There's little doubt at the moment the league isn't quite as mouth watering competitive as it had been for most of the last decade. Right now there's a couple pretty heavy anchors weighing things down at the bottom and the days of anyone can beat anyone have been replaced by any of the top 4 can beat anyone. Never the less in my time of following D3, every CCIW team save for North Park has won the league and every CCIW team has participated in the big dance, even Millikin (to be honest though Millikin and North Park have done pretty much nothing since the first couple years I began following this division). I would be hard pressed to find another conference like that in the same time frame of just about 25 years.
Four of the past five seasons the CCIW has had a team in the NCAA Quarterfinals and 8 of 12 NCAA qualifiers have advanced to the Sweet 16, no small feats coming out of the Midwest Region. Four different CCIW programs have won at least a share of the last four league Championships. North Central has won the last two in almost identical fashion by running through the CCIW in impressive fashion after an injury filled non-conference schedule. One last little nugget to drive the point home, 6 of the 8 league schools have participated in the NCAA tournament the last 4 seasons. This is a great league to follow.
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Review and Preview
against its neighborsvs NathCon 6-4
vs MWC 8-2
vs WIAC 3-4
vs HCAC 2-3
vs SLIAC 7-2
vs UAA 4-3
vs IIAC 6-3
vs MIAA 6-6
That's a lot of neighbors
The regulars from the CCIW will tell you last season was a down year out of conference and that's very much a true statement. However its 51-37 record or something close to that would be stellar for just about everyone else, but the bar is very high in this conference where the normal out of conference win percentage is closer to 65 in any given year. Why so low? The bottom half of the league really struggled and throw in North Central's 6-5 record and those 5 teams accounted for a 23-32 record. Everyone else shot 3 under par and didn't think the greens were very fast.
As you can see the CCIW has many options when it comes to scheduling and this really isn't including some viable NAIA options in and around Chicago who they didn't schedule much. CCIW teams travel and log a lot of miles, probably more than most D3 conferences not on the West coast or the deep South. One thing you will note is that the CCIW played 12 games against the MIAA, that's more than any other conference and even to me this is a little surprising. I guess I've never really looked at it too closely, but we've been hovering around 10 games per year for the past few seasons. This is a good thing.
As for last season the leagues split their 12 meetings. A large part of that success was Hope/Calvin's 3-1 weekend in the MIAA/CCIW challenge, a couple of those games could have gone either way. Only Alma and Kalamazoo didn't play a CCIW school with all but Olivet logging at least one win. In the future I think the avg number of match-ups might grow closer to 15 than 10. The CCIW is facing a similar scheduling crunch as the MIAA has been, its neighbors are getting bigger. The MWC is adding Cornell, the SLIAC is adding a couple teams and with the relatively recent formation of the NathCon, the scheduling options are slowly shrinking.
In the NCAA's:
Wheaton made the tournament as a Pool C and won its 1st and 2nd round games against Gustavus Adolphus and Edgewood before losing at eventual National Champion Whitewater in the Sweet 16, 67-56.
North Central was the league's auto-bid winner and advanced to the Sweet 16 after winning close games against Rose-Hulman and Washington-St. Louis. NCC lost to Wittenberg 58-55
Illinois Wesleyan was a Pool C entrant and advanced all the way to the Final Four with wins over UW-Stevens Point, Hope, Wooster and Wittenberg. IWU lost to National Runner-up Cabrini 81-78.
Here's a look at the teams bottom to top from last season's standings and my brief and probably wrong take on their 2013 outlook:
8. Millikin 1-24, 0-14
The Big Blue spent 2012 not reaching 50 points in over half of their games. There may not have been a more inept offensive squad in D3 (check that, Franciscan would be crushed by Millikin), if they weren't it they were close. First year head coach Matt Nadelhoffer learned just how much of a rebuilding project this really is. Millikin has logged back-to-back 1 win seasons and are in the midst of a 34 game CCIW losing streak. Its pretty ugly in Decatur (and the basketball isn't very good either).
