View from the Corner Desk

NMU men/GLIAC glance 12/10/07

Not everything can fit in your newspaper. Not everything is right for a particular story either. So I’m going to try to use the blog to add to stories and pull out telling stats and highlight some stuff from around the GLIAC. [Also see the women's glance.

NMU Men

I think it’s safe to say NMU’s 61-51 victory over Tech Saturday was a shocker to most (all?) at the Berry Events Center. As I wrote in Sunday’s paper, NMU just plain outhustled the Huskies. MTU coach Kevin Luke was ticked and said his team played “rotten.” NMU coach Dean Ellis had one of the biggest smiles after the game that I’ve ever seen. As for everyone else, it was mostly jaws dropped.

It’s hard saying what the victory means. Tech is a quality team, though thus far it’s not playing as well as I expected, but it was a rivalry game, in front of a loud, mostly partisan crowd. And now the Wildcats have to get back on the road and face a tough schedule.

Dean’s take: “We don’t play for awhile here now, we go back on the road. 14 of 17 on the road, just got done with two of those home games. It’s never easy to play in a different gym every night, but we have to.

“That crowd, the scene (Saturday) was incredible. The band was great. The cheerleaders. That was a great scene. They hung in there with us, battled for us. But we’re not going to get that consistently in the middle of January. We’re going to have to figure out a way to win a road game here coming up.”

Ellis also credited his training staff. In the interior battle, guard/forward Sebatien Salois got cut above the eye.

Dean: “Every game this year we’ve had an in-game injury. So he gets cut above the eye like a boxer’s cut. Thank God our training staff got him patched up for the second half. He rebounded hard. He got loose balls. He had a huge basket for us.”

Stats of interest

Northern gives up 70 points, for what it’s worth for the only double-digit scoring deficit in the league. Northern guard Jake Suardini of Gwinn leads the team with 14.4 points and 5.1 rebounds. Although the box scores individually look bad, Northern’s assist:turnover margin is .78, just .01 from being smack in the middle of the league. But Northern does have the worst rebounding margin in the league at -7.1.

Men’s GLIAC glance

As often as I can, I’ll glance at the highlights of the GLIAC men’s and women’s basketball conferences and how Northern is doing. This is typically stuff that is good to know but doesn’t exactly make the most compelling copy in a newspaper.

What should have been a terrific matchup Saturday between division leaders No. 2 Grand Valley State and No. 9 Findlay was anything but. First off, the Oilers (who knocked off Ohio State in exhibition) lost to Ashland (Ashland?!) a week earlier. Then the Lakers blew them out 82-60. The Lakers are 10-0 overall and 3-0 in the league, looking like the powerhouse they are. Meanwhile, Gannon and Wayne State are tearing it up in the South, both in the league and outside with 6-1, 3-0, and 7-1, 2-0, records, respectively.

Ashland, Gannon, Hillsdale, Findlay and Wayne State (all South teams) are leading the league in scoring with more than 80 points per game each. Northern brings up the rear with 57.

However, Ashland and Hillsdale bring up the rear in defense, so they must be playing some real uptempo games. I’d like to see a points per possession analysis myself, but that’s a little complicated for the GLIAC!

Hillsdale’s Tony Gugino leads the league in scoring with 21.4 points and Wayne’s Wynn Sarden pulls down 10.5 boards.