Quote from: ephoops on March 31, 2009, 10:11:11 AM

IMO, Paulsen's offense works best when he has the following type of personnel:

A point guard who can penetrate and make good decisions with the ball.  He needs to be able to create his own shot as well.

A center / post player who commands the respect of the defense when he receives the ball in the post.   

Wing players who can shoot the "3".

They all need to be in good shape.

Any offense should work pretty well when you have players with those types of offensive skills - right??

jumpshot....I just looked up something & found another validation that Amherst's "pattern" over the years has been pretty good...7 consecutive seasons (stopped this year) getting to the Sweet 16 in the NCAA tournament.  Amazing.  Any other school in the region with that kind of performance?

Quote from: jumpshot on March 08, 2009, 06:35:38 PM
Amherst's loss, in my opinion, reflects something of a pattern over the years: weak schedules, players with exceptional skills and size who can appear to be like "bullies" ---bold against little guys but not always great against teams that are not intimidated.

You obviously have a problem with the "pattern" that has gotten Amherst to the Final Four in four of the past five years...and the last three years in a row.

But I just can't think of a recent program with more success - can you?  So maybe that "pattern" has done OK.

Quote from: eclinchy on March 08, 2009, 05:25:32 PM

Quote from: frank uible on March 08, 2009, 03:44:42 PM
In my unsophisticated view a number of the good Amherst or Williams teams of the last 7 years would have blown the doors off this year's NESCAC, including this year's versions of Amherst and Williams.

I don't think anyone disagrees.

Sure, there's been a fall-off in talent this year.  And I also think that we've been spoiled by the unusual level of success of those 2 schools in the recent NCAA tournaments.  The last 5 or 6 years was an incredible run, probably unmatched by any other conference in that time stretch.  Amh and Wms have been in a total of six NCAA final fours since 2003.  And those teams blew the doors off of everyone (almost)...on a national level.  But they also had a lot of good fortune with (a) lack of injuries, and (b) some fortuitous NCAA tournament results, which helped their marches to Salem.

This year's version of NESCAC obviously wasn't up to the standard of those prior teams, but they also weren't that bad. I've seen a lot of D3 games this year, and, for example, Wms, Bow and Colby were 3 well-coached teams that could beat anyone in the region on a given night.  The NCAA-bound NESCAC teams didn't fare well at all in the tournament, but good fortune just wasn't with them - Midd had an uncharacteristic collapse in the last 3 minutes in their game and missing all of those FTs also was an aberration.  If Midd just shot their season average for FTs (62%), they would've won...and Amh's Baskouskas injured his right wrist prior to their game vs G-Mercy.  He had to wear a wrist/hand wrap on his shooting hand.  I think that his healthy shooting wrist would've been worth at least the six point differential in that game.  Unfortunately, these things can happen.  And yes, you need to be lucky as well as good to go deep into the tournament.

Quote from: lefrakenstein on February 24, 2009, 05:49:40 PM
Prediction: Barring injury, Jeff Holmes will end his career as Amherst College's all-time leading rebounder.

The current career mark of 844 belongs to Doug Hawkins '56. If Holmes continues at his current average (5.6 per game) for the rest of the season he will have around 700 to go with three years to play. That's 233 a year or about 7.7 per game assuming 30 games a year (which is actually below Amherst's average games/year over the last 6 years). If you figure Holmes ups his playing time to average 25 min/game for the rest of his career (again, I believe this to be a conservative number), and maintains his rebounding efficiency (possibly conservative considering he will likely get better at rebounding as he fills in his frame and naturally improves), he will finish with over 850 rebounds.

I, too, believe that Holmes is an outstanding rebounder and will prove to be a dominant force in NESCAC during his next 3 years.

