“They didn’t even win the game, but that it was that style of basketball that I just immediately fell in love with,” said Preston. “And when I realized that Grinnell was the kind of school I wanted to go to anyway, it was just a dream come true in that sense.”

That nationally televised game against Beloit was five years ago, and many wins later Preston and fellow senior John Bruns have arrived at the finale of their collegiate careers. This season, however, the Pioneer squad (6-15, 4-10 in the Midwest Conference) faced serious adversity after losing last year’s talented senior class to graduation.

“Last year we had three superlative offensive players in my son [David Arsenault], John Grotberg and Bobby Long who never panicked if we fell behind,” Head Coach David Arseneault wrote in an e-mail. “They knew that they had the ability to score in bunches and usually did. This year’s group tends to worry too much when we go ‘cold’ and tends to lose offensive confidence quickly.”

Bruns explained that this team’s youth made it difficult to execute the system on a consistent basis. 

“When your core is a freshman class of eight guys that have never played system ball and are coming out from playing regular basketball, and you’re telling them, ‘Hey, go play system ball and score 130 points,’ that’s really hard,” Bruns said.

With so many young players on this year’s team, Coach Arsenault called on Bruns and Preston to step into leadership roles. 

“I think that’s been one of my favorite things about this year is getting to know all of [the first-year players],” Preston said. “I’ve tried to be kind of a big brother to them, in the sense of college and what it takes on the court to succeed—not necessarily as someone that has been a leading scorer, but as someone who has watched several people succeed in that type of role.” 

“That’s all I’ve known since being in this program is to have those guys lead the way, so this year was kind of fun because we got to show some new guys the ropes a little bit,” Bruns said.

Arseneault noted that even in what he called “a down year,” the Pioneers are still on pace to bring home the NCAA title in several statistical categories.

“We still are poised to lead the country in scoring and three-point makes for the 15th time in 17 years and, in Dylan Seelman, have a first year on pace to lead the nation in three-point makes per game,” Arsenault wrote.

After an astonishing 131-84 home victory over Knox and a 95-77 road loss to Illinois College, Grinnell hits the road to take on Knox yet again on Thursday.

“Given our road record this season, there is no reason to expect anything but a dogfight at Knox,” Arseneault wrote before the game. “We have been very erratic in our play this season. Hopefully, we will have learned our lessons from these games and not let last week’s result versus Knox at home have any bearing on the effort it will take to beat them at their place.”

The Pioneers will not finish in the top four in the Midwest Conference and therefore are not playing in the Conference Tournament. Grinnell will host Monmouth for their final game on Saturday in an attempt to finish the season on a winning note. 

“That’s definitely what we’re playing for, and as a team if we end the season [with a win] it would give everyone a positive memory and something to build on,” Preston said.

Bruns also sees a foundation that will allow the Pioneers to build a bright future.

“I think there’s a great core group that just really gets along with each other and they’re going to have a lot of fun figuring out all the possibilities of the system,” Bruns said. “How they figure it out is completely up to them. It can be a good or bad experience, but I think they’re going to make it a good one.”

“I thought we were more aggressive offensively than we have been at other points this year,” wrote Head Coach David Arsenault in an e-mail.

Forward Matt Skelly ’12 attributes their success and aggressiveness to a total game effort on both offense and defense.
“We were able to get them to turn the ball over which led to a faster pace of play and more opportunities for us offensively,” Skelly said.

Dylan Seelman ’13 led the team with 29 points, and Skelly was close behind him with 28. Matt Chalupa ’12 contributed 12 points, while Dominique Bellamy ’13 scored 11 and Scott Kaitz ’11 had eight assists and five rebounds. The team looks to continue their aggressive offensive play this weekend as they face Ripon College on Friday and Beloit College on Saturday, both away games. Two months ago, the Pioneers lost to both schools at home, and are looking to avenge those losses this weekend.

“We are definitely excited to face Beloit this next weekend because we feel we let one slip away when we lost to them by one the first time,” said Kaitz, who is the point guard and one of the co-captains for the team.

The Pioneers, 0-9 on the road, are also looking for their first win away from home this season, and are optimistic they will find it this weekend.

“Ripon and Beloit will be tough tests this weekend, but if we play up to our capabilities, then there’s no doubt we can win both,” said Griffin Lentsch ’13, the leading scorer for the team, and the first freshman to do so since John Grotberg ’09 accomplished the feat in the ’05-’06 season.

