WBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Gregory Sager]

Coach of the Year, should be Olivia Lett?

Lett or Kent Madsen. Graduation cost Wheaton the best player in the league, plus four other players who had each started at least a dozen games and averaged 18 mpg or more in 2019-20. And yet Wheaton finished at the top of the standings this season, 2 1/2 games ahead of second-place Millikin, only to be denied the opportunity to participate in the CCIW tournament because of Covid-19. That's a top-notch season of work on Kent Madsen's part. But Lett would be a good choice, too.

[RogK]

Coach of the Year has always been pre- conference tournament, which would point to Madsen.
But, this year's all-CCIW voting apparently includes the tournament results, so you (iwu70) could go with Lett.
The league doesn't bother explaining the deviations from all previous seasons.
Is it a permanent change to include the CCIW tournament results in consideration for all-CCIW voting?

[GoPerry]

the all-CCIW honors are up :
2021 Lori Kerans Most Outstanding Player -- Kendall Sosa - Illinois Wesleyan
2021 CCIW Newcomer of the Year -- Elyce Knudsen - Millikin

FIRST TEAM
Name    School    Pos.    Yr.     Hometown/H.S.
Kate Christian    Carroll    G    So.      New London, Wis./H.S.
Kendall Sosa*    Illinois Wesleyan    G    Sr.    Bloomington, Ill./Normal Community
Bailey Coffman    Millikin    F    So.    Heyworth, Ill./Bloomington Central Catholic
Jordan Hildebrand*    Millikin    F/C    Sr.    Mendon, Ill./Unity
Elyce Knudsen*    Millikin     G    Fr.    Phillo, Ill./Tolono Unity
Jayla Johnson*    North Park    F    Jr.    Wheaton, Ill./Wheaton-Warrenville South
Hannah Williams*    Wheaton    G    Sr.    Fishers, Ind./Heritage Christian
Annie Tate*    Wheaton    G    So.    Elburn, Ill./St. Charles North

SECOND TEAM
Name    School    Pos.     Yr.    Hometown/H.S.
Elizabeth Behrndt    Carroll    F    So.    Sussex, Wis./Hamilton
Courtney O'Donnell    Elmhurst    F    Sr.    New Lenox, Ill./Lincoln-Way West
Kelly Weyrich    Elmhurst    G    Sr.    Arlington Heights, Ill./Hersey
Riley Brovelli    Illinois Wesleyan    F    Sr.    Oglesby, Ill./LaSalle-Peru
Samantha Munroe    Illinois Wesleyan    G    Sr.    St. Charles, Ill./East
Allison Pearson    North Central    G    Jr.     Des Plaines, Ill./Maine West
Emily Czuhajewski    North Park    G    Jr.    Chicago, Ill./Taft
Hannah Swider    Wheaton    G    Jr.    Wheaton, Ill./North
*Unanimous Selections
--
Deviating from prior seasons, there is no Coach of the Year. Really? No plausible reason for that.
Augustana and Carthage are shut out.
I'll pompously stick with my all-CCIW list.

I don't know RogK - total miss on Coffman is pretty big for a man of your intellect  .  I am a bit surprised at her first team nod and three from MU.  I don't ever recall that, even on the men's side.  But then I don't see an obvious replacement for Coffman amongst the second teamers either.

Congratulations to Thunder ladies Annie Tate and Hannahs Williams and Swider.  Well deserved.

Looking at this list of honorees following an irregular season, I'm not sure that the names would've been much different in a full non-Covid season.  I'm also wondering why the Coach of the Year omission  . . .

[Gregory Sager]

Is it a permanent change to include the CCIW tournament results in consideration for all-CCIW voting?

Not likely, but I can't say that for sure.

[RogK]

GoPerry, if you're going to apply "a man of your intellect" to me, you should add something between "your" and "intellect."
Something like "minimal" or "barely detectable." 
I do think highly of Coffman but opted for Fox because Fox was relied on for more minutes and has improved herself to a level of all-around fine player with no significant flaws.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

I only saw Knudsen play in the championship game, but, based on that one game, I'd call her the best player in the conference.  She certainly looked like the best player on the floor to me.

[iwu70]

Hoops Fan, if you look at the season stats, over the course of the year, you will easily see that Kendall Sosa is the MOP in the CCIW this season.  Knudsen is very good, seemingly special, esp. as a freshman.  Perhaps she'll win three MOP awards now, not sure.  But, I give Kendall Sosa her due . . .

Too bad such a strange season, with all the varying number of games, schedules, and postponements, esp. for IWU.  And, Wheaton, likely the best team, and not even getting to play in the conference tournament.  Sad, but true.  A choppy strange set of games.  And, IWU played NPU four times!  But only played ten games total.  Weird.

Oh well, perhaps next season we'll have something closer to a normal season and a full schedule.  Let's hope.

'70

[Titan Q]

I only saw Knudsen play in the championship game, but, based on that one game, I'd call her the best player in the conference.  She certainly looked like the best player on the floor to me.

I guess you should have seen the game where Sosa scored 47 at Millikin?

[Titan Q]

Kendall Sosa: 26.7 ppg, 3.8 rpg, 2.7 apg, .497 FG, .460 3-point, .889 FT

Elyce Knudsen: 18.5 ppg, 4.4 rpg, 2.6 apg, .448 FG, .282 3-point, .771 FT

[Titan Q]

Regarding Wheaton and Millikin...

* Millikin lost at Wheaton by 7 in a game Millikin led for about 33 minutes.

* Millikin beat Wheaton in Decatur by 25 points.


From the games I watched, the best team in the CCIW won the conf tournament.

