Another Run Through The Gauntlet

It's an annual tradition for Confessions of a Sportscaster, in addition to covering all NCC basketball games I work, to take a look at the conference standings at the halfway point.

The CCIW, like most college basketball conferences, plays a double round robin regular season schedule, with every school playing each other twice: once at home and once on the road. Through seven games, every team will have played each other once with either four home games and three road games or vice versa. Since everyone has played everyone, it's a good time to take a look at the standings and see where North Central is at when it comes to the CCIW Tournament looming in about a month.

Women's Basketball

In retrospect, I probably rated this Cardinal team a little too high, even knowing that they were losing a lot from last year's NCAA Tournament team. In my defense though, the CCIW has been a little wonky, and seven of the eight teams are still right in the hunt.

Illinois Wesleyan seems to have proved that last year was a down year, and after North Park failed to hit a pair of free throws at the tail end of overtime, the Titans finished the first half of CCIW play back in first place in the conference. Wheaton, meanwhile, has struggled a little bit, losing their opener at Augie (hold that thought) as well as losing at Elmhurst. They're still right in the thick of things though, as they hold the tiebreaker with Illinois Wesleyan. We then have a tie for third, which Elmhurst wins thanks to their head to head win over North Park, so if the season ended today, those four teams would meet in Bloomington for the CCIW Tournament.

Tricky part is, there are three other teams tied only one game out of that fourth and final spot. I actually had to go down the tiebreaker list a little bit. Augustana is in fifth place because of their aforementioned win over Wheaton. That still leaves Carthage and North Central, with the Lady Reds getting the head to head tiebreaker. This means the Cardinals are currently in seventh place, three games up on Millikin. That's the weird one; they were expected to make the Tournament, and after getting swept the first time through the Gauntlet, they're effectively out.

Regarding the Cardinals though, they're 1-3 against the top four teams in the conference, but get the top two teams at home the next two Saturdays. Wheaton is clearly not as strong as I thought they would be coming into the year, and the Cardinals gave them a tough matchup at King Arena a few weeks ago. As for Illinois Wesleyan, the Cardinals struggled there but only lost by 12. Switching venues will certainly help. The Cardinals also get Carthage and Millikin at home in this second go around, which will help, but road trips to North Park, Augustana, and especially Elmhurst aren't going to be easy. The Cardinals are probably going to need to take two of the three road games and at least split at home. That would get them to 7-7 at a minimum, which is iffy in terms of tournament prospects. If they win at Elmhurst, they seal the head to head tiebreaker there and would have a bit of a leg up. Ideally, they need to take at least three of the four home games plus at least two road games to seal the deal.

I'm not entirely sure if it will happen. The Cardinals have had some bad luck so far in conference play; Carthage shot 10-19 from three in their six point win up in Kenosha last week (though the Cardinals did themselves no favors by struggling from the free throw line), and Liz Rehberger scored an unheard of 42 points in North Park's win at Merner (I expect a high point output from a forward, but never a guard). A little regression to the mean has the Cardinals at 5-2 and in third place in the CCIW. They'll need that luck to go their way over the next month if they want to play an extra game or two again this year. It's certainly doable, and like Coach Roof told me on Saturday, the Elmhurst win saved their season, but it's not going to be easy.

Men's Basketball

With seven regular season games left, plus the CCIW Tournament, it's still very early to make any kind of predictions, but I'm going to go out on a limb: the CCIW is going to get three teams into the NCAA Tournament again. You have a clear three team cream of the crop in Augustana, Elmhurst, and North Central, and after that there's a fairly significant dropoff.

Such is what happens when you have a Rock-Paper-Scissors tie at the top of the conference, with the home teams winning all of the matchups between these three teams. This meant I had to go all the way down to the fourth tiebreaker to open things up, with North Central falling to third place solely because they've only played three games on the road, while Elmhurst and Augie have each played four. Elmhurst then gets the tiebreaker over Augie thanks to their head to head win. From there, the remaining five teams have won all their games against the teams below them, while losing to the teams above them.

With a two game lead halfway through, this has North Central in great shape regarding the CCIW Tournament. They've got four road games the rest of the way, including very tough trips to Elmhurst and North Park. The advantage lies in their remaining home dates: they get Wheaton, Illinois Wesleyan, and most importantly, Augustana, all within the confines of Gregory Arena. Even a mini-slump of 3-4 gets the Cardinals to 9-5 in conference, which would all but certainly get them an invitation to the tournament. The way this Cardinal team has played this year, however, you'd have to think they'll do better than that. They're not going to fall behind 33-2 to Augustana again, and other than that they have played extremely well against everyone in conference (other than falling behind by 14 at Illinois Wesleyan before rallying back to win in overtime).

You can probably book CCIW Tournament travel plans now, but it's just a question of where the games will be played. I'm hoping that I will get to work three extra games at Merner with the Cardinals hosting the CCIW Tournament, in which case there's then a pretty good chance that I will get to work at least three more games with North Central getting to host some NCAA Tournament games. But that is getting a little ahead of myself. Like Jayme Moten said postgame on Saturday, one game at a time.