MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Gregory Sager]

The Vikings lost tonight's game on the boards. Carroll outboarded NPU 41-35, including 13-9 on the offensive glass. The Vikings got away with losing the boards battle by a significant margin against UWSP, but you typically don't get away with that twice in a row ... and the Vikings didn't tonight.

A few weeks ago I mentioned that Michael McNabb was a legit D2 player who could've had a nice career at Northern Michigan, had he elected to stay there. I've watched all or part of four Carroll games now, and I'm completely sold on him. He is easily an All-CCIW first-teamer.

[iwu70]

A really awesome game in Kenosha, with IWU winning over Carthage in OT 85-81.  Tied at 73 in regulation. 

It was the Mason Funk show tonight, a career high 35 points.  IWU outscoring CC 12-8 in the OT, with Casen Lawrence hitting two dagger treys in the OT, from way out.

For CC:

Brooks 24
Nesbitt 18
R. Johnson 13
Daun 10

For IWU:
Funk 35, 14-22 from the field
Lawrence 12
Colak 12 and 8, fouling out in regulation
Cleveland, a rough night, but still 9 and 12
Niego, running the offense, 9

Fridman injured, in civies.

IWU had only 12 TOs all evening.

A good start over the other main contender for the CCIW crown.  IWU goes to 6-1, 1-0.

Great game, two superb teams.  An important road win for IWU.

IWU'70

[Gregory Sager]

Millikin 55, North Central 50 at the Griz
Illinois Wesleyan 85, Carthage 81 in an overtime final from Tarble
Augustana 84, Wheaton 81 at Carver

[GoPerry]

Wheaton 81
Augustana 84

The Thunder came out very slow and tentative going down by 18 points 10 minutes into the game.  Maybe from not having played a game in over a week. Then they seemed to somehow shake off the week's worth of rust and slowly inched their way to narrow the lead to only 8 at halftime.  Soren Richardson took it upon himself to not let it get out of hand.  In the second half,  Reid Olson went on a late tear of  three point shooting display.  Wheaton finally tied it with 5 mins left, and took the lead by 1 with one minute left.  But the Vikings made some huge plays down the stretch, made free throws and came out with the victory.  Numerous defensive lapses by Wheaton especially early in the game.  They were also a whopping -14 rebounding ( 32-18).  And 16 turnovers is way above their average.  The Thunder still had their chances to pull out the road win but it was not to be.

Richardson with 29 pts
Reid Olson  17 pts on 5-10 from behind the arc
Kyle Neibch,  14 pts

Dom Rhoden with 25 pts
Marieon Anderson  18 and 8

[mwunder]

Truly a great game in Kenosha last night that featured 15 lead changes and 14 times the game was tied. IWU hit big shot after big shot and Carthage wasn't able to answer every blow (elbow).  Mason Funk aka Larry Pistol Pete Bird, made every kind of shot you want to see. Quite the show.

Carthage did have a chance down the stretch, but missed 3 FTs in a row under two minutes which contributed to the need for some last second heroics by Schlesinger to force OT.  Carthage shot 28 FT to 12 for IWU. Oh to have made one more in regulation.

[Jbothe]

IWU-Carthage was a blast to watch last night.  Both teams going at it.  Refs called the game real loose both ways.

Wesleyan physical strength took its toll eventually last night.  They were the tougher team.

Carthage is off to a rough start.  All their losses are to good teams but they are still losses. 

[GoPerry]

Elmhurst  81
Wheaton  82

Soren Richardson 22 pts, 7 rebs
Kyan VanderWoude  16 pts
Carson Grier, 14 pts, 12 rebs
Devin Martin 14 pts

Dominic Trelenberg  27 pts
Aidyn Boone  14 pts, 7 rebs

Not pretty, but still a big home win.  The BlueJays were up by as much as 13 pts early in the 2nd half, but Wheaton was able to crawl back in it and then get the lead back with 10 mins remaining.  It was great to see Noah Hedrick, who has seen less playing time this season, come in and hit some key treys to bring the Thunder back.

Defensively, it was still a struggle despite EC only scoring 81 pts, 36 in the 2nd half.  Wheaton did turn up the intensity a little.  But really, Elmhurst went ice cold on wide open shots for about 5 mins, shots they were making in the 1st, and that allowed the Thunder to come back.  Wheaton did everything they could to give the game away in the last minute, a la Hope, but they were able to hold on (Trelenberg hit two big treys too).

[Gregory Sager]

North Park 78
Millikin 65

Kolden Vanlandingham: 19 pts, 11 rebs, 6:5 a:to
Mike Vuckovic: 16 pts, 5:0 a:to
Julian Campbell: 14 pts, 9 rebs
William Bates: 13 pts

Lane Thomann: 18 pts, 13 rebs
Ian Winkler: 16 pts
Tionne Spates: 7 rebs
Chris Ketchum: 7 rebs

It wasn't easy -- the sheer physicality of Millikin and the Big Blue's penchant for taking the air out of the ball and then finding a way to score at the end of the shot clock means that it's rarely going to be easy to beat this Big Blue team -- but NPU got it done. They still aren't winning rebounding battles, but they did respond well to MU's muscle ball by playing some muscle ball of their own.

NPU improves to 5-2, 1-1, while MU drops to 7-2, 1-1.

[Gregory Sager]

Incidentally, congratulations to Kolden Vanlandingham upon joining North Park's Thousand-Points Club. He was already well over 1,000 (somewhere in the 1,300s, I think) for his career, including his points tallied for Earlham as a freshman, but he passed a thou for his NPU career tonight. He now has 1,006 for the royal blue and gold.

