The CCIW is another conference which is behind the curve getting media information out. For the CCIW, this has been a thing both pre-season and even in-season for the entire time I’ve been doing this blog. Hopefully they’ll improve soon (and in fairness, they did present live chat sessions with the coaches for media days this year), but for now all I really have to work with is the pre-season poll and some random bits from the schools. As a result, no team capsules here.
That said, North Central and Wheaton are, as usual, the front-runners. It’s a clear edge for North Central in first-place votes, but not in overall poll points where the margin was much narrower; there was support for Illinois Wesleyan in the #2 spot, as one might expect from a playoff team from last year, from voters who picked Wheaton at #1. The one thing everyone agrees on, however, is that North Park is going to finish dead last, and I mean that literally. Every single ballot had them in eighth place.