The young team also looks forward to testing themselves amongst other conference teams—teams that know the “system”—with their last six games all against Midwest Conference foes.

“We haven’t won on the road all year so the games this weekend will test our maturity. We are eager for the opportunity to go up north and prove we can win on the road,” Skelly said.

“System” basketball, a strategy that Coach Arsenault has perfected and utilized over the years, depends not only on the team’s ability to shoot accurately, but also to shoot and score quickly to generate an insurmountable point total. In the six seasons prior, the Pioneers did not average less than 108 points per game, and typically led the nation in points scored per game in any of the three NCAA divisions. This season, they are averaging 92 points over a total of 17 games so far with just six games left on their regular season schedule.

“We have been a different team than past years and because of that we might not average over 100,” Kaitz said. “There have been games where we have pulled back in order to save our legs and that has resulted in fewer points scored. At times our offense has looked great. If we can become more consistent offensively, we will begin to see the higher point totals we have seen in past years.”

So, will the Grinnell Men’s Basketball team average over 100 points at the end of this season?
Coach Arsenault says, “We would have to go on a real tear to average 100 points a game this year. I just don’t see that happening.”

Coach Arsenault admits that he knew this would be a tough season for the Pioneers.

“The best teams we have had through the years would have struggled away from home with this year’s teams from William Penn, Buena Vista, Wheaton, UW Whitewater,” wrote Head Coach David Arsenault in an e-mail.  

But since the beginning of Midwest Conference play, the Pioneers were immediately competitive and after break, they have gone 3-3 in conference.

“As a team, we were struggling at that point to get wins, so they [practices] were kind of tough but at the same time, they were very good for us. We had a couple of rough weekends , but this past weekend, we started to turn things around.”

And with confidence building, the season is surely salvageable in their eyes.  

“We have a decent shot at conference with a lot of winnable [future] games,” said Matt Chalupa ’12. The Pioneers will make the Midwest Conference Tournament if their conference record is in the top four. Currently, Grinnell is in seventh place and but only two games back.  

Coach Arsenault is confident about the advantages of the System at this point in the season. As other teams become fatigued earlier in the game as the season stretches on, the Pioneers will have “fresher legs by comparison” due to their multiple substitutions, Arsenault said.

“I thought our energy level was fantastic this past weekend and it helped that we didn’t need to lean on any one player for excessive minutes,” Coach Arsenault wrote. 

Although the team received a lift from these recent wins, Arsenault is still searching for “vocal presence in practice” and there have been questions about which player will emerge as a main scoring threat in games as well. 

“Last year we had main scorers who did most of the scoring the last three years,”  Kaitz said. “This year’s question was who was going to do a lot of the scoring. Matt Skelly has really stepped up and Griffin, although he’s hurt now, was doing some good scoring.” 

However, the lack of a real designated shooter has given the Pioneers a little more flexibility in the way they approach games. One major change in the team’s game this year is an increase in spreading the scoring opportunities. 

“I think we just kind of let the offense start flowing rather than to trying to dictate what and happened when. We just started playing basketball.”

Coach Aresenault would prefer to depend on just a few “statistically significant and the remainder of the roster occupies needed playing roles,” but due to youth and injury getting the chemistry built for that kind of system just wasn’t developing. Kaitz, co-captain and point guard, was out with an injury for five weeks and after his return Griffin Lentsch ’12, first year who leads the team in average points per game,  

“We have been hurt by the injury bug,” Coach Arsenault wrote. “So, creating some sort of synergy has been difficult. Rather than focus on goals we have been more or less of the mindset to try to get better every day—which we have been doing.”

Chalupa said that although the Pioneers are currently winless on the road, the team is still young and does not have the same confidence and energy exerted from the support at home games. 

“We’re a young team and being in somebody else’s gym you lack the support from the crowds, which for us gives us the confidence and swagger we need to do what we do. If we can on the road, stay as one unit and just be super supportive, we will definitely be able to pull something off,” Chalupa said. 

The Pioneers will continue their Conference tournament push against Lake Forest College (5-4 in MWC, 7-9 overall) on Saturday in Chicago and then return home to face Fontbonne University on Sunday.