Millikin graduates one lone Senior who played just under 7 minutes per game, everyone else returns. Recruiting over the next couple of years will be the key to any Big Blue resurgence and that's probably all that needs to be said about personnel. These guys weren't terrible out of conference and could have won a couple of other games but in the CCIW they were absolutely clobbered just about every night to the tune of having a -30 scoring margin. There's not much here to suggest much improvement for next season, any conference record that includes a digit other than zero in the win column is probably terrific.
bonus: The 2013 schedule will allow a few chances at non-conference wins.
7. North Park 6-19, 2-12
North Park's 2012 season wasn't much better than Millikin's except North Park won some games and was far more competitive in most of them. However in the league they beat only Millikin twice and only had a couple other chances at wins. First year coach Dylan Howard resigned after the season to accept a D1 assistants position. North Park hired Anderson head coach Tom Slyder.
NP loses 5 Sr's, all of them significant contributors when healthy. Senior to be Mark Holmes was the only Viking to garner all-league honors, he'll return as the teams top offensive threat. The Vikings played a few Freshmen significant minutes and for the most part this will be a pretty young team. Tom Slyder will have a mostly clean slate to deal with and given the usual questions about coaching changes its going to be hard to see North Park getting out of this seventh place position, they might win a couple more games but its a 4 game gap to the next level of CCIW teams.
5t. Elmhurst 12-13, 6-8
Elmhurst might have been a little better team than their record indicates. Outside the league 4 of their 5 losses were by less than 10 points, while inside the league all 8 losses were by 10 points or more. Such is life in the CCIW. The Blue Jays were able to split with Augustana and Carthage by winning at home and probably won and lost all the games they should have.
Senior all-conference player Zack Boyd graduates along with second leading scorer Jerome Robinson so they will need to replace some significant points and minutes. They probably have enough to stay ahead of NP and Millikin, it will be difficult to move up the standings however.
5t. Carthage 12-13, 6-8
Carthage suffored a handful of close losses on the season and really weren't that far from being a top 4 CCIW squad despite the 3 game gap to fourth place. Three consecutive losses to finish the season cut the legs out from what could have been a winning season. But overall to me at least, Carthage was a tough team to figure out.
Carthage graduates 6-4 Sr. G Max Cary and a little used sub, otherwise the Red Men return everyone. The most important player returning will be G Malcolm Kelly who led the CCIW in scoring and will be one of a fistful of players in contention for the league MOP. Normally with so much returning you'd pen these guys for the top half of the league but in this league I'm not quit sure its that simple. I think Carthage is in contention for a league tournament spot and it will likely come down to the final week, but if there's one squad who could fall flat of expectations it might be this one.
4. Augustana 19-7, 9-5
Augustana was one of the CCIW favorites in 2012 and their season started out looking that way with 11 wins in their first 12 before a transfer away and a couple injuries derailed what was looking like a fine season. After beating Millikin to start the CCIW campaign Augie lost its next three and spent the rest of the season playing catch-up. One wonders if under a slightly different NCAA selection criteria if Augie could have been the CCIW's 4th team to make the tournament, even they might have made the Sweet 16. All around though, probably a pretty disappointing season.
Ouch, including the mid-season departed Luke Scarlatta the Vikings lose 6 significant contributing players including their top 4 leading scorers, most significantly all-CCIW performers Bryant Voiles and Troy Rorer. For many programs that would be a problem but Grey Giovanine has put Augustana in the reload not rebuild category for some time. I suspect Augie will turn out better than some might anticipate and I still project them to be in the running for a CCIW tournament spot, which they've never missed.
3. Illinois Wesleyan 23-8, 10-4
The Titans really only had a two week stretch of three tough losses in the middle of the CCIW season that cost them the Championship. After making the NCAA field as probably one of the last teams in, IWU put together a run for the ages by beating four of the winningest D3 programs consecutively, all away from home, before losing in a thriller to Cabrini in the National Semi-Finals.
