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Messages - Gregory Sager

#31
Quote from: RogK on December 18, 2023, 02:39:19 PM
I also went to IWU's 73-63 win at U of Chicago. A hard-fought game between two very athletic rosters.

I saw you on the livestream. You looked like you had the world by the tail, lounging there all alone in the west-end bleachers.
#32
Quote from: Wildcat on December 18, 2023, 02:19:29 PM
If Carthage continues their terrific season, like I think they will. How will the loss to Ripon and the win over Whitewater effect their playoff hopes for hosting?

Waaaay too early to ask that question, which is dependent upon a million other factors.
#33
This weekend's scores (home teams in italics):

Friday
Carthage 83, Illinois Tech 79

Saturday
Chicago 59, Wheaton 52

Sunday
Augustana 84, Lake Forest 83 (ot)
Carroll 86, Northland 61
Elmhurst 74, Lawrence 41

CCIW non-con to date: 30-27 (.526)

Incidentally, Antuan Nesbitt was back in action and played a full game on Friday. Carthage is still missing AJ Johnson, however.
#34
Quote from: magicman on December 16, 2023, 12:25:33 AM
Quote from: Gregory Sager on December 16, 2023, 12:01:25 AM
Quote from: stlawus on December 15, 2023, 10:23:40 PM
Nothing better than seeing midwest d3 schools lose to NY teams.   Every year d3 midwest teams think good sports don't exist outside of their regional bubble.

Depends upon the sport. In D3 men's soccer, the shoe is on the other foot -- northeastern teams (NESCAC and Messiah, in particular) have traditionally dominated the sport, and northeastern fans have tended to disregard the midwestern teams.

Hello Greg,
Hope you are well. I see you are still trying to make posters see the other side of the coin. Keep up the good work. ;D

Great to hear from you again, Prestidigitator! Sorry to learn that you're not doing well these days. Miss seeing your posts on d3boards. Take care of yourself!
#35
Quote from: stlawus on December 15, 2023, 10:23:40 PM
Nothing better than seeing midwest d3 schools lose to NY teams.   Every year d3 midwest teams think good sports don't exist outside of their regional bubble.

Depends upon the sport. In D3 men's soccer, the shoe is on the other foot -- northeastern teams (NESCAC and Messiah, in particular) have traditionally dominated the sport, and northeastern fans have tended to disregard the midwestern teams.
#36
Quote from: Flying Dutch Fan on December 15, 2023, 01:44:07 PM
Quote from: RogK on December 15, 2023, 01:21:52 PM
a very unusual stat from that game :
http://stats.ncaa.org/contests/3960238/box_score
only 4 fouls on Principia
I'm guessing most coaches (if not all of them) would be after the team for lacking any aggression on defense with that stat.

Gentlemen, that box score needs to be assessed in context.

Principia, as always, has a very skimpy roster. The Panthers only have eleven players on the roster, and, as is always typical for them as well, some of those players are essentially nothing more than warm bodies who can allow the Panthers to go five-on-five in practice and who can be utilized in garbage time to save unnecessary wear-and-tear on the rotation players. And those rotation players are small in number, indeed; a glance at the stats and box scores for Principia shows that it's, for all intents and purposes, a seven-man team. Once again, that's a familiar situation for the Principia MBB program.

What makes it far, far worse is that Principia's leading scorer, Jaquan Adams -- a formidable offensive presence at 24.8 ppg who had outings of 26 and 23 points against a pair of very good ARC squads (Loras and Central, respectively) -- is currently out with an injury. In other words, Principia is now not only offensively challenged by having to replace the team's best scorer by far, it's now effectively down to a six-man rotation as well.

And that, I think, gets to the heart of the whole "How can they play defense if they never foul?" question. If you're worried that your team will lose its ability to compete if two or more guys get into foul trouble and have to sit, then you teach your players to be very judicious in how they approach their defensive responsibilities. The Fontbonne game is not an outlier; the Panthers have only been whistled for a single-digit number of fouls in each of their last three games (one of which was an overtime affair against Mississippi University for Women; six fouls were called against the Panthers in 45 minutes of basketball against MUW, and the Panthers won that game). After ten games they're averaging under 11 fouls per game as a team ... and that's taking into consideration that one of those ten games was against Grinnell, whose games can often descend into whistlefests.
#37
Quote from: HOPEful on December 15, 2023, 11:04:54 AM
Quote from: Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan) on December 15, 2023, 10:37:18 AM
Logan Pearson's been seen in a walking boot.  It's going to be tough for Platteville to beat Calvin without him, even if there's a No. 1 curse.

