KVS gets a T, the next 12 calls go blatantly in Calvin's favor.  Soderberg gets one, Calvin shoots 20 free throws in 6 minutes.  Can you see where it might be easier for Calvin to "play above the officiating"?

Also, the public love-fest between Hope, Calvin and Ernie Cryer and Tom Hoffman immediately upon their retirement, certainly raises the collective eyebrow of the Hope/Calvin bias believers.  I can't wait to see what happens when Geerlings retires.  Calvin will probably rename the Fieldhouse after him.

If Fun Ron was sitting about 15 rows up, behind the metal dividing bars and the walkway in the upper deck of the arena, I would agree, he would not have been in the visitors section.  However, my guess is that he was sitting in the visitors section if he could hear what Soderberg was saying.

Is Fun Ron a Calvin fan?   If so, why was he sitting in the Olivet section last night?  Were the other 4,000 seats filled?

Civic Minded-
I just don't want God to be confused as to who He is supposed to root for.  As all Christianity clearly revolves around the CRC/RCA, this has been a really hard week for Him and I don't want to add to it.

A random thought:  If Calvin played Notre Dame, who would He root for?

Further, Old Knight, we don't want you.   Please don't root for us.

Geez, Old Knight.  Sounds like 3 unbiased opinions to me.  You lay out your one-sided argument and then three of your friends, after prodding from you, agree with you (probably just to get you to shut up)?  Quite scientific.

It seems to me that you should worry about your own team and stop trying to raise the collective ire of the non-Calvin posters on this board.

Your arguments are all flawed and, quite frankly trite and boring.  We only have so much bandwidth here.  Please, before you press the post button in the future, reread your post and think to yourself WWKVSD.  I think you'll find that if you follow that guideline, most of the time you'll just close your browser and cancel your post.

I did not hear what Draayer said to warrant the technical (that happened underneath the basket at the closed end of the arena, so it would have been impossible for anyone to hear (including me, unless one of the old Calvin fans had lent me their MiracleEar).  However, I could frequently hear Draayer jawing with the Albion bench throughout the night.

Regardless of what he did or didn't say, we know for a fact that he said (or did) something inappropriate enough to warrant a technical from the officials (as did your coach).  The intent of my comment was to point out that the pious fans should get off their soapbox with respect to Crawford, as they live in the same glass house as their players and coach.

I said enough of the grade school tattle tale garbage OLD knight.  Grow up.  He's a big boy, he can say what he wants to say and none of us are going to cry about it.

Believe me, sitting so close last night and hearing the stuff coming out of Draayer's mouth, I don't think any Calvin fans want to get into a discussion about various players' class.  Let's just chalk it up to the frustration of 2 players who were frustrated by hard nosed defense and a lack of any sort of protection from the officials all night.  These guys are in college.  Drop the playground tattle tale bs, it is not appealing.  Be glad you won and get over it. 

Just a quick response to the K complaints about the game last week

If a coach decides to foul Crawford everytime he touches the ball (which is a valid strategy, just not very effective) then there is no room to complain about the free throw discrepancy.  Very early in the game essentially everyone in the Albion section realized that RP was going to make Crawford earn his points at the line, and fortunately for the Brits he did.

Back when NBA teams used to pull that on Shaq, it's not like they could complain about how much he went to the line.

I think that a big part of Albion's numbers is that students only returned to campus this week. 

Additionally, and I don't include Hope and Calvin in this, I don't put much trust in the accuracy of the attendance numbers.  I know that Albion's are often wrong, as there are so many people who don't have tickets for most games.   With the exception of Hope and Calvin, that seems to be the case for most MIAA schools. 

I look for the numbers at Albion (or at least the actual number of people in the seats) to pick up over the next couple of games as students get settled back in to campus.

Just checked the NCAA individual stats and Brandon Crawford is currently:
7th in the nation in rebounding
9th in the nation in points per game
5th in the nation in field goal percentage at 70.7% for the year.

