MBB: Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

[April]

Lawrence received 6 points in the new poll and Carthage received 3. Cal Lutheran, which is 6-1 and handily defeated both Lawrence and Carthage, doesn't appear in the poll.

What a joke.

OxyBob

I'm not going to lose sleep over Cal Lutheran if the SCIAC voter wasn't even impressed enough to include them.

[/quote]
I posted my thoughts on this on the Top 25 board.

[NWCer]

Those who know Cal Lu, how good are they?  They seem solid, and my Boxers handled them over in Hawaii, just trying to gage Pacific.

Thanks.

Happy Holidays!

[OxyBob]

Those who know Cal Lu, how good are they?  They seem solid, and my Boxers handled them over in Hawaii, just trying to gage Pacific.

I saw CLU play against Carthage and Lawrence, and the Kingsmen beat both of them handily. I thought Cal Lutheran was the better team in both games. However, you do have to keep in mind that a win by a SCIAC team against a CCIW team like Carthage must be given very little weight because if a CCIW team lost on the West Coast then it was because it was a road game, and not only a mere road game, but one where the CCIW team had to fly on an airplane to get there. You also have to factor in that the CCIW players were inexperienced, distracted and excited from sightseeing, tired from traveling, hometowned by the refs, and generally discombobulated.

I am not sure if MWC Lawrence made any excuses for losing to CLU.

OxyBob

[Gregory Sager]

That whine is getting a little old, O-Bob. May I ask how many more times you plan to keep repeating it?

Yeah, we get it. You think that the SCIAC gets no respect, and that the snowbird teams (or perhaps it's just the CCIW snowbird teams) look down their noses at the SCIAC and make excuses when they lose to SCIAC teams. Fine. Everyone's entitled to his opinion. Yet Pat's question still goes unanswered by you or anyone else in this room: Why didn't the SCIAC-based Top 25 pollster see fit to include Cal Lutheran on his ballot?

I raise this question as someone who is completely agnostic on the issue of whether or not Cal Lutheran deserves Top 25 mention. I've seen Carthage play, and in my opinion the Red Men, although fairly decent, are not Top 25 timber. Then again, it's not as though they're getting a lot of love from the pollsters -- three poll points could come down to a single, solitary outlier pollster who likes the Red Men for 23rd place. Who knows ... he could be a Hope or Calvin affiliate. And it's not as though Lawrence (six points) is meeting with widespread acclaim among the pollsters, either. Moreover, the bottom line is that it's a December poll, only the fourth of the season, in fact; the information on each D3 team is still fairly limited, and there's a lot of bleed from preseason expectations, last year's performances, brand-name effects, etc., evident in the current poll snapshot. I don't see a lot of reasons to take poll results at this time of the season all that seriously.

It's a big fuss about very little, as far as I'm concerned.

[OxyBob]

Yet Pat's question still goes unanswered by you or anyone else in this room: Why didn't the SCIAC-based Top 25 pollster see fit to include Cal Lutheran on his ballot?

I won't engage in that kind of sophistry. How the heck should I know why someone whose identity I don't know voted or didn't vote a certain way? Ask them.

OxyBob

[Gregory Sager]

Yet Pat's question still goes unanswered by you or anyone else in this room: Why didn't the SCIAC-based Top 25 pollster see fit to include Cal Lutheran on his ballot?

I won't engage in that kind of sophistry. How the heck should I know why someone whose identity I don't know voted or didn't vote a certain way? Ask them.

Pat's question was rhetorical. Of course you (and the rest of the SCIAC regulars) don't know the pollster's identity, because he has never revealed himself. The point of the question is that there is a much better target for your ire than your CCIW-fan strawman.

In the light of your griping, that rhetorical question is a valid one. Why? Because the SCIAC pollster is almost certainly the only person who is in a position to make a decision about Cal Lutheran's worthiness based upon firsthand observation. The only CCIW supporter who has a Top 25 ballot is Bob Quillman, and as he explained in the Top 25 room he didn't put Cal Lutheran, Carthage, or Lawrence on his Week Four ballot.

[oldchap]

You think that the SCIAC gets no respect...

