2017-18 NCC Men's Basketball Preview

The women's preview is up and running, but with the season starting today, I need to get the men's preview up and running as well.

I'm about to begin year four of full time announcing for the North Central men's team, and it's given me the privilege of working for a team that has been good over the last few years, and I'm honored to continue to work for them.

I mentioned this in the women's preview, but I want to bring it up again. If you're on the full version of the website, you'll notice in the sidebar on the right that I have a standings feature for both the men's and women's teams of the CCIW, something I will try to update daily if I can. It'll be harder during non-conference play, but a lot more doable when we are in conference play since everyone will be going at it all at once.

Let's take a look at what the men have in store for us this winter.


North Central Cardinals
2016-17: 18-11 (9-7), 4th in CCIW; lost in NCAA Tournament Second Round

2016-17 Recap

Back in March I wrote an in depth piece on the last campaign, and you can go there for the full details. But in a nutshell, the Cardinals lost one of their best players in Connor Raridon in December and had to figure out how to play without him. It wasn't pretty, but they kind of backed into a CCIW Tournament spot, and started a theme of "They shouldn't have let us in." And indeed they shouldn't have; the Cardinals became the first #4 seed in the history of the CCIW Tournament to win the thing, and fell just short in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

Key Returners

What's exciting about this team is that basically everybody comes back from last year's team, save starting point guard Jagger Anderson. But the most critical piece coming back is Connor Raridon. Raridon missed the final 22 games of the season but by all accounts he's fully recovered and ready to go. He averaged 17.7 points and 7 rebounds a game before the injury, and there's no reason to think he can't replicate or improve on those numbers this season. Alex Sorenson is back for one final campaign to dominate the post, the glass, and occasionally the top of the key after finishing with 17.8 points and 9.2 rebounds per game last season. These two are preseason All Americans, and that will make the Cardinals a dangerous team.

There's a ton of depth behind these two though. Erwin Henry is back for one last run, bringing his 13.2 points and 6 rebounds per game back to the wing, and he'll be complemented by combo guard Aiden Chang (10.6 PPG). There's a good amount of depth on the bench with Tommy Koth (3 PPG) and Jaquan Phipps (1.7), but both play solid defense, especially Phipps, who will never be an elite scorer, but is a great hustle player and glue guy off the bench. The exciting returner is Matt Cappelletti, a guy who started the year at the end of the bench, but with the Raridon injury was pressed into service and became a major piece (8 points and 5.8 rebounds per game). There's plenty of additional depth at forward as well with an improved Jack Bronec (0.9 points, 1.7 rebounds) as well as Jack Clausel (0.4 points and 0.8 rebounds in 9 games).

New Faces

Photo by John Langham (Naperville Sun)

Todd Raridon hit the recruiting trail pretty hard this offseason, and has quite a few names for future consideration on the squad. He got a 6'5" forward juco transfer in Kane Wildermuth, who averaged 5.8 points per game for Carl Sandburg College last year, but started all 33 games for them, so I'm assuming he's a good post defender (I haven't seen him play). I would figure to see a fair amount of Blaise Meredith, a 6'4" freshman out of Neuqua Valley, who projects to be Jagger Anderson's replacement. By many accounts he's a stud defender but really developed his offensive game last season and should be a nice piece for the guard rotation. They also brought in Jack Clausel's brother Will, and he will probably also be a rotation piece as well. The other freshmen on the main roster include 6'1" guard Ryan Hodge, 6'3" guard Mike Pollack, and and 6'4" forward Jay Bisacki.

Non-Conference Schedule

There's a good balance of home and road games out of the CCIW and it should provide a good test for this Cardinal team. They open the season on Saturday in Ohio against Heidelberg before coming home on Tuesday for the Battle of Chicago-Maple Avenue against Benedictine. They follow that up with a Thanksgiving weekend tournament in Hawaii against Whitworth and Lewis & Clark. After the three game CCIW preview, the Cardinals have a couple short road trips as the home and home with Aurora takes them to Kane County, followed by a trip up to Michigan to take on Alma at their place. The Cardinals then return home for games with Albion and NAIA Robert Morris. They close out the non-conference slate in mid-January during their CCIW bye against Finlandia. There are some decent teams on here, and the Aurora and Benedictine games are always entertaining and tightly contested. These should provide some good preparation for a tough gauntlet.

