MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Pat Coleman]

After seeing all the NCC games so far this season either in person or via a stream and periodically streaming approximately 20-25 other teams, I'd say Mike Vuckovic of North Park is probably the best player I've seen so far this season.

Makes you wonder;
1. Where was he last year? I think NPU lost their last 6 games in a row last year to fall out of contention in the CCIW race and miss out on the playoffs. Could he have not contributed?

He was at the end of the bench last year, which, honestly, is where he belonged. He didn't bring much to the table at all in 2024-25, and he wouldn't have helped stanch the bleeding during NPU's late-season skid if Ed McGhee had put him out on the floor more.

Oh, and you're having a senior moment, Mark. North Park didn't miss out on the playoffs last season. As a matter of fact, the Vikings were knocked out in the CCIW quarterfinals by your own Cardinals.

(I recommend daily cognitive exercises to enhance memory function. I swear by crossword puzzles, but word-search puzzles and/or Sudoku are good options as well. )

Oh, no, no, no!  🫨
By  playoffs, I meant/mean the national playoffs or the national championship tournament, the possible entrance into by your Vikings which was denied by virtue of their loss to my Cardinals in the conference, (not national) tournament. Perhaps I should have been a little more detailed in my original post but I assumed any knowledgeable college 🏀 fan would realize that by "playoffs," I was talking about the national playoffs, not merely the conference tournament. 😉
Although I certainly have them, there was no senior moment in this particular instance.
And let's not lose track of the foremost point of my post which was to praise Mr. Vuckovic. 🤗

This is a good reason to call it "the NCAA Tournament" -- national playoffs implies that there are regional playoffs, which is an NAIA thing.

[iwu70]

Congrats to Noah Cleveland on CCIW Player of the Week and D3hoops National Team of the Week.

He's anchoring the IWU offense now, a tough guy in the paint for sure, and so much more offensive contribution than we've had in that space since Lerentz. 

'70

[Gregory Sager]

Congrats to Noah Cleveland on CCIW Player of the Week

He's not the CCIW Player of the Week, Mark. Lane Thomann of Millikin won the award this week.

[iwu70]

Sorry, Greg Sager, I hadn't seen the new award posting.  Cleveland was the winner along with one of your guys, last week.  Plus, this D3hoops Team of the Week award too.  Not too shabby.  Good luck handling Cleveland on the 10th at The Shirk.  Are you coming down for the games?

IWU'70

[Gregory Sager]

Sorry, Greg Sager, I hadn't seen the new award posting.  Cleveland was the winner along with one of your guys, last week.

Come on, Mark. You can say it. Say it. I know that it's a long name. But you don't need to spell it out on your own. You can cut and paste it.

Kolden Vanlandingham. C'mon. Give it a try. K-O-L-D-E-N-space-V-A-N-L-A-N-D-I-N-G-H-A-M. No, you won't melt into a sizzling puddle like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz if you actually mention the name of a CCIW player who doesn't wear green in a post praising one of your own boys. The IWU security guards won't throw you out of the library and off the campus. The folks who have offices in Shirk Center won't start ghosting you. It's actually, truly, legitimately possible to type and post the name of a player from a team other than Illinois Wesleyan winning an award without having your world come crashing down around you.

It won't kill you. Kolden Vanlandingham. See how easy it is?

Type his name! Seriously. It's not that hard, Mark! You can do it, old pal!

[Gregory Sager]

Indulging my own curiosity, and in the interest of promoting Matt Snyder and the D3 Datacast podcast he does with his brother Zac (a podcast that's well worth viewing if you're a D3 basketball fan), I'm going to post Matt's computer-generated predictions for tonight's CCIW games in comparison to Ken Massey's.

Here's the MasseyRatings predictions:

Illinois Wesleyan 77, Augustana 69	(IWU 77%, AC 23%)
Wheaton 79, Carroll 76	(WC 58%, CU 42%)
Carthage 74, North Central 72	(CC 55%, NCC 45%)
Elmhurst 73, Millikin 67	(EU 70%, MU 30%)

... and here's Matt's:

Illinois Wesleyan 74, Augustana 69	(IWU 69%, AC 31%)
Carroll 83, Wheaton 82	(CU 54%, WC 46%)
Carthage 67, North Central 64	(CC 61%, NCC 39%)
Elmhurst 70, Millikin 69	(EU 54%, MU 46%)

[iwu70]

Greg, you need help.



'70

[Gregory Sager]

Kolden Vanlandingham! It's so, so easy, Mark! Yes, typing that first capital K will feel difficult, but it'll get easier from there. I promise.

Step into the light!

[goodknight]

Kolden Vanlandingham! It's so, so easy, Mark! Yes, typing that first capital K will feel difficult, but it'll get easier from there. I promise.

Step into the light!

Wooden shoe know: For your Calvin and Hope friends, spelling and pronouncing VanLandingham is a picnic in Kollen Park.

[GoPerry]

Carroll 84
Wheaton 85

Soren Richardson  25 pts 5 rebs 5 stls
Carson Grier  17 pts 6 rebs
Devin Martin 15 pts  8 asst (3to)

Michael McNabb  27 pts 4 reb
Lamar Smith  22 pts 7 rebs
Jacob Naber 10 pts 9 rebs

The Thunder got off to a fast start and led by as much as 16 pts in the 1st half.  Credit the Pios in hanging in and chipping away at the lead.  Wheaton played decent defense for about 30 mins.  But Carroll got back in the game by scoring easy barely contested layups in the last 2 mins to nearly pull off the comeback.  Richardson was terrific in hitting some really key buckets late.

