WBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[iwu70]

The Pgraph today reports that, very sadly, Gabrielle Holness is out for the year, effectively ending her basketball career at IWU.  Ms. Holness, one of my favorites on the team, is a senior.   The knee injury she suffered early in the NCC game seems to have been serious.  Not sure about surgery, etc.  It's a big loss for the Titans as she was the first key player off the bench in the current rotation and one of the more effective three-point shooters for the TITANS.  Very sad to see this loss. 

IWU at Elmhurst Saturday afternoon -- hoping to go 2-0 in conference play, to improve to 5-3 overall. 

IWU70

[RogK]

Sad news indeed, iwu70. I'm sure she'll be a good source of encouragement from the bench for the rest of the season.

[RogK]

GoPerry, your post regarding the Wheaton - North Central game contained an item I thought deserved further contemplation : the Thunder grabbed an abundance of rebounds, 67.
So, I checked back and found that this amount is about standard for their games vs NC in recent years :
1/25/14 - 53, 2/15/14 - 73, 1/10/15 - 67, 1/31/15 - 69, 2/28/15 (CCIW playoffs) - 53, 1/9/16 - 70, 1/30/16 - 62.
In conference play, NC opponents have averaged in the mid-50s for rebounds, so Wheaton has done very well in that category. Wheaton won all 8 of the games referred to.

[GoPerry]

GoPerry, your post regarding the Wheaton - North Central game contained an item I thought deserved further contemplation : the Thunder grabbed an abundance of rebounds, 67.
So, I checked back and found that this amount is about standard for their games vs NC in recent years :
1/25/14 - 53, 2/15/14 - 73, 1/10/15 - 67, 1/31/15 - 69, 2/28/15 (CCIW playoffs) - 53, 1/9/16 - 70, 1/30/16 - 62.
In conference play, NC opponents have averaged in the mid-50s for rebounds, so Wheaton has done very well in that category. Wheaton won all 8 of the games referred to.

Thanks RogK.  Not surprising at all.  We all know that stats have the potential to be inflated when playing NCC.  But for me, it still causes a slight wow factor when I see it on a stat sheet- things like 67 rebs or 100+shots in a game.

A big game tonight for the Thunder ladies as they take a long bus ride to Oshkosh to take on the undefeated and 10th ranked Lady Titans.   I like having these early non-con tests vs nationally ranked teams so that the team and Coach Madsen can see where they stack up nationally.  I've been somewhat critical in the past that their non-con schedule hasn't prepared them well for the post-season.  So they need games like today's and vs Hope on the road(although 1st game of the season is not ideal) for a better chance at a deeper run in March. Two 1st round exits the last 2 years which have been pretty disappointing.

Unfortunately the game got moved 2 hrs later to 5pm since UWO is hosting the football semi vs John Carroll.  This will make the travel home a little sketchy in the snow.  Otherwise, that could be a decent twin bill for a D3 sports fan: Noon D3 football semi final followed by a basketball game featuring 2 nationally ranked teams.

Travel safe everyone!

[lmitzel]

The Pgraph today reports that, very sadly, Gabrielle Holness is out for the year, effectively ending her basketball career at IWU.  Ms. Holness, one of my favorites on the team, is a senior.   The knee injury she suffered early in the NCC game seems to have been serious.  Not sure about surgery, etc.  It's a big loss for the Titans as she was the first key player off the bench in the current rotation and one of the more effective three-point shooters for the TITANS.  Very sad to see this loss.   

IWU70

That was the fear I had when I saw her go down. Bummer to see happen no matter what team you root for.

[iwu70]

Sad for Gabrielle and the Titans.  I send strength to her for a full and complete recovery.  She's been a big part of the program for four years. 

IWU goes down to EC 86-80.  Now 4-4, 1-1.

'70

[Gregory Sager]

North Park beat Carroll, 87-57. Alicia Arnold led the way with 21 points for the Vikings, while Hannah Rehfeldt added 17, Gabby Sandoval scored 12 (and had three steals), and Liz Rehberger chipped in 11. Amani Davis had a really nice floor game with five steals and four assists to only one turnover for NPU. Shaylee Sloan pulled down a game-leading eight boards for the Park.

Carroll is not without talent. It's just an extremely young team -- two juniors, and everybody else underclassmen -- and it's too thin a roster as well. Only eight Pioneers suited up for this game. If Lindsay Schultz can keep this group together and pick up a couple of bigs and a penetrator in the off-season, the Pioneers might be on to something.

This went according to form, so it's nothing to get too excited about. It's just a relief that NPU took care of business without any drama. Now the Vikes wi'll step out of conference play again and continue to try to work out the kinks.

[RogK]

Greg, I think you should've capitalized the first letter of the last word in that post.

[Gregory Sager]

You really got me with that one, Rog.

