MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Patrick Coleman]

I chatted with Ron Rose and a number of other Division III coaches about the new state of D-III and how the portal affects how they recruit and such.

https://d3hoops.com/playoffs/men/2026/division-iii-portal-there-is-no-tomorrow

[north central]

Millikin is absolutely looking for a coach.

Looks like they found one. Not sure if it's the right guys but we'll see. Quite frankly it doesn't matter who is hired if internally Millikin isn't going to make changes. You can't have bottom half of the conference facilities, resources, budgets , salaries, tradition and expect to be good unless your competitive financially and Millikin isn't and hasn't been. Millikin hasn't won a conference title in over 35 years and it's not because the coaches have all been bad. Millikin internally (Lori Kerans) has to do more to support the men's program.
Several people have brought this up but if Lori Kerans didn't reach out to Matt Lewis or Anthony Figueroa prior to making this hire she should be fired because thats AD malpractice .

[Greek Tragedy]

Millikin is absolutely looking for a coach.

Looks like they found one. Not sure if it's the right guys but we'll see. Quite frankly it doesn't matter who is hired if internally Millikin isn't going to make changes. You can't have bottom half of the conference facilities, resources, budgets , salaries, tradition and expect to be good unless your competitive financially and Millikin isn't and hasn't been. Millikin hasn't won a conference title in over 35 years and it's not because the coaches have all been bad. Millikin internally (Lori Kerans) has to do more to support the men's program.
Several people have brought this up but if Lori Kerans didn't reach out to Matt Lewis or Anthony Figueroa prior to making this hire she should be fired because thats AD malpractice .

https://athletics.millikin.edu/news/2026/4/7/mens-basketball-noonan-named-millikin-head-basketball-coach.aspx

I guess Matt Lewis can play with his kids now.

[Gregory Sager]

Tom Noonan is a Decatur guy and a Millikin guy. He had solid success as the head coach at St. Theresa, the local Catholic high school down there, and then for four seasons he sat second chair for Kramer Soderberg, who himself had previously sat second chair for Mark Scherer. It all feels a bit ... well, inbred would be an uncharitable term, but it sure feels like a doubling down on the existing Millikin coaching tree.

I will say this, though -- I think that Soderberg had the right idea in terms of recruiting. He really used his hometown connections to shift the Millikin program's recruiting footprint (and thus its identity) from central Illinois to greater St. Louis (including the stretch of Illinois that's across the river from the Gateway City), where there's a lot more people concentrated in a smaller area. I think that greater St. Louis is really Millikin's only hope of ever establishing itself again as a basketball program to be reckoned with. It will be interesting to see if Noonan sticks with the Soderberg plan, or if he looks elsewhere to get his players.

[north central]

Tom Noonan is a Decatur guy and a Millikin guy. He had solid success as the head coach at St. Theresa, the local Catholic high school down there, and then for four seasons he sat second chair for Kramer Soderberg, who himself had previously sat second chair for Mark Scherer. It all feels a bit ... well, inbred would be an uncharitable term, but it sure feels like a doubling down on the existing Millikin coaching tree.

I will say this, though -- I think that Soderberg had the right idea in terms of recruiting. He really used his hometown connections to shift the Millikin program's recruiting footprint (and thus its identity) from central Illinois to greater St. Louis (including the stretch of Illinois that's across the river from the Gateway City), where there's a lot more people concentrated in a smaller area. I think that greater St. Louis is really Millikin's only hope of ever establishing itself again as a basketball program to be reckoned with. It will be interesting to see if Noonan sticks with the Soderberg plan, or if he looks elsewhere to get his players.

Again none of that matters without institutional support.i can assure you none of the coaches in the CCIW got anymore worried about Millikin being a real threat now. Here's perspective for how far Millikin is behind. IWU is making Rob Rose the NIL compliance person . Millikin won't even re package kids and IWU potentially has NIL ? Millikin will never be better than IWU or any other teams if that don't change

[Gregory Sager]

Again none of that matters without institutional support.

Did I say otherwise? If so, please quote me on it, because I don't recall saying anywhere on d3boards that institutional support wasn't vital.

