WBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[iwu70]

IWU plays Hope @DeVos at 2 p.m.  Should be a good early test for the Titans to see how good they truly are this year, though early in the season.   IWU still a work in progress, like so many teams at this stage.

Don't think IWU can speed up Hope, or get much out of "run and jump" against them, so this may be a different kind of game, even with IWU trying to play fast.  Much more determined by what happens in the half court.   To have a chance, IWU will need to rebound the ball, defend well in the half court, and shoot the 3 well, getting more production from Palmer . . . and perhaps more paint scoring, rebounding from Kuntson this game.   Huber, Heller and Powers are all playing very well so far, early in the season . . . 

Titans will need to play their best to have a shot  . . . I'm expecting Hope to win, but do hope this game is competitive, close.

IWU'70

[iwu70]

IWU shooting poorly, playing poorly.  Hope is good, but not that good.  Hope 46 IWU 21 at the half.  IWU seems a bit overwhelmed by the moment. 

'70

[iwu70]

@Hope, after 3Q, Hope 76, IWU 58.  Titans showing some spunk.

'70

[iwu70]

Final at DeVos:   Hope 99 IWU 73

Hope:

McKinney 19
Bagley 18
Sietsema 11

Winning the rebounding 47-35, TOs 13-17, and points in the paint 54-38

IWU:

Powers 18
Knutson 16
Palmer 14
Huber 11

IWU suffering a huge deficit in the 1st Q, such a poor start, then trying to fight back to make it respectable. 

Of course, HOPE is good, #1 in the nation, but IWU just didn't have a good night shooting or at the FT line (57%).  So, live and learn and know how tough the competition is going to be come tournament time, if you make it that far.

IWU outscored Hope in the second and third quarters to get within 13, but then Hope pulled away again.

No respite, UW Whitewater up next.

IWU'70

[Roundball999]

Final at DeVos:   Hope 99 IWU 73

Hope:

McKinney 19
Bagley 18
Sietsema 11

Winning the rebounding 47-35, TOs 13-17, and points in the paint 54-38

IWU:

Powers 18
Knutson 16
Palmer 14
Huber 11

IWU suffering a huge deficit in the 1st Q, such a poor start, then trying to fight back to make it respectable. 

Of course, HOPE is good, #1 in the nation, but IWU just didn't have a good night shooting or at the FT line (57%).  So, live and learn and know how tough the competition is going to be come tournament time, if you make it that far.

IWU outscored Hope in the second and third quarters to get within 13, but then Hope pulled away again.

No respite, UW Whitewater up next.

IWU'70

In recent years we've seen Hope pull away in the 4Q frequently.  Their starters are good, but seemed to me IWU starters were nearly as good.   1Q was probably an anomaly; Hope was on fire and IWU had a bad quarter.   The difference maker seems to be that Hope goes 9-10 deep in their regular rotation and sometimes even deeper, you can see it in the box score minutes today.  Together with their overplay half court defense and constant rotation of fresh legs, opponents just wear down by the 4th.

As you say, IWU showed some real spunk and mental toughness.  Many teams would have come into Devos and folded after a start like that.  Instead, IWU made it competitive for the rest of the game.  I've always admired IWU for their tough non-con schedule, it can only help later in the year.

[Gregory Sager]

St. Olaf 62
North Park 48

Aaliyah Parker-Fox: 10 pts
Elisha Dunlap: 9 rebs
Esther Miller: 6 stls

This game was painful to watch, and even more painful to call. To describe the Vikings' shooting today as brutal would be putting it mildly. NPU went 18-65 (.277) from the field and 4-28 (.143) from behind the arc, one of those efforts that truly lives down to the old saying that they couldn't throw the ball into Lake Michigan if they were standing at the end of Navy Pier. For much of the game the Oles played a tissue-soft zone defense that never extended and didn't particularly slide laterally all that well, which meant that the Vikings were presented with lots of open looks all day. They basically dared North Park to make a trey. The Vikings were unable to oblige.

The Vikings were without Jayla Johnson again today, but you can't pin this one on her absence. The Oles were totally beatable, but the Vikings simply didn't take care of business.

[lmitzel]

NCC dropped its home opener tonight 68-48 to Chicago. Decisive point of the game was a 10-0 run to close out the first quarter after back to back Lexie Hernandez threes made it 14-10 late in the quarter.

