Also, those uniforms the beloved Cards were wearing tonight are God awful to look at.

Allow me to agree, even as an Elmhurst fan. When I first heard of their grey uniforms I thought they'd at least have red numbers and letters (similar to a Bulls alternate of recent years), but these are just drab. If you randomly tuned into a game, you'd have no idea what school is even out there.

Quote from: lmitzel on February 01, 2023, 10:39:15 pm

NCC sits at 6-6 in conference and gets the other three teams in the log jam of 3rd-6th place at the hangar in the next two weeks (plus a trip to Wheaton to break it up). Won’t be easy but I’d rather have them playing those games with me watching from just off center court.

I was checking the Cardinals' schedule to confirm the game time for Saturday, and realized while doing so that North Central has won as many games at Van Male this year as they have in the Hangar.  It will be good to have threeeeeeeeeeee of the four conference matchups in Naperville as we reach the regular season's endgame.

North Park 79
North Central 65

Shamar Pumphrey: 17 pts, 6:4 a:to, 3 stls
Kolden Vanlandingham: 16 pts, 3 stls
Davante Robinson: 11 pts (3-4 trey)
Jordan Boyd: 5:0 a:to, 3 blks
Marquise Jackson: 4 stls

Mitch Lewis: 27 pts (9-9 FT), 12 rebs

This was an impressive win by NPU, not only in that the Vikings beat a good team, but because they had to stave off multiple Cardinals runs in order to do so. NPU enjoyed a double-digit lead for most of the middle of the game, but NCC cut it to two at one point and to four in a couple of other instances, due in large part to the phenomenon that is Mitch Lewis.

Barring a CCIW tournament meet-up, this will be the first and last time that North Park will ever face Mitch Lewis. And good riddance, I say. That man is a beast.

Quote from: USee on January 20, 2023, 11:46:07 am

IWU has had injuries and hasn't been playing at their expected level to this point, but they are still a very good D3 team.

IWU fans have been leaning hard into that "oh, so many injuries" narrative this season, but the reality is that only one player from last season's rotation -- Nick Roper, who appeared in 25 of IWU's 30 games last year and averaged 9 minutes played per game -- has been sidelined by injury. Grant Hardy and Pryce Punkay, two other injured players whose absence has been bemoaned by Titans faithful, saw a grand total of 52 and 7 minutes of varsity floor time last season.

Obviously, IWU lost four starters from last season's team to graduation, so scads of minutes opened up this season for the Titans, and the guys named above (plus incoming freshman Nathan Boldt) were expected to grab some of them. But you can't make any assumptions about players who've seen little or no playing time in terms of their future success when they're directly thrusted into prominent roles; IWU's Harrison Wilmsen and Hakim Williams, for example, have not exactly set the world on fire this season upon being asked to play much bigger roles for the Titans. And when you have a bunch of young guys collectively being asked to step up all at once, your team thus by definition becomes a wild card -- which is one reason why I thought that the Titans were overrated going into this season, even before all of those injuries became an IWU talking point. (And I wasn't alone in thinking that, either.)

The mainstays for the Titans this season have been their rotation holdovers from 2021-22: Cody Mitchell, Ryan Sroka, and Lucas Heflen. That's what people should've been expecting. That's not to say, of course, that some guy from any generic team who played seven minutes of varsity time last year couldn't step up and become the team's star this year. That happens all the time in college hoops. But you can't bank on it happening, especially in a league this tough. The CCIW is a prove-it-to-me league -- and many IWU fans foresaw big accomplishments in 2022-23 for a whole bunch of guys who hadn't proven anything whatsoever to date at this level. I suspect that this comes from the whole "if IWU recruited him, he must be a future star" syndrome, the hubris of which never ceases to amaze me.

I thought that the Titans would be a pretty good team this year, and thus far they've been a pretty good team. Very good? Nope. Too slow -- this past Wednesday night was a classic example that the reigning mathematical formula in D3 hoops right now is (speed > size), too lacking in ball protection, and -- most oddly, given IWU's tradition of having more good shooters than anybody else in the league -- not very good when it comes to shooting. With one round-robin in the books, the Titans rank fifth in shooting percentage in CCIW play despite being by far the league's tallest and longest team (i.e., the team most likely to benefit from pounding the ball into the post for high-percentage shots), dead last in three-point shooting, and dead last in free-throw shooting. Again, these are CCIW stats, not overall stats, so nobody can argue that the dismal shooting of the Titans is reflective of the fact that they've played better overall competition than have the other eight CCIW teams. What success the Titans have had this season (8-7, 5-3) has been because of their defense.

Like I said ... pretty good team? Sure. Very good team? No way, José.

I have a very strong suspicion that Wheaton, a quick team full of high-motor guys that can shoot, is going to wipe the floor with Wesleyan tomorrow in King Arena.

Couple observations from being at the Carthage game tonight.

*.  The game turned as soon as Lewis came in the game.  He hit a number of nice jump shots and Campbell just couldn’t guard him (part of the reason for lack of minutes)
*.  Bulatovic had a poor game tonight.  He didn’t score in the first half and the majority of his shots were taken off balance.  He did end up in double figures, but not a great game.
*.  NC went 25 for 28 from the FT line vs. 9 for 15 for Carthage.  Hard to overcome that advantage and efficiency.
*.  Carthage cut the lead to 4 twice in the second half, but couldn’t get a big stop to get it down to one possession.
*.  Nesbitt started out hot with I think the first 8 points and then didn’t really get going again until middle of second half.  Not flashy, but a real nice player who is provides good defense, scoring and very unselfish play.