WBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[iwu70]

NPU needs far more than just better recruiting.  Better facilities would help, but they also need a coach who has better planning, game management and team design experience.   NPU has had some terrifically talented players over the years, but the way they play as a team has been at times sorely lacking. 

Again, hate on IWU all you want, but some of the coaches trained in the IWU system do have valuable experience . . .  Olivia Lett a good current example.  Michelle Bilek, Rebecca Ehresman and some others I could mention will be good head coaches, if they wish, at some point in the near future.  One could name some on the men's side as well -- I'm sure you can name them . . . and it goes beyond Jon Baines. 

IWU'70

[Jester1390]

Lol I don't think he was hating on Iwu or the message I think he was hating on the messenger. Which he shouldn't your no different then a cowboy or packers and red sox fan. Your devoted to your team and cant see reality sometimes.

[Gregory Sager]

NPU needs far more than just better recruiting.  Better facilities would help, but they also need a coach who has better planning, game management and team design experience.   NPU has had some terrifically talented players over the years, but the way they play as a team has been at times sorely lacking.

I vehemently disagree. The hallmark of Amanda Crockett's teams has been great defense, and the heart of that is not only that the Vikings have played great team defense, but that every player in the rotation has consistently played better individual defense as her career progressed. And Amanda's planning and game management were fine; too often her hands were tied by her available personnel for her to X's-and-O's her way out of specific mismatches.

NPU needs better recruiting, pure and simple. The crackerbox is what it is; I don't think that it plays all that big of a role in whether or not a prospect decides to enroll at North Park to play women's basketball. The problem has been recruiting, specifically in terms of volume. As you said, the Vikings have had terrifically talented players over the years -- they're seeing two of them graduate next month in Jayla Johnson and Emily Czuhajewski -- but there hasn't been enough of them to sufficiently stock the roster in such a way as to not only get them to the top of the standings but to keep them there for the entire duration of the season. This past season was a textbook case of that; there was no CCIW-quality depth at all beyond the starters, and once Emily went down with her leg injury the Vikings' fortunes went down with her. But it goes back further than that; the 2015-16 team was one good player away from competing for the title, and when Nikki Przybyslawski tore her ACL that December the Vikings descended into mediocrity. And the 2019-20 team was one good player away from winning the CCIW title as well.

The opposite side of the ledger, to me, is Carroll. The Pioneers were picked to finish fifth this past season, and it was a distant fifth; they were picked as close to seventh as they were to the two teams tied ahead of them in the poll. But the Pioneers finished 19-7, 10-6, and came pretty darned close to making it to the CCIW tourney championship game with a shot at the dance on the line. How did they do it? Depth. Lindsay Schultz kept losing players to injury or Covid protocols, but she was able to keep plugging in players who responded with CCIW-grade performances. Lindsay Schultz can recruit, and it's doubly impressive how many good players she's recruited during her brief tenure in Waukesha in light of the fact that Carroll is one of the most difficult places to recruit in the entire league, if not the most difficult.

Recruiting is very hard work. It's easy for us fans to gripe about it, because we're not the ones working the phone, spending half of our evenings in high-school gyms, or sweating out test scores or aid packages. It's easy to bemoan holes in your team's lineup, or a lack of depth. But you can't get around the fact that recruiting is by far the most important responsibility of being a college head coach. Even if you delegate most of the recruiting legwork to an assistant or assistants, you're still the one who closes the deal, you're still the one who hires those assistants in the first place, and you're still the one who bears the ultimate responsibility for the team that you send out onto the floor 25 or more times every winter. I'm not at all saying that Amanda was bad at it. But she wasn't good enough at it to get NPU to the top of the league ... and it's because she was always one Nikki Przybyslawski, or one Zakiya Newsome, or one Soly Roman, short of where she needed the Vikings to be.

Again, hate on IWU all you want, but some of the coaches trained in the IWU system do have valuable experience . . .  Olivia Lett a good current example.  Michelle Bilek, Rebecca Ehresman and some others I could mention will be good head coaches, if they wish, at some point in the near future.  One could name some on the men's side as well -- I'm sure you can name them . . . and it goes beyond Jon Baines. 

Oh, good grief. 

[itsnotmeitsyou]

Well the NPU hire has been made. Chances are very good that the promotion of an assistant to 1st time
Head Coach will result in the consistent pattern of results that have occurred previously with 1st time HC's in this league....

