The All-LL teams have been released:
https://libertyleagueathletics.com/news/2025/3/4/liberty-league-unveils-2024-25-mens-basketball-awards.aspx

You would think it would be just about impossible to sweep Hobart and miss the LL playoffs, but Bard just might.

Intriguing addition to the Bard roster this year. Elise Berger, pitcher from the U.S. Women's National Baseball Team:
https://www.mlb.com/news/elise-berger-commits-to-bard-college-to-continue-playing-baseball

Along similar lines, Vassar's new pitching coach is also a woman with Liberty League and Team USA pedigree:
https://www.vassarathletics.com/news/2025/1/14/baseball-beth-greenwood-named-vassar-pitching-coach.aspx

In 2008, Vassar had Lilly Jacobson - another Team USA player - on the roster, but she didn't get into a game according to the stats from that year.

Skidmore's first LL win of the season comes at Vassar. Thoroughbreds shoot 62% from the field. Yowza

Union over SLU by 1 at the buzzer
Bard over Hobart by 1 at the buzzer
Ithaca over Clarkson by 3
Vassar over RPI by 4
RIT over Skidmore by 5
What a night

Liberty League teams beat the hell out of each other every week

Boy, Hobart just torched RPI at home. Game was never close. Statesmen led by 10 at half, were up 23 at one point and cruised by 14.

Not too far removed from a 13-point home loss to Bard, Union leads #1 Emory by 11 at the half ...

Maybe this has already been discussed at length, and if so, please forgive me.

What has happened to Skidmore?
5 LL Championships, last one in 2018-19, six trips to NCAA Tournament.
Then this:

2019-20: 7-18 (6-12) missed playoffs
2020-21: Covid
2021-22: 15-11 (9-8) #5 seed, lost in final
2022-23: 13-13 (11-7) #5 seed, lost in first round
2023-24: 4-20 (2-16) missed playoffs

Adding tonight's home loss to Vassar, Skidmore is 43-67 over the last six seasons, and 28-47 in conference play. They're already 0-3 in league play and RPI is their next conference opponent.

I've only been following LL hoops since 2011 or so, and I just always thought they'd be a perennial power like SLU and Hobart, especially because they have a great coach.

So what's going on?

Preseason coaches' poll:
1. Hobart
2. St. Lawrence
3. RPI
4. Union
5. RIT
6t. Bard
6t. Ithaca
8. Vassar
9. Clarkson
10. Skidmore

I'm certain Bard has never been picked this high, or that Skidmore has been picked this low.

There are a couple of things at play here with the weekly awards.

First, the "Liberty League office" consists of two people, and they are not watching games to make these weekly selections. That's not their job.

It is actually the job of the athletic communications departments at each institution to nominate for those weekly awards. There's a Monday deadline to get those nominations in, and then decisions are made based on those nominations.

The nomination process is not just clicking a box to submit a name. There's an opportunity there for SIDs to submit a paragraph to explain the reasoning behind the nomination.

I'd wager the Clarkson SID either didn't make a nomination in this case, missed the deadline, or did make a nomination but chose not to write anything in the box.

SIDs who go after the weekly awards hard, never miss the deadline, and write well bring more of these awards to their student-athletes. It's not a question of favoritism. It's professionalism.

I hate it when they give the COY to the coach of staff from a team that was expected to be good. Hobart overachieved? RPI? If we're being honest, many were picking Union to finish just ahead of Bard. My vote goes to Union, and I think it's a no-brainer.

How about Union winning at RPI?! And Bard was up twice in that game at RIT but yielded a horrible equalizer late

York is a CUNYAC school located in Brooklyn, and many of those players have jobs. So if you look at their box scores, they always have enough players and a few subs at home, and barely have enough guys and no subs when they go on the road.

None of it really matters. If Bard is a paper tiger, it'll be obvious at Ithaca on Saturday.

Chevy Chase not only attended Bard, but he was on the soccer team. A Nov. 2, 1964 clip from the Bard Observer (which I can't attach because it says the uploads folder is full) says he scored twice in a 7-5 loss to Marist, and scored the only goal in a 4-1 loss to Union early in the season that fall.

(The clip says Bard lost its first four games to Nyack Missionary College, Marist, Union and Army JV. Hartwick was next on the schedule.)

That said, seeing him at graduation this spring was unusual. He's never been a big donor, but one of his homes is in Woodstock, which is 10 miles from the Bard campus, so maybe there's hope with that relationship.

Another pair of guys who didn't want to come back to Bard? Donald Fagan and Walter Becker of Steely Dan. When they were undergraduates, they formed a band called "The Leather Canary," and their drummer was ... Chevy Chase.

It's true:
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/how-chevy-chase-almost-became-steely-dans-drummer/

Union Garnet Chargers?
https://www.union.edu/