“Both of those are going to be very tough teams,” Assistant Coach Dave Arsenault ’09 said but being at home, and with the talent that we have on our team, I think they are games that we should be able to win. If we can play our game we should go away with a couple of wins.”

The team lost the heart of its offense with the last year graduation of last year’s seniors, which included the program’s all-time leading scorer, John Grotberg ’09, and all-time leader in assists, Dave Arsenault ’09—requiring some players to step into a larger scoring role. Forward Matt Skelley ’12 has increased his offense output significantly by scoring 30 and 29 points in his last two games. Joining him is a troupe of talented first years, including Griffin Lentsch ’13 who is averaging 22 points a game as well as Jesse Ney ’13 and Dylan Seelman ’13 who have both reached double digit scoring in multiple games.

With a 1-4 record, the Pioneers may not seem threatening, however five games against challenging non-conference opponents, including top 10 nationally ranked University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Dave Arsenault knows to put the record in the right perspective.

“We put together a really brutal nonconference schedule,” Arsenault said. “Our first game was probably against the lesser of our four [opponents]. After that, they have been against very good competition.”

Although some first years have been thriving, others have struggled with shooting due to both the unique offensive style of Grinnell and the lack of a clear model to follow.

“Well I think it was a little bit easier for me [to learn the offense] because we had [the seniors] there,” Skelly said. “But everyone is learning a new role this year, so those guys don’t really have an example, so even though they are really talented players, just coming into a system without seeing seniors who are professionals at it—it is tough—but they have come a long way.”

Luckily, Team Co-Captain Ross Preston ’10 points out, the team enlisted the very knowledgeable ex-player and current Assistant Coach Dave Arsenault to help them.

“He is the only person in the world that has been exposed to the system this much who isn’t [Head Coach David Arsenault] and he also played in it,” Preston said. “Coach [Arsenault] would say Dave gets it better than he does. He is really good at giving specific feedback.”

Part of the team’s new identity involves a larger focus on defense and rebounding thanks to added height in numerous positions, partly due to their first year class.

“It is nice to have quite a bit of size with the first year group, a lot of those guys are versatile players,” Dave Arsenault said. “[The height] helps us out a lot defensively with our press, they can get their hands in passing lanes and take away things and grab rebounds that people who are a little bit shorter can’t.”

Despite the rough start though, the objective remains the same for the squad—and this weekend’s conference games are the best place to start.

“The goal for us this season is to win the [regular season] conference championship again,” Dave Arsenault said. “Although people might be questioning that right now with our record, I think this weekend is going to be a good test for where we are as a ball club.”

“It seemed like, even in that first half, we were making a lot of mistakes, just with the execution of our offense,” Team Captain and point guard Ross Preston ’10 said. “So I think in the second half when those mistakes continued to occur and they went on a few of those runs and our shots weren’t going in—then it just got to be this thing where this had been building all game and [the team was] just really frustrated.”

In their game against Waldorf, the halves were flip-flopped.  The Pioneers were down 24 points in the first half, but won the game by seven in the end. The problem apparent in both games for the Pioneers is that their offense is just too streaky.

“Well, the first half against Waldorf we didn’t shoot well, it was the first half of the season, and it was a lot of the freshmens’ first half playing ‘The System’ so it was a little rough,” guard Augustus Karisch ’10, said.

But that doesn’t mean that the team hasn’t been able to score. The Pioneers went on a 16-2 run in the middle of the second half against Waldorf to tie and then was able to pull ahead in the final minutes for the win.

“I think we’ve already shown that we can go on runs,” Preston said. “We definitely can do it in spurts but we haven’t shown that we can do it all game.”

But the area that the Pioneers are most concerned with is their defense.

“Everything gets started on defense,” Karisch said. “If we can get a lot of steals, if we can get our hands on some balls, and get the other team frustrated. Even if we don’t get a steal, they’re running all the way down the court, getting a layup, and having to run all the way back, so they get tired.”

Involving the first years in the scoring will also be a major factor in the team’s success.

“We have three or four freshmen in primary scoring roles where they’re expected to do a lot, and they have a lot of pressure on them to do well,” Karisch said. “To some extent, the success of the team does depend on the freshmen making shots. Even those who aren’t shooting, being where they need to be on the floor and making good passes will be important.”

The Pioneers will get another chance to improve in all of these areas when they play Buena Vista College at 2 p.m. tomorrow in Storm Lake, Iowa.