Well, if you think the SCIAC gets no respect, think about the independents. Chapman beat CMS this season, they are 8-2 and yet are nowhere to be found in the polls. They never made it to the playoffs because it is biased towards the Conferences. They would have to have a near perfect record from this point on to even have an inkling of a chance at a playoff spot. I apologize for sounding like a whiner, and I promise I won't do that again. However, I needed to get this off my chest. 

[dahlby]

I think Chapman's situation is more to their overall strength of schedule.  And they have lost two in region games to the NWC.

Happy Holidays to all.

[OxyBob]

Of course you (and the rest of the SCIAC regulars) don't know the pollster's identity, because he has never revealed himself.

Exactly. I don't know if the voter is a coach, an SID, or a "media member," so I can't comment except to say that there's one SID in the SCIAC who can't count to 7.

The only CCIW supporter who has a Top 25 ballot is Bob Quillman, and as he explained in the Top 25 room he didn't put Cal Lutheran, Carthage, or Lawrence on his Week Four ballot.

If Carthage had beaten CLU then it would have been hailed as a great victory over great odds.

Chapman beat CMS this season, they are 8-2 and yet are nowhere to be found in the polls. They never made it to the playoffs because it is biased towards the Conferences. They would have to have a near perfect record from this point on to even have an inkling of a chance at a playoff spot.

I agree with dahlby. Chapman has a good team, but because they're an independent and because of their strength of schedule, the Panthers have very little room for error if they want to get a Pool B bid. I guess you will have to blame Chapman's absence from the Top 25 poll on the mysterious "SCIAC pollster."

I apologize for sounding like a whiner, and I promise I won't do that again. However, I needed to get this off my chest.

Don't let a shameless CCIW homer like Sager intimidate you, and don't accept his characterizations of your posts as whining or griping. Just because you state your opinion doesn't make you a whiner or a griper, just a fan like the rest of us.

OxyBob

[Gregory Sager]

You think that the SCIAC gets no respect...

Well, if you think the SCIAC gets no respect, think about the independents. Chapman beat CMS this season, they are 8-2 and yet are nowhere to be found in the polls.

As Dahlby mentioned, Chapman is probably held back somewhat by strength-of-schedule issues. The loss to Whitman, which has a losing record, looks particularly problematic, although the wins over CMS, St. John's, and East Bay State appear to be good ones.

They never made it to the playoffs because it is biased towards the Conferences.

Actually, the opposite is true. The teams eligible for Pool B (independents and members of non-affiliated conferences) are more likely to get into the tourney with mediocre records than are the teams from affiliated conferences (Pool A). Take a look at past tournament brackets; the teams that sport 15-13 or 16-11 records and the like are quite often Pool B teams. Lots of good-but-not-great teams over the years have been able to parlay the fairly light competition for Pool B bids to their advantage. That's the reason why the Multi-Region Topics room that deals with indies and members of non-affiliated conferences has the rather pejorative name "Bumblin' B's"; the common perception is that this pool involves a lot of teams that wouldn't make it into the tourney if they were competing with affiliated-conference teams for berths, and that Pool B teams almost invariably get their clocks cleaned once the tournament starts.

They would have to have a near perfect record from this point on to even have an inkling of a chance at a playoff spot.

Not true. As I advised you last week, make it a point to follow the conversation in the "Bumblin' B's" room in order to track how Chapman lines up against the likes of Nebraska Wesleyan, Maryville (TN), St. Joe's of Brooklyn, Finlandia, Lancaster Bible, etc. You might be surprised at just how well Chapman stacks up against its Pool B peers.

Right now, Chapman has the best regional record (7-2) of any Pool B contender, as far as I can tell. In fact, there's only two other Pool B contenders that I can find that have winning regional records: Nebraska Wesleyan (4-2) and Rust (4-3). As I said, the regulars in the "Bumblin' B's" room (Ralph Turner, etc.) do a very good job of tracking this stuff as the season goes along.

The only CCIW supporter who has a Top 25 ballot is Bob Quillman, and as he explained in the Top 25 room he didn't put Cal Lutheran, Carthage, or Lawrence on his Week Four ballot.

If Carthage had beaten CLU then it would have been hailed as a great victory over great odds.

