FB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[robertgoulet]

Wheaton is peaking at the right time, imo. I smell an upset.

[79jaybird]

My sympathies and condolences to the Thorne family and North Central community.  Jeff and his father John were always open minded, welcoming personas that valued the person, more than anything on the athletic fields.
May the good Lord comfort him and his family.   God Bless.   

[emma17]

Just heard in 670 NCC kicker Ellison (sp?) wins the Fred Mitchell award. Big congratulations.

Sympathies to the Thorne family, very sorry.

[CCIWFan69]

I think Bethel needs to keep NCC under 21 pts to have a chanced to win. It will be tough for Bethel to score much more than that IMO. Lacrosse scored on the last play of the game to get to 28.

Another LaCrosse TD was setup by a 50 yd half back pass that got them down to the 1.  They then scored on 4th and goal from the 3 on a play where Haas was dead to rights in Renick's arms, escaped and then made a good throw and an even better catch by the TE for the TD.

I need to watch more of Bethel before I comment on their offense compared to UWL/Wheaton, etc.

UWL had 418 total yds, more yards then NCC. UWL had 347 passing yds. UWL WR #19 had 100 yds receiving and 4 TD's.

I think the NCC picks by Roby #2 were huge, stopping a drive and a pick 6 late in first half.

Turnovers could be huge this Saturday too.

Here is the press conference you were discussing earlier. Sound is a little off early but clears up after a minute or so.

Without a doubt Roby's 2 INTS were the critical plays in the game.  However, the total yards are a bit misleading IMO.  UWL outgained NCC 186 yards to 14 over the final 9 minutes of the game and closed the gap from 35-14 to 35-27 in that time.  Obviously not ideal to give up that much yardage, but their were backups mixed in the last 2 drives and UWL had 3 drives to NCC's 1 in that 9 minutes due to recovering the onside kick.

If there is snowfall on Saturday I'm hoping there isn't too much as Coach Spencer mentioned in either this press conference of the previous one that the field is essentially on top of rocks/the river and therefore they cannot use a bigger plow on it.

I never felt the NCC game was in doubt.  It is similar to a basketball team up 20 and the other team hitting a bunch of 3s at the end of the game but the game was pretty much over already.  Someone who didn't see the game may have thought the game was much closer that it really was.  As mentioned, NCC had a pretty decent edge in yardage until the 4th quarter.

NCC had a chance to really put the game away to start the 2nd half.  They were up 28-7, getting the ball to start the half, drove to midfield, and ended up punting.  They were running the ball at will and ended up throwing 2 passes once they got to midfield.  I thought it was an interesting set of play calls there versus pounding the rock.

Overall, it was a good game and feel like UWL would have finished 3rd in the CCIW.

Good luck to NCC and Wheaton this weekend.

[WRMUalum13]

Wheaton is peaking at the right time, imo. I smell an upset.

I can't figure out if Mount Union just really regressed since their week 1 game against Wheaton, or Wheaton just played a bad 1st 3 quarters against Mount and is in fact a semi-final level team

[GusD]

Looks like snow in the forecast. I'd say that's advantage NCC. Bethel will need to be able to throw the ball. It depends how heavy the snow is I guess.

Right now the predicted high temp for Naperville on Saturday is 12 with 1-3 inches of snow.

They've now taken any accumulation of snow out of the predicted weather for Naperville on Saturday. There may be some flurries but that's it. The current forecast shows a game time temp of 9, with a "feel like" temp of -5.

[USee]

Wheaton is peaking at the right time, imo. I smell an upset.

I can't figure out if Mount Union just really regressed since their week 1 game against Wheaton, or Wheaton just played a bad 1st 3 quarters against Mount and is in fact a semi-final level team

Wheaton had a lot of new faces week 1. 3 new OL, 3 WR that were like new to this qb (missed previous yr due to injury, 7 new defensive starters. Vs UMU Wheaton got smoked by Maloney and Co with a relatively new secondary. They actually held up well against the run and had little trouble moving the ball  but didn't finish a few early drives. Th Thunder certainly got hot and have stayed relatively healthy late in the season.