Hernandez paced the Cardinals with 9, Megan Duffy scored 8, and Abby Davidson paired 7 points with a team high 8 rebounds. Marissa Powe paced the Maroons with 18 and 8.

Bigger concern at the moment is with Mitrese Smith leaving less than 5 minutes into the game. Hoping she's okay.

[Gregory Sager]

Otherwise:

Augustana 72, Loras 69
UWSP 61, Carroll 56
St. Norbert 64, Carthage 49
Hanover 78, Elmhurst 55
UW-Whitewater 79, Millikin 69
Chicago 68, North Central 48
Wheaton 61, UW-Platteville 53

The CCIW (7-14, .333) isn't exactly burning up the track coming out of the starting gate.

[GoPerry]

Wheaton 61, UW-Platteville 53

Much better game from Caroline Sikkink, 23 pts on 9/19 shooting after only putting up 8 attempts on Friday.  She and Richardson both need to be getting 12-15 shots a night for the Thunder to have some success. 

Freshmen Anna Fernandez and Kate Oliver continue to show pretty high Bball IQ and potential.  Both are not afraid to take it to the hole and draw fouls.

[RogK]

Over Friday-Saturday, I attended 3.9 games : Beloit @ North Park, Alma v St Olaf (at NP), Elmhurst v Hanover (at Wheaton) and UW Platteville @ Wheaton. I opted to depart that last one with about 4 minutes remaining in order to catch an eastbound Metra, rather than the next one 2 hours later.
I agree with GoPerry's optimism regarding Fernandez and Oliver. They each look very athletic and multi-skilled.
I found out that Annie Tate's return to action could be several weeks away. Hopefully she gets back to 100% or close to it.
Injury is a problem for Elmhurst. I think Kate Matthews may be out for the year (ACL?); she had a bunch of good games as a freshman last year, including scoring in the 14-22 range in seven games.
5'11" freshman Anna Kleszynski has missed two games after grabbing 10 rebounds in her debut last Tuesday.
Millikin is missing star forward Bailey Coffman.
North Central has been without Elle Sutter, who developed into a fine player during last season.

[lmitzel]

North Central has been without Elle Sutter, who developed into a fine player during last season.

I'm assuming that stems from the fact that she's gotta get transitioned over from soccer. Elle earned First Team All-CCIW honors there and helped lead the Cardinals to the CCIW title game a week and a half ago.

[Gregory Sager]

Over Friday-Saturday, I attended 3.9 games : Beloit @ North Park, Alma v St Olaf (at NP), Elmhurst v Hanover (at Wheaton) and UW Platteville @ Wheaton. I opted to depart that last one with about 4 minutes remaining in order to catch an eastbound Metra, rather than the next one 2 hours later.

Boy, have I been there, done that ... and more than once. I have nightmare memories of sprinting across the Wheaton campus back in the day in a furious attempt to make the train rather than twiddle my thumbs on the platform for two hours. If I was lucky I could get Pete McBride or the late Dave Lawrenz to give me a postgame ride so that I could make the eastbound Metra.

North Central, Elmhurst, and Carthage are the opposite. You know you're going to have a long wait for the next train after a ballgame at those places, so you find someplace warm nearby to hunker down in the meantime.

[lmitzel]

I've had something gnawing at me a little bit since the 4th quarter of the NCC-Chicago game the other night. Greg, this question might be best asked of you since you may be most in the know, but I'm not sure if anyone else here would also know enough.

Last year the CCIW started doing media timeouts during all of its games. No issue in and of itself, but we had an interesting conversation with one of the officials towards the end of the game about how those are enforced. Apparently we're supposed to be charging those media timeouts to alternating teams (which is... 100% not how we did it last year and I'm pretty sure is not specified in any rule about those are enforced. This was what I found on a quick Google during the game, and I just interpret this as it's official timeouts that don't get charged either way, which is how we did it last year.)

Official's argument about it made sense... speeds up the game a little bit with fewer timeouts to take, but I don't think it's how you're supposed to do it.

[Gregory Sager]

We didn't have media timeouts in the NPU Tipoff Tourney this past weekend. In fact, the subject never came up.

[RogK]

lmitzel, thanks for the info on Elle Sutter ... she's quite an athlete!
There was confusion with media timeouts Saturday at Wheaton. They seemed to be in addition to those allotted to the teams.