Baloney. I would never have said such a thing, Q would never have said such a thing, April would never have said such a thing, and Mr. Ypsi would never have said such a thing. That pretty much covers the waterfront in terms of CCIW-alumni posters who post in this room. In fact, one of the frequent complaints from yourself, Fosheezie, HopeJV/GeorgeBush/SalemPavers/D3Ghetto, and other SCIAC posters has been that outsiders have disrespected the level of competition that SCIAC teams present. Given that, how could a Carthage win over CLU have been "hailed as a great victory over great odds" by outsiders if the competition offered by the Kingsmen was considered by them to be substandard?

I agree with dahlby. Chapman has a good team, but because they're an independent and because of their strength of schedule, the Panthers have very little room for error if they want to get a Pool B bid.

That's not true. As I said above, Pool B aspirants actually have a comparative advantage over teams from affiliated conferences in terms of garnering tourney berths. Chapman's problem is that the strength of schedule for the Panthers gets weaker from this point onward. The likes of Dallas, Redlands, and two games apiece against La Sierra and UCSC will drag it down. However, the converse of that is that it should allow Chapman to run up a pretty gaudy regional record by season's end.

Don't let a shameless CCIW homer like Sager intimidate you, and don't accept his characterizations of your posts as whining or griping. Just because you state your opinion doesn't make you a whiner or a griper, just a fan like the rest of us.

"Shameless CCIW homer"? Hardly. On the contrary, I said that Carthage is a decent team, not a Top 25 team. Nor did I offer any excuses for the Red Men's loss to CLU. That was your sarcastic doing, not mine or anybody else's. As I said, I'm completely agnostic on the subject of Cal Lutheran's worthiness of Top 25 recognition.

Nor does oldchap have to "accept [my] characterizations of [his] posts as whining or griping," because I never did so in the first place. I called you out on your griping because you posted your bit of snark about Carthage's supposed excuses twice; in fact, the two posts were almost word-for-word identical. On the other hand, far from being a whiner, oldchap simply seems to be a relative newcomer to the byzantine world of D3 tournament qualifications who will be fine once he learns the ropes about pools, primary and secondary criteria, etc.

Hey, if you feel that it's your mission to take up HopeJV/GeorgeBush/SalemPavers/D3Ghetto's old hobbyhorse about the lack of respect that the SCIAC "fishbowl" gets from national D3 observers, of course you're entirely within your rights to do so. I might even agree with some of what you have to say in that vein -- and if you ever come up with another piece of snark as funny as the "Top 25 is a compass that always points east" line, I'll be the first to laugh at it. But I won't sit idly by and allow myself or anyone else's views on the subject to be distorted as part of your quest to play the role of the victim.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Don't let a shameless CCIW homer like Sager intimidate you, and don't accept his characterizations of your posts as whining or griping. Just because you state your opinion doesn't make you a whiner or a griper, just a fan like the rest of us.

"Shameless CCIW homer"? Hardly. On the contrary, I said that Carthage is a decent team, not a Top 25 team. Nor did I offer any excuses for the Red Men's loss to CLU. That was your sarcastic doing, not mine or anybody else's. As I said, I'm completely agnostic on the subject of Cal Lutheran's worthiness of Top 25 recognition.

Nor does oldchap have to "accept [my] characterizations of [his] posts as whining or griping," because I never did so in the first place. I called you out on your griping because you posted your bit of snark about Carthage's supposed excuses twice; in fact, the two posts were almost word-for-word identical. On the other hand, far from being a whiner, oldchap simply seems to be a relative newcomer to the byzantine world of D3 tournament qualifications who will be fine once he learns the ropes about pools, primary and secondary criteria, etc.

Hey, if you feel that it's your mission to take up HopeJV/GeorgeBush/SalemPavers/D3Ghetto's old hobbyhorse about the lack of respect that the SCIAC "fishbowl" gets from national D3 observers, of course you're entirely within your rights to do so. I might even agree with some of what you have to say in that vein -- and if you ever come up with another piece of snark as funny as the "Top 25 is a compass that always points east" line, I'll be the first to laugh at it. But I won't sit idly by and allow myself or anyone else's views on the subject to be distorted as part of your quest to play the role of the victim.

You already were - back on January 31, 2008 when he previously used the line.

