MBB: Liberty League

[Greek Tragedy]

Sorry to hear about your loss. Take care of what you need to do.

[Bartman]

Congrats to SLU on the win over Ithaca , maybe the Saint Seniors are ready to make a run?Hobart Seniors take care of business against Skidmore after Aiden Rogers is presented with his 1000th career point basketball.Although Hobart pulled away at the end, Skidmore fought well and has some decent talent for a last place team.Three games remain before the LL playoffs and it is looking like RPI and Vassar are in a good position, but there is still room for some end of season jockeying . 

[UfanBill]

The Union College men's basketball team leads the nation in Free Throw %, shooting 272/340 (80.0%) after last nights 18/21 effort in a one point win over Clarkson 71-70. Clarkson was only 7/18. They needed every made point after ironically two missed 2 FTs with 25 seconds left allowed the Golden Knights one last opportunity. A contested 3 for the tie fell off the rim and a put back layup only made the final score closer. The Garnet Chargers have made a late push to the top half of the Liberty League standings by winning their last 5 games by a total of 12 points! 

[LLFan23]

A win today for RPI against Vassar would essentially seal another regular season title for the engineers. A Vassar win would leave them in the drivers seat but closing against Hobart and Ithaca in the last week of the regular season would be a tall task. Elsewhere around the league Clarkson is fighting for their season against an Ithaca team that holds hope of securing a first round bye while SLU is battling for their season against a scorching hot Union team.

[UfanBill]

This afternoon the St. Lawrence Saints celebrated their final home game of the 2024-25 season as it was senior night for their 6 graduating players. The Union Garnet Chargers, with no seniors on their roster obliged their elders by making it a memorable game for the Saints squad. St. Lawrence forced 11 first half turnovers and Union did little right in falling behind 37-18 at the midpoint. The Garnet didn't fare much better in the second half and St. Lawrence won 74-50. Union, who is tough when they shoot well, had an off night going 19/59 and only 3/22 from the arc. They did hit 9/10 free throws to keep their national #1 ranking in that category. St. Lawrence dominated defensively with 13 steals among Union's 18 turnovers. In a season that's been disappointing for the Saints veteran squad it was evident they came motivated today.   

[d3d3d3]

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

[LLFan23]

Vassar's demolition makes the last week of league play much more exciting. They now control their own destiny but could finish as low as 3rd. Vassar looked great today, a strong weekend against Ithaca and  Hobart will position them as a well and away favorite to win the league. RPI seems to have everyone else's number this year except for Vassar.

[Bartman]

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

Hobart has no consistency this season . I'm not optimistic that they can put two , yet alone three good games together. Last night quite a few players were playing with the flu as the Meshanicks had an off game that could have been their last home game. Hopefully they can get two road wins next weekend and secure one more home game .

[stlawus]

Appreciate all the comments of condolences, truly means a lot.  Shows what a great community these boards are. 

With excellent play and a little luck up route 11 SLU rescued their season for the time being.  Union was red hot coming into Canton but as mentioned above the SLU seniors had other ideas.  SLU really has not had a bad defensive game this season aside from the one road game against Clarkson. Their inconsistency on offense is what has tripped them up this year, so hoping that all the experience on the team carries them through this final stretch and they can get shots to fall.  Not out of the woods yet as Clarkson can still leap them if SLU stumbles next weekend and Clarkson prevails.  Actually, now that I look at it, Bard is ahead of Clarkson due to tiebreakers.  So some serious high stakes basketball is going to be played next weekend. 

1st seed still very much up for grabs among any of the top 3, should be a great final regular season weekend to see where the dust settles. 

[LLFan23]

Anybody know the up to date order of tie breakers for playoff seeding?

[stlawus]

Off the top of my head it's head to head followed by record against opponents higher in the standings starting from the top down.  After that it's record against opponents from the team immediately below and compare down.

[stlawus]

The playoff field is set with Bard and Clarkson getting eliminated.  Seedings are still very fluid.  After losing at home to Hobart Vassar needs to win tomorrow AND have RPI lose to SLU to finish in first place. There are so many seeding implications tomorrow it's not even worth typing it all out. Union having the season sweep of RPI gets them the tie breaker in a lot of these scenarios.  Union winning tomorrow gets them a home game regardless.  SLU will need multiple combinations of results to get into 5th place which could see Hobart dropping to 6th.  I believe that hinges upon Clarkson losing to Skidmore/Bard beating RIT as crazy as that sounds. 

On a somewhat of a side note, it looks like Joe Burke's frustrations over the current state of the Skidmore program is boiling over a bit.  Had a completely ridiculous and uncalled for reaction to Downs in the first half after the refs gave a Skidmore player a warning for saying something to the SLU bench after a made 3.  Downs wanted the ref to say or do something and Burke lost his mind thinking Downs was yelling at his player and had to be restrained by his assistants from going after Downs.  Downs reciprocated but Burke grossly overreacted which earned him a technical.  He absolutely hates losing to SLU and I guess reached a breaking point.  Certainly not going to earn your team any goodwill after that.

[UfanBill]

RIT shot an incredible 19/38 from behind the arc, with nine different guys hitting a three , 37/70, 52.9 % overall and lost the game 100-98 to Union. How? the Garnet Chargers lit it up at an even better rate shooting 36/63, 57.1 % and 10/22 from 3. Again Union won the game with their nation leading free throw shooting 16/18 to RIT's 5/7. There were 12 ties and 24 lead changes in this back and forth contest. It was the two free throw misses after making their first 16 in a row at the end that once again gave Union's opposition a chance to win or tie but a Tiger jumper at the buzzer clanked off the rim. Union improves to 10-7 in the Liberty League to sew up a playoff spot. 

[stlawus]

Also, if Ithaca beats Vassar and RPI loses to SLU RPI will get the 1st seed by virtue of sweeping Ithaca.

[mrhoopfan]

RIT shot an incredible 19/38 from behind the arc, with nine different guys hitting a three , 37/70, 52.9 % overall and lost the game 100-98 to Union. How? the Garnet Chargers lit it up at an even better rate shooting 36/63, 57.1 % and 10/22 from 3. Again Union won the game with their nation leading free throw shooting 16/18 to RIT's 5/7. There were 12 ties and 24 lead changes in this back and forth contest. It was the two free throw misses after making their first 16 in a row at the end that once again gave Union's opposition a chance to win or tie but a Tiger jumper at the buzzer clanked off the rim. Union improves to 10-7 in the Liberty League to sew up a playoff spot. 

RIT defense has been beyond awful......very disappointing season for a team that finished 3rd in the conference last year and returned 8 of their 9 top guys