We finally saw (yet another) freshman Luca Carbonaro on the floor for a few brief minutes.  The coaches have been high on his potential but had to wait for football to end.  I'm not sure there are that many spare minutes available for him however. 

[Gregory Sager]

Wheaton won at home, 85-84, after almost coughing up a 16-point lead in the second half, as Carroll's defense stiffened -- but the Pios' offense couldn't quite take them over the top. Michael McNabb missed what would've been the tying trey in the waning seconds and Lamar Smith hit a buzzer putback that didn't matter. Wheaton was led by Soren Richardson's 25 points and 5 steals, with Carson Grier contributing 17 and Devin Martin adding 15 with a really nice 8:3 floor game. Carroll was paced by McNabb's 27 and Smith's 22 and 7, with Dennis Estepp pumping in 11 off the bench and Peyton McKenna and Jacob Naber adding 10 each, Naber leading CU with 10 boards. Bad stat of the night: Carroll only went 7-15 from the line, dragged down by Smith's shocking 0-7 performance. Smith had been shooting .729 from the charity stripe coming into tonight. Fun to hear former Wheaton point guard Jon Nielsen doing color on the broadcast.

Another team that fell short in a comeback attempt was Elmhurst, which dropped an 83-77 overtime decision at home to Millikin. The Big Blue jumped out on EU at the start of the second half and led by a dozen with under nine to go, but the 'jays fought back and managed to catch up at the end of regulation thanks to four Vinnie Adjahoungbeta free throws in the final 15 seconds. But Millikin pulled out to a two-possession lead in OT and got a dagger trey from Nate Straughter in the final minute to seal the deal. Straughter and Ian Winkler had 20 apiece for the Big Blue, with Lane Thomann and Chris Ketchum contributing 17 and 14, respectively. The 'jays were paced by Adjahoungbeta's 27 (on 8-12 shooting) and Dom Trelenberg's 19, while Aidyn Boone added a 13 and 10 double-double in the losing cause.

Illinois Wesleyan beat Augustana at Shirk, 88-79. The Titans led wire-to-wire, and while Augustana shaved down a 17-point deficit with 11 minutes to go and refused to fade, the game was never really in serious doubt. Noah Cleveland was the bell cow with 25 and 13 for the winners, and IWU also got strong shooting performances from Karlo Colak (23 on 4-8 long-range bombs) and Casen Lawrence (21 on 5-9 from downtown), Colak also adding 10 boards. Jackson Niego had a nice 5:1 floor game with 4 steals. Leading the way for Augie was Jake Willems with 25 (4-7 from range), Cam Atkinson with 14 (4-9 from beyond the arc), and Dom Rhoden with 13.

Carthage held off a doughty North Central squad and finally got some separation at the very end of the game in the hangar, getting back on the bus to Wisconsin with a 69-61 win. Riley Brooks sparked the victory with 21, aided considerably by the efforts of the Johnson brothers; AJ had 13 and 9, while Riley had 11 and 10. North Central was paced by Sean Molloy's 17 points, with Alejandro Diaz the only other Cardinal in double-figure scoring at 13. Tyler Surin led the way on the boards for NCC with 9.

[lmitzel]

Carthage 69
NCC 61

The Cardinals only led a couple times in the first half; missing a couple layups early and going just 1-11 from three in the first half will do that. They continue to hang around against teams, but couldn't get over the hump in this one.

Riley Brooks: 21 pts
AJ Johnson: 13 pts, 9 reb
Ryan Johnson: 11 pts, 10 reb

Sean Molloy: 17 pts, 6 reb
Alejandro Diaz: 13 pts
James Bullock Jr: 7 pts, 6 reb

[Gregory Sager]

Carthage	4-1	10-4
North Park	3-1	10-3
Illinois Wesleyan	3-2	11-3
Millikin	3-2	11-3
Wheaton	2-2	8-5
Augustana	2-2	7-6
Elmhurst	1-3	8-5
Carroll	1-3	6-7
North Central	1-4	5-9

Saturday's games
Augustana @ Elmhurst
Millikin @ Carroll
North Park @ Illinois Wesleyan
Wheaton @ North Central

all games are 4:15 pm starts

[iwu70]

Glad to see IWU playing in the high 80s tonight, winning over Augie 88-79.  It wasn't really that close. 

For Augie:
Willems was brilliant, 25
Anastasiadis brilliant, 0
Sanxhaku, brilliant, 0
Ivanovich, brilliant, 0
Postnikov, brilliant, 0
Gbeblewu, brilliant, 0

(See Greg, I can spell all the names.  I won the Augustana roster spelling bee tonight!  ).


For IWU:

#0 25 and 15
#22  23 and 10, probably his best game of the year.
#14  21
#15  11 with five assists

IWU had 11 blocks and made 13 treys. 

IWU shooting 50%, 43% from three, and 79% from the FT line.

The Titans move to 11-3, 3-2.  Up next Greg's boys, coming into the Shirk on Saturday at 4:15 p.m.

********

On a more serious note, Josh Fridman will have shoulder surgery tomorrow and is out for the season.  Let's hope the surgery is successful and that Josh comes back next year stronger than ever.  He's a great person and a great player.

IWU'70

[Gregory Sager]

Fridman's shoulder surgery is old news, though. The absent CCIW player I really want to hear about is Staishaun Kelley. What happened to him? He's been MIA since Augustana's loss to Dubuque around Thanksgiving time. Injured? Ill? Something else? He's still on the Augie roster. Great defensive player who can score a bit, too. Augie could certainly use him.