CCIW Outlook

I always talk about how much of a gauntlet the CCIW is, and this year is no exception. North Central was expected to win the league last year, and won the tournament, but struggled a bit in league play. This year we've again got a fairly clear pecking order in tiers: the elite teams, the teams just a step below that will challenge for the CCIW title, the teams that will contend for the conference tournament, and the also-rans, though in this conference the also-rans could compete in most other conferences for a title.

North Central fits into that elite tier, being ranked a preseason #12 in the country. They share this tier with Augustana, who is an interesting case: last year they were considered to be on a rebuild and ended up coming within a blocked layup of winning the national title. Go figure. Last year's Augie team brings back basically everyone and boasts a preseason All American in Chrishawn Orange along with a good young core that has that experience to draw on. They also have Grey Giovanine, who is an excellent coach even if he has a tendency to yell, stomp, and throw his jacket into the fifth row of the bleachers.

In the group right below the North Central's and Augie's of the world is where Carthage fits nicely. I completely underestimated Bosko Djurikovic's squad last year, but they shocked a lot of people outside Kenosha en route to a CCIW title and tournament hosting rights. They're still a very young team overall, but have a lot of great pieces in 6'11" Brad Perry, additional forwards Kienan Baltimore and Brad Kruse, and added some nice shooting in Aurora Central Catholic star Brett Czerak. The voters certainly argued for it, and I have a hard time countering it, in putting Illinois Wesleyan in this group as well. They have a really nice backcourt in Colin Bonnett and Brady Rose, Tyler Burdine will probably improve as a sophomore, and they got their heir apparent to Trevor Seibring in Alex O'Neill. They're not a team to sleep on.

If we go down a tier to the tournament contenders, this is where I'd put Wheaton. I underestimated them last year mainly by ignoring Aston Francis, who is a monster offensively and received the conference's fourth preseason All American honor. The question will ultimately be what they can do around him with guys like Trevor Gunter, Ricky Samuelson, and Spencer Peterson. They should be in the mix, as should Carroll, who in their first year back in the CCIW contended for a tournament spot. They bring back a lot of their sharpshooters from last year, but we'll see if they can keep it up. North Park actually got one more point than Carroll, but I would think they should be flipped. The Vikings lost Juwan Henry to graduation, and star forward Jordan Robinson is taking a sabbatical this season. They still boast some talented guys in Billy Kirby and Colin Lake, but I think it's going to be a rough year on the north side of Chicago after they finally made a CCIW Tournament last season.

This brings up the fourth and final tier. Elmhurst is getting a little more love in the polls. Brandon Auker and former Cardinal Jeremy Ireland figure to lead a young Blue Jay group that will certainly not be awful, but I think they're pretty untested two years removed from that senior-heavy core. Millikin is easily at the bottom this season, and I don't want to say they deserve it, but they're going to have some struggles after forcing head coach and Aurora Christian alum Matt Nadelhoffer out the door. It'll be up to Michael Charles II and Tyler Pygon to keep this team afloat.

Final Thoughts

The part about this team that concerns me is inconsistency last year. They laid a couple eggs at home early on, and blew a pair of winnable games on the road before getting things figured out in time to make the Dance. On paper, this is one of the best teams in the country, but basketball isn't played on paper. However, this is a confident group and a team that has played together for a couple years now. They've got some early tests on the schedule, but this is a group that I know can get through adversity. I think this year they take a big step forward, bring the CCIW Tournament back to Naperville, and make a nice deep NCAA Tournament run... hopefully with a trip to Salem at the end of it.

Prediction: 20-5 (12-4), 1st in CCIW