulled it off, technically.  CIT was amazing this year.  All four men's games were extremely close and hard fought.  The CUC vs. CUW game was an intense back and forth battle til the end, it came down to a 3-pointer by CUW's Brian Jackson with 3.3 seconds left (Avery got off a half-courter that hit the front of the rim as time expired).  On Saturday CUC took it to CU-AA, but fell apart in overtime.  The championship game was again a very intense back and forth game.  However, CUW was on the other end of the game winning 3 that night.   They also couldn't connect from the FT-line (41.7% for the game) and that is ultimately what cost them another CIT Championship. 

Should make for an exciting finish in both divisions.  A small margin for error the rest of the way. 

[WLCALUM83]

1/31/12 guesses:

Aurora over MSOE
WLC over Maranatha
CUW over Marian
Rockford over Dominnican

and in the game of the day-- Lakeland over Edgewood on the road

[BadgerFan42]

My picks for the night:

I want to pick MSOE over Aurora, but MSOE has proved that they aren't as good as their early record showed...Aurora wins by 15
Demuth continues his hot shooting and WLC wins safely against MBBC
CUWs defensive pressure is too much for Marian and the Falcons cruise to a victory at home
Rockford puts on an offensive clinic against a poor Dominican defense

Sticking with the trends...A high powered Muskie offense proves to be too much for Edgewood at home (83-71 LU)

[RFMichigan]

CU-AA is a subsidiary of CUW right now, so Concordia-Wisconsin could've won had Ann Arbor pulled it off, technically.  CIT was amazing this year.  All four men's games were extremely close and hard fought.  The CUC vs. CUW game was an intense back and forth battle til the end, it came down to a 3-pointer by CUW's Brian Jackson with 3.3 seconds left (Avery got off a half-courter that hit the front of the rim as time expired).  On Saturday CUC took it to CU-AA, but fell apart in overtime.  The championship game was again a very intense back and forth game.  However, CUW was on the other end of the game winning 3 that night.   They also couldn't connect from the FT-line (41.7% for the game) and that is ultimately what cost them another CIT Championship.   

It was certainly an exciting weekend of basketball. Tell me if I'm way off base, but Mequon, Seward, and Ann Arbor were interchangeable in their personnel types and styles; good overall athleticism and basketball skill; athletic, quick point guards with good handles, a couple of complimentary 3-point shooters, a lanky slasher or two, and the beefy 6' 6" - 6' 8" guy in the middle. 

Honestly, I thought that the only team that really didn't have the horses was CUC, and they lost two games that they probably feel they controlled in the second half. The fact that CUW kept hoisting threes when they weren't falling (at one point the Falcons were 2-19 from behind the arc) was about the only thing that kept CUC in their semi at all. Once CUW put on the press with about five minutes to go I just had a bad feeling for CUC as they really don't have great ball handlers. (But hitting better than 2-7 from the charity stripe in the last five minutes wouldn't have hurt either.)

Other observations:
- I'm shocked at how much better Seward is now than they were last year - they were terrible in Ann Arbor in 2011. Two newcomers has made a huge difference for them.
- Rocko Holmes - CU-AA's center who dropped 28 on UM last year also has dropped about 30 pounds from last year. I'm not sure his game is any better though. I thought he was pretty nimble when he was carrying 265 pounds and he seemed to have pretty good stamina a year ago as well. Ann Arbor is going to have to go out and find themselves a big man next year.
- Luke Doedens is a really smooth player - probably the best all-around player in the tournament. CUW is really going to miss him.
- It was amazing to watch CUC's Charles Gorden wiggle to the hoop for 26 against CU-AA. He was almost unstoppable even though he was giving up some serious height and weight to Ann Arbor's centers. I wish RF would have fed him the ball down on the block some more. (I also wish that he would have played in the first half against CUW - not sure why he was out.) He only went 9-9 in the second half against CUW and 20 - 25 (80%) from the field for the tournament. Sheesh.)
- Speaking of free throws, CU-AA went 13-14 in the last 6 minutes of regulation plus overtime. CUC went 1-5 including a miss with no time on the clock which would have won the game. Double sheesh.
- The eventual game-winning three that the guy from Seward hit was a prayer. A friend of mine and I were standing on the floor behind the play and directly lined up with the ball and the basket, and the guy was basically moving hard in the air parallel to the free throw line when he let the shot go. Somehow it went in. Doeden's shot to tie was a clean look, and I can't believe it didn't fall. 
- I'm nostalgic for the old days, but this tournament now features two scholarship-granting NAIA schools which just doesn't sit right with me.  Maybe it doesn't make much of a difference seeing how close the four games were (Three games decided by total of seven points plus and an overtime game in the fourth.) but, man, I don't know. It was fantastic atmosphere though, so there's that.

