Tuesday, Jan. 15 Scores & Comments

[EastIowaHawk]

Post the outcomes of your games and let's hear what you think.

 

[EastIowaHawk]

Monday scores:
CR Washington 74, Fairfield 51
Pella 74, PCM 61
Sheldon 61, So. O'Brien 49

Tuesday:
DM North 82, Ankeny Cent. 65
Sergeant Bluff- Luten 59, CB Abe Lincoln 35
Van Meter 72, Woodward 61
Garner-H-V 57, West Hancock 39
Clear Creek- A 61, Williamsburg 57
Iowa City West 74, Waterloo East 61. Pat McCaffery 35
Cascade 54, Camanche 47- Defending champs take down ranked team
Clear Lake 60 C-G-Dows 49
Dubuque Hempstead 67, CR Washington 59 - Soph Michael Duax 33
George- LR 66, West Lyon 44
Norwalk 65 Carlisle 61 in a tight one- two talented teams
Pella 68, Knoxville 47
WDM Valley 76, Ankeny 67
Waterloo West 63, CR Xavier 59
West Fork 78, Northwood- K 28
Lake Mills 61, Algona Garrigan 54
Algona 50, Webster City 45
Cedar Falls 58, IC Liberty 50. The Lightning are definitely improved
DM Hoover 58, Ames 44
Dyersville Beckman 43, West Delaware 39- 2A over ranked 3A
SC East 65, SC West 64. East wins on final shot
Dubuque Senior 52, CR Kennedy 39, even though Carter held to 9
Linn-Mar 59, Iowa City 48
CR Prairie- Dub. Wahlert postponed to Jan 21
Clinton Prince of Peace 62, Dav. North 58- 1A beats 4A
Maquoketa 67, Mount Vernon 39- Cardinals 14-0
Harlan 59 Ballard 54
DC- Grimes 43, ADM 42- whew

 

[Hawki45]

Wow, CF by 8 over Liberty....MVC might be the deepest it’s ever been.

EIH, I would love to get your thoughts on this. With teams like Wahlert, Xavier, and Assumption down in 3A for football and only playing 3A teams in the regular season, do you think their basketball programs will try to follow suit any time soon and look to leave the Mvc or mac for a WaMac conference or something like that? I see benefits from both but now that football is out of the picture for the Mvc I don’t see anything holding them back if they wanted to “move down” to a 3A conference

 

[makelovenotwar]

I know both Assumption and Wahlert are NOT thinking about dropping down for boys basketball. No clue about Xavier. Real feeling around Wahlert is that the program is doing fine even if it is in a dry cycle. Wrestling aside last year, Wahlert boys sports have been pretty week for several years. The girls teams have been doing well. Volleyball and girls cross country are in midst of multi-year stretches of state titles.

These things go in stretches. School just lacks Division 1 male players right now.

The one thing I see around the program is the lack of multi-sport males. Just not very many of them.

 

[EastIowaHawk]

Hawki45, I pretty much agree with makelovenot war. I don't see Assumption, Wahlert or Xavier moving out of their MVC and MAC conferences for other sports aside from football. They were all much larger schools when they originally were asked to join these conferences, and all their natural rivals are in the same conferences. Moving these schools down to their own enrollment sizes made complete sense in football. The last year that Wahlert played in the MVC, their school of 450- 600 enrollment had to play 4 top ten 4A schools and they were absolutely pummeled. The rash of serious injuries was the worse part because there were no competent subs and kids got tired playing both ways against the Iowa City Wests and Cedar Falls powerhouses. Of course, Wahlert went 0-9 this past season in 3A football, but most regulars return next year. Xavier is an outlier in 3A because of their historically tremendous program. I really don't know what you do about them, although Western Dubuque gave them a run in the championship game until their (WD's) quarterback went down with a major concussion.

In basketball these three schools are definitely 3A. Right now, none are ranked and all will probably have losing records this year, because most of the other conference teams are just too strong this year. Iowa City and Liberty may be the weakest teams in the MVC, and they're not weak! All the state's big conferences are having very strong years, with multiple powerful teams. And all the better public school 3A teams are playing "up" more each year, also. The run for the state championships this year will be a donnybrook of upsets along the way, count on it. Eventually, if the enrollments of these three schools would drop below a critical number, yes, then maybe the Wamac or a new conference would be the answer, but I don't see it for awhile yet. Each of these three schools will be better next year in basketball, especially Wahlert, which will return almost all of its scoring. I think the culture for basketball is far better than the culture for football in Dubuque and the Quad Cities. These three schools, like many others in the state, are very strong academic schools, and for that major reason I think the enrollment situation will decline much less rapidly than in the past and may even somewhat level out.

