MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Patrick Coleman]

Millikin is absolutely looking for a coach.

[Gregory Sager]

Maybe Matt Lewis can straighten out the IWU program.  Rose couldn't get them to the Final 4.     

So, this could be the source of some interesting though probably meaningless speculation. I'm sure he wants to keep his coaching knives sharp but what the heck could he do?  There are a handful of college and junior college programs within commuting distance but I'm not sure if any are looking for a coach or assistant coach.

Hmm. I can think of a CCIW school an hour south of Bloomington that is looking for a head coach right now.

[Green Beer]

Yes. But Decatur is a heck of a commute. They could live in Clinton, and both have a tolerable commute.  See? This is why groundless speculation is so much fun.

[Greek Tragedy]

Millikin would be dumb not to go after Lewis. Of course, Lewis has to be interested first.

[GusD]

Millikin would be dumb not to go after Lewis. Of course, Lewis has to be interested first.

But who wouldn't be interested in a job that not only includes a head coach position but also the opportunity to live in one of the garden spots of the Midwest? 

[GusD]

And since most top assistant coaches aspire to be the top man, I wonder if IWU's Etheridge might submit an application? 🤔
He wouldn't have to move far, and he already knows the recruiting territory.
That would open a spot on the Green Team staff that perhaps Lewis might fill. 😏

[Gregory Sager]

Yes. But Decatur is a heck of a commute. They could live in Clinton, and both have a tolerable commute.  See? This is why groundless speculation is so much fun.

Where would d3boards.com be without it?

[Gregory Sager]

Millikin would be dumb not to go after Lewis. Of course, Lewis has to be interested first.

But who wouldn't be interested in a job that not only includes a head coach position but also the opportunity to live in one of the garden spots of the Midwest? 

Leaving aside the gibes at Decatur, the inescapable fact is that Millikin could be a very desirable job for someone like Matt Lewis. You'll probably retort with some remark about the ongoing futility of Millikin men's basketball, so I'll save you the trouble. Nobody's going to argue that point.

In fact, I'll preemptively back it up for you by bringing the reciepts. Let's look first at the D3 dance. The Big Blue haven't been to the D3 tourney since 1989. The next-longest current wait among CCIW programs, aside from prodigal son Carroll University -- which got there as recently as 2012 as a MWC member -- is Augustana, which last went dancing in 2019. That's 30 years more recent than MU's last participation in the D3 tourney. And the Big Blue haven't won a tourney game since the Joe Ramsey team of Barnes, Horst, Guin, Slapak, Bottorff, and that crew took down UW-Whitewater, 101-86, in the first round of the 1988 tourney. The next-longest dry spell in D3 tourney wins among CCIW programs is Carthage, which reached the Sweet Sixteen in 2010 when Steve D. was wearing a Carthage jersey rather than a Carthage polo. In other words, Steve hadn't even been born yet, and his father and mother were still coaching the North Park men's and women's basketball teams, respectively, when the Big Blue last saw the inside of a gym in March.

The Big Blue also haven't won a CCIW title since 1989, whereas all of the other non-Carroll teams in the league aside from Elmhurst have won one within the past ten years, and at least EU has won one in this century. And Millikin hasn't even finished within the top four of the CCIW standings since 2000.

Each of those four streaks of program futility -- longest period without a D3 tourney appearance, longest period without a D3 tourney win, longest period without a CCIW championship, longest period without a CCIW first-division finish -- is the longest of its kind in CCIW history.

Here's my point: A guy like Matt Lewis might decide to pursue the Millikin job precisely because the Big Blue have struggled so much for close to 40 years now. Look at it from his perspective. UW-Oshkosh is a great situation: big, well-resourced school that supports athletics very well -- the Titans are good in just about every sport -- and has a strong men's basketball tradition. Aside from a brief fallow period at the end of Ted Van Dellen's coaching tenure a decade and a half ago, the UWO MBB program had a lot of success over the past three and a half decades under Van Dellen, Pat Juckem, and then Lewis. It was Juckem who broke through and reached the season's final weekend (with Lewis as his second chair), losing the national championship game in 2018 and then decamping for Wash U, leaving Lewis to cut down the net and lug the Big Doorstop home to America's Dairyland the following March as the first interim head coach in D3 MBB history to win a national championship.

In other words, he's been to the mountaintop -- but he didn't have to set up base camp at the bottom first. He started off well up the mountain; Pat Juckem saw to that. That smacks to me of a guy who simultaneously has a national championship ring as a head coach yet still might have something to prove. Or maybe he feels that he doesn't have something to prove but still relishes the challenge of resurrecting a program that turned to dust back when George Bush -- the first George Bush -- was in the White House.

The great thing about the Millikin job is that it is a legitimate challenge, given the lamentable history of the Big Blue over the past two generations, but it's still a desirable position that draws quality applicants. Some guys are quite happy to try to build incrementally upon the success of their predecessors; others want to hack their way through the jungle and carve out a new path to success where it previously didn't exist. Either way, the bottom line is that it's a CCIW head men's basketball job, and the CCIW is a draw in the coaching world regardless of which school has the opening. The other desirability aspect is that winning at Millikin is not an impossible task. There are other coaches in other sports at MU who are having success; since we're in baseball season, look no further than what Brandon Townsend is currently doing with Big Blue baseball as an example of how the right coach can turn the Big Blue into a winner.

I don't know Matt Lewis, and I don't claim to know what makes the man tick. But I can make a reasonable inference as to why he might view Millikin as an attractive coaching position.