WBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[RogK]

Jackie Errico continued her fine play, hitting a go-ahead basket with :42 left, helping North Central get past Augustana, 68-64. At 2-4, NC still has an outside chance to contend for the conference playoffs. Tuesday's game vs Elmhurst is a must win for them. And it's a very important game for Elmhurst, as well. Should be well-contested.
Millikin handed Carthage its 3rd CCIW loss, 46-44. Each team shot a measly 6 FT attempts in that one. One would have to assume that the refs didn't call much, which favored defensive play. On top of that, I'd assume that both coaches decided to favor defense to the detriment of their offenses. A clue supporting that supposition is that 58 (nearly 3/4ths) of the total 78 rebounds were defensive, meaning that players mostly went back on defense rather than going for offensive rebounds.  I'm guessing that there were a lot of one-and-done possessions.
It worked for Millikin, anyway. If I'm misinterpreting the stats, one of our readers should tell us.
One of the fans at the Elmhurst game Saturday asked me how Olivet Nazarene is doing lately. They are the last team to beat IWU, by the way.
That fan can read the following (the rest of you shouldn't, as it is NAIA, not NCAA).
ONU led Trinity International 35-31 at halftime Saturday. Eleven minutes later, it was 68-55. Then ONU apparently got pissed off and outscored TIU 50-18 over the final 9:00 of the game. Now THAT is a scoring spree.

[Out_Of_My_Kitchen]

I wonder if she replicates the same style of play of her college teams?  Could you imagine this team if she would have came back for one more year!

Long time no post...  We attended the IWU-NPU game Saturday and we sat with the Christina and the rest of the Solari family. 

It was a bit of sloppy game played by both sides.  NPU did not give up and made a couple of runs to get the deficit back to within 5 and 11 in the 2nd half. In the end, NPU clearly did not have the depth to keep up with the bigger IWU team and the outside 3's by IWU. 

On a personal note, my daughter is playing for Maine South HS and the new Freshman-B coach, Christina Solari.  Under Christina, the B-team is at 14-1.

[RogK]

Congratulations to Olivia Lett and Meghan Merklein, co-Players of the Week.
Nicely done, girls! Maybe not the last time for either, either.

[Mr. Ypsi]

New poll is out.  IWU continues to slowly climb back up - now 6th (from 7th).  Beyond that the news is not so good: Millikin rose only from 9 points to 12; Carthage and Wheaton both fell out completely.

[Gregory Sager]

NPU put in a good effort on Saturday. The Vikings had the IWU lead down to five about halfway thru the second stanza, much to the extreme and vocal annoyance of a Titans coaching staff that was clearly expecting a walkover, before a collective NPU panic attack against a press that hadn't presented a huge problem for the Vikings up to that point allowed the visitors to go on a 14-2 run within the space of only a few minutes that put away the game.

Roxie Jones, who is still under the weather and unable to play a full game, nevertheless scored 19 points. Sarah Peterson, who isn't 100% herself, had a weird game -- eight turnovers, but four blocks and five steals. Antoinette Collman continues to get better every time she takes the floor, and it was good to see Danielle Cathey make the most of her limited minutes towards the end of the game. I think she'll now start to play a more prominent role for the Vikings.

As one poster said, NPU just doesn't have the depth at this point to hang with a team like Illinois Wesleyan for forty minutes. But the Vikings are working hard and gaining good experience, and I'm pretty confident that in 2011-12 Amanda Reese will have enough firepower on hand for North Park to pose something more than a mild and momentary threat when the Vikings go head-to-head with the established powers of the league.

[Hoosier Titan]

Hang on, Greg.  Some of the team might have expected a walkover, but the coaching staff didn't.  I saw the prep notes.  The Titans were very sloppy in the first half and early in the second but they finally got their act together to pull away.  I was impressed with Collman and it's good to know that Jones was under the weather--that explained her short stints on the floor, where she was very impressive within her range.  This is a much better North Park team than I've seen in a long time; they look to have a bright future and that's good for the conference. 

[Gregory Sager]

Hang on, Greg.  Some of the team might have expected a walkover, but the coaching staff didn't.

I beg to differ. I was sitting at the scorer's table, five feet away from Mia Smith, and early in the second half (while NPU was chipping away at the 13-point lead Wesleyan had at halftime) I heard her say something like, "C'mon, let's wake up and put this one away," or words to that effect. She clearly did not anticipate North Park hanging around for thirty minutes, much less forty.

The prep notes only demonstrate that she's a good coach who does thorough advance work.

[Hoosier Titan]

Hang on, Greg.  Some of the team might have expected a walkover, but the coaching staff didn't.

I beg to differ. I was sitting at the scorer's table, five feet away from Mia Smith, and early in the second half (while NPU was chipping away at the 13-point lead Wesleyan had at halftime) I heard her say something like, "C'mon, let's wake up and put this one away," or words to that effect. She clearly did not anticipate North Park hanging around for thirty minutes, much less forty.

The prep notes only demonstrate that she's a good coach who does thorough advance work.