Hope was up 3 with 4 minutes left against Platteville. Then Logan Pierson happened...

Not quite as painful as being up 6 on Whitewater with 36 seconds left... but being that the two games were 3 days apart, it's all kinda the same wound... Barnstable and Pierson are basically four-letter words in Holland right now :)

You're nicely getting retribution against that particular walking "four-letter" word by misspelling it. ;)
#38
Quote from: Wildcat on December 09, 2023, 10:44:32 PM
Carthage was missing two players tonight and Elmhurst is definitely missing Neshat Dalipi. He was just starting to get rolling before his injury.

Carthage wasn't just short two players, it was short two starters, both of whom average double-digit scoring: AJ Johnson (13.9 ppg) and Antuan Nesbitt (10.6 ppg). While Dalipi is missing useful development time as Jonathan Zapinski's heir apparent, in terms of yesterday's game the absence of Elmhurst's backup center doesn't even come close to offsetting the loss of Johnson and Nesbitt for the Firebirds.
#39
North Park 75
Augustana 55

Phil Holmes, Jr: 14 pts, 6 rebs, 5:2 a:to
Trevon Roots: 14 pts
Shamar Pumphrey: 13 pts

Andrew Ayeni: 11 pts
Chase Larsen: 10 pts, 7 rebs
Matt Hawkins: 10 pts

The Park finally snaps an ugly losing streak with a solid, if not pretty, road win. You'd think that a team like Augie that is 100% committed to playing a 3-2 zone for 40 minutes would be ideally suited to play an opponent that shoots the three as poorly as does NPU, but it didn't work out that way. Even though North Park stunk it up again from behind the arc (7-27, .259), the visitors showed great patience in the halfcourt, kept the dumb shots to a minimum, and used their size advantage to great effect by working the high-low zonebreaker to get Phil Holmes, Trevon Roots, and DJ Wallace lots of looks right at the rim.

The Vikings really aren't doing the sorts of things that they're supposed to do in Sean Smith's system -- it's predicated upon getting a lot more shot attempts than opponents via offensive rebounds and turnovers, and once again NPU really didn't get any advantages in those two categories, leading to only two more field-goal attempts than Augie had and six fewer free-throw attempts -- but it didn't matter, because of a combination of NPU's use of quickness and length advantages to bother Augie shooters plus Augie's own lackluster ability to make shots. And a nice bonus was that, even though North Park only got to the line fourteen times, Sean's boys went a season-best 12-14 (.857) from the stripe.

Best of all, really, is the fact that they did it without their leading scorer. Kolden Vanlandingham did not dress for tonight's game, due to an injury that I've been led to believe (and, frankly, hope) is a minor one. The comforting thing about that is that North Park's finals week is this coming week, so the Vikings don't have another game until they face Dominican nine days from now.
#40
Augustana 66
North Park 34

Victoria Perry: 17 pts, 11 rebs

Cali Papez: 17 pts, 12 rebs
Emma Berg: 13 pts
Corey Whitlock: 12 pts, 10 rebs
Kylee Devore: 10 pts
Cadence Tatum: 10:3 a:to
Ashley Lang: 4 stls
#41
By contrast, it was never a game at Faganel, as visiting Carthage led 45-17 at the half and romped to an 80-56 win over Elmhurst. Lauren Knight led the way for the Firebirds with 25 and 10, while Marianna Morrissey had 19 and 7. Elmhurst was paced by Shanyce "Utah" Makuei with 21 and 7, and Kristin Bukata had 12, while M.C. Brown also grabbed seven boards for Elmhurst.
#42
Carroll hands #9 Millikin its first loss of the season, taking down the Big Blue in overtime, 101-98, at Van Male. Exciting game, and, apart from a brief hiccup late in the fourth quarter in which the two teams exchanged two straight sets of unforced turnovers, a really well-played game, too. Elyce Knudsen was as dominant as always, but she did not come up roses in the endgame situations; she missed a free throw with fourteen seconds left in regulation -- only her second FT miss of the entire season -- that would've put the Big Blue up by two possessions, she missed a big layup attempt in the final minute, and her attempt to send the game into a second OT with an admittedly difficult 26-foot leaner with two seconds left hit the front of the rim and bounced out. Clutch three-point shooting by the Pioneers late in the fourth quarter and into overtime spelled the difference, and it was made especially impressive by the fact that two Pios starters (Lauren Soyke and Natalie Gricius) fouled out of the game early in OT.

