WBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Gregory Sager]

North Park 67
Westminster (PA) 58

Nicole Kruckman: 13 pts
Brittany Pittas: 12 pts
Rachel Torres: 10 pts, 3 stls
Dominikque Williams: 10 rebs
Soly Roman: 8 rebs
Liz Rehberger: 5:2 a:to

The Vikings came out of the gate a little wobbly tonight, as one might well expect for a team that is playing seven freshmen and a transfer (the second transfer, Donnie Taggart, was not in the gym tonight, due to a death in the family). The Titans were killing NPU on the boards early, and the visitors went into the locker room up by a point. But NPU went on a 12-0 run over a four-minute stretch in the middle of the second half, turning a 41-40 deficit into a 52-41 lead that they never relinquished. The sparkplug for that run was freshman Liz Rehberger from Resurrection HS here on the North Side; she had five points, two rebounds, two assists, and two steals during that stretch. From that point onward, NPU began to dominate in the paint, as the rebounding got better and better and Nicole Kruckman made her presence felt in the low post.

The Vikings used their quickness to good effect in this game, as twelve of Westminster's 26 turnovers were NPU steals. Between that and the 52-47 rebounding advantage for NPU (which included a 22-11 advantage on the offensive boards for the Park), the Vikings ended shooting a whopping 72 field-goal attempts for the game. That leads us to the downside, though, which is that the Vikings really didn't shoot well at all; they were only 23-74 (31%) from the field and an atrocious 2-20 (10%) from downtown. Chalk up a lot of that to opening-night jitters from the freshmen, though.

The Titans are no great shakes, but they're not that bad a team, either. This was a nice opening-night win for the young Vikings. NPU will have an interesting test on Saturday afternoon, though, as the Vikes host Knox, which defeated Dominican tonight, 105-93. As you can guess by the score, Knox plays the Grinnell System -- so this will be good practice for NPU, seeing as how the Vikes are going to have to face North Central's version of the System twice after the calendar turns to 2014.

[iwu70]

IWU women over Wash and Jeff, in Baltimore, 84-70.  Titans start off the new season with a bang!

McMahon 22
Baltes 14 with 9 assists
Seibring 13  and 8 REBs
Kasey Reaber 8 and 10 REBs
Jackson 8 and 4 REBs
Holness 7 off the bench

Good balance. 

Looks a very solid, promising start.  As I thought, McMahon is going to be doing more of the scoring this year.  IMHO.

IWU football wins this afternoon, going to 9-1 and a likely NCAA play-off berth.  Announcements coming Sunday.

IWU70

[BruinFan]

Greetings from Oregon and the Northwest Conference!

It is great to have Wheaton out here this weekend. I wish George Fox would travel to your region at least every other year. This season they are headed to Texas in late December for some out of region play.

I think it is a win-win to have the CCIW and NWC play each other and get a brief snapshot comparison between the two conferences. I look forward to tonight's game between the Thunder and Bruins as both are voted by their conference coaches to be near the top at the end of the conference season. (6 PM PST)

What do you think about the CCIW coaches poll of a Carthage 1st place finish followed by either Wheaton or IWU?

[Gregory Sager]

North Park 134
Knox 74

Liz Rehberger: 23 pts
Brittany Pittas: 20 pts
Annie Shain: 15 pts
Soly Roman: 13 pts, 8 rebs
Amani Davis: 11 pts
Hannah Rehfeldt: 11 pts
Nikki Przybyslawski: 5:0 a:to
Dominikque Williams, Rachel Torres, and Kayla McCall: 4:0 a:to each

NPU ran out to a quick 19-0 lead en route to setting a new school record for points scored in a game, as the Vikings easily solved Knox's version of the Arseneault System. The record is not the matter of which the Vikings should be the most proud, though; what's really exciting about what North Park did yesterday was that the Vikes only turned the ball over thirteen times against a style of play that is completely predicated upon causing turnovers. In fact, the 28:13 assist-to-turnover ratio posted by the Vikings yesterday would have been very impressive against even a team that played a normal style of play. Meanwhile, Knox itself turned the ball over 30 times -- with 17 of those turnovers caused by NPU steals.

