WBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[RogK]

With 5:00 to go in the 1st half last night, Wheaton led Aurora 37-5! 
The Thunder rolled to a 74-46 final. For the game, Wheaton held Aurora to .241 overall FG pct and 8/34 on 2FGs.
Hannah Considine tallied 17 pts and 9 rebs in just 17:00. Sarah Drury had 8 and 8 in 14:00.
All Wheaton players were in for fewer than 22:00 except for Katie McDaniels who played 32:00. She had 0 turnovers.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Speaking of good competition, we're going to learn a lot about how tough, how good the Titans are in the next week or so as the IWU women play #25 Cornell, #23 WI-SP, and then #4 WI-Whitewater.  Hope the Titans are eating their Wheaties. 

IWU'70

Mark, the conference season hasn't started yet.

[iwu70]

Ypsi -- LOL. 

Wheaties = "Breakfast of Champions."  Yes, the Titans hopefully will eat more Wheaties later in the season, too. 

Look forward to seeing the Titan women at The Shirk this weekend.  Two games -- with IWU DIII tournament football in between.  Would be nice to see the Titans win these three games upcoming and move into the Top 25 in the rankings.  We'll see.  I'm sure Coach Mia will have them well-prepared.

By early reports, Wheaton will be very very good this year.  Perhaps they can put a loss or two on Carthage. 

IWU70

[RogK]

Millikin beat Eureka 64-54 yesterday. Bria Williams tallied 19 pts and 8 rebs. Jasmine Johnson rang up 10 pts, 9 rebs and 4 blocks. The Big Blue have made only 7 3FGs in 3 games, but are 3-0.

[iwu70]

Good start for Millikin, but not against the strongest of competition.  More serious tests to come.

IWU70

[iwu70]

Carthage winning easily tonight. 

Great run of games upcoming for the Titans -- as follows:  #25, #23, #2, #4, potentially #1, Not Ranked (Chicago), ORV (Calvin), #27 and #37.  Hope the pre-season conditioning was thorough.

This is the gauntlet.  Guess some CCIW games later on will seem like a stroll in the park. 

IWU70

[iwu70]

CCIW Women off to a good start so far -- at 16-5. 

'70

[RogK]

In that Carthage win, Taylor Boardman had 10 rebs and 2 blocks in 18:00. The Lady Reds made 29 of 48 2FGs (Michelle Wenzel 6/6, Alexis Hahn 4/5) and 11 of 22 3FGs (Kasey Kleiner 5/5, Haley Stercic 5/10).
Elmhurst defeated Dominican, thanks in part to Devin Vaughn (4/5 FG, 3/4 FT, 5 assists, 3 blocks, 2 steals), Melanie Schwerdtmann (16 pts in 19:00) and Fiona McMahon (17 pts, 10 rebs, 4 blocks in 18:00).

[RogK]

Went to Naperville last evening to see how North Central would respond following their 70 pt loss. No signs of discouragement were noted as the Cardinals topped Lake Forest 123-99.
Eight Cardinals scored in double figures; NC scored 54 pts from 3FGs, 42 from 2FGs and made 27 FTs.
They had 28 steals (Anita Sterling 7, Bobbi Johns 5, Sofia Svensson 4).
Maryssa Cladis was one of many who played very well; she is always a very hard worker, doing a lot of good things at both ends of the court.

[iwu70]

IWU over #25 Cornell (of Iowa) tonight 79-70, to go to 3-0.  A tough, rather ugly game with both teams not playing, shooting particularly well.  The Titans were able to grind it out, grind them down with pressure, and take a 5-6 point lead with about 5 minutes to play and never relinquish it -- winning by 9 on a flurry of Lexi Baltes FTs.  Titans forced 29 TOs, made 15 steals (to Cornell's one), but had trouble scoring, shooting a rather poor % and making way too many mistakes, TOs (24) themselves.  Cornell is a tough, big team, with some good trey shooters, so this was a tough win, over a ranked opponent.  The beginning of the IWU gauntlet of games.  So far, so good.  Tomorrow, #23 WI-Stevens Point -- 4 p.m.

Baltes 19
Jackson 18 and key treys, 3-5 from beyond the arc
Seibring 12

Colleen McMahon had a rough night and couldn't buy a basket.  Several Titans in foul trouble, early and late.  The closer officiating made the game very disjointed and ugly -- with some very questionable calls.  Both teams were hurt by TOs, travelling calls, mistakes that experienced teams, senior players should not be making at this stage, even early in the season.

Coach Smith used "run and jump", kept the pressure on, which probably won the game, but she substitutes so rapidly and quickly that you wonder what the players think and feel, moving in and out so much.  Starters again:  Baltes, McMahon, K. Reaber, Jackson and Seibring -- major rotation included Holness, T. Reaber, Samantha Ellsworth and Emily Beoletto.  The Titans will struggle this year with BIG teams, when they get in the half-court, as they do not rebound, box out all that well and don't have the treyball threat they had previously with Gardner and Bilek.  Best trey shooter tonight was Jackson, when she stepped out of the lane and her defender didn't follow. 

Overall, pretty ugly, with plenty of areas of improvement needed, plenty!  This team, this rotation is a work in progress, but tonight was a good win against a big, talented and ranked opponent.  More of these challenges to come, some much much bigger.  To win those down the line a bit, the Titans will have to play A LOT better and shoot a better percentage, take care of the ball and reduce silly errors and TOs much much more.  Plus, "run and jump" just won't much work vs. some teams with excellent PGs. 