[Gregory Sager]

Congrats to Annie Shain upon being promoted to take over the reins at North Park. Annie is a diligent worker who knows the game and has a good rapport with her players. She's fully aware that NPU needs to up its game in the recruiting department. That is even more blatantly obvious right now, given that the Vikings, while not having an utterly bare cupboard, have a roster that as currently constituted will probably get them picked to finish dead last (and rightly so) in next fall's CCIW coaches poll -- and if it isn't augmented in this recruiting cycle with some players who can immediately step onto the floor and perform well at the CCIW level, dead last is where the Vikings will likely finish in 2022-23.

I haven't spoken to Annie much about recruiting this past season, but my sense is that John Born wouldn't have hired her if she didn't have a great incoming class lined up.

So sorry that we didn't hire a Greenie, Mark.

[iwu70]

Greg, don't worry, I didn't expect you to do so.  Most on this board are not very prone to taking my advice.  We are all partisans of one sort or another.  Some other schools down the line will benefit from hiring Bilek or Ehresman or others in the "greenie" lineage.  Elmhurst on the men's side has surely benefited.  Congrats to Annie Shain, and good luck to her.  NPU will live with their decision, and we'll see how it all plays out in time.  Sounds a tough spot to be in for her with the thin cupboard of returnees.  I'd pick them last . . . 

'70

[RogK]

It may not be fully known among our fellow writers that Annie Shain served as head coach for several games during this past season while Coach Crockett was off for maternity leave.
She may, of course, make some revisions based on her own basketball philosophy.

[itsnotmeitsyou]

Congrats to Annie Shain upon being promoted to take over the reins at North Park. Annie is a diligent worker who knows the game and has a good rapport with her players. She's fully aware that NPU needs to up its game in the recruiting department. That is even more blatantly obvious right now, given that the Vikings, while not having an utterly bare cupboard, have a roster that as currently constituted will probably get them picked to finish dead last (and rightly so) in next fall's CCIW coaches poll -- and if it isn't augmented in this recruiting cycle with some players who can immediately step onto the floor and perform well at the CCIW level, dead last is where the Vikings will likely finish in 2022-23.

I haven't spoken to Annie much about recruiting this past season, but my sense is that John Born wouldn't have hired her if she didn't have a great incoming class lined up.

So sorry that we didn't hire a Greenie, Mark.

Last?

Elmhurst didn't have a single CCIW-caliber player on their roster this season. Me, you, Coach Shane, and any two of NPU's current players could compete with this years version of the 'Jays (and I can't shoot anymore and you prolly can't move!) 

[Gregory Sager]

It may not be fully known among our fellow writers that Annie Shain served as head coach for several games during this past season while Coach Crockett was off for maternity leave.

She did a good job of it, too. IIRC, Annie Shain went 6-1 in her stint as acting head coach.

[Gregory Sager]

Greg, don't worry, I didn't expect you to do so.  Most on this board are not very prone to taking my advice.

I didn't do the hiring, Mark. John Born is the one who hired Annie Shain as head coach. He's the one who didn't take your advice ... and he doesn't post here.

We are all partisans of one sort or another.

Not necessarily. Rog is a glaring example of a non-partisan poster on this board. But for the most part you're correct about this being a board of partisan posters. Nevertheless, I think that Jester hit the nail on the head when he said:

Your devoted to your team and cant see reality sometimes.

Mark, your partisanship is so over-the-top that you're prone to not simply indulge in your typical fulsome cheerleading for IWU but to actually present unsupportable statements as fact:

Some other schools down the line will benefit from hiring Bilek or Ehresman or others in the "greenie" lineage.

You have no concrete evidence to support this. This is how you try to do so:

Elmhurst on the men's side has surely benefited.

To use a sports metaphor, you threw the pass five yards out of bounds on this play and plunked the guy holding the first-down marker right in the head. In the past you've often tried to bask in Olivia Lett's success at Millikin by insinuating that it's a reflection of her having played and coached under Mia Smith as a Titan. That's borderline acceptable; everybody has influences and mentors, and it is certainly reasonable to imply, if not outright declare, that Mia Smith played the major role in making Olivia Lett the successful head coach that she is today. But, boy, does that also border upon being an insult to Lett. It could easily be construed as a knock on Lett's native intelligence, basketball acumen, and social skills (the latter of which is a key component of successful recruiting). And that's to say nothing of your presentation of Lett as essentially a product of Mia Smith's influence being a dismissal of anybody else who may have influenced Lett along the way -- for example, her high school coach at Pana HS, or former U of Chicago head coach Carisa Sain Knoche, under whom Lett served for two years as an assistant.