OB has been utterly obsessed with comments Q and I made almost a year ago when Oxy beat IWU.  In his mind, we were 'shameless homers' (sound familiar?) making excuses; since our posts (he has deleted his, thought some remain in quoted posts) are still up, anyone is free to judge whether or not they were inappropriate (late December, 2007).  He has beaten this dead horse to the point that even Pat warned him (March, 2008) to cut it out, but it continued (even on other boards) to the point that I finally exploded (October? 2008).  At that point he deleted his account (which is why he now has so few recorded postings), deleted all his messages, and reappeared a week or so later.  (My explosion was inappropriate and I have apologized to posters [there is even a board devoted to it on Anything Goes/Anything that isn't politics], though I will not apologize to OB until he apologizes to me.)

I think it is a terrible shame, because OB is obviously very knowledgable, cares deeply about d3 basketball, and is often quite witty, but he also seems to have a persecution complex concerning Oxy and the SCIAC in general (probably justified regarding the NCAA bean-counters; NOT in my opinion in terms of d3hoops.com).  To borrow his phrase, one might even conclude he is a 'shameless homer'.

[OxyBob]

Dear Sager and Ypsi,

Thank you very much for the lovely Christmas gift of umbrage and indignation. Beats frankincense and myrrh every time. You shouldn't have.

Sincerely,

OxyBob

[Titan Q]

Here is what I posted after the IWU/Oxy game one year ago...

Occidental 88
IWU 67

http://www.oxyathletics.com/sports/mbkb/2007-08/stats/1229iwu.htm

The Titans got beat by a better team tonight...the Tigers may be the best team the Titans have faced this year.  6-1 guard Connor Whitman is a legit 1st Team All-American candidate and Oxy has a ton of size, including 6-10/240 freshman transfer Sean Anderson from UC-Riverside.

IWU point-guard Travis Rosenkranz was in foul trouble the entire game and only played 14 minutes.  Sean Dwyer, just back from that year-long injury and playing in his third game, was forced into 30 minutes of action.  Not an ideal way for Sean to get back into things.

The Titans couldn't buy a 3-pointer tonight - 2-16 from beyond the arc.  The perimeter guys were all off tonight it seemed. 

Another solid game out of the big guys - Gant with 14 & 10, Chamernik with 16 & 7, and Sexauer with 8 points.  As the freshmen guards continue to settle in and play more consistently, the Titans will improve.

Bottom line tonight though was just Occidental was just too much.  That's a very good team.  The Tiger fans I spoke with after the game all felt like that was their team's best performance of the year so maybe I saw them at their best, but that seems like a team that could do a little damage in the NCAA tournament this year.

Terrible huh?

http://www.d3boards.com/index.php?action=profile;u=310;sa=showPosts;start=1005

[Titan Q]

If Carthage had beaten CLU then it would have been hailed as a great victory over great odds.

And that's why on CCIW Chat I've gone out of my way to remind people that, despite a gaudy non-conference record this year, the league does not have a lot of great wins...

More on that topic...

CCIW vs "Top 25 caliber" teams:

- North Park vs Wash U, neutral (11/15), L, 64-86
- Augustana vs Wash U (11/22), L, 82-87 (OT)
- North Central vs Mt. Vernon Nazarene (11/22), L, 75-91
- IWU @ Olivet Nazarene (12/2), L, 63-76
- North Central vs UW-Whitewater (12/3), L, 54-62
- Millikin @ SIU-E (12/4), W, 70-59
- IWU @ Wash U (12/6), L, 86-93
- Carthage @ Olivet Nazarene (12/12), L, 73-87
- Elmhurst vs UW-Stevens Point (12/13), L, 53-62


CCIW: 1-8

And that's why I've spent so much time on Hoopsville reminding people that Carthage and Wheaton's wins over perennial D3 powers Hope and Calvin shouldn't necessarily be considered big wins, because the two MIAA powers are down a bit.

Yep, just a CCIW homer.

[Gregory Sager]

Dear Sager and Ypsi,

Thank you very much for the lovely Christmas gift of umbrage and indignation. Beats frankincense and myrrh every time. You shouldn't have.

Sincerely,

OxyBob

Count your blessings, O-Bob. It's not every SCIAC fan who gets a visitation at this time of year from three wise men from the east.