I'm going to be sappy for a moment and say I missed all of you NESCAC board folk during the site's hiatus.

I did manage to catch up with Toad in person when Williams visited Midd, and subsequently shared a chuckle with Kevin App, when he asked how old my son was when he and Mike Maker came into my home years ago on a scouting trip in Vermont. Answer: He was 3 then; he's 17 now and a HS senior. I pointed out Young Bucket, in the stands. He laughed and said he had kids of his own now. (For context, Maker and Bucket have been friends for decades.)

I will have more to share on the season after the games are done.

For now, all attention should be paid to Trinity, Tufts, and Williams. Good luck, gentlemen. Make us proud.

All-league teams out.  No huge surprises, other than the fact that they've expanded to 14 total players from 10, which I don't love, as 10 worked fine for the last 23 years including in years where a lot of good players were excluded.   Going to 14 this year leads to really having to stretch to include some guys ...

https://nescac.com/news/2024/2/28/rowing-nescac-releases-mens-basketball-awards.aspx

My biggest issue with this is picking Begin over Medley as ROTY.  Begin poured it on in certain games against bad competition for a truly terrible Bates team.  In conference games, he mostly struggled, jacking up loads of shots with low efficiency.  Meanwhile, Medley was a strong two-way player who often closed games for a worlds-better Tufts team.  And he was clearly better than Begin, overall, in conference games.  I don't see rewarding a guy on a 3-21 team unless there is simply no alternative choice.  And while this wasn't a great year for rookies overall, Medley stood out as the most impactful first year player on a top-tier team. 

I know these are individual awards, but it's also a bit odd to see Conn with the (deserved) POTY as well as TWO other guys on all-league teams, while Williams only has one all-league player on even the expanded all-league roster, despite finishing first in the regular season and making it to the title game, while Conn's season ended in the first round of the conference championship.  If you are going to go to 14 guys, either Alex Lee or Brandon Roughley would have been deserving. 

Have to 100% agree and again if you are going with 7 per team, and why did they change this, than Smith needs to be on the 2nd team.

Its almost like the coaches decided to keep too many people happy. Should have been the best 10 and that is it.

Agree with you on ROY and the Conn analysis. If both Williams and Trinity were better and Williams only gets 1 and Trinity only gets 2, that is wrong. For Conn either Elias or Cam, or maybe neither actually, certainly not both.

Someone came up with the 14, imo, it lessons the awards. Like giving everyone a medal. Why not go to 8, 9 or 10 per team. There are 5 players on the court, that should be the number. Hamilton didn't deserve 2 either.

Quote from: nescac1 on February 29, 2024, 11:26:41 AMI know these are individual awards, but it's also a bit odd to see Conn with the (deserved) POTY as well as TWO other guys on all-league teams, while Williams only has one all-league player on even the expanded all-league roster, despite finishing first in the regular season and making it to the title game, while Conn's season ended in the first round of the conference championship.  If you are going to go to 14 guys, either Alex Lee or Brandon Roughley would have been deserving. 

Can also point to the 7th and 8th teams having two to Williams's one. Wes I can understand; it's hard to leave off Nicky Johnson. For the Conts, Morgan was a first-team lock. Seems like Singh might be more of a reputation pick than actual performance.

Congrats to the outgunned Ephs and Coach App - somehow they managed to beat a team with 2 first teamers, the DPOY, and the COY, another two teams with 2 all-league players, and a team with 3 all-league players. All with just one of the top 14 players, impressive!

In all seriousness, this is stupid and has nothing to do with Williams. My hope is that this was some one off thing where there were a lot of ties in the voting, but my gut tells me this is the new way they are going to do it, which is a massive mistake. At the very least, just had 1 more guy and do 3 teams of 5. That way we can compare historical context and preserve 1st and 2nd team and understand its importance.

Also Begin was a healthy scratch in a rotation for a team that won 3 games while Jon Medley was playing rotation minutes for an NCAA tournament team. If you polled the coaches all 11 would rather have Medley, Furbush included.

The did the same thing on the Women's side, 7 on each team. So guessing this is the way it will be going forward.

I like your thought, add 1 more player and just do three teams of 5.

None of this would even be an issue with a 10-guy team, but when you compare Alex Lee to Cam Schainfeld:

Lee: 11/4/2 on 41/28/80 as the primary ball-handler and top perimeter defender for a team that beat Conn, finished first in regular season, and played in the league title game, vs. ...

Schainfeld: 9/2/3 on 35/19/80 (plus two spg, and like Lee an excellent defender and primary ballhandler) for a team that finished third in the regular season, and lost in the first round. 

Just not sure what the argument is for Schainfeld (who's a very good player, I'm not trying to ding him here) as the THIRD guy from Conn over Lee as the second guy from Williams.  And agree that if you go to 14 guys, Dana Smith is worthy of one of those spots as well. 