His league average shooting percentage would put him first in the nation. The current leader is shooting 74.2%.

I was sort of surprised that he did not make D3Hoops' team of the week this week after Albion's big win over Hope and his great numbers in the Alma game.  Shooting 20-24 for the week and scoring 51 points, is really amazing. 

Pat, no need to defend the players who are recognized this week.  I am sure that they all had great weeks.  He just continues to have such monster performances every week.

Collinge,
I agree with last year's result.  I just was having some fun with the sensitive Scot fans.  But with respect to things that do matter for this year's poll:

At this point of the season, unless there is a head-to-head matchup, we can only go by similar opponents (which of course, is imperfect, but the best thing available until tournament time).  Because Albion is undefeated in D3 with a number of quality wins, it compares favorably in these comparisons.  For example, Wooster beat Witt, Baldwin-Wallace beat Wooster, and Albion beat Baldwin-Wallace.  Albion beat Elmhurst, Elmhurst beat IWU.  IWU beat Puget Sound. 

People try to discount Wooster's loss to BW because it came in a OT and was a close game.  In the same breath, people on this board are trying to discount Albion's win yesterday because the final score was closer than expected. I have read similar posts discounting Albion's win over BW because it was close.  In my mind, I am thrilled that Albion has won a number of close games.  The players seem to believe that in a close game, they will find a way to win. 

I agree that the top 5 teams are all very close and have very good resumes, but the fact remains a loss is a loss and a win is a win.  When the tournament comes, you have to be able to win the close games.  There is no arguing that Wooster and Witt are very good teams.  It is just puzzling that the assumption seems to be that Albion cannot climb above them.  What makes this even more baffling is that there were many who seemed poised to proclaim that Hope should move to number 1 if they had beaten Albion, despite the fact that they did not seem to have a more impressive resume at the time. 

I am not suggesting that Albion clearly deserves to be ranked above Witt and Woo, I am just curious as to why the idea is so quickly dismissed by posters on this board. 

Woo Scots Fan,
Nobody is suggesting that Albions win at Alma is what should vault the Britons over Wooster, it is Albion's beating of Hope on Wednesday and also the fact that your exact same Wooster team couldn't beat Albion when they played 10 months ago.  I guess I would rather Albion learn how to react when the chips are down and win a few close regular season games, rather than blow out everybody in the league and then panic and lose to Albion in a close game in the tournament like your Scots.

The voters bias towards Wooster's name and history may indeed keep Wooster above Albion.  But if my memory serves me correct these voters kept Wooster above Albion in this poll all year long last year as well, but that didn't matter much when you had to travel to Albion to get beat in the tournament.  

Either way, my guess is that Albion could care less about the Top 25, when the real rankings come out (the Great Lakes regional rankings), given Albion's undefeated regional and D3 records and with wins over regional powers Hope and Baldwin-Wallace. given the objective criteria used in calculating the regional rankings, Albion is likely a shoe-in for #1.

Sort of hate to drag on the discussion, but I'm not sure that the home vs. away logic applies to the Albion-Hope game.  First, as per an extended discussion on the MIAA board, the home team had lost something like the last 7 games between these two.  Also, Albion is not back in session yet and Hope travels better than perhaps any team I have witnessed in 20+ years of following D3 hoops.  As the radio announcers for both Hope and Albion mentioned last night, it hardly seeemed like an away game for the Dutchmen.  I don't put as much stock in the home-away thing.  But, I thought it was worth mentioning since many on this board seem to.

On another topic, if the point of the poll is to predict which team is most likely to be left standing at the end, then they may as well start giving extra points to any team outside of the Great Lakes region, and probably the Midwest as well.

Whether Albion is number 1, 2, or 4 (I find it hard to believe that even Hoops Fan or Titan Q will argue that the Brits should fall below 4) doesn't matter much at this point in the seaon only a few games into the conference season.