Have to agree about the officiating. It was terrible. Inconsistent from half to half, too many touch fouls early on that kept stopping the game over and over again, and kept players from both teams on the bench. Not what you want to see when you have two of the top ten teams in the country playing each other in a conference championship game.

Good points, but I'm not sure I agree with giving Amherst the edge. Amherst shoots a ton of threes. It's not the only way they score, but with the lineups they've been putting out there lately, it is a huge part of their offense. Tufts can chase the shooters off the 3pt line and has shot blockers behind them to deal with any dribble penetration.

I agree that both teams will struggle to score. First to 55 will win it, I think.

Caught the Amherst/Bowdoin game on the webcast, which was actually very well done.

The game was a very good one, and was as close as 5pts inside the last three and a half minutes. Amherst got a good bounce, the officials missed a clear walk, and someone hit a 3 and they did not look back. Bowdoin was very tough, but had a hard time handling the length of Amherst's front court. For a team without any post players, Amherst sure gets a lot of blocks from their bigger players.

Tufts can match that length, and also can score inside with North and Baptista. I think Baptista is the X-factor tomorrow. If she plays well, nobody in the NESCAC can guard her. Should be a great game tomorrow. I'd give Tufts a small edge because of the home-court advantage, as well as being completely fresh.

Thoroughly deserved win from Tufts tonight. They hung tough in the first half and the relentless defensive pressure began to wear on FDUs short rotation of four guards in the second half. The tandem of Morehead, Dillion, and Roberson played very well on both ends of the court, and Kanner and North were solid as well. Neither team got much of anything from its bench, but with the increased number of timeouts and the stakes, teams operate with shortened rotations anyway.

Quote from: nescacbbrules on March 13, 2015, 11:34:42 PM
I suppose it's true that you can't expect to win many games scoring 45 points....unless, of course, you're the kind of team that blocks 12 shots while holding your opponent to 31 points on 17% shooting. Then you can expect to win lots of games. Tufts plays games that often are not hailed as beautiful, impressionistic art, but if you have a taste for gritty, in-your-face, grinding defense, then they play "ugly" masterpieces. FDU understands the difference. Last year their high scoring offense managed 42 points in their national semifinal win, a number very close to the average of Tufts' opposition and six fewer than FDU scored in the first half tonight against Geneseo.

45 would have been more than enough to win last year's Tufts-FDU final four game. I do expect Tufts to need a few more than that today, but if they score 55, I think they'll win. Either way, it will be a great game.

Quote from: polbear73 on March 10, 2015, 09:29:24 AM
Since the loss to Roger Williams to open the season, I have tended to underrate Bowdoin throughout the season and I am happy to have been proven wrong. I too believe that Bowdoin has the guard play to beat the Montclair press and has a very good chance to upset a very good team. Also, while it is difficult to beat a very good team three times in a row, I still don't understand why Bowdoin is ranked lower and deemed to be an underdog to Amherst after beating them twice by a decent margin, granted once at home but also on a neutral court.

The national rankings are largely BS. None of the people with votes really have the time, means, or inclination to watch all the teams, so they're just going based on past history and what other people say. The relatively lack of inter-region play (as compared to Division I) also makes ranking teams relative to each other difficult to impossible.

I could see a team being ranked below a team they beat once, but after two relatively convincing wins against Amherst, Bowdoin really does deserve to be ranked above them. That should come via Amherst being dropped down to the 15-20th spot they deserve, and Bowdoin being bumped up a few places.

Bowdoin ended up with the tougher Ro16 matchup, in my opinion. Montclair State is a tough team that will be doubly tough to beat at home.

Tufts/East Conn should be a decent game, especially with FDU looming and the Tufts players possibly being distracted by anticipating that rematch the second day. No question that Tufts is the stronger team, but they're also rather depleted - in addition to missing Foley, they were without Batista this weekend.

All that said, there aren't any bad teams left in the tournament, so every game is going to be a struggle no matter who or where you play. I'm looking forward to next weekend. Hopefully not all the games start at the same time. Also looking forward to seeing if Wash U can do anything with Sydney Moss.

Are coaches instructed to only take the conference season into account? Because Robertson played a little more than a third of the season, and for the first part of that was only playing 15m a game off the bench.

She made second team all NESCAC on inertia and past accomplishments, in my opinion. Statistically, she certainly didn't deserve it based on her season.

When you're the third or fourth at-large bid from a region, you really can't complain about where you get put. Bowdoin was always going to host, and I would have been shocked if Amherst got to - they didn't deserve it.

The selection committee wants to minimize plane trips. So long as you are within 500 miles, they don't care if you're next door or 498 miles away.