WBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Mr. Ypsi]

I stand corrected.

But aside from the absolute top of the food chain, I think the east (especially the northeast) has far more dominance in women's than men's b'ball.  (At the VERY top, the ONLY two champions east of Ohio since 1989 have been NYU (1997) and Amherst (2011).)

[Backseat Driver]

Augustana beat Aurora tonight, 70-63.

[RogK]

Three bus trips in five days for Augie : Saturday's round trip to Chicago, yesterday's to Aurora and tomorrow's to Wheaton. (I'm assuming that they have gone back to Rock Island each time and are not doing one extended road trip. D3 budgets likely do not allow for that?) Augie's following three games are at home.

[iwumichigander]

Three bus trips in five days for Augie : Saturday's round trip to Chicago, yesterday's to Aurora and tomorrow's to Wheaton. (I'm assuming that they have gone back to Rock Island each time and are not doing one extended road trip. D3 budgets likely do not allow for that?) Augie's following three games are at home.

Correct assumption for CCIW at least.

[thunder38]

890 miles in five days for the Vikings...giving the weather we've been having they might need to break out the rowboats to get to Wheaton tomorrow.

[RogK]

With possible hazardous freezing-over occurring later today in sections of Illinois and Wisconsin, safe travels are wished for all, even those who just need to walk across campus.
At first glance, tonight's contests may look like mismatches record-wise : 2-6 at 6-2, 3-5 at 0-8, 4-4 at 6-2, 3-5 at 8-0. We'll see if there are any "upsets."

[Backseat Driver]

Wheaton 82
Augustana 45

Wheaton
Breanna Bohlen- 15 points
Hannah Considine- 12 points, 6 rebounds
Brooke Olson- 12 points
Lauren Graham- 12 points

Augustana
Amy Hicks- 9 points, 5 rebounds

Really good all-around performance for the Thunder tonight at King Arena. Lauren Graham played really well tonight. It looks like she's getting back into top form, which is great for the team heading down the stretch. Just a very balanced game from the Thunder. Everybody played well and made key contributions.

[Backseat Driver]

Wheaton's Brooke Olson surpassed 1,000 career points in the Thunder's victory tonight. Brooke has been an outstanding player for Wheaton throughout her career. She worked her way into the starting lineup during her freshman year and has stayed there. There's very little that Brooke doesn't do well on the court. She can shoot from the outside, pull up for jumpers, and drive to the basket. She is also an excellent defender, and she has taken an enormous amount of charges in her career. She simply plays extraordinarily hard whenever she's on the floor. In addition to all of that she is a great leader and teammate. Brooke represents Wheaton College very well, and it's great to see her reach this milestone in her career.

[iwu70]

Congrats to Brooke Olson.   A stellar career at WC to be sure.

Good, home court win for the Titans tonight over NP, who gave the Titans a strong contest.  IWU has to keep plugging away, staying within range of CC in the conference race, hoping that someone else will also puts a loss on Carthage, perhaps WC can do it. 

Strong games tonight by Michelle Bilek (scoring more now!) and Katy Seibring.  NP seems to have contained Melissa Gardner well in this game.  Katy Seibring is having a very strong stretch of games in conference play and making a good case for All-CCIW status, first or second team, in would seem to me. 

Big games upcoming for the Titans -- Pink Zone game @Shirk vs. WC, between the two strong second place teams, and then the tough road re-match with Carthage up in the Cheeseheadland. 

Keep it rolling, Green, still some important basketball to be played for conference honors and for seedings in the CCIW tournament and hopefully beyond.

Congrats to Coach Smith and all the Titans for the good home win over North Park.  (IWU men got a big big big road win at Augie tonight -- coming back from 16 down with about 9:00 minutes to play . . . a great stretch run, comeback in the tough environs of Carver.  Strong games by Overstreet and Zman, and some great bench spark and D from Eric Dortch).       All good.

IWU70

[thunder38]

I'm looking forward to a very quality matchup at the Shirk Center on Saturday. Both of these teams come in healthy and in full stride and the winner will emerge as the only contender left to rundown Carthage.  This will be interesting because there's too much time left in the conference schedule to go with the "vanilla" game plan but these two teams are probably a 75% lock to rematch in the 2/3 game in the conference tournament.

[RogK]

Carthage (9-0) used a 34-12 run over the final 8 minutes to get a comfortable 105-80 win over North Central. Five Lady Reds scored 15 pts or more, possibly a first in CCIW WBB history. Stephanie Kuzmanic had yet another outstanding game with 25 pts and 9 assists. Cailee Corcoran had 22 pts and 12 rebs. Kasey Kleiner had 8 assists and a nearly-perfect 16 pts (she missed a FT! shameful!). Michelle Wenzel had 15 pts and 3 blocks. Alexis Hahn poured in 15 pts (7/9 FG) in just 8:00.
For NC, Bobbi Johns had 9 assists and 5 steals in 17:00. Sophie Newson topped the Cardinals in scoring (12) and rebounding (5).
Millikin finally moved into the win column in conference play, getting past Elmhurst 72-53. Jasmine Johnson had 16 pts (7/9, 2/3 FT), 7 rebs, 2 blocks, 3 steals in 18:00.
Elmhurst got 19 pts and 6 rebs from Fiona McMahon, while Karen Senette tallied 12 on just 9 FG att (but she had 6 of EC's 27 TOs). The Bluejays did not lose any ground in the chase for the 4th playoff spot, as NP, NC and Aug also lost. If Millikin wins out the rest of the way, they'll be in that chase, too.
A couple of league freshmen may have given us a taste of good things to come. The aforementioned Alexis Hahn's quick 15 pts were impressive. And Wheaton's Makayla Seibold scored 9 pts in 69 seconds.

[RogK]

Carthage clinched a CCIW playoff spot with their 9th win, incidentally. The 5th place teams E and NC can do no better than 8-6.

[Gregory Sager]

Last night was a very disappointing loss for NPU. The Vikings just can't seem to get it done in their games against the upper echelon, senior-dominated team or not. In some senses, last night was the most disappointing loss of them all, because the Vikings were up by double digits on the road at IW, but couldn't sustain it. Naturally, IW itself had something to do with that, but something just seems to be missing with these Vikings. I'm not sure what it is, and I've seen them play as much as anybody this season.

There were some good individual performances: Sarah Peterson had 14 and 8, Nicole Kruckman had 12 and 5, and Kamauria Acree had 10 and 6 in spite of the fact that she didn't shoot well from the field. But as a team, the Vikings just have a habit of going into a deep freeze offensively for three, four, five minutes at a time. Their defense keeps them in games, but their offense doesn't seem up to turning those close games into wins.

NPU is still hanging on to fourth place, but it's far from a given that the Vikes will be able to stave off the teams below them and secure a playoff spot.

[RogK]

Tomorrow's CCIW action includes the matchup of 7-2 teams (Wheaton at IWU) that thunder38 mentioned, a matchup of 3-6 teams (Elmhurst at NC) that promises to be very competitive, plus 4-5 North Park at 1-8 Millikin and 9-0 Carthage at 2-7 Augie. No team takes any other one lightly, of course.
Whoever loses in Bloomington can forget about any shot at catching Carthage. The winner in Naperville will either be one game behind or tied with NP for the 4th playoff spot.
All this leads me to a 1:00 game at Roosevelt University (will check out their new gym) and a 5:00 game at Lake Forest (so I can visit a Knox player whom I've known since she was about 7 yrs old). So, no firsthand report from me on CCIW results this weekend.

[Gregory Sager]

I won't be giving a firsthand report from Decatur, either, although I will be watching the NPU @ MU livestream on the computer.