Yes, I heard that too.  I was closer than you.    She was talking to her team, who were clearly playing below their potential.  Just because she wanted the Titans to do their best doesn't mean that she was denegrating North Park.

And if she were anticipating North Park folding, why would she have bothered doing the advance work?  (She wouldn't be a very good coach if she were anticipating that).  And she is a very good coach indeed. 

But if you want to encourage the d3 community to think that Mia Smith takes things for granted I guess that's fine with me. 

[Gregory Sager]

I didn't say that she was denigrating North Park. I said that she was annoyed that her team hadn't put away the Vikings, particularly since her team had put the Vikings down by a substantial margin at the half. And she didn't say it to her team; she muttered it in a thinking-out-loud kinda way. I suspect that her male assistant coach was the intended target for her words, if anyone was.

Doing the advance work is part of the job. Every good coach does it, regardless if the opponent is 15-2 or 2-15. You never take anything for granted. Nevertheless, you don't expect a clearly inferior foe to hang around and chip away at your lead, particularly when you have them down by 13 at the half.

[bblover]

The coaching quality in the CCIW is clearly well above average, but let's not make these incredibly hard-working, for the most part, quite talented, people into gods. In the end, it is the players who play, not the coaches. Is it Coach K's fault that Duke fell to an unranked FSU? Is it Thibodeau's fault that the Bulls lost to a lousy Philadelphia team after beating them by 40 at home a few days earlier. Is it Doc's Rivers fault that the Celtics, the number one team in the east, lost to one of the worst teams in the NBA, the Washington Wizards. Is it Phil Jackson's fault that his Lakers recently lost to the lowly Clippers. No matter what a coach says and how much they prepare a team, the players (the kids in this case of CCIW) know who they are playing. Inevitably, even the very best teams, are not emotionally prepared for a few of their games. As happened on Saturday, the better team (IWU) prevailed, but I do not think that it had much to do with the coach or preparation. As my brother tells me again and again, when a great team plays a weak team, every so often, that weak team wins. "That is why they play the games". 

[RogK]

It is true that the players do the playing, the coaches don't.
But, in the NBA, a crummy General Manager gets the blame for a roster that can't compete with the rest of the league.
In college, especially at D3, if a team doesn't have a talented-enough roster, the coach has to look in a mirror to see who's responsible.
The D3 coach has a difficult, time-consuming job (particularly if he or she is a busy recruiter). They also do things that we don't see, to help players grow as people, sometimes completely unrelated to basketball. I think many of them get their greatest satisfaction by helping their players to be ready for life after college. Success on the court is a big focus, too, of course.
The D3 coach does not have the public or media scrutiny that D1 or NBA coaches have to face, nor are millions of dollars riding on how well they do. But, D3 coaches do have their hands full, for sure.

[bblover]

They also do things that we don't see, to help players grow as people, sometimes completely unrelated to basketball. I think many of them get their greatest satisfaction by helping their players to be ready for life after college.

I agree with you 100% that many coaches, including a number in the CCIW, do an incredible job in helping their players develop as both basketball players and human beings. In the end, isn't this what it is all about. I used "well-known names" in my previous blog, because I think that they can help make this point. I read John Wooden's last book. In it, he points out that in his career as a coach, he was probably most proud of the first team that he coached at UCLA. That team ended up being 500 and got nowhere near a national championship. Jerry Sloan of the Utah Jazz has never won an NBA championship (or been coach of the year), but he consistently produces winning teams with whatever talent he has, and every player who has played for him has nothing but great things to say about him.

[Mr. Ypsi]

I wonder if she replicates the same style of play of her college teams?  Could you imagine this team if she would have came back for one more year!

Long time no post...  We attended the IWU-NPU game Saturday and we sat with the Christina and the rest of the Solari family. 

It was a bit of sloppy game played by both sides.  NPU did not give up and made a couple of runs to get the deficit back to within 5 and 11 in the 2nd half. In the end, NPU clearly did not have the depth to keep up with the bigger IWU team and the outside 3's by IWU. 

On a personal note, my daughter is playing for Maine South HS and the new Freshman-B coach, Christina Solari.  Under Christina, the B-team is at 14-1.

Yeah, and she COULD have done it (she had a legitimate medical red-shirt).  With no disrespect whatsoever to this year's Titans, if you add Christina I'd be willing to bet a fair amount that they would be undefeated and ranked #1!

But then your daughter's team probably wouldn't be 14-1!

[Gregory Sager]

Carthage whipped NPU tonight up in the Toolshed, 81-43. It was a classic case of one team doing everything wrong and the other team doing everything right. It won't get any easier for NPU, either, as the Vikings continue their road swing on Saturday night down at Millikin.

[Hoosier Titan]

IWU rolled over Augustana 91-58 in Rock Island.  Nikki Preston led with 21, Hope Schulte had 15, Olivia Lett 12, and Stacey Arlis 10.  Whitney Miller, Kristen Fox, and Jessica Baids paced the Vikings with 9 each.   The Vikings won the rebounding battle, while the Titans shot 48.5% from the field and 80% from the foul line (a big improvement over the last couple of games).