But when you compare the stats of different generations, you need to consider that the players of the 50's and 60's and 70's : (1) only played about 18 to 20 games per season and (2) only had 3 years on the varsity, with freshmen being ineligible in that era.  Assuming that Doug Hawkins '56 played 60 varsity games, he averaged over 14 rebounds per game.  Is 14 rebs per game within Holmes' capability?  From what I've seen of Holmes, maybe it's possible during the course of his junior and/or senior years when his body matures and he gets stronger.  But it's probably not going to happen over the course of his entire 4-yr career.

ac08:
Yes, I'm basing my predictions on returning contributors from last season, but with a heavy emphasis on whether those contributors actually helped their teams win last year.  Stats and playing time on a losing team are not that impressive to me.

SenFrost:  Your logic re: "3 starters returning from a NESCAC title holder = 2nd best in league this year" is definitely flawed.  You must've forgotten that last year, with five (5) starters returning from that NESCAC title holder, Williams finished 4-5 in the regular season (6th place) and lost in the NESCAC post-season tournament 1st round by 37 points.  This year, Williams has a new coach (& a new system) to deal with and only three (3) starters from that mediocre 4-5 season.  How can they leap-frog to 2nd best (on paper) in NESCAC?  I suppose that it's possible, but definitely not something to count on.  To me, it looks like Middlebury, Colby, Bowdoin, and Amherst - in that order.  The second tier is probably Williams, Bates, Williams, Trinity and Tufts - in that order.  Wesleyan & Conn Coll probably won't make the NESCAC post-season tournament.  But it's early in the season, so we'll see how it plays out.

NY Hoopster - You're too hung up on a player's numbers.  In your world, First Team All-League would be the top scorers 1 through 5.  Second Team would be #6 through #10.  Right?  Or maybe it's some combo of numbers (points, assists, rebounds, etc.) to rank each player?  One question - how many of these players have you seen play? I believe that you need to see them play in order to have a valid idea about where they might rank within the league.  The stats don't tell the story.

Choice is a decent player, but I don't see where he's in the top 15-20 players in NESCAC.  Unless Colby somehow gets into the postseason NESCAC playoffs, the Mules & Choice & Gaudet are relatively inconsequential.  2nd team All-League? No way.  In my opinion, there are too many other excellent players in the league contributing on much stronger teams.  And Choice is only a soph, so there's no sentimental "lifetime achievement award" opportunity yet for him.  If B. Jones or R. Martin or M. Weisbrot were playing for Colby, they'd each be averaging 20/10, so the numbers don't mean that much to me.  After all, somebody's got to score when Colby has the ball.  Can the Mules win twice this weekend to sneak in as an 8 seed?  I don't expect it.  So do they go quietly, probably finishing in 9th place?  I think yes.

Anyone who relies on statistics to determine the value of a basketball player is just lazy or naive about the essence of the game.  Sure, in general, if a PG has a 3:1 assist-to-turnover ratio, then he is probably playing more efficiently than another PG who is at 1:1 , but you don't really know unless you see them in the context of their teams' styles and teammates' skills.  It drives me nuts when people (usually the casual fans) will say that a player who scores, say, 20 ppg is "a better basketball player" than someone who's a 10 ppg scorer.  That's absolutely not necessarily true - it could be true, but it's impossible to tell unless you see the entire skill set that each player brings.  I like looking at shooting percentages and defensive abilities (by the way, in my opinion, no stats work for this most important element - defense - not even steals or blocked shots).

Amherst's record is similar to Williams for the same 12-year period:

      276 - 61, an 81.9% winning percentage

And their team also has a decent future ahead of them.

What's the status of Williams for the coming year?  I see that no one here has projected them in the top half of the league.  They have the great recent history, excellent coach, etc.  Why wouldn't they at least be mentioned in the top half? Maybe they will have another great season, but they're just not getting any hype yet?  Or maybe the talent level just isn't there anymore? Can someone can shed some light?

Sounds like Williams is bringing in a high-level recruiting class... How does the rest of NESCAC look in terms of incoming frosh? Will Amherst be bringing any difference makers in?

ARTestes - Yeah, I heard the same rumor. They're dancin' in the streets in Pasadena...maybe it's goodbye to that 1 for 72 slump they've been in.

Does anyone have any information about incoming frosh for the SCIAC next year?