As ugly as the final score looks, nobody should feel sorry for the Prairie Fire. One of the consequences of using the System is that you can end up on the ugly end of a massive blowout if you don't play well or don't really have the capacity to perform it well. While Knox is no great shakes -- North Central is a much better exemplar of the System -- it was still good enough to beat Dominican last night using the System.

I'm very impressed with what the Vikings have done thus far with so many new faces in the lineup.

NPU will have a much stiffer test on Monday, as the Vikings travel to Monmouth to take on a 1-0 Scots team that went 20-5 last season.

[Roundball999]

As ugly as the final score looks, nobody should feel sorry for the Prairie Fire. One of the consequences of using the System is that you can end up on the ugly end of a massive blowout if you don't play well or don't really have the capacity to perform it well. While Knox is no great shakes -- North Central is a much better exemplar of the System -- it was still good enough to beat Dominican last night using the System.

Congrats to North Park, sounds like they executed exceptionally well against the system style. 

I agree with your comment about the potential for blowout, yesterday I witnessed a system team for the first time when I saw Hope win by 70 against North Central.  I honestly can't figure out how the system would work against any team that has decent players, some depth, and good coaching.  Therefore it seems mostly geared toward creating big numbers against opponents that the system team might beat anyway, even if they didn't play the system style.  It's also pretty much impossible to keep down the winning margin against an overmatched system team when the end of the bench is getting layups time after time.

[RogK]

Roundball999, you won't attribute any credit to that style of play, even when it works? That's like saying that driving a Ford from Schaumburg to Madison is no good because you could've gotten there in a Toyota.

[RogK]

In Elmhurst's opening pair of wins, Fiona McMahon made a total of 14/20 FGs and Melanie Schwerdtmann made 14 of 19.
In Millikin's opening pair of wins, Bria Williams averaged 18.5 plus 8 rebs, Brittany Czaplicki averaged 18.5 and 9 rebs and Jasmine Johnson averaged 10 rebs, 2 blocks and 2.5 steals.

[Roundball999]

Roundball999, you won't attribute any credit to that style of play, even when it works? That's like saying that driving a Ford from Schaumburg to Madison is no good because you could've gotten there in a Toyota.

Well, as I said this was the first "system" game I've seen so I'm hardly an expert, just giving my opinion.  But there are a lot of smart coaches out there and I suspect it is meaningful that so very few of them choose to employ the system.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say the system "works".  Is there evidence that system teams regularly beat teams they wouldn't normally beat if they hadn't used the system style?  I really don't know because I haven't followed such teams, it's entirely possible such upsets are common and I'm just not aware of it.  As I said, my impression based on a data set of just one game was that using the system may allow the system team to beat an opponent the system team would have beaten anyway.  But it really didn't seem to me that it would help upset a superior opponent, rather it seemed more likely to me to magnify the superiority of the opponent.  On the other hand, I can recall many instances of disciplined half court teams beating superior opponents (some of the old Pete Carril Princeton teams come to mind as classic examples).  So on the balance I just don't see the upside of using the system.   

On another note, the new officiating guidelines may also work against system teams, again based on just the one game I saw.  All the trapping, chasing and all court pressure lead to 30 foul calls against North Central, many that may not have been called last year.  Hope was in the double bonus less than ten minutes into each half, it allowed a lot of points to go on the board with no time coming off the clock.

[Gregory Sager]

Roundball, my take is that the System ultimately doesn't have that much direct impact upon the outcome of a game either way in terms of overall team strength. A team that is superior to a System team will still beat it most often, and a team that is roughly parallel in ability to a System team stands a good chance of winning if it remains disciplined enough to take what the System gives it. This is taking as a given that the opponents in question have sufficient numbers on the roster to deal with the pace of a System game.

As the MWC men's basketball room posters have attested for years, it's often the team that plays a System team's opponent immediately after that System game that is the clearest beneficiary of the System. Since the far-flung MWC played a Friday/Saturday schedule for many years, there is apparently a pretty healthy set of data that shows that the teams that played Grinnell on a Friday suffered adverse effects in their Saturday game. Given the physical demands put upon a team by Grinnell, that's entirely understandable.