 

[Cheese2]

Hawki45, I pretty much agree with makelovenot war. I don't see Assumption, Wahlert or Xavier moving out of their MVC and MAC conferences for other sports aside from football. They were all much larger schools when they originally were asked to join these conferences, and all their natural rivals are in the same conferences. Moving these schools down to their own enrollment sizes made complete sense in football. The last year that Wahlert played in the MVC, their school of 450- 600 enrollment had to play 4 top ten 4A schools and they were absolutely pummeled. The rash of serious injuries was the worse part because there were no competent subs and kids got tired playing both ways against the Iowa City Wests and Cedar Falls powerhouses. Of course, Wahlert went 0-9 this past season in 3A football, but most regulars return next year. Xavier is an outlier in 3A because of their historically tremendous program. I really don't know what you do about them, although Western Dubuque gave them a run in the championship game until their (WD's) quarterback went down with a major concussion.

In basketball these three schools are definitely 3A. Right now, none are ranked and all will probably have losing records this year, because most of the other conference teams are just too strong this year. Iowa City and Liberty may be the weakest teams in the MVC, and they're not weak! All the state's big conferences are having very strong years, with multiple powerful teams. And all the better public school 3A teams are playing "up" more each year, also. The run for the state championships this year will be a donnybrook of upsets along the way, count on it. Eventually, if the enrollments of these three schools would drop below a critical number, yes, then maybe the Wamac or a new conference would be the answer, but I don't see it for awhile yet. Each of these three schools will be better next year in basketball, especially Wahlert, which will return almost all of its scoring. I think the culture for basketball is far better than the culture for football in Dubuque and the Quad Cities. These three schools, like many others in the state, are very strong academic schools, and for that major reason I think the enrollment situation will decline much less rapidly than in the past and may even somewhat level out.

I think that schools should have to play in a 3A league if they play in the 3A tournament. Not sure it is entirely fair to play against 4A schools all year and then drop down to play in the 3A state tournament. In the big 4A schools, you have more kids that specialize in 1-2 sports(thus more skilled players versus just all around "athletes"...schools like Assumption, Wahlert, and Xavier need to have multi sport kids just to field a competitive team in many sports in those leagues. It is difficult for them to compete in hoops in the MAC and MVC because of this, unless they have a couple exceptional classes come through. I realize Wahlert is the outlier in this group because they have a weak football program and lack the participation numbers that are necessary to compete in that sport...Wahlert is a basketball school clearly, always has been and always will be.

 

[EastIowaHawk]

Cheese- one of the ways a 3A conference would work for the schools we're talking about would be to take the eastern part of the state and form a new 3A conference with Mt. Pleasant, Assumption, Maquoketa, West Delaware, Mt. Vernon, Solon, Xavier, Waverly, Wahlert, Charles City. Western Dubuque (depending on their enrollment), Marion, maybe Decorah, Central DeWitt, and ?Liberty or Crestwood, Independence, etc. It could be divided into north- south divisions of seven or eight teams each. Now that I've done this-- you know it actually makes sense and is almost feasible! Now all you have to do is get 14- 16 activity and athletic directors on the same page. Print this out and send it to the athletic directors and the IHSAA. Half-kidding, but that would be a pretty darned good conference-- competitive and pretty even in basketball. Basically taking the Wamac and expanding and strengthening it. There could still be room for one or two 4A local teams on the schedule if they want. Would take a few years down the road to implement. Heck, most of these schools get lumped together at tournament time anyway. I mean, 4A is basically four large conferences. It might work for 3A too.

 

[Cheese2]

Cheese- one of the ways a 3A conference would work for the schools we're talking about would be to take the eastern part of the state and form a new 3A conference with Mt. Pleasant, Assumption, Wahlert, Maquoketa, West Delaware, Mt. Vernon, Solon, Xavier, Waverly, Charles City. Western Dubuque (depending on their enrollment), Marion, maybe Decorah, Central DeWitt, and ?Liberty or Crestwood, Independence, etc. It could be divided into north- south divisions of seven or eight teams each. Now that I've done this-- you know it actually makes sense and is almost feasible! Now all you have to do is get 14- 16 activity and athletic directors on the same page. Print this out and send it to the athletic directors and the IHSAA. Half-kidding, but that would be a pretty darned good conference-- competitive and pretty even in basketball. Basically taking the Wamac and expanding and strengthening it. There could still be room for one or two 4A local teams on the schedule if they want.

I think you are on to something EIH...this league would have competitive balance and is feasible travel wise. This would be an incredible 3A basketball league!