[Gregory Sager]

I only saw Knudsen play in the championship game, but, based on that one game, I'd call her the best player in the conference.  She certainly looked like the best player on the floor to me.

Nope. Despite how Tuesday's game played out, Kendall Sosa is the best player in the conference. Actually, I suppose that it's now correct to say that she was the best player in the conference.

Regarding Wheaton and Millikin...

* Millikin lost at Wheaton by 7 in a game Millikin led for about 33 minutes.

* Millikin beat Wheaton in Decatur by 25 points.


From the games I watched, the best team in the CCIW won the conf tournament.

Millikin also lost by 13 at North Central, a team that Wheaton swept. And Millikin never faced #3 North Park, which lost on its home floor to Wheaton (albeit in overtime). I saw both Wheaton and Millikin play multiple times, and I'm not sold at all on the thesis that Millikin is hands-down the better team. I think that MU is a bit more talented, but Wheaton is steadier. This season cried out for a rubber match between the two teams.

(That makes twice today that I've stood up for Wheaton. I feel like I need to take a shower.)

[GoPerry]

Whoa, whoa, whoa.  Did I hit the Bizarro WBB: CCIW link by mistake?  First Ryan is naming the best player in the league based on a single viewed performance.  And then Q reasons that an 8-3 team is better than an 11-1 team based on overall margin of points in a home/home head to head split.  The double bizarro capper is Greg defending the Thunder twice - himself admitting to the strangeness of that.

The Thunder did not play well in Decatur in both team's third game of the season.  Wheaton looked like a team trying to settle in multiple players finding themselves in key roles while having barely played any significant minutes in prior seasons.  They were a much better team after the NPU victory which is when Annie Tate hit her stride.  And they also won their last 3 games while dressing only 8-10 players and missing regulars Hannah Swider and Zoe Nordling.   And that single loss to the eventual champion doesn't look near as bad as MU's loss to an eventual 2-10 NCC.  On the other hand, 11-1 includes no games vs IWU, a team proven to have Wheaton's number on some big occasions.

As I posted earlier, Millikin is to be congratulated for winning the conference tournament and thus the 2021 conference championship.  But I'm certainly not willing to say that they would have beaten Wheaton in a conference championship game on Wheaton's home court.  In fact, I rather doubt it.

Elyce Knudsen had the best game on Tuesday night.  Kendall Sosa was the best player in the league this brief season.  It wouldn't be difficult to argue for her being the top player in the country although her all around game isn't quite as noteworthy.  She was certainly the top scorer in the league and country.  Knudsen was a unanimous first team All CCIW selection.  But so was Wheaton's Annie Tate who put up some pretty gaudy #s herself. The only difference between the two was Tate's 22 total minutes of prior playing time virtually none of which were in consequential moments in a game.  I think this sets up Knudsen, Tate and Jayla Johnson –another unanimous All CCIW pick- as the top players in the league come November.

[Gregory Sager]

Well stated, GP. And I agree that, from this far-off vantage point looking ahead to 2021-22, the top players in the league appear to be (in alphabetical order) Jayla Johnson, Elyce Knudsen, and Annie Tate. As you mentioned, each of the three is a unanimous All-CCIW first-team pick. But they're also the only three returning unanimous All-CCIW first-team picks.

Having said that, it's important not to put excessive emphasis upon that fact. Yeah, it would've been easy to look ahead and put Jayla Johnson on that 2021-22 list coming into this just-finished season, since she'd been a unanimous All-CCIW first-teamer in 2019-20 as a sophomore and the CCIW Newcomer of the Year and a second-team selection as a freshman in 2018-19. But Annie Tate certainly wouldn't have been on the list, since, as you said, her prior contribution to the Madsenites had been negligible. And Knudsen, in spite of the fact that she had been a very hot commodity on the recruiting trail as a high-school senior, wouldn't have been on that list, either, because you just can't tell what sort of an impact even a blue-chip will have as a freshman.

All of which is to say that we don't know who will emerge from the ranks to be a dominant player in 2021-22 -- but it's a pretty sure bet that, alongside the returning three superstars (should they remain healthy and if they don't slack off), a new player or two or three will attain that unanimous-All-CCIW-first-teamer status. And we don't know who she or they are yet.

[Gregory Sager]

Mike Krizman, the CCIW's assistant executive director and SID, has been putting together a series in recent months on outstanding CCIW women. This morning the league office released the latest iteration in the series, which is about my North Park classmate and friend Becky Johnson Djurickovic. I highly recommend that every fan of CCIW women's basketball read the article and watch Mike's interview of Becky. She was a real trailblazer in North Park women's basketball, both on the court and later as head coach, and she was a very important part of the formative years of CCIW women's basketball as a whole back in the late '80s. Listening to this interview gives a good glimpse at just how far this sport has come since our college days (which now seems like eons ago; it still blows my mind that Becky, like several of our classmates, has retired from teaching).

[GoPerry]

Mike Krizman, the CCIW's assistant executive director and SID, has been putting together a series in recent months on outstanding CCIW women. This morning the league office released the latest iteration in the series, which is about my North Park classmate and friend Becky Johnson Djurickovic. I highly recommend that every fan of CCIW women's basketball read the article and watch Mike's interview of Becky. She was a real trailblazer in North Park women's basketball, both on the court and later as head coach, and she was a very important part of the formative years of CCIW women's basketball as a whole back in the late '80s. Listening to this interview gives a good glimpse at just how far this sport has come since our college days (which now seems like eons ago; it still blows my mind that Becky, like several of our classmates, has retired from teaching).

Yes - good interview GS.  Knew of father-son obviously but had no idea about the mom.  What a basketball family . . .