Now for the picks:
Aurora over MSOE (Aurora needs this one pretty badly and MSOE is slumping)
WLC over MBBC
CUW over Marian (No upset tonight for Marian)
Rockford over Domincan (although I wouldn't be surprised by a Stars upset with Rockford looking past them)
Lakeland over Edgewood (I think Edgewood will be thinking about their Marian loss.)
Now . . . I'm just not sure how CUC will recover from their CIT last-second losses. On the one hand they may be reeling. On the other hand, they hung tough with two very talented squads. I think CUC will play well down the season stretch, but Benedictine wins at home.

[BadgerFan42]

You bring up the point about the Scholarship schools at C.I.T...I really don't think it matters at this point.  Maybe it's because Seward hasn't been very good the past couple of years (really they still aren't), but if CUW had hit their FT's the CIT championship would've gone to a D3 school for the 3rd straight year.  If you remember way back 4 years ago, CUW lost by 1 to CUNE at Seward in the championship game.  That year Seward was loaded with talent.  Now I could be wrong, I think the scholarships might come into play for the next couple of years because CUW and CUC are both losing a lot of talent after this season so we could see Sewards return to dominance, but for as long as I've known about CIT...it isn't always the most talented team that wins that tournament. 

Anyone else surprised by Edgewood taking care of business against LU last night??  MSOE burning the nets up with 37 points....in the game... 

[Just Bill]

More surprising was Edgewood beating LC despite getting just two points from Wisniewski. He did have six assists so he found a way to contribute. EC got big games off the bench from Williams and Klocek.

For LC, Schwarz and Ward had about what you would expect, although Schwarz didn't get to the free throw line at all in the second half. Regal struggled shooting as much as Wisniewski did, although he still made some great drives late in the game.

I saw the shot by Doedens in the CUW game to tie it on video. Wow.

[BadgerFan42]

Not sure if many of you know who Matt Menzl is, former CUW sports radio broadcaster and now he primarily does horizon league sports, but he said it best, "Luke Doedens is one of the most clutch players I've seen down the stretch...".  His shot at the end of the Championship game at CIT is one he makes 9 out of 10 times, it was Sewards day...

Surprising that EC won with Wisniewski only scoring 2, that is typically their formula for a loss if he doesn't score, also helps when the Craig has 20+...it will be an interesting finish, 4 games left?

[Gregory Sager]

- I'm nostalgic for the old days, but this tournament now features two scholarship-granting NAIA schools which just doesn't sit right with me.  Maybe it doesn't make much of a difference seeing how close the four games were (Three games decided by total of seven points plus and an overtime game in the fourth.) but, man, I don't know. It was fantastic atmosphere though, so there's that.

You might be making much ado about nothing here, RFM. I don't know if you follow the "D3 vs. other divisions" room in the Multi-Regional Topics section, but if you don't you would be surprised by what you find in there. Every year, without fail, D3 and NAIA Division Two play roughly to a draw, and that usually covers about 150 games or so between the two divisions. Simply put, there's not all that much to the whole idea of scholarships in NAIA-2.

For NAIA-1, it's a different story; those schools get twelve scholies apiece, and they frequently use them to good effect. The top tier of that division is more comparable to the NCAA's D2 than it is to D3, and NAIA-1 beats D3 handily in head-to-head competition every year.

But for NAIA-2, the six scholies that its schools are allowed don't often go very far. Lots of NAIA-2 teams give out scholarships that are well under the maximum allowed, both in numbers and in money, and other NAIA-2 schools don't even give out scholies at all. And lots of schools split up their scholarship money so that they can distribute partial scholarships among a wider variety of players. I've heard what some CCAC schools in the league's Division Two section give out as scholarship money, and it's really a pittance. Add in the fact that there's typically less prestige from an academic standpoint among NAIA schools than what is enjoyed among D3 schools, which gives D3 schools a recruiting advantage, and you can start to see why there's rough parity between the two on the national level.

[BadgerFan42]

Couldn't agree more with Mr. Sager (any relation to the always well dressed Craig Sager?).  During my time as a Division 3 basketball player I was never impressed with NAIA-D2 schools, they're basically division 3 with the ability to throw a few hundred dollars at a kid and call it an athletic scholarship.

Picks for tonight, only one:

The Falcons, always tough to beat on their home floor, cruise past MBBC to pick up an extra win.   

[Gregory Sager]

(any relation to the always well dressed Craig Sager?).

Nope, and I definitely don't reach his sartorial standards.

[BadgerFan42]

All it takes is a wild suit coat and a tie that doesn't match...

[WLCALUM83]

2/4/12 guesses:

Lakeland over Benedictine:
CUC over Maranatha:
Marian over Dominican:
Edgewood over Aurora:
MSOE over WLC: