I also hear that someone bought a lot of tickets. Someone who was standing 7th in line to get tickets for myself and a couple other people was told that Wheaton had about 105 tickets to sell, and that they would be limiting the amount of tickets to be sold to one individual. By the time the 6th person got up to purchase, they had already sold out of the tickets.

I'm not sure what really happened, but I am disappointed if there really were 105 tickets at 2 pm and someone bought the majority of those tickets.

Now that it appears as if I will not be able to attend the games, does anyone know if WETN will broadcast both games on the local TV station in the Wheaton area?

Has anyone heard if any of the schools have returned tickets for the Wheaton sectional?

I must say that tonight's game was great. I was very impressed with the coaching of UWP, and at some points not too impressed with at least one of Wheaton's coaching decisions.

With regards to UWP great adjustments, I was very impressed with their move to the 1-3-1 zone with a 5 minutes left in the game. This took Wheaton out of their offense and made them quite stagnant. This helped UWP come back from the 9 point deficit. The other thing that I noticed, UWP spaced their floor really well. They noticed that Wheaton was playing off their guards on the weak side of the ball to help with the big guy, UWP then put their best shooter on the weak side of the ball for skip passes and got a couple of good looks against Wheaton's tough D.

I will also say that I was confused why Wheaton continually attempted to front Skemp. Skemp got so many easy looks because they were able to float the ball over the front defender and Wheaton had no one to help not that it would have helped. I personally thought that Wheaton would have had better success playing behind Skemp and pushing him further from the basket.

With all that said, Wheaton had a sort of off night (free-throw and turnovers) and still came away with the "W". I don't think any team will be looking forward to meeting this Wheaton team and I think if they play to their potential, they can keep advancing.

Just my 2 cents.

So, here are a couple of points from my perspective about last nights game.

First, I am one of those alumni that has not gone to any Wheaton games this year, but jumped at the opportunity to see the Thunder play NU.  I can completely understand why there were so many wheaton fans at the game.  Most NU fans see Wheaton on the schedule and have zero interest in seeing this game.  However, this game had so much more meaning for Wheaton and their fans.  Also, to say that the mix was 50-50 IMO was more 65-35 in favor of Wheaton fans, especially as far as volume went.

Second, I want to give Bill Harris alot of credit for this "moral" victory.  His players were very well coached and did a great job playing out his game plan.  Wheaton purposfuly slowed the game down, as there were several situations where wheaton could have pressed the tempo and Wheaton held back and played the style of game they wanted.  Also, NU helped with this playing a high 1-3-1 zone.  I was very surprised when NU went to a man on man defense, and shockingly enough I thought Wheaton had a bit of an advantage when NU went to a man defense.

Third, the clock malfunction I think did a lot to frustrate the Thunder for the last play.  NU missed the FT and wheaton started to bring the ball up and the clock just didn't start.  That totally screwed up the flow of the last possesion and also cost the Thunder about 1.2 seconds of game time, which could have proved useful.

Lastly, it was fairly sureal to look on espn and see an ap report on a Wheaton game and the near upset even made it to local radio station (101.9 wtmx) news segment.  All in all, eventhough Wheaton gets an L in the record book, this was as good of a loss as you can have and Wheaton did a fantastic job of representing D3, the CCIW, and Wheaton College.

Not to jump ahead of anything, but what are the tie breakers for getting into the tournament because it is feasable that there will be a 3 way tie for 3rd and 4th place?

There has been talk about there being something wrong with IWU but no one knows what it is.  I have an Idea about that.

To me IWU entered Saturdays game with a buisness mentality.  Sometimes a buisness mentality is good, but IWU played with no heart and it seemed as if they were going through the motions.  For example, how many times did Trost stand there and berate his team for not talking on the defensive end.  There was only one player that I heard talk for IWU on the court and it was Steve Schweer (the player who called out his teammates).  With less than 2 minutes gone in the game Wheaton was up 10-5 and Trost called a timeout for the sole purpose of getting his team to talk.  To me it didn't work and looking back at the game it was as if IWU was playing with out emotion.  Wheaton on the other hand played with all the emotion they could muster up.  You could see that they believed they would win.  After a time out during the run to take the lead I saw Johnnie Standard sit down waving his towel with a smile that said that we had take the lead by 10 points even though we were still a couple points behind.  If IWU wants to make a run in the tourney, they better start playing with the kind of emotion that their coach is trying to instill in them.

Side note, did anyone else get a laugh out of looking at Trost when he was yelling at IWU with his black suit and his sparkling white sneakers.  I realize that it was Coaches against Cancer week and I thought it was awesome that D3 coaches are getting into the act, but it was still a bit odd and for some reason I could not take his ranting seriously when I looked at him (maybe thats why IWU wasn't listening to him either).

Just my two cents.

Just to clarify,

All of my comments are and were in no way based on the game last night.  They are based on the games against Wheaton that I have seen, and I distinctly remember commenting on Augies phyisical charictaristics after the games.  I truly believe that Augie plays very physical and their play always toes the line with fouls.

Yes all CCIW teams are physical but in my opinion, Augie is the most physical.  How does Augie perform when the game is being called tight?  What happens when two of their starting 5 get 2 fouls in the first three minutes of the game.  I am asking this not to stir up controversy, but because I honestly do not know not having seen it.

Yet again, my two cents.

I just wanted to add a couple of tid bits from my own mind.

With regards to Augie D, I have seen them play Wheaton a couple of times, but not this year yet,  and they are the most physical team I have seen play.  In my opinion, most of what they call defense could be considered a foul, but the refs let them get away with it.  To Augies credit, they play what they can get away with.  The past few games that I saw Augie play, the refs let augie play too physical until the second half, but by then it was too late and the damage was done in the case of the Wheaton games.

Just another tidbit of info.

With a Wheaton victory on Saturday, they are right in the thick of things for the Conference tournament.  They have not gotten much press because of their record but they are exactly the type of team to go under the radar and make serious noise.  And as far as Q's 11-3 record mentality, Wheaton still holds true, having held home court so far, and losing away games to the three top teams in the confrence so far (taking two of them to the last few seconds of the game).

I am still in doubt of Wheaton's chances, but they are the type of team that will contend in most games, and if they can learn how to win one of those games, they just might actually make the confrence tournament, and then, anything is possible.

Just my two cents.

Speaking of traveling student bodies.  I am pretty sure that Wheaton fans outnumbered Elmhurst, which I find very interesting, due to the fact that when Wheaton was good there were some games that no one attended, but now that we get spanked, the team  has support.  I was also impressed that the majority of the fans stayed in their seat and were cheering more at the end of the game than Elmhurst was.

Now to the actual Game.  Wheaton looked sharp for the first 5 minutes of the game, then it got away from them.  Wheaton was too conscious of Martin or Elmhurst's inside presence that their defenders got sucked into the paint and then couldn't get out in time to defend the three.  Also, Wheaton tried the dribble and dish too much for very negative results (22 steals for Elmhurst).  There were too many times where the dribbler would find himself in no mans land or just try to force a pass that was intercepted or deflected and such.

I would also like to give Elmhurst a ton of credit.  They played their game perfectly.  Their offense was working flawlessly with open shooters comming off of passes, double picks, rebounds; it was all working for Elmhurst.  Their D was also amazing saturday.  They had great help defense, and really closed down the lane when Wheaton drove the ball, and tried to dish it out.  Andy Wiele could never get an opening, nor for that fact could most of the Wheaton team.

I would like to congradulate both teams on not allowing this game to get chippy near the end of it.  I thought that there were a couple of times where tensions could have flaired and escalated to inappropriate leves especially after the Martin elbow to Jordan Kempers neck.

Lastly, I was very depressed by John Mohans reactions ingame.  I could tell that after each Elmhusrt bucket he was demoralized.  Mohan was not the only player or coach for that matter to display frustration, but to me he had given up in the first half.  

My two cents for now.

Howdy,

Here are a couple more thoughts on the game Saturday night.

First,  Both teams played well at times and poorly at others.  It seemed for a while that both defenses only made stops when the o's made mistakes.

Second, Chupp didn't look consistent.  He consistantly sailed the ball long or waited to long to throw the ball.  There were several instances especially the 2 point conversion where he had recievers open, saw them but just waited a half second to long to throw the ball.  It also seemed his timing routs were a bit off as well.  With all that said I still think he is a good qb, but still needs some improvement.

The NCC offense at times looked completely unstopable, they have a nice look to them, with a spread offense and quick three to five step drops with quick crossing patterns, which makes it hard for a D to get pressure on the QB.

As per the Onside kick attempt:  I actually agree with the call they made.  First, it gives you an opportunity to get the ball back without the other team touching the ball.  Second, with NCC getting the ball with the short field it allows them to score quicker (in this case had Wheaton kicked it deep, NCC would have been able to run the clock out with out Wheaton getting the ball back).  It is always a tough call to make, but had Wheaton recovered the ball, no one would be questioning the decision.

I hope I didn't rehash to much, but it was a frustrating football weekend for me ( I am a huge Vikings fan as well).

Just my two cents.

Howdy all,

I asked this a couple pages earlier, but recieved no reply.

Is there going to be a way to listen to the D3football.com Game of the Week broadcast while attending the game?  I know I can listen to NCC or Wheaton's call, but I thought it would be interesting to here Pat's view of things.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Pat,

Will there be  a way to listen to you calling  the game at NCC or is can you only listen online?