“They had a great record last year,” Preston said.  “They didn’t make it to the tournament but they’re good.  They’re going to be slightly more disciplined than the two teams we’ve played so far. We’re expecting them…to be really physical and beat us up a little. Being on the road makes it more difficult than at home, naturally.”

As the Pioneers work through their tough non-conference schedule, they’re hoping to build an identity as a team. If they can keep their defense consistent and they can develop their first years then the team believes they’ll be ready for whatever Midwest Conference play will bring.

“It takes some time to get used to the new style of play and get used to new positions,” Karisch said. “It could take a couple games and it will be different for every freshman. People will have had four or five games to acclimate to ‘The System.’ We are playing tough games. If we can get through the pre-conference schedule and have our confidence intact…We will be ready.”

Grinnell Women’s Basketball is looking to build off a 4-19 season last year with a revamped team that includes seven first years. 

“So far we have been working towards [improving this year] with our preseason preparation being a lot stronger this year than it was last year,” Coach Gluckman said.

Although the team has only lost shooting guard Jody Watkins ’09 to graduation, the team almost doubled in size with the addition of the first years. Since the team is so young, the first years are a vital component to the team and have already been included as such. 

“Our team atmosphere is very welcoming and our first years have already found a home within our program,” Gluckman said.

Though they will also face the challenge of being forced to rely heavily on first years. 

“This year our team is relying pretty strongly on the first years since they are about half of the team,” Forward Jessica Shotts ’10 said. “We are going to need a lot of them to play some minutes.”

The freshman class includes four guards, two centers and a forward, giving the team far more balance than in previous years. 

“We will have an inside and outside presence this year, and so one of our strengths will be our versatility,” Gluckman said. 

The Women’s Basketball team has also adopted a new style of offense. 

The new style “requires athletes to be very smart on the court, and should be something that will fit in well with the student athletes on our team, but [it is a] slight switch in mentality,” Gluckman said. 

Despite the excitement over the new offense, Coach Gluckman still believes that defense will be the key to the team’s success. 

“Our biggest challenge by far will be in sustaining a relentless and aggressive defense,” Gluckman said.

The Grinnell Women’s Basketball team will begin the season on the road against Cornell College on Nov. 15, followed soon after by their first home matches against Buena Vista University on Nov. 20 and then against Martin Luther College on Nov. 21.

Men’s Basketball at Grinnell over the last few years has played to outstanding success including advancing to conference finals last year.  This year however, the team will be debuting several new players in order to continue their tradition of producing one of the most potent offenses in NCAA basketball.

“We’d like to win our conference and lead the country in scoring and three-point shooting,” Head Coach David Arseneault said. “The key to this will be developing team chemistry and amping up our defensive effort so we can better create scoring opportunities.”

That said, team co-captain Ross Preston ’10 can’t wait until the season gets underway. 

“I’m most excited to continue playing in the ‘system’ and exciting the crowds, home or away,” Preston said.

The “system” began under Arsenault and relies on three-point shooting and turnovers to rack up a high number of points.  The key is trading two points for three.  In addition, substitutes are handled hockey style with multiple players coming on and off in order to keep the players on the floor as fresh as possible.

The team has lost several key contributors to their success over the past four years. 

“We lost three players, David Arseneault [’09], John Grotberg [’09] and Bobby Long [’09], who combined to score 7000 career points. We also lost two valuable role players—Ahmed Idrissa [’09] and R.J. Roewe [’09],” Arseneault said. 

In lieu of these graduated players, Grinnell’s basketball team has added eight first years including forward Griffin Lentsch ’13, their top prospect, and must now develop these new players. 

“The first years have been playing like first years. Lots of ups and downs. But they are a talented group who will eventually figure things out,” Arseneault said. 

Captain Preston also emphasized his faith in the new players. 

“Our new freshmen are an integral part to our success this year and I think the campus will be getting to know them soon,” Preston said.

Arsenault plans on stressing the Pioneers’ advantage in games—their athleticism and their overall size. However, perhaps even more importantly they will need to overcome their greatest flaw. 

“Our weakness is our propensity for turning the ball over,” Arseneault said. 

The men’s team will need to develop their first years and solve their turnover problem quickly in order to stay competitive both in and out of conference play. 