Olivia Rangel set a new career high with 30 points to lead the Pios (11-16 from the field, a perfect 8-8 from the stripe), while Gricius had 21 before departing and Emilie Wizner continued showing her hot hand from downtown, as her 18 points featured a 4-5 performance from beyond the arc, a couple of those treys coming late in regulation. Chloe Halverson led the Pios in boards with 7. Knudsen finished the day with 32 points, including 5-10 from distance. Bailey Coffman added 22, Sophie Darden contributed 17, and Matayia Tellis hit double figures as well with 16 in the losing cause.
#43
Quote from: cardinal773 on December 06, 2023, 07:11:01 PM
All of the talk about how he has improved the culture and his investment in his student athletes is what impresses me.  The wins are a product of this brand of holistic coaching and mentoring.  The accolades are a product of the wins.

There are examples of this positive coaching throughout the conference (and region).  Thank you, Greg, for sharing Park's experience with coach Rooker.

Yep. And it really does stem from the positive and affirming culture he's building and the buy-in he's getting from his players, because that is affecting recruiting. CCIW-level prospects are coming in on visits, and they're liking what they see in terms of how Kyle and his staff go about their business and how they treat people, as well as the upbeat atmosphere among the players, which counts for a lot in terms of first impressions. It's still an uphill battle to get suburban Chicagoland kids to commit to a city school (Kyle and I talked about that in our halftime interview last week), but that hill might not be quite as steep as it used to be. I feel good about where the program is and where it's going.
#44
Carroll 77
North Park 51

Aliyah Hershberger: 17 pts

Emilie Wizner: 21 pts (4-4 trey)
Natalie Gricius: 13 pts
Lauren Soyke: 12 pts
Olivia Rangel: 10 pts, 13 rebs
Natalie Palzkill: 6 rebs, 5 stls

You'd never know it by looking at the final score, but North Park led for all but 47 seconds in the first half; the first 00:16 of the first quarter and the last 00:31 of the second quarter marked the only time allotments in which NPU did not have the better of it. But that was in large part because Carroll appeared to be shooting the ball while wearing blindfolds, as the Pioneers were doing everything else right -- they were dominating the boards, their press was forcing turnovers, and Natalie Palzkill was totally blanketing the best offensive weapon the Vikings have, Victoria Perry. The Vikings actually led by nine with 2:35 to go in the half, 25-16, basically because they could put the ball in the net every now and then and Carroll simply couldn't.

But that state of affairs couldn't last forever. The Pioneers erupted for a 13-2 run in that final 2:35 to go into the locker room up by two, in what in retrospect was a perfect foreshadowing of the third quarter. Stripped of their blindfolds, the Pioneers shot an absurd 13-19 (.684) from the field in the third stanza while continuing to grab all of the rebounds at both ends of the floor and forcing turnover after turnover with their press. It was a 33-10 quarter, and that was all she wrote.

The lone bright spot was freshman guard Aliyah Hershberger, who got her 17 points on 7-9 shooting from the field to set a new high for her young career.
#45
Illinois Wesleyan 70
North Park 56

Lance Nelson: 14 pts

Nick Roper: 15 pts
Ryan Sroka: 12 pts
Harrison Wilmsen: 11 pts
Mason Funk: 11 pts
Marko Anderson: 9 rebs
Luke Yoder: 8 rebs

Nothing to add that I haven't already said over the past three weeks regarding this nightmare.