But, 3-0 is 3-0 -- a good win, grinding it out, sticking with it and hitting lots of FTs when the game was almost in hand.  Overall, not sure this team has enough offensive weapons to really challenge the top teams.  We'll see.  Good D, good tenacity tonight -- but lots of issues on offence. 

Keep going, keep improving TITANS.

A stiffer test tomorrow -- 4 p.m. vs. WI-SP.

IWU70

[iwu70]

#1 DePauw over Millikin tonight 63-45.

'70

[Gregory Sager]

North Park smoked Aurora today, 84-55. No surprise there, but it was a game with a surprising start. I could tell in warmups that the Vikings looked lethargic and disinterested, and that's exactly how they started the game. After finding themselves down 10-2 after the first three minutes to an opponent that they knew full well was slower afoot and thinner on the bench, they kicked it into high gear, scoring the next eight points and then going on a 16-3 run later in the half, while finally closing out the first stanza with a 13-point run and starting the second half with an additional seven-point run to make it a rout. NPU led by as much as 33 in this one.

It was Spread The Wealth Day at the crackerbox, as twelve of the thirteen Vikings who played this afternoon scored. Brittany Pittas was the only one to reach double figures, as she scored 18 (including 4-6 from behind the arc). The only niggling irritants that remain from an otherwise-immaculate day at the office for the Park were some continued bad free-throw shooting (55% for the day, now 56% for the season -- that's not going to get it done in January and February, ladies) and a minus-two rebounding margin (if you can't outrebound Aurora, how are you going to outrebound Carthage and Wheaton and Millikin and Illinois Wesleyan?).

But I don't want to detract too much from the day's accomplishment. The Vikings played a team that they were supposed to trounce, and, in fact, trounce them they did. They showed great energy for the most part, after that sleepwalk of a start, and were extremely aggressive on defense (26 Spartans turnovers, right at the average for NPU opponents).

NPU's next game is Tuesday at home against IIT (where former Elmhurst guard Rashida Joiner is an assistant coach), a game that promises to not be very competitive, either. But after that the cupcakes vanish from the schedule. On tap for next weekend is a trip to Kentucky to face eighth-ranked Thomas More (3-0) and a perennially solid Centre squad (3-1). The four opponents who'll close out the NPU non-conference slate -- Olivet, Fontbonne, Heidelberg, and Dubuque -- are currently a combined 10-1. The Vikings should be pretty well prepared by the time that the CCIW portion of the schedule opens up.

[iwu70]

Sometimes you win ugly -- like last night vs. Cornell -- but some nights you lose ugly too -- like the Titans tonight vs. UW-SP.  Titans lost 73-71 in a game they should have won.  I'm sure some layup drills are going to be involved in practice in the coming weeks.  Don't think I've ever seen a game -- men or women -- at IWU where so many layups were missed, where the Titans were superior in foot speed but couldn't finish.  Point is a BIG strong team with a couple of good trey shooters, esp. #10.  Titans worked at it all night, had an 11 point lead, then went down by 7-8, fought back to have a shot to win the game, but poor shot selection and clock management, strange coaching at the end did them in.  Don't know why they didn't foul earlier and have an additional possession to tie or win the game with a trey.   Good game again by Jackson and Baltes.  McMahon still struggling as it is pretty obvious that teams have done their homework and are trying to take away her baseline quickness and moves now.  So many Titans missed so many easy shots, enough to pull out your hair in disbelief.  Kasey Reaber played pretty well tonight, though she also does things that must make Mia Smith just want to scream.  Titans subs have to improve, get some kind of offensive contribution going, or this team is going to rely much much too much on the 4-5 starters.  I like the looks of Holness so far, but, to be honest, this team really has some work to do on fundamentals, on valuing the ball and each possession and on getting the rotations on the "run and jump" better organized.  Could have been a great win over another ranked, big, tough team tonight, but the Titans just came up one trey or one possession short tonight.  55% FT shooting in a game like this just won't cut it.  It was an exciting and hard-fought game and both teams really wanted it -- but Point got the nod over the Titans @home tonight.  Titans now 3-1 on the season, on the gauntlet of pre-CCIW games.

IWU travels to #4 WI-WW on Wednesday.  Yet another very tough, big and experienced team.

IWU70

[mark_reichert]

Though I haven't check Massey's to see the overall toughness, I just wanted to commend Millikin on having Depauw(1) and Washington University on their schedule.  I've stated D3boards before they're perfectly placed geographically to play in the Tip Off Tournament those schools co-host with   CCIW rival Illinois Wesleyan (and make it four champions(2)) but they already play IWU twice a year.  Perhaps it could be when the other two are hosting, because there's a chance they won't play the Titans then.

(1) Well, they consented to play in tournament in which Depauw was on of their opponents which is much like putting them on their schedule.

(2) Other Midwest based candidates would be Hope and Wilmington College.  I don't think George Fox, Amherst or Howard Payne would travel that far in November.

[Mr. Ypsi]

I've always admired the guts of whichever team joins the IWU/WashU/DePauw tourney.  I haven't attempted to check, but I wonder how many times that team has avoided 4th place?