Game Notes: (MBK) Elmhurst University @ North Central College (1/24/22)

Final Score
NCC 79, Elmhurst 70

Game Summary
Early on, this seemed like a repeat of the Illinois Wesleyan game as the Blue Jays (12-5, 4-4) jumped out to a 17-4 lead just five and a half minutes into the game, forcing Todd Raridon to burn his second early timeout. The Cardinals (11-5, 6-2) had to burn a third at the halfway point of the first half as Elmhurst built a 32-11 advantage. North Central followed that timeout with a 9-0 run, but couldn't trim it to single digits as the Jays took a 45-29 lead into the locker room. A couple early second half Cardinal pushes were negated by answers from Elmhurst, especially halfway through the second half when the Cardinals surrendered a fast break dunk by the Jays to push their lead to 15. But then the Cardinals started to claw their way back, scoring eight straight to cut it to single digits. Elmhurst still led by nine with a little over seven minutes to go before the Cardinals embarked on a decisive 14-0 run that gave the Cardinals their first lead of the game, and the Jays would not recover.

Key Players

• Matt Helwig (NCC): 9-12 FG (1-2 3PT), 2-5 FT; 21 pts, 9 reb (1 off), 5 ast, 1 stl. Having just been crowned the CCIW Men's Basketball Student-Athlete of the Week, the nation's third-leading scorer ended up a little below his season average in this one, but was still a key portion of the comeback in this one. He helped keep the Cardinals in it with 10 points in the first half, then kept them in it for most of the second half before scoring two points during the key 14-0 run. His nine rebounds tied the game-high.
• Shea Cupples (NCC): 6-10 FG (5-9 3PT)l 17 pts, 6 reb, 7 ast. First off, that's a pretty good Connor Raridon-esque box score. Second off, let's differentiate the numbers by half. Shea had four assists and a couple rebounds in the first half, but was 0-4 from beyond the arc and I wasn't feeling super confident in him at the break. But then the second half started. He hit back to back triples fairly early that cut into Elmhurst's half-high lead of 17 points, added a third that trimmed it to four, a fourth that gave the Cardinals their first lead of the game, then served up the dagger with about two minutes to go when he banked home a fifth, followed next time down by adding a layup to push the lead to eight. I think this was easily the best game of Shea's career, and I'm dubbing this, at least for now, The Shea Cupples Game.
• Jake Rhode (ELM): 5-18 FG (2-14 3PT); 12 pts, 3 reb (1 off), 1 ast. Rhode is going to be a unanimous First Team All-CCIW and will likely finish the year as an All-American. So it wasn't a surprise in the early going when he hit two of his first three trey attempts to help get the Jays out to an early 17-4 lead; his second forced the second NCC timeout. So you'd be forgiven for thinking game more or less over five and a half minutes in with him off to a good start. And yet now, look at his final line for the game and marvel at it. He missed his final 11 shots from beyond the arc, something seemingly unthinkable given his history. If he's any closer to his normal self, we're talking about a completely different ball game, considering the help he had from his supporting cast in this game.

Key Stats

• NCC: 8-16 FT (50.0%). This is alarming. And it also factors in a 2-5 night at the stripe by Matt Helwig, who is now ninth in the country in free throw percentage thanks in part to a streak of 61 consecutive makes that was snapped on Saturday at Carthage. They got away with it in this one somehow, but may not again.
• ELM: 7-26 3PT (26.9%). It wasn't just Rhode. The whole Blue Jay team was a tale of two halves. They were hot early as part of building that huge early lead and finished 7-14 from deep in the first half. Those of you who are quick at math will note that that means an 0-12 second half. Rhode took six of those 12 triples that missed, so it wasn't just him that went cold; it was really the whole team.

CCIW Scoreboard Watch

• IWU 89 (15-2, 8-1), @ CAR 72 (8-9, 1-7)

Final Thoughts

Photo by Steve Woltmann

The Miracle on Brainard Street. The Oshkosh game. Recent years have been kind to Merner Fieldhouse in the number of amazing finishes and outstanding games. And now, The Shea Cupples Game can be added to the lore of legend. I have to count, but I know I'm getting close to the century mark of North Central men's basketball games I've announced. And when the time comes, I want to do a countdown of the best/my favorites. Those two aforementioned games will be at or near the top of the list. And now... so will this one.

#ElmhurstBlewA21PointLead https://t.co/rMxFNqUVTr

— Lucas Mitzel🎙 (@northsider89) January 25, 2022

It was unbelievable even as it was happening. You don't expect after getting your butt kicked for the first ten minutes of a game that you're going to be in it, but the Cardinals never gave up. And even then, with the Cardinals threatening and ultimately pulling back within single digits, it didn't seem like it was going to happen. We were all kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop; Rhode was due to hit eventually. But he kept missing, the Cardinals continued to claw back, he kept missing, all of the sudden it was a one possession game, and then the next thing you know the Cardinals have a lead with under five minutes to go, then they push it out and get a dagger with just couple minutes to go and a building that was limited in fans due to COVID restrictions was as loud as it's been since the Oshkosh game.

I don't want to say this was a must-win for the Cardinals, but in a way it was. This was the halfway point of the conference slate with a pair of losses combined with some struggles in non-conference that won't give this squad a lot of leeway when it comes time to start looking at regional rankings and think about building out a tournament bracket. And even in the CCIW itself, coming into a year where the projection was a big three of Illinois Wesleyan/Wheaton/Elmhurst with the Cardinals a tier below, an 0-2 start against that triumvirate had those projections looking spot on. Instead, with the win North Central finds itself a half game up on Wheaton for second place. With a sweep of eighth place Carthage in hand and one more to go against everyone except North Park, whom the Cardinals have yet to play, this team is in good shape, but doesn't have a lot of margin for error with eight to go.

The second half of CCIW play begins Wednesday as the Cardinals welcome in Augustana. NCC has a win over the Vikings at Carver already in the books and is looking to keep pace with Illinois Wesleyan. Oh yeah... and The Belt^TM is going to be in the building on Wednesday.