WBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Next Man Up]

lmitzel, there must be ongoing revisions to the roster.
I didn't recall Mitrese Smith on my first look at the '22-'23 list, but Jurkovic was there.
Tonight, no Jurkovic on the roster, but Smith is there.
I guess it doesn't matter before late October.

lmitzel, there must be ongoing revisions to the roster.
I didn't recall Mitrese Smith on my first look at the '22-'23 list, but Jurkovic was there.
Tonight, no Jurkovic on the roster, but Smith is there.
I guess it doesn't matter before late October.

I don't remember seeing her at first either and then when I went to respond she was again.

Eh, it's early.

I saw Mitrese and talked with her when I was down at the gym last Friday. She is taking her COVID year this year and will be using it to play and complete her eligibility.

[RogK]

Augustana's new roster :
https://athletics.augustana.edu/sports/womens-basketball/roster/2022-23
Of last season's 14 non-seniors, 12 are back. Prominent players Hannah Simmer (506 minutes in 22 games) and Erin Morrissey (368 minutes in 24 games) are not listed.
There are 7 freshmen and 3 transfers (a junior and two sophomores).

[iwu70]

RogK, that Augie roster is one of the taller groups you will see in CCIW, right?   Some good talent returning. . .

IWU'70

[RogK]

Agreed, iwu70.
Newcomers include 6'2" and 6'4".
Yep, good returning players.
How the heck is Gabriela Loiz a senior already? Seems like she was a freshman just three years ago.

[iwu70]

RogK, I think IWU will, again, have to play fast and press, with tons of defensive pressure . . .  they've got some size in, but their overall starting group will not be tall so paint/rim protection will be at a premium.  The fab three freshmen are back, joined by Heller and Carlson.   They will be good, but will have to play at their own style and pace to win.  The 3-ball will be huge. 

IWU'70

[RogK]

Last season, IWU induced 22.8 opponent turnovers per game (662 in 29g).
http://stats.ncaa.org/team/300/stats/15866
That was well above average and I'm sure they can achieve similar this coming season.
They scored 69.2 pts/game in '21-'22. Do you expect them to accelerate the offense to the extent that they'd score around 80?

[iwu70]

Yes, I expect the Titans to still often use "run and jump" and do their best to induce TOs.  That's the Mia Smith way . . .  and everyone knows it's coming, but it still usually, most often works.

As to offense, for both men and women at IWU, the magic number is always 78 -- I'd say any time an IWU squad gets to 78, they win 85-90% of the time.  With the fab three freshmen coming into their second year -- that's Huber, Powers, and Palmer -- I expect a pretty good offensive output.  Of course, they lost Lansford . . . and will need Carlson and Heller to step up . . .  If they can get 10 ppg from Heller and about 8 and 10 from Carlson, the Titans will have a very successful year.  Rebounding and paint defense still an issue when we play against bigger teams like Whitewater . . . but with "run and jump," the strategy is always to keep the opposing team pretty much out of the paint, away from the basket, with pressing and TOs.   I'd expect a similar style and pace of play upcoming.  Very fast, very fit . . . Several others will surely contribute in the rotation . . . and we'll see some significant improvement from several of those players . . .  Lansford, Eck and Bowen are big losses, esp. on defense, but the new group has every chance to be good, to again contend for the CCIW title . . . and get to the post season.  That's my thought for the moment. 

IWU'70

[RogK]

Elmhurst's new roster :
https://elmhurstbluejays.com/sports/womens-basketball/roster
Seventeen returning from last season, plus nine newcomers (2 JR, 1 SO, 6 FR).

[Gregory Sager]

As to offense, for both men and women at IWU, the magic number is always 78 -- I'd say any time an IWU squad gets to 78, they win 85-90% of the time.

That's what's called a truism: a fact so obvious that it really doesn't need to be stated. For any CCIW team, men or women (and in every other D3 league as well), getting to 78 points will earn you a win almost every time. The only distinction is that the lower score of CCIW women's games than men's games makes it even more true for the women. In fact, your "they win 85-90% of the time" declaration is a drastic underselling of reality on the women's side of things.

The mean scoring average of CCIW women's basketball teams in conference play last season was 62.9 points. If you took each team's 2021-22 scoring average as their score against you in 2022-23 (since mean scoring averages typically don't deviate much on a league-wide basis from season to season), and your women's team scored 78 points in every CCIW game, your team would not only win the league with a perfect 16-0 record, you'd soundly thrash almost every team in the league on a nightly basis. Only Millikin (73.1 ppg) and Illinois Wesleyan (72.2 ppg) would be able to lose to you by single digits, and even if you factored in a +4 for homecourt advantage (I think that that's the variable that Ken Massey uses), you'd still sweep both the Big Blue and the Titans and run the table in the CCIW.

There are 429 teams in D3 women's basketball. Guess how many of them averaged better than 78 points last season? Eight. That's all. Just eight teams. And of those eight high-octane teams, only three (Aurora, Webster, and Hope) are common CCIW opponents. Aurora whomped Elmhurst last season, 103-73, but the 'jays were epically awful last season, so that doesn't tell us much. More pertinent is the fact that the Spartans only edged North Central by a score of 63-62, a game in which the Cardinals had two shot attempts to win it in the final fifteen seconds. NCC was a distinctly subpar team last season by CCIW standards (9-17, 6-10), but, as you can see, the Cards not only nearly beat Aurora, they held the Spartans to a whopping 17 points below their season scoring average. Webster was a better outfit than Aurora, but the Gorloks beat their lone CCIW foe, Augustana, by a modest 81-74 margin in St. Louis -- and Augie was no CCIW colossus at 12-13, 6-10. So it's fairly reasonable to assume that a 78-point performance against last season's Aurora or Webster would still give your CCIW team a better-than-fair chance to win. Against Hope? Fuggedaboutit. First of all, you're not going to score 78 points against that Dutch defense, anyway. Second, even if you did, they'd still beat you. But even if you did schedule Hope during the regular season, a 78-point performance every night would still get you a 26-1 record heading into the D3 tourney, and you'd then keep winning in March until whichever round you again ran into Hope.

In other words, your 78-point marker is completely, utterly useless on the women's side. You might as well make it easier on yourself and just say, "If the Titans outscore their opponents, they'll win."

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

In other words, your 78-point marker is completely, utterly useless on the women's side. You might as well make it easier on yourself and just say, "If the Titans outscore their opponents, they'll win."

Now this statement is almost always true.

[Gregory Sager]

More pertinent is the fact that the Spartans only edged North Central by a score of 63-62, a game in which the Cardinals had two shot attempts to win it in the final fifteen seconds.

By the way, the Aurora guard who made a big three-point play in the final minute to put the Spartans ahead, Victoria Perry (10.1 ppg in 2021-22), is now a Viking. She transferred from Aurora to NPU over the summer.

[RogK]

The North Park head coach has a new and much longer last name, no doubt intended to make Greg Sager's NPU broadcasts more difficult pronunciationally:
https://athletics.northpark.edu/sports/womens-basketball/roster/coaches/annie-radenkovich/840
--

[Gregory Sager]

Nah. "Radenkovich" is child's play. I don't even need to practice it. Once you've mastered "Przybyslawski" and "Czuhajewski", a name like "Radenkovich" is nothing more than a nice smooth sip of slivovitz.

[Gregory Sager]

By the way, her new husband, Nick Radenkovich, is the head coach of the men's basketball team at Morton College.

[Gregory Sager]

North Park's 2022-23 women's basketball roster just went up on the NPU website moments ago.

Vikings fans are going to see a very nice early Christmas present listed third from the bottom on this roster!