[Roundball999]

Roundball, my take is that the System ultimately doesn't have that much direct impact upon the outcome of a game either way in terms of overall team strength. A team that is superior to a System team will still beat it most often, and a team that is roughly parallel in ability to a System team stands a good chance of winning if it remains disciplined enough to take what the System gives it. This is taking as a given that the opponents in question have sufficient numbers on the roster to deal with the pace of a System game.

As the MWC men's basketball room posters have attested for years, it's often the team that plays a System team's opponent immediately after that System game that is the clearest beneficiary of the System. Since the far-flung MWC played a Friday/Saturday schedule for many years, there is apparently a pretty healthy set of data that shows that the teams that played Grinnell on a Friday suffered adverse effects in their Saturday game. Given the physical demands put upon a team by Grinnell, that's entirely understandable.

That makes a lot of sense to me, thanks for the insights.  I hadn't thought of the effects on teams for games the day after they play a system team; I can see how having some real depth is important for playing both the system team and for the day after.

[RogK]

Along those lines, we just had two examples of System teams having to use maximum effort on a Friday evening to eke out a tight victory (Knox over Dominican at North Park, North Central over Ripon in OT), but having very little energy the next afternoon, each getting drilled/destroyed/demolished by 60 and 70.
So, one could certainly say that the System puts a strain on its own players to the point that a quick turnaround day 2 game is going to be difficult.
At least Knox and North Central went 1-1 for the weekend instead of 0-2.
To answer Roundball999's question, when I say the System "works" in a game, I simply mean that it produced a win. And when it does produce a win, accept it as reality. Speculation about how they or any other team would do using an alternate style is merely guessing.
It is not a magical style of play that will turn any team into a dominant team.
Given that it normally yields a game with a large number of possessions for each team (maybe 150 pct of a regular game), it does magnify any mismatch.
As I've said here before, conventional basketball doesn't work very well for a lot of teams either.

[keith45]

Along those lines, we just had two examples of System teams having to use maximum effort on a Friday evening to eke out a tight victory (Knox over Dominican at North Park, North Central over Ripon in OT), but having very little energy the next afternoon, each getting drilled/destroyed/demolished by 60 and 70.
So, one could certainly say that the System puts a strain on its own players to the point that a quick turnaround day 2 game is going to be difficult.
At least Knox and North Central went 1-1 for the weekend instead of 0-2.
To answer Roundball999's question, when I say the System "works" in a game, I simply mean that it produced a win. And when it does produce a win, accept it as reality. Speculation about how they or any other team would do using an alternate style is merely guessing.
It is not a magical style of play that will turn any team into a dominant team.
Given that it normally yields a game with a large number of possessions for each team (maybe 150 pct of a regular game), it does magnify any mismatch.
As I've said here before, conventional basketball doesn't work very well for a lot of teams either.

I'm not sure the back to back had as much of affect on NCC versus playing a Hope team that is big, athletic, composed and very very good. NCC played better last season in this same tournament, in the 2nd game of the back to back. I missed the first half, but saw the 2nd half and NCC just couldnt make shots or get past Hope defenders. i still think NCC is 4th this season, they have some impact freshman and transfers that help absorb the losses from last season.

[RogK]

I just saw that NC committed 51 turnovers, which has to be the most disappointing aspect by far for them.
Hope had 32 steals. How and where on the floor did they get all those steals?
And NC got up only 19 3FG att, un-System-like. Credit Hope for preventing them, or wasn't NC looking for threes?

[keith45]

I just saw that NC committed 51 turnovers, which has to be the most disappointing aspect by far for them.
Hope had 32 steals. How and where on the floor did they get all those steals?
And NC got up only 19 3FG att, un-System-like. Credit Hope for preventing them, or wasn't NC looking for threes?

it felt like a ton of them were on post entry passes. Some were bad passes and some were well defended. Hope is a LONG team, disrupting passing lanes and blowing up screens. I dont think they played starters in the 2nd half either. Was a great learning experience for the NCC team

[RogK]

It's not too early to look at stats, is it? Come on.
Haley Stercic is her normal self again this year, making 6 of her first 9 three attempts.
http://www.cciw.org/custompages/CCIW_Links/WBasketball/Stats/1314/confldrs.htm