You all follow and care about this more than I, but one of my pet peeves is that awards go to the best players on the best teams rather than simply to the best players. It's one thing to name someone MVP/Player of the year, but why should a Ralph Kiner be punished because he plays for the last placed Pirates? Players always look better on good teams as they simply don't have to do as much to excel. Some do, fine. But that doesn't mean because the other 4 players are subpar, that you weren't one of the best in the league. Most all-league, all-American lists lose some credibility in my eyes over this. Not all stars on bad teams deserve awards but the BJ Armstrongs don't deserve them either.

Fair points all around and I don't really disagree - however, the precedent for the most part has been set as heavily weighting best players on best teams. I would actually argue this is the first year where there have been guys in the bottom of the league that have clearly produced at a higher level and shown a higher ability than guys at the top - Morgan, Johnson, Regan, even Poulton, etc. Makes it even more confusing as to how Conn got 3 guys on there.

My pet peeve is really only (or *was* only, before they added 4 new spots) the stretching to include guys from so many different teams. There probably aren't all league guys at 7-8 schools every year.

All I can say about all league is this:  the coaches vote.  They see every team play live and on video countless times.  As followers of NESCAC hoops we have the right to disagree, and its a fun exercise.  But they have the expertise, and it's hard to imagine them voting for someone they genuinely think doesn't deserve it.  From personal experience of over 25 years as basketball coach in division three I can say that while I sometimes didn't agree with all league picks made by coaches, I could understand their perspective.

Correct but the gripe is the criteria and the lens they are looking through. The precedent has been set to spread out the nominees to all the teams, so the coaches are weighing whether or not the best player at school A is better than the second or third best player at school B, which then turns into whether or not school B is good enough to warrant two or three selections, so on and so forth. If every year it was just the players from the top 4-5 schools, they would be voting through a different scope.

Also I don't think they spend as much time as we do thinking about it. They are head down, one day at a time, preparing for games and recruiting the entire season. Then they are asked to vote a few days after it all ends and they do the best they can.

Williams leads 30-21 at halftime against DeSales. It has been a total rock fight and I wouldn't say it was part of their game plan to turn it over 9 times but they have certainly become comfortable at winning ugly like this. Alex Stoddard and Hudson Hansen in particular had nice halves off the bench and they will need their depth for another 20 minutes. One thing to keep an eye on - DeSales outrebounding the Ephs 22-15, a number of those on the offensive end. If they can cut down on their second chances they have a great chance of advancing to tomorrow.

Williams absolutely unloads on DeSales  to start the second half and advances to the Round of 32 for the 6th time in 7 years, winning 77-51. After leading by a comfortable 9 points heading into the locker room the Ephs absolutely blitzed DeSales to open the half, hitting 5 of their first 7 threes as part of what I believe ended up being a 22-2 run that really put the game out of reach earlier than expected, with the lead ballooning to 39 at one point before some tough Bulldog shot making.

First of all, the Oswego St. broadcast was as advertised - really impressive student broadcasting crew, production, all of it. Worthy of a tournament game.

Secondly, it was a great time to play the best 10 minutes of the season for Williams. They played the same defense they do every possession - solid, disciplined, and unrelenting mentally. And then when you make 5 threes in a row to open things up, the game gets a lot easier. Cole Prowitt-Smith (14 pts), Alex Stoddard (13 pts), and Alex Lee (13 pts) all made 3 threes each, Karren finally got to see the ball go through the hoop, and Hudson Hansen even made the first three of his career for good measure.

A game like this has such an exponential effect on your confidence regardless of how you are playing heading in, so it will be interesting to see how this affects the Ephs tomorrow against the winner of Oswego/Babson. They are still improving and have room to grow as a group because of how often their lineup has changed this year, another reason to have more confidence. And they didn't play anyone more than 28 minutes tonight which could be huge tomorrow.

Congrats to Coach App and the team, another great win! Remarkable last six weeks.

Wow, what a game -- just an utter domination by Williams.  The Ephs were longer and a lot quicker than DeSales and DeSales just couldn't get any good looks on offense, it must have felt like playing a team in slow motion for Williams after dealing with lightning-quick Trinity last weekend.  The Williams defense had DeSales at I think 21 points with 15 minutes left in the game before letting up a bit in garbage time. 

The Ephs got into a rhythm from 3 and really had it cooking in a way we've rarely seen this year on offense.  Hope they save some of those outside shots for tomorrow!  When Hudson Hansen is nailing a 3, you know it's your day from outside.  The entire Williams team played great but Nate Karren, Alex Lee, Cole Prowitt-Smith, Alex Stoddard and Hansen all really had it cooking on both ends of the floor. 

Tough day for DeSales overall but shout out to Devin Atkinson who seemed like the only guy in a groove for DeSales and he was fighting hard out there even down 30. 

Tomorrow will be a very different type of game as both Oswego and Babson are far more athletic teams than DeSales.

As for Coach App, that's 6-6 in round one NCAA games, including the last two years when Williams was the (ostensible) underdog, or at least the lower-seeded team.  Can't do much better than that! 

Tufts squeaks out a great game against Stockton. Speaking of guards that are really good that didn't make all-league, Khai Champion made some big shots in crunch time for Tufts. Good chance to get all 3 teams through to the second round with reasonable looks at Sweet 16 appearances as well.