[RogK]

Ha ha!
Augustana rolls on, with an 83-68 win over Carthage. For the Vikings : Izzy Anderson had 12 pts, 7 reb, 5a, 4 stls; Sadie Roberts in that order 13 6 3 2; Mikayla Fallon 16 pts in 19:00; Kaycee Kallenberger 12 reb in 22:00. The Lady Reds' Morgan Vukovich did really well, 20 pts 13 rebs, 8/12 2FG and 4/4 FT.

[RogK]

Prior to attending the game at NP, I watched (online) much of the 86-80 Elmhurst win over IWU. I was impressed by Kaela Jones's clutch FT shooting 4/4 in the final half-minute after she had hit the floor hard. She finished with 22 pts. Elmhurst committed nearly too many turnovers, including having its collective pocket picked from behind several times by the Titans, but more than made up for that by good shooting, 7/15 3FG, 23/36 2FG, 19/25 FT.
Wheaton lost 65-53 up at Oshkosh. The Thunder had only 3 o-rebs, partly a failing on their part, but more so may be a sign of why Oshkosh is so good.
Katie McDaniels had 23 pts in 38:00, 8/11 FG (incl a three), 6/6 FT.
North Central led 36-34 at halftime at Millikin and followed that with a 67-34 2nd half, to win by 35. Millikin got 20 pts from Emily Schultz and 13 rebs by Lauren Moses. NC's Jamie Cuny was very sharp, making 5/6 threes and 4/4 FT for 19 pts, adding 6 rebs. Other Cardinals "chirped in" with 84 pts.

[GoPerry]

UW-Oshkosh 65
Wheaton 53

This was a fairly blasé and somewhat disappointing effort on the behalf of the Thunder ladies.  McDaniels did her usual thing with 23 pts on 8/11 shooting.  But the usual solid supporting cast had very poor nights.  Kelly Lawson came into the game averaging 16 pts a game but seemed hesitant to assert herself for whatever reason, finishing with a single point.  The rebounding was pretty bad -11 including a 16-3 disadvantage on the offensive glass which contributed to Oshkosh taking 18 more shots than Wheaton 65-47.

UWO has a solid team but I was not overwhelmed.   I don't believe they are considerably better than Wheaton although they obviously were last night.  It's a team the Thunder might get a crack at again but they'll need to play at a higher level.

[lmitzel]

North Central led 36-34 at halftime at Millikin and followed that with a 67-34 2nd half, to win by 35. Millikin got 20 pts from Emily Schultz and 13 rebs by Lauren Moses. NC's Jamie Cuny was very sharp, making 5/6 threes and 4/4 FT for 19 pts, adding 6 rebs. Other Cardinals "chirped in" with 84 pts.

Went back to watch this one this morning. NCC looked good. Struggled offensively early on, but the press was on point. I think I counted three five-second calls on inbounds plays, and when you can get multiple of those, you know it's your night. It helps too when you catch fire from beyond the arc in the second half.

After falling just short against the top teams in the CCIW, this was a good win to get. They don't come back home until January 7th though, with a trip to Hawaii coming up in a week as well as a tournament in Chicago to help tune up again before CCIW play resumes.

[lmitzel]

Random side note with this game, and this is mostly just me picking nits about off-court stuff, but I wish the other PA announcers in the conference would make it easier on themselves and just say something to the effect of "a new five on the floor for the Cardinals" when a line change happens (or hell, if they want to steal my "wholesale line change" line, I'm not opposed to it). It's just so much easier than trying to catch all five of the players coming on and announce them all. To the Millikin announcer's credit, she did adjust to just last names after a while, which was smart. It's just so much quicker to do the general line change announcement, especially after a foul call.

[Gregory Sager]

North Park PA announcer Kevin Shepke typically doesn't do roll call when NCC makes a line change during an NCC @ NPU contest. Since he doubles as the live stats operator he doesn't have the time to even try to do it. As for me as the play-by-play broadcaster, I typically don't individually identify each new quintet, either, when NPU hosts NCC. I simply inform the viewers of the line change. On most occasions there just isn't enough time to visually scan the uniform numbers and come up with the new names, and the occurrence in which there usually is time to announce the new Cardinals -- an NPU timeout -- is when I'm either reading ad copy or, if it's late in the game and the score is close, I'm giving a game-situation reset, which consists of my reciting the score, time, timeouts remaining for both teams, team fouls for both teams, and the list of players with three or more personal fouls.

The actual pace of a game against North Central is not that hard for me to negotiate as a PBP announcer, because it's still not as quick and as incident-heavy as a men's game. The hard part is keeping the players straight, and even with that I'm stretching to call it "the hard part". It usually takes me a couple of minutes of calling a game before I have the numbers and names of opposing players down cold to the point where I'm no longer looking at the handout to remind myself. It takes a bit longer to do that when the Cardinals are the opponents, but that's really not a big deal. Nobody who's watching the broadcast can see me holding my clipboard with the handout on it, anyway.