[Gregory Sager]

... and David picks Goliath's pocket, as North Central dumps Illinois Wesleyan in the hangar, 68-57, in a game in which IWU coughed up the ball 19 times. There are no off-nights in the CCIW, and the Titans seemed to have forgotten that, as they were absolutely outworked and outhustled by a Cardinals team that had only won one game this season coming into tonight. Certainly didn't help IWU's cause that the Titans couldn't throw a ball into water if they were leaning over the side of the canoe, as they shot 20-58 (.345) from the field and 4-26 from long range (.154) -- but it's not as though the Cardinals shot well, either. In fact, NCC had an ugly 18-61 (.295) night of shooting field goals themselves. When's the last time that somebody beat a Top Ten team while shooting less than 30% from the field?

You have to love college basketball. Trey Davis, who was averaging one point per game and was 0-5 from downtown for the season, went 4-4 from beyond the arc to spark NCC"s second-half comeback ... and Noah Cleveland, who is typically a craptastic free-throw shooter, went 8-8 from the line tonight for the Greenies.

[Gregory Sager]

Carroll was pesky, but Carthage managed to win part one of the Battle of Wisconsin today, downing the Pioneers, 81-76, at Tarble. Carroll whittled a 10-point Carthage lead down to two with two with seven minutes and change left, but couldn't get over the hump. The Firebirds built it back up to ten, only to see Carroll narrow it back down to four with 29 seconds left -- but the Pioneers simply ran out of clock. Riley Brooks led the way for Carthage with 28 on 10-16 shooting (including 6-8 from downtown), while AJ Johnson added 16 and Ryan Johnson had a 10 and 14 double-double with four steals. Michael McNabb led Carroll with 23, Peyton McKenna knocked down six treys in 15 attempts for all of his 18 points, Lamar Smith scored 16, and Jacob Naber had an 11 and 7 day for the Pioneers.

[Gregory Sager]

Question: Should Merner, Boster, Hamming, Laing, and whatever other Augie 1972-73 players are still above ground pop the champagne corks early? Because after tonight the only undefeated team left in the CCIW is the one team that didn't play tonight: Augustana. The other eight teams are all 1-1 in league play, aside from 0-1 Elmhurst.

[kenoshamark]

Got to watch the Carthage - Carroll game this afternoon in person.  Very high scoring first half with Riley Brooks just unconscious scoring 24 points with some real 3 point daggers.  As Greg has alluded to, McNabb from Carroll is a really good player, he can score from the outside and is very adept getting to the rim as well.  Interestingly, McNabb, Riley Brooks and Antuan Nesbitt all started their college careers out at Northern Michigan (D2).  NM recruits heavily in WI and half of their current roster is from WI.

Now, back to the game. If Carthage is going to go anywhere this year, their pre-season all American, Ryan Johnson, is going to have to step up his game.  Coming off the player of the year, last year, big thing should have been expected.  He scored 10 points tonight and missed a number of put backs that he should have finished.  When he did get fouled, he was only 6-11 from the free throw line and at least one was a front end of the bonus he missed. He was outscored by Carroll's center, Naber (11 to 10) and that should have been a true mismatch.  Now, everyone can have a bad game, but here are his stats so far, after 6 games.  Shooting .362 from the field, .263 from the 3 point area and .681 from the free throw line.  What he does very well is rebound (14 tonight) and he is a good passer, but he needs to be more of an offensive threat if Carthage is going to make the tourney again.  There was a point in the game, during a timeout, that he slammed the ball hard to the ground and caught it, so you can tell there is frustration on his part.  Again, I think he is a fine player, but he is not playing like an all American level player, in my opinion.  Fortunately, between Brooks in the first half and his brother, AJ, in the second half, they saved the game for Carthage or it easily could have been back to back losses at home.  I hope he can turn things around quickly, since he has shown the ability to dominate in the league as he did last year.  Just not showing up yet after 6 games.

[lmitzel]

... and David picks Goliath's pocket, as North Central dumps Illinois Wesleyan in the hangar, 68-57, in a game in which IWU coughed up the ball 19 times. There are no off-nights in the CCIW, and the Titans seemed to have forgotten that, as they were absolutely outworked and outhustled by a Cardinals team that had only won one game this season coming into tonight. Certainly didn't help IWU's cause that the Titans couldn't throw a ball into water if they were leaning over the side of the canoe, as they shot 20-58 (.345) from the field and 4-26 from long range (.154) -- but it's not as though the Cardinals shot well, either. In fact, NCC had an ugly 18-61 (.295) night of shooting field goals themselves. When's the last time that somebody beat a Top Ten team while shooting less than 30% from the field?

I was telling some folks before the game that this was either going to be a really long night or a really magical one with no in between, and for a bit it looked like it would be the former. But NCC had fought back to within four by halftime and didn't go away in the second half, finally grabbing the lead with under 10 minutes to go and just found a way to gut this out.

I still can't believe the Titans hit just 4 of 26 from deep. The Demon Rim was working overtime tonight. Only other night I can remember like this one was back in 2022 when Jake Rhode scored like eight quick points early then went absolutely ice cold for the last like 30 minutes.

You have to love college basketball. Trey Davis, who was averaging one point per game and was 0-5 from downtown for the season, went 4-4 from beyond the arc to spark NCC"s second-half comeback ... and Noah Cleveland, who is typically a craptastic free-throw shooter, went 8-8 from the line tonight for the Greenies.

The latter I blame on our stats crew for mentioning he was like 36% from the line coming in. The former I am not complaining about.

[Gregory Sager]

Only one game this week, as Carthage entertains UW-Platteville at 7 pm on Tuesday. Then it's back to a full slate next Saturday, with Carroll using its bye to go on the road and take on UW-Whitewater that evening.

I suspect that the hole in the schedule is because it's finals week for a lot of CCIW schools. I know that that's the case for NPU.