WBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[iwu70]

Beer, that would be grand, to add to this year's freshmen group.  Sounds like all these "exceptional" newbies will push the rising juniors too.  Mia and Brian do a great job at recruiting, and success and great facilities breed more success. 

As Ypsi always used to say, "in Coach Smith we trust."

Looking forward to today's final regular season game at Shirk, hopefully wrapping up another regular season CCIW championship.

March basketball to come . . .

IWU'70

[iwu70]

IWU clinches a share of the regular season crowd (Carroll also won), beating Augie 86-68.  The Titans now seeded #2 and will travel to Carroll for the tournament semis on Friday. 

For Augie:

Papez 14
Lewis 12 and 89
Tatum 10 

Augie with 22 TOs.  Shooting 47%/36% from three/69% FTs.

For IWU:
Bardic, another awesome game, 26
Kobylarzyk 15
White, a double double, with 14 and 10 assists
Palmer, off the bench, another double double, 11 and 11

IWU at 44%/39%/80% from FTs.

IWU made 10 treys today.

IWU concludes the regular season 20-5, 15-1 in the CCIW. 

The injury bug bites . . . Caitlyn Leyden going down in the first Q with some kind of knee injury.  She drove to the basket, was hit with no foul called, and didn't get up off the floor.  Had to be helped from the floor.  She did not return to the game, but did stay and sat on the bench the rest of the game, so no immediate trip to the ER.  I have no idea if she will miss games. 

Congrats to Coach Smith, all the staff, and all the Titans on another CCIW regular season Championship.  Congrats to Carroll as well, both finishing 15-1, not easy in this league. 

On to the post season.

'70

[Green Beer]

There were multiple injuries throughout the game including a player on Augie's team who fainted.  She fainted on the way to the bench and her teammates had to carry her to the chairs and lay her down. The refs stopped the game while Augie's coach and support staff attended her. They were concerned but not paniced, as if they were aware of some sort of situation, but if you were in the stands it was quite harrowing.

[iwu70]

Seems some good news for the Titans, with no serious injury to Caitlyn Leyden.  Some others with minor concerns, still in boots etc., but all pretty much ready to go on Friday in the CCIW tournament.

Good luck to the Titans up at Carroll this weekend.

'70

[Gregory Sager]

Annie Radenkovich is out as North Park's head coach, and her assistant coach Sam Ervin is gone as well. GA Lore Porter is thus minding the store at the moment for NPU WBB as the sole remaining coach.

Sad to see Annie go, as she's a North Park alumna and former Viking and is a terrific person to boot. But three straight 20-loss seasons, with only two CCIW wins in those three seasons, is clearly not acceptable.

I'm very hopeful that John Born can find and hire an excellent candidate to run the NPU WBB program. North Park has had a lot of success in building competitive programs in several other women's sports over the past few years, a couple of which have won CCIW hardware and another of which appears to be on the verge of doing so. There's no reason why North Park women's basketball can't be competitive as well. And the most important step to achieving that is to make a successful hire for the head coaching job.

[Gregory Sager]

Congratulations to Aliyah Hershberger for being named to the All-CCIW second team. I'm not immune to recognizing the difficulty level of that achievement. You can't help but admire how hard she had to work and how often she had to succeed on the court to earn that kind of respect from the other eight head coaches in the league when her team only went 1-15. Despite the pounding she took while fearlessly driving to the basket time after time as one of the league's smaller players (North Park lists her at 5'6", but I doubt that that's accurate), she still managed to lead the CCIW in minutes per game, and she was both a top ten scorer and appeared in some of the shooting categories as well.

[iwu70]

Congrats to all the All-CCIW players selected.  I'm especially happy about unanimous selections for first team for Ava Bardic and Sawyer White.  As I predicted earlier, Caitlyn Leyden on the Second Team. 

Glad to also see Ava Bardic, at long last, honored this week as the CCIW Player of the Week.  She's had a great season and this is well-deserved.

Good luck to the Titans up in Cheeseheadland this weekend.  Not easy beating Carroll on their floor.

IWU'70