“The non-conference schedule is the toughest we have ever had. Past championship teams would have struggled with this schedule,” Arseneault said. 

Finally, the wait for the “system” will soon be over, as the team opens at home versus Waldorf College, a team who defeated Grinnell on the road last year 117-106, at 3 p.m on Sunday, Nov. 15.

“I came away from those games thinking the better team won,” head coach David Arseneault said.

But the pieces finally came together. Carroll and St. Norbert collapsed, and the Pioneers made personnel changes that have since produced an eight game winning streak and their best basketball of the year, winning by an average margin of 27 points. The trick? Play your best players, and play them often.

“Since we’ve played better teams, we’ve adjusted our substitutions,” coach Arseneault said. “More John [Grotberg ’09] Bobby [Long ’09] and David [Arseneault]… We’re sacrificing the future for the present.”

Grotberg, Long and Arseneault provide most of the Pioneers’ offensive attack, combining to score 64 percent of Grinnell’s points this season.
But throughout their careers, their similar offensive skill sets have meant that they have often led their own squads of five, with no more than two of them on the court at once. Since the Carroll loss on Jan 24, though, each member of the trio has seen their playing time increase to around 28 minutes per game, frequently putting all three of them on the court together.

“We don’t necessarily score more points, but we’re more efficient,” Long said. “When it’s just one or two of us on the floor, [our opponents] can put their best defenders on us.” With all three of them out there, the Pioneers can almost guarantee themselves one good offensive matchup, opening up the floor and usually guaranteeing a better shot.

The move goes against the system’s philosophy of tiring out smaller teams by continuously putting fresh players on the floor, but it is the kind of tweak that might finally help the Pioneers overcome their perennial struggle against quality opponents. Grinnell has made the Midwest Conference
Tournament more times than any other team this decade, but has won the tournament just once.

The team’s wins this season, however, didn’t come against the conference elite. The Pioneers are 13-3 in conference play this year, but 12 of those wins came against teams not in the tournament in a year during which the MWC had just four teams with winning records.

The Pioneers must win more games against the MWC’s top four this weekend than they have all year. Friday’s opponent, St. Norbert, comes in having lost four of their last six, but the Green Knights should still give Grinnell significant trouble.

“They slow the ball down a little, clog the middle of the lane, they know who the shooters are, and they have a week to prepare,” Grotberg said.

St. Norbert’s personnel is particularly suited to challenge Grinnell’s game. The Green Knights’ leading scorers, 6’4” forward Brian Fleischmann averaging 11.8 ppm, and 6’6” center Tom Katzfey averaging 11.4 ppm, will likely give the Pioneer defense problems and should wreak havoc on the boards. “[St. Norbert] usually outrebounds us by 20 every time,” Grotberg said.

If Grinnell survives St. Norbert, they will face the winner of Lawrence and Carroll on Saturday. Lawrence comes in as the MWC’s hottest team, winning their last seven by double digits with three of those coming against tournament opponents. Carroll returns all-conference guard Wes Ladwig from injury and just beat St. Norbert on the road, locking up the third seed.

But, it’s a wide open tournament, with all four teams holding first place at one point during the season. The Grotberg, Long and Arseneault show might be just the boost the Pioneers need to send them over the top and into March Madness.

Though they play as a cohesive unit now, the five seniors had very different beginnings with Grinnell basketball. Idrissa, for one, hadn’t even planned on playing college ball. “I saw the boys shooting around and having a pickup game during my first year,” Idrissa said. “I came back and started playing on the team later in the week.”

For Long and Roewe, however, it was media coverage of the famed style of play that first peaked their interest. “My dad brought home a Des Moines Register paper one time,” Roewe said. “It had a huge article on Grinnell basketball and how they score a bunch of points and that got the ball rolling little bit.”

But for Arseneault, whose father has been the head basketball coach since 1989, Grinnell basketball has always been in his blood, ever since he was a little kid. “When I was old enough to walk I would go over to practice, playing around with the guys and dribbling the ball and causing problems,” he said. “When I was in high school, in the off season I would go play with the college guys and I could see the direction [the system] was heading with a lot more three-point shots
and just playing up and down at a quicker pace.”

Others didn’t have such easy transitions into the system. “When I first came I didn’t shoot 3’s very well and so that limited how I could help the team,” Idrissa said.