IWU has some significant graduations in Jordan Zimmer, Eliud Gonzalez, John Koschnitzky and Stephen Rudnicki. That's a pretty big hit to the back-court, as in all the starters and backups. Overall though IWU returns enough front-line talent to compete very well in the CCIW, the real question will be how quickly their likely young guards will come through for them. IWU might lack a playmaking star in the back-court for now but it sure seems like this team will be right in the middle of the CCIW race.
2. Wheaton 23-7, 11-3
For much of 2012 Wheaton looked every bit like a team that could win the CCIW and when Augustana fell off the pace early I think most figured Wheaton would be the team to take the title. Wheaton cruised through much of the CCIW season and beat North Central twice in close games, it was a loss to Carthage and an early OT loss to IWU that ultimately kept the Thunder from winning the title. With beating NCC twice the Thunder will certainly feel like an opportunity to win the CCIW slipped away. This was in my opinion the best D3 team I saw in person outside of Hope.
Wheaton graduates 4 pretty significant Sr's in league MOP Tim McCrary, 2nd teamer Aaron Garriot, 3rd teamer Spencer Schultze and 3 point specialist Jeremy Pflederer. Its a lot to replace and what returns is pretty young and inexperienced. The Thunder will be led by Jr. to be Troy Peters and after that a host of Fr and So, who among them will pick up the scoring is yet to be known. Wheaton probably takes a step or two back next season
1. North Central 22-8, 12-2
NCC's path to a 2nd straight CCIW Championship was in many ways nearly identical to the year before, a struggle in the first half of the season due to injuries etc., then putting it together in the CCIW. This years run was less of a surprise as I think most people probably had them among their contenders. Head coach Todd Raridan has clearly made North Central one of the many elite programs in this league right now.
The Cardinals graduate only PG Kevin Gillespie and return everyone else including MOP candidates Derek Raridon and Landon Gamble. The rumored departure of G C.J Goldthree would be a blow but not a game changer, these guys have more than enough returning to be considered the CCIW favorite and should, barring another non-conference struggle, be among the nations top 10 teams for most of the season and probably considered one of the dozen or so National Title contenders.
Conclusion and Unnecessary Analysis
Wouldn't you love to live close enough to be able to catch some of these games. I don't know that next season will have the same kind of close race between 4 obviously very good teams but it still should be very competitive and enjoyable for those who get to witness this conference. Overall the league loses what probably can be considered a pretty average collection of talent in numbers, although IWU, Augustana and Wheaton certainly take big graduation losses. Losing all-american type players like Jordan Zimmer and Tim McCrary are always tough to replace but this league usually finds a way.
One thing very noticeable after searching through so many rosters (somewhere north of 50 after this league) is the CCIW is just a little bit taller all around than most leagues. Mix in what is usually a pretty obvious upgrade in athleticism when viewing in person and its really not hard to see why this league has enjoyed so much success and has such a great reputation. That's not to say these teams aren't flawed, all D3 teams really are, its just a lot harder to find that flaw in this league.
For next season I don't think a lot changes as the hierarchy of programs seems to be set with Millikin, North Park holding things up and everyone else in varying degrees of awesomeness. But the margin for error seems pretty slim among the better teams and a really good Fr. or transfer could sway things up or down for teams fairly easily. I see a pretty good battle among Carthage, Augustana and Wheaton for the 3-5 spots and if IWU struggles to find good guard play you could probably put them in that mix as well. I also don't think its a foregone conclusion NCC wins the league, you still have to go out there and get the W's, but they are the clear favorite.
Flimsy 2013 prediction:
1. North Central
2. Illinois Wesleyan
3. Carthage
4. Augustana
5. Wheaton
6. Elmhurst
7. North Park
8. Millikin
North Central and Illinois Wesleyan make the NCAA Tournament.
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