WBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Ultimate Titan Fan]

Considering that jaw-dropping freshman class at Wheaton, the Titans may need several years to catch up unfortunately.

[iwu70]

Wheaton does have an impressive recruitment class . . . IWU didn't do badly, but just seems it is not really clear what the IWU identity will be this season . . . surely some of the role players now have to step into new and more major roles, and some of the pine-sitters of the last two years will get their chance to shine.  The talent is there, but I think how it is mixed and deployed will be very interesting to see.  MU and WC look to be very strong . . . again.   

IWU'70

[RogK]

the conference site shows a new league logo :
https://cciw.org/
the CCIW also announced a November 31 2022 deadline by which the other 7 teams must join Augustana and North Park in being called the Vikings.

[lmitzel]

the conference site shows a new league logo :
https://cciw.org/

They did a big reveal on Monday. Honestly, I dig it.

the CCIW also announced a November 31 2022 deadline by which the other 7 teams must join Augustana and North Park in being called the Vikings.

But do we have to change our color schemes too?

[Gregory Sager]

the conference site shows a new league logo :
https://cciw.org/

They did a big reveal on Monday. Honestly, I dig it.

I like it, too. It's much more dynamic than the old logo -- and the line thru the new logo does something that the old logo didn't, which was to make the initials "CCIW" geographically specific. As the presser points out, the line represents the Halas-Lombardi Line, aka the Cheddar Curtain, aka the border between the land of FIBs and the land of cheeseheads.

It would've made less sense in the pre-Carroll days to make a big deal about the "and Wisconsin" part of the conference's name, since Carthage is a (barely) Wisconsin-based institution whose sports rosters have tended to be dominated by Illinoisians, but Carroll is a bona-fide Wisconsin school any way you slice the gouda.

the CCIW also announced a November 31 2022 deadline by which the other 7 teams must join Augustana and North Park in being called the Vikings.

But do we have to change our color schemes too?

Scroll down on this link and check out the school-specific versions of the new logo:

https://spark.adobe.com/page/J8yFd5tgsNHTU/

It's kind of eye-opening. It reveals that Elmhurst is pretty much committed to permanently regarding the two distinct shades of blue it's used in recent years (deep sky blue and college navy blue, to be technical about it) as EU's school colors. And it also shows the different thinking downstate; while Millikin is now using gray along with its traditional Egyptian blue instead of using white as the secondary color, Illinois Wesleyan continues to be monomaniacal in its devotion to its primary color, despite the fact that IWU has also used gray as the alternate instead of white in its uniforms and marketing.

Surprisingly, IWU is joined in its mono-hued attitude by Carroll. Carroll has traditionally used orange and navy blue as its school colors, but the navy blue is nowhere in sight here. That's in spite of the fact that navy blue is still ubiquitous in Carroll athletics as the secondary color, including in the university's mascot logo. Perhaps Carroll wanted to differentiate between itself and Wheaton, which has always used an identical orange-and navy-blue color scheme. But notice that Wheaton's is now different as well; Wheaton now pairs its navy blue with burnt orange. Perhaps this shift to a more Texas-flavored hue of orange is a tribute to former WC men's basketball superstar and Lone Star State resident Aston Francis.

That leaves North Central and Carthage as the only two remaining CCIW schools that share a color scheme, the basic red-and-black by which they've both been known since time immemorial. (Both schools tend to vary a bit in terms of which specific hues of red they use, although NCC men's hoops has always favored vermilion in particular; I don't think that either school is committed to anything other than the general idea of red, though.) North Park and Augustana likewise retain their traditional colors -- royal blue and gold for North Park, navy blue and gold for Augustana -- although NPU doesn't use gold all that much anymore (lots of people refer to this color as "yellow," which has all sorts of undesirable connotations, but it ain't yellow; it's gold). Lots of NPU teams are still stuck in that tedious, outdated national sports trend of using black as the alternate color. Augie (to its credit, IMO) remains much more gold-intensive than North Park.

One other thing about the new branding. The CCIW has dumped the gray-and-black scheme for the league's logo and replaced it with a new combo of blue on top (I think that that particular hue is cerulean blue) and black on the bottom, which gives a nice, combative implication to the league. (My suggestion for the league's new motto: "Bruises On the Border") If you scroll down from the school-specific versions of the new CCIW logo in the link above, you'll see the sport-specific versions of it in the new blue-and-black color scheme. One of those new logos isn't for a sport at all; instead of a ball or a playing surface it has a headset with mic. Three cheers to Mo and Mike for looking out for me and my fellow broadcasters by giving us our own logo!

[Jester1390]

Gregory I wish I knew you in high school to help me with my reports.  One thing though I didn't see any footnotes listed

[WLCALUM83]

I can see them now-all kinds of signs on the WI-IL Border touting the "CCIW BOGO on NEW LOGO Sales-- (ba da bing!) waddya say-start near Carthage and work all the way around?

[Gregory Sager]

Gregory I wish I knew you in high school to help me with my reports.  One thing though I didn't see any footnotes listed

I make footnotes available to my Patreon subscribers for a reasonable monthly fee.

I can see them now-all kinds of signs on the WI-IL Border touting the "CCIW BOGO on NEW LOGO Sales-- (ba da bing!) waddya say-start near Carthage and work all the way around?

It'd be nice to give northbound travelers something to discuss other than making the same old tired jokes about the Bong Recreation Area.

[lmitzel]

Maggie McCloskey-Bax is looking for a new assistant at NCC. Haven't looked to see if the official job posting is up yet on NCC's website.

[Next Man Up]

Maggie McCloskey-Bax is looking for a new assistant at NCC. Haven't looked to see if the official job posting is up yet on NCC's website.

Same staff as last year still showing on the website and no job posting up yet. Is this a replacement for Asst Coach Chandler or an addition to staff?

[RogK]

Augustana's new schedule :
https://athletics.augustana.edu/sports/womens-basketball/schedule
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[Jester1390]

rogk   did IWU not have any recruits their roster page for upcoming year is up and no freshman everyone is returning but it looks like no seniors from last year decided to return

[Ultimate Titan Fan]

Titans have four recruits that I know of. In previous years, I've noticed their practice of holding off updating the roster until well into the academic year.

[Roundball999]

Some schools are fortunate enough to have a JV team or have too many candidates for the varsity squad so hold off on posting the roster until after the first weeks try outs.

[Gregory Sager]

Some schools are fortunate enough to have a JV team or have too many candidates for the varsity squad so hold off on posting the roster until after the first weeks try outs.

Well, that plus the fact that D3 sports information departments are typically understaffed, and their focus right now has to be on gearing up for fall sports rather than badgering winter-sport coaches for their rosters before the school year has even begun.