Quote from: Cards Fan on December 11, 2017, 10:08:27 PM

Quote from: Colby Hoops on December 11, 2017, 05:07:49 PM

Quote from: nescac1 on December 11, 2017, 01:24:09 PM
The four early leaders in the NESCAC ROY race all had HUGE games over the weekend.  All four were highly-regarded coming into the season and have lived up to it plus some:

Grant Robinson, Amherst, 19 points and 5 assists, 5-6 from 3, where he had previously struggled
Jack Farrell, Middlebury, 22 points and 2 assists, 3-5 from 3
Matt Hannah, Colby, 23 points, 7 boards, 5 assists, 4-9 from 3
Austin Hutcherson, Wesleyan, 27, points, 6 boards, 4 steals, 7-9 from 3

Farrell for the season is averaging 9-3-2 with an incredible shooting line of 50/55/90
Robinson is at an even more impressive 10-4-4 but his shooting has been a bit less efficient 41/24/64
Hannah is at 14-3-3, 50/41/62
Hutcherson, 11-3-2, 43/50/71, plus an impressive 2 spg and 1 bpg, he's doing it all

Bowdoin's Zavier Rucker is in the mix as well, I'd say.  NESCAC's loaded rookie class has helped make up for a long of top-tier departures in the off-season.  Those five guys all look like strong ROY candidates (with Hutcherson as the odds-on favorite), but several other guys are close behind: Colby's Wallace Tucker, Wesleyan's Jordan James and Antone Walker, Amherst's Fru Che and Timmy McCarthy, and Conn College's Dan Draffan. 

What's most impressive is that rookies are playing huge roles on three of the top-tier teams in the league, Middlebury, Wesleyan and Amherst.  A good sign for those three as you'd expect their young guys to keep improving over the course of the season and of course into future seasons.

Jordan James has a lot of talent. Saw him at the Williams-Wes game and he made a couple of wow plays.

Took the words right out of my mouth.

He's got some Delpeche in him. Seems aggressive - but I think it's true.

A few late to the party thoughts from Saturday night's Little 3 game.

1. Williams misses Dan Aronowitz: No duh. What I mean is that they miss his alpha-dog clutchness and reliability. From an outsider's perspective, it seemed that any time things got close late in games, the ball would end up in Aronowitz's hands and good things happened. They lack that guy to "bail them out" of tough situations. Scladlock is VERY good, but it seems there is still some adjusting to him being the #1 option. Almost seemed like Greenman, Casey and Heskett were more likely than Scadlock to fire up shots late in Saturday's game.

2. Jordan Sears may be the NESCAC Defensive Player of the Year: He was on Scadlock like glue for almost the entire game and held Scadlock to 15 points on 5-15 (31%) shooting. Sears finished with 4 blocks and 2 steals, plus 10 rebounds, and just generally made life very challenging for Williams' most dangerous threat. Another solid contender from the Cards: Kevin O'Brien who finished with 2 blocks and 4 steals in the contest.

3. Wesleyan's Freshmen are REALLY good: There's no doubt that replacing Harry Rafferty and JOseph Kuo would be tough, but many of their minutes have been filled by longer, leaner, athletic, defensive-minded freshman. I'm not sure any of them will put up the gaudy numbers necessary to be Rookie of the Year, but Austin Hutcherson, Antone Walker and Jordan James are all damn good NESCAC players already.

4. The NESCAC is WIDE Open: Williams is clearly still good enough to win the league. So is Wesleyan. Amherst has the talent to do it and so does Tufts. Bowdoin has some big wins. I think Midd takes the crown this year (again) - but will be fun to see how it shakes out.