I was talking about the geographic nuts-and-bolts of recruiting and about the way that the Millikin program somehow manages to consistently stay in-house in terms of MU and the Decatur area with regard to head-coach hiring (Marc Smith and Matt Nadelhoffer being notable exceptions). If those topics don't interest you, well ... feel free to carry on with your NIL discussion instead. I'll certainly read whatever you or anybody else has to say about it; it's clearly a topic of major importance right now.

i can assure you none of the coaches in the CCIW got anymore worried about Millikin being a real threat now.

And I can assure you otherwise. Every team in this league has to be regarded as a real threat on any given night. Did you not follow the league this past season? Millikin beat a CCIW-top-three team, Elmhurst, by six at Faganel. Millikin beat up-and-comer Wheaton at King. Millikin lost by one point to Illinois Wesleyan, a game that the Big Blue had two chances to win in the waning seconds if Nate Straughter had been able to hit either of the two shots he took. Millikin lost by three to Carthage at Tarble, a game in which the Big Blue was down by a single point within the final half-minute. Flip those two losses and MU is in the tournament.

Go ahead and ask any coach in this league if he considers Millikin to be a real threat, and then get back to us on it.

[WUPHF]

Again none of that matters without institutional support. I can assure you none of the coaches in the CCIW got anymore worried about Millikin being a real threat now. Here's perspective for how far Millikin is behind. IWU is making Rob Rose the NIL compliance person. Millikin won't even re package kids and IWU potentially has NIL ? Millikin will never be better than IWU or any other teams if that don't change

If you were to catalog posts about institutions suggesting that they lack institutional support, Millikin may rank among the Top 10.  The comments go back for at least as long as I have been around.

Millikin is regularly on the lists of colleges at risk of closure so I am not sure, does the athletic department have a lot of unrealized fundraising opportunities left to close?

Or do they support other programs more than basketball, as unlikely as that would seem?

I am not sure that adding compliance officer to the long list of duties held by Rob Rose means much.  Every department has someone that accepts compliance forms and passes them along to General Counsel for review.  But who knows, maybe he will do work to expand NIL.

[Gregory Sager]

I chronicled Millikin's generations-long struggle here on CCIW Chat a week ago:

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.

I didn't add this to my chronicle last week, because I didn't think I had to -- as WUPHF said, we've been over this ground regarding Millikin countless times on this board -- but I think it's pretty obvious when you look at the grand sweep of Millikin MBB futility that there is some sort of unspecified institutional obstacle, or obstacles, at work behind it. I think it's still a desirable head coaching job, because: a) it's the CCIW; and b) there is always going to be a certain kind of coach who relishes this sort of challenge. But there's no doubt that this legacy of futility that is closing in on being four decades long has causational aspects that go well beyond coaching quality.

[north central]

I chronicled Millikin's generations-long struggle here on CCIW Chat a week ago:

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.

I didn't add this to my chronicle last week, because I didn't think I had to -- as WUPHF said, we've been over this ground regarding Millikin countless times on this board -- but I think it's pretty obvious when you look at the grand sweep of Millikin MBB futility that there is some sort of unspecified institutional obstacle, or obstacles, at work behind it. I think it's still a desirable head coaching job, because: a) it's the CCIW; and b) there is always going to be a certain kind of coach who relishes this sort of challenge. But there's no doubt that this legacy of futility that is closing in on being four decades long has causational aspects that go well beyond coaching quality.

I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm saying that I have spoke with every head coach at Millikin over the past 30 years and they all have said lack of institutional support (budgets, financial aid packages, admissions support) are all severely lacking. So it doesn't matter who is hired because several of the coaches in Millikins past were really good other places. Personally I think the athletic administration wants woman's basketball to be the schools marquee program over football or men's basketball.
I do disagree with Millikin being a threat and by threat I mean a threat to win the league. I've spoken several head coaches in the league very recently and none see Millikin as a threat to win the league or even compete at the top of the league. No head coach in the league is now thinking " whoa my job just go a lot harder because Tom Noonan is running the show " . No disrespect to him because again it may not be his fault if they don't win .  I will say it is his fault if before he was hired he didn't make certain demands to the administration about things that have to be done and I'm sure he didn't or he would not have been hired .   
I also wonder if Lori reached out to any higher profile candidates or even did an interview process . If no other candidates were contacted and no interview process was done then she should be fired because hiring from within from a losing program is just dumb .