Earlier this year the NCAA voted to move up the start date of basketball season, so I get to resume the gradual destruction of my vocal cords a little earlier this year!
Officially, the season begins on November 8th, so I'll have the men's preview out next week. The women's preview comes well in advance for reasons you will read about coming up. Let's get to it!
North Central Cardinals
2017-18: 5-20, 3-13 CCIW (8th), missed CCIW Tournament
2017-18 Recap
I'll be honest: the less said about last season, the better.
It wasn't pretty. I harbored no illusions about the Cardinals being able to hang with the big dogs atop the conference, but they lost multiple games they should have won, being unable to close out games and going into some bad shooting slumps. The high point of last year was an overtime win at home over Carthage in December, a win I still can't comprehend. Going into the new campaign, the team will have to replace its best player and starting point guard in Mayson Whipple, one of its better shooters in Michaela Reedy... and has a brand new head coach.
Coaching Change
I touched on the assistant change in the "New Faces" section last year, but this is bigger. After eight years, Michelle Roof decided to step down as head coach and pursue a career in law enforcement. A couple month search resulted in the hiring of
Maggie McCloskey-Bax, who had spent the last five years as top assistant and recruiting coordinator at conference rival Carthage. The Lady Reds have consistently been in contention for the CCIW Tournament during her tenure, at least some credit for which has to go to North Central's newest coach. I met her about a month ago, and she seems excited for her first head coaching gig and the upcoming season. She will be joined by
Kimberlee Chandler as top assistant, who previously spent two years as an assistant at Benedictine.
Key Returners
Last year's team was pretty young on the whole, and that remains the case this year. There's just one senior on the roster in
Siarra O'Neill, who if fully healthy should be an outstanding shooter for this team, and with a solid year can sneak into the top ten in program history for made threes. The junior class though is pretty outstanding.
Maya Walls is capable of being a double-double type player, and
Natali Dimitrova is a very good interior defender, with
Hannah Vitkus providing some depth behind both. They also have the replacement for Whipple pegged in
Lyndsay Brennan, who has really improved over the last couple years and should contend for an All-CCIW spot. She will be supported by sophomores
Haydn Braun and
Page Desenberg, with
Rachel Dawson providing some additional bench depth at the forward spot.
New Faces
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| Photo by Jeremy Papasso |
The huge story besides the new coaching staff is the group of freshmen coming in. Before she left, Michelle Roof had told me that this was the best recruiting class she'd ever gotten. Her departure caused some concern in change of commitment, but McCloskey-Bax was able to secure everyone's commitment to North Central. I mentioned one member of this class in Guerin's
Sydney Geis in the recap post, but I found out about the rest when the roster finally went live.
Tyonne Howard out of Louisville will back up the point guard spot and hopefully bring some solid shooting to the team.
Kate Ogrodny took advantage of her senior season at Pine Creek High School in Colorado Springs to showcase her talents in the backcourt, and will add additional depth there. Closer to home,
Allison Pearson comes from a Maine West team that finished third in the state last season, and
Allana Newsome brings
her apparent ankle-breaking skills to the table. Meanwhile,
Kylie Modaff is fresh off her high school knee injury and is good to go for this season. At the forward spots, 2016 state champ at Byron
Challen Jackson joins new member of the All-Name Team in
IxChel Leeuwenburgh, who can be a force down low, as well as
Mitrese Smith, who averaged 12 and 9 for Kewanee High school last season. That's a lot of good depth for this team going forward.
Non-Conference Schedule
Once again the non-conference slate is pretty barren in terms of games in Naperville. The Cardinals' season opener is at home against Knox College out of Galesburg, a team coming off a fairly successful season out of the Midwest Conference. After that, it's fairly road-heavy, with the annual Benedictine game taking place in Lisle this year. The Cardinals also return home-and-home favors with trips to Dubuque and Stevens Point, as well as a road trip up to Minnesota to take on St. Mary's just before Christmas. The docket also includes a pair of tournaments: one at Wilmington College in Ohio Thanksgiving weekend, and one at Wartburg College in Iowa just before New Years that includes three teams ranked in the preseason Top 25. The fun game though comes before the season, as tomorrow North Central travels into the city for an exhibition with McCloskey-Bax's alma mater: Loyola-Chicago.
CCIW Outlook
Before I dig into the preseason poll you see here, there's one big change for this season that needs to be mentioned. Back in January,
the CCIW voted to expand its conference tournaments for a number of sports from four teams to six. This brings the CCIW more in line with the national average of teams that make their respective conference tournaments, and creates more impactful games down the stretch. The moveup of the start of the season helped greatly with this, as the conference slate was expanded in December to include four dates instead of the three that there were the last couple years. The Tuesday before conference tournament weekend that had been the final date of regular season games will now host play-in games as the #3 and #4 seeds will host the #6 and #5 seeds, respectively, for the right to advance to the weekend. It will add chances for a boost in strength of schedule and regionally ranked opponent games as resume boosters. Overall, I love this change.
As for the conference itself, we're back into tiers again and I didn't see many surprises in the coaches' poll above. I still see Wheaton and Illinois Wesleyan as the cream of the crop in the conference. The Titans lost their two best players to graduation in Rebekah Ehresman and Molly McGraw, but have a ton of talented young players still in house to wreak havoc. But that dropoff has me agreeing that Wheaton is the favorite, especially since they really didn't lose anyone of significance from last year's team and have a loaded frontcourt. Carthage surprised me that they finished that close to the Titans, as the fruits of McCloskey-Bax's labor in Kenosha will still pay some dividends, and Tim Bernero is a hell of a coach, so I definitely see them as the third best team.
Augustana in fourth makes sense to me given their loaded backcourt, and their frontcourt is underrated in my opinion. After that, I believe the field is wide open, and this is probably where I'd put North Central. I'm not sold on an Elmhurst roster that's overflowing with players; there are good players here to be sure, but they lose arguably the conference's best post player in Mikaela Eppard, and that will hurt them. There's a lot of faith in Carroll, but they're an extremely young team with just a single senior in Sara Hartl, and otherwise have only freshmen and sophomores. Millikin begins life after Lori Kerans' long tenure with former Illinois Wesleyan legend Olivia Lett at the helm, and Lett has been a good assistant at multiple D3 blue bloods since her graduation, making the Big Blue a tough out. North Park, meanwhile, is relatively young but isn't going to be a doormat for this league.
Final Thoughts
This team has nowhere to go but up after a disappointing 2017-18 campaign. Given the talent coming in for North Central, combined with the increased opportunity for postseason play, and I like this team's chances. They need to get off to a good start if they want to be relevant in February, but I think they can be. I don't know that they're ready to challenge the elite in the conference, but they should be in the mix for a conference tournament berth this year.
Prediction: 12-13, 7-9; 6th in CCIW
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