Nevertheless, given that Lett played for Smith for three years and was an assistant under her for three more, you can at least make the argument that Lett's impressive success is a byproduct of Mia Smith's influence upon her. It's an argument, mind you, not a proven fact, but you're at least on the playing field with it.

But drawing John Baines into this? Wow. Let us count the ways that this is messed-up. First, it's the wrong sport. Baines coaches men's basketball, and has never had any sort of association whatsoever with Mia Smith (who wasn't even at IWU when Baines was a student-athlete there; she was coaching volleyball and softball at Monmouth at the time). So this statement of yours is not an endorsement of Mia Smith's influence upon Bilek or Ehresman -- or Lett, or anybody else associated with Titans women's basketball -- at all. When you say "greenie lineage," you literally mean anybody who is an Illinois Wesleyan sports alumnus or alumna. And, whether you're blinded to it or not, that's just plain nuts. (And, no, it's not sugar-covered nuts, either. It's just plain nuts. ) It completely undercuts your Mia Smith argument and puts you out on the fringe with the conspiracy theorists ... unless, that is, you can produce some of the magic green pixie dust Illinois Wesleyan provides to its student-athletes that automatically make them great future coaches. I'm not holding my breath on that.

Second, there were a lot of years that took place between John Baines the IWU men's basketball center and John Baines the successful Elmhurst men's basketball head coach, years in which he never wore green. He spent two years coaching at Bloomington HS, then spent ten -- count 'em, ten -- seasons sitting second chair beside Mark Scherer as Elmhurst's assistant coach, a coaching tenure so long that it makes the argument that Elmhurst, not Illinois Wesleyan, is the CCIW school that shaped Baines as a coach much more compelling. And then he spent three successful seasons learning his craft as a college head coach at the University of St. Francis in Joliet. It's therefore quite a reach to claim that Illinois Wesleyan is the institution that shaped Baines as a head coach.

Third, as I said earlier, your statement that Bilek and Ehresman will be successful head coaches, whether at North Park or some other college, is unsupportable speculation, not fact. Again, no slam on Bilek or Ehresman whatsoever in terms of their actual merits, but I need to see the magic green pixie dust for myself before I am convinced that they should be at the top of any AD's hiring list simply because they have undergraduate diplomas from Illinois Wesleyan.

Congrats to Annie Shain, and good luck to her.  NPU will live with their decision, and we'll see how it all plays out in time.  Sounds a tough spot to be in for her with the thin cupboard of returnees.  I'd pick them last . . .

On that we agree. Even as bad as Elmhurst was last season, I think that the Bluejays will be picked eighth, ahead of NPU, next fall by the coaches, barring an incoming class for the Vikings that impresses Annie Shain's new peers enough for them to alter their thinking. Back on January 29, the 'jays were alarmingly competitive against the Czuhajewski-less Vikings at Faganel -- NPU carried a mere three-point lead into the final minute of the game -- and the Park will lose a lot more to graduation from that team that was missing Emily (Jayla Johnson and Lauren Lee) than Elmhurst will (Taylor Harazin and Marissa Urso, the latter of whom didn't even play in that January 29 game).

[RogK]

Wheaton has revealed an early '22-'23 schedule :
https://athletics.wheaton.edu/sports/womens-basketball/schedule
===

[GoPerry]

So this statement of yours is not an endorsement of Mia Smith's influence upon Bilek or Ehresman -- or Lett, or anybody else associated with Titans women's basketball -- at all. When you say "greenie lineage," you literally mean anybody who is an Illinois Wesleyan sports alumnus or alumna. And, whether you're blinded to it or not, that's just plain nuts. (And, no, it's not sugar-covered nuts, either. It's just plain nuts. )

. . . or maybe it's just plain Grape Nuts . . . since they're neither grapes nor nuts . . .? 

[RogK]

On Tuesday, I happened to be at the IIT campus right as a bus arrived bringing the UW - La Crosse lacrosse team.

[gordonmann]

Wheaton has revealed an early '22-'23 schedule :
https://athletics.wheaton.edu/sports/womens-basketball/schedule

That's the earliest schedule posting I can remember. It warms my heart.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Wheaton has revealed an early '22-'23 schedule :
https://athletics.wheaton.edu/sports/womens-basketball/schedule

That's the earliest schedule posting I can remember. It warms my heart.

You gotta let people know who you're playing, so they know whether to schedule you or not.  It's the new way of the world.