Roewe also had a rough adjustment to the system— he was use to playing for large amounts of time instead of the 35-second spurts that have come to define the system. “My high school team was like the direct opposite—we would have games where our halftime score was like 12-7,” Roewe said. “We would play defense on offense.”

Though the system was different than high school play, the seniors were forced to pick up the style of play quickly. “I know especially for me and Dave and Bobby we were sort of thrown into playing a lot right away. They had lost a bunch of seniors the year before,” Grotberg said. “It didn’t take too long to adjust just because we kind of had to.”

As a result of playing the system, the past four seasons have yielded some eye-popping game statistics and a collection of broken records. Last season, in a game against North Central University of Minnesota, Arseneault broke the NCAA assists record for a single game. “I had 34 assists in that game,” Arseneault said. “Fortunately, a lot of people were making shots.”

Though record breaking is not a daily game occurrence, the success of the system translates to conference victories. “[At] Lawrence one time in the second half of the game it was tied at half time and they only missed one or two shots total from the field and we still beat them by like four or six,” Roewe said. “To not lose or to shoot like 90 percent from the field and to lose in general is just a ridiculous thing to think about. It must be so frustrating for other teams but it happens quite a lot.”

Roewe also pointed to the strength of the system against teams that are seen as more talented ball-players than the Grinnellians. “[William Penn] players were like six-foot seven, six-foot-five big individuals like really athletic,” he said. “And a bunch of us little nerds were able to run around and beat them.”

Though Grinnellians usually take for granted the strengths of the system, the men’s basketball team wasn’t always a sure-fi re winning team. However, coming up together against challenges has been one of their strong suits, and has led to some of their most memorable games.
“We had a losing record for the first five or six games in conference and kind of all sat together and tried to figure out what it is that we were doing wrong and where should we go from there,” Grotberg said referring to his secondyear. “Then it just kind of happened that we won 13 games in a row and won the conference championship. That was pretty special.”

Though they are moving on from Darby Gymnasium and Grinnell College basketball at the , all of the seniors want to continue playing basketball in one form or another. For Long and Grotenberg, their sights are set on playing overseas. “I’m looking at Italy or Germany, but really I’ll play
anywhere,” Long said. “I actually went to Italy two summers ago to play with a select team for basketball so I met some coaches there and have been in contact with them.”

Arseneault wants to continue with college basketball, but from the sidelines, hopefully as a coach. “When I go to grad school I want to fi nd a graduate’s assistant job coaching college basketball and eventually get into it that way,” he said. “I don’t want to leave, I want to come back—that’s probably why I’m going to get into coaching, so I can eventually coach here.”

For Roewe and Idrissa, the plan is to return to their roots of pickup games and rec leagues. “I’ll defi nitely play at like a YMCA or some sort of rec league, but nothing too serious,” Idrissa said.

But for now, the players are just focused on one thing: winning the conference tournament. Having gotten into the tournament the past three years in a row, but losing the first game each time, the team has high hopes for this year, and the seniors have big aspirations for their fi nal games. “If we play like we’ve played the last seven games because we’ve won all of them, I think we have a good chance, regardless of if it’s here or somewhere else,” Long said. “We just really want to have a great end to senior year.”

The basketball team travels to Monmouth this Saturday to play the Fighting Scots. A Grinnell victory coupled with a St. Norbert College loss to Carroll University would ensure that Grinnell hosts the MWC championship next weekend.

Two weeks earlier, the chances of the men’s basketball team hosting the MWC tournament was little, if any. But with today’s victory against Monmouth, coupled with a St. Norbert loss to Carroll, Darby gym will be raucous come Friday night as the Pioneers will host the Conference tournament as the number one seed.

Earlier this year, Grinnell dropped games to both Carroll University and St. Norbert College at home. The loss to then-undefeated Carroll and St. Norbert left the Pioneers on the outside looking in.

But as of late, Carroll and St. Norbert have struggled, both finishing the conference season with four losses. The fourth team to qualify for the Conference tournament, Lawrence University, finished with a Conference record of 13-3, the same as the Pioneers. Despite the tied record, an earlier Grinnell victory over Lawrence ensured the Pioneers would win the ie-breaker and host the tournament.

The action begins this Friday night in Darby, when #1 Pioneers play host to #4 St. Norbert, and #2 Lawrence takes on #3 Carroll.