NCAA Tournament Preview: Wisconsin-Whitewater @ North Central College

This past Saturday marked 4 years of dating my fiancee, so I was out to dinner and missed out on the excitement at Merner, prompting texts of "how can you miss this?!" from Geoffy. Turns out I did miss out on a pretty good game and seeing the Cardinals move on to the deadly part of the Bracket of Death. The NCAA and NCC also had to scramble a little bit to accommodate the second round.

University of Wisconsin-Whitewater vs North Central College
Rice Center (Benedictine University; Lisle, IL)- Sat. March 9, 2013- 7pm

About Wisconsin-Whitewater
From Whitewater, WI
24-4, WIAC Champions
Defeated Dubuque 58-42 in the first round

North Central has the opportunity this weekend to host the D-III Indoor Track and Field championships in their beautiful new Residence Hall-Recreation Center, so it would have been a logistical nightmare to try and host a basketball game as well. Thankfully our friends up the road offered their facility. I've been to a couple concerts in the Rice Center and caught the first half of NCC's game against Benedictine earlier this season there. It's a really nice gym, and it's going to be absolutely packed on Saturday.

Readers of COAS with ties to North Central probably know quite well the illustrious recent history of Warhawk athletics, with 11 national championships to their name, including winning 4 Stagg Bowls since 2007 (beating North Central a couple times on their way to those wins, including a quarterfinal contest in Naperville in 2010 that Ryan Piers and I won an award for). Basketball history has been a little less notable, with the last meeting coming in 2008 with a Whitewater victory. But if that 2010 football game is any indication, Whitewater will bring plenty of fans to pack the Rice Center, since Whitewater, Wisconsin is all of 2 hours away.

Looking to this year, Whitewater is the defending national champion and only lost a couple players to graduation, which makes this matchup somewhat terrifying. Sophomore guard Quardell Young leads the Warhawks in scoring and is one of 4 guys averaging double figures. Freshman Darnell Harris is their main big man (11.4 points, 5.9 rebounds per game) alongside senior Luke Knoble averages 10.8 on 59 percent shooting. Despite a lot of freshman and sophomore contributors, you can't say this team is "inexperienced" since they did win the title last year. They have a lot of length and balanced scoring, something you need to get through this stage, but so does North Central.

One of the things I really took away from the win on Saturday was that the Cardinals didn't get everything going until late in the game since Derek Raridon took a while to get going offensively and Vince Kmiec was having some trouble scoring as well. Fortunately for North Central, they have Landon Gamble, who's averaging 14.5 points on 58 percent shooting, and is one of, if not the best offensive post players in the nation, and Charlie Rosenberg is coming off the bench to provide further low post scoring if the jumpers aren't falling. Comparing team scoring numbers, Whitewater is about a point per game better offensively but the Cardinals are a little more stifling on defense.

I do think the Cardinals can come away with this one again with a little bit more balance and while youth isn't as big a factor this time, I'm not sure Whitewater can defend Landon Gamble (seeing as almost no one can) and Derek Raridon seems due for a big game. Either way, this is going to be another great game and one I would get there early for. Go Cardinals!