WBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Mr. Ypsi]

Congrats to D3Hoops Central Region Player of the Year, Wheaton's Hannah Frazier! Also made 1st team, naturellement.
Congrats also to IWU's Maddie Merritt, who made 3rd team.

That really surprised me, since until early February I thought Maddie was the front-runner for CCIW MOP.  I thought sure she would make at least 2nd team.

[gordonmann]

I did too. That wasn't where the votes fell for some reason.

[GoPerry]

Congrats to D3Hoops Central Region Player of the Year, Wheaton's Hannah Frazier! Also made 1st team, naturellement.
Congrats also to IWU's Maddie Merritt, who made 3rd team.

Congrats to Hannah Frazier.  That is a very nice accolade to receive.  With some of the big game #s she put up, it's well deserved recognition.  I've always thought WashU's Madeline Homoly was very impressive. 

Maddie Merritt does seem low.  But since this is voted by SID's, one never really knows how much time they can devote to really studying their votes, as overworked as they are.  Much different than coaches vote it would seem to me.

[Pat Coleman]

There isn't even a coaches' all-region team for women's basketball, so we'll never know.

[iwu70]

Bowdoin vs. Thomas More for the title tomorrow.  Scranton and St. Thomas go out in the semis.

Congrats to Maddie Merritt of IWU for playing in the All-Star game. 

IWU'70

[iwu70]

Looks like Thomas More wraps up the perfect season.  Too bad Polar Bears.

There's always next year for all the teams, save one.

'70

[Gregory Sager]

How weird is it that the national champs won't be able to defend their title, because they're leaving the NCAA altogether?

[RogK]

Congrats to Hannah Frazier, the only non-senior 1st team All-American D3Hoops :
https://www.d3hoops.com/awards/all-americans/women/2019
Nice for Wheaton to have her (presumably) returning for another season.

[GoPerry]

Congratulations to Hannah Frazier on her 1st Team All American selection by the D3hoops staff.  The way she dominated play this season made her a very strong candidate for AA consideration.  And given so many excellent players in the women's game across the country, Frazier's selection on the 1st team is a heady distinction indeed.  Such recognition goes further than statistics, but her junior campaign final #s are: 

20.0 pts/game(16th in the country), 49.8 FG%, 46.7 3FG%, 7.4 reb/g, 3.0 asst/g, 1.60 a/to; 3.20 blks/g(2nd in country), 83.2 FT%(50th)

She and Jordan Myroth take over the primary leadership responsibilities next season.

[RogK]

GoPerry, do you have any early opinion on Hannah Swider? As a 5'10" guard, she's an interesting prospect for increased prominence for the Thunder.
Over her nine most recent appearances, she made 4 of 8 3FGs and 4/5 2FGs. Granted that's a small sample, but it is trending in a good direction.

[GoPerry]

GoPerry, do you have any early opinion on Hannah Swider? As a 5'10" guard, she's an interesting prospect for increased prominence for the Thunder.
Over her nine most recent appearances, she made 4 of 8 3FGs and 4/5 2FGs. Granted that's a small sample, but it is trending in a good direction.

Thanks Rog.

Prior to the season, I had thought that of all the freshmen, Hannah Swider would see minutes right away.  She has a scorer's mentality, is not afraid to shoot and is certainly capable enough.  However her playing time was pretty underwhelming even though she did log minutes(sometimes only 1or 2) in 20 or so games.  In fact, she played more in the non-con portion of the schedule and her quality of minutes really diminished as the season went along - never really part of the regular rotation.  One obvious issue is that she's third in the depth chart at the 2-guard behind Hannah Williams and Kristi Demski, both of whom have similar games to Swider.  That won't change next year as Wheaton doesn't graduate any guards.  To see the floor she might need to distinguish herself in Coach Madsen's mind – perhaps defensively since Williams/Demski are not great defenders. If she were a better ball handler she could possibly spell Jordan Myroth.  But that role seems to have gone to Kirsten Madsen who was a very positive development for the squad this year.  With the loss of Devin Kyler and Jen Berg, someone needs to pick up the rebounding slack also.

Most freshmen need a year or so to acclimate to the enhanced skill and speed of the college game.  Only the very elite can come in and play impactful minutes on a nationally competitive team.  I thought Swider definitely showed promise but at this point, is a "TBD" in the impact category.

[GoPerry]

In the fwiw category:

Final poll has  IWU #22 (above #24 Wisc Luth), WC #25. 

TMU unanimous #1.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

How weird is it that the national champs won't be able to defend their title, because they're leaving the NCAA altogether?

Weird, yes ... but it is what it is. Sadly, the school was shunned by it's regional brethren (for reasons that could be argued to the cows come home) and decided it was better to leave.

[Gregory Sager]

I guess that I must've missed it when you've discussed Thomas More's status on Hoopsville. Why did TMU leave the PAC, and why wasn't it able to join the HCAC, OAC, or SLIAC, or any other D3 league for that matter?

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

I guess that I must've missed it when you've discussed Thomas More's status on Hoopsville. Why did TMU leave the PAC, and why wasn't it able to join the HCAC, OAC, or SLIAC, or any other D3 league for that matter?

You can probably read between the lines as to why they left the PAC. Ignore what the local paper has written and consider: they were "allowed" to leave within a year of the decision and under "mutual agreement."

And too many of the other conferences (HCAC, MIAA, OAC, etc.) had members who were not interested in having Thomas More as part of the conference. Reasons why run the gamut - some similar to why those don't want to be in the same conference at Christopher Newport, or misconstrue what York (Pa.) is as a program, etc., etc., etc.

We have discussed TMU's status a few times in the last 18 months on the show.