WBB: Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference

[NACfan215]

LC v. Marian postponed till tomorrow night as well.

[WLCALUM83]

Joining Rockford/Benedictine in progress -tied at 9 approx midway thru 1st half

[Captain_Joe08]

My only updates of the night (I have to leave shortly for Tennis Practice)

Wisconsin Lutheran 26
Concordia Chicago 11

6:39 1st Half

Dominican 15
Aurora 12

4:39 1st Half

[WLCALUM83]

Benedictine up 25-22 on Rockford  6 seconds left in 1st half

Other 2 halftime scores:

Aurora 21, Dominican 17

WLC 34, Concordia-Chicago 19

[WLCALUM83]

Final:  Benedictine 59, Rockford 58  (Regents had 2 opportunities in the last minute, but a traveling call with 37 secs left and good D by the Eagles on the Regents last trip down the floor were keys for this game--Eagles' Novak had a career high 26 pts.

Other finals:

WLC 79, Concordia-Chicago 37

Dominican got off the in-conference schneid, beating Aurora 70-64

(If my figuring is correct, with those results, WLC has clinched at least a tie for the South title.)

THIS JUST IN:

Per NAthCon standings, Benedictine has clinched a playoff spot.

[WLCALUM83]

Remaining schedule for South division in-contention squads:

CUC:  at Marian, at Dominican, vs. MSOE. at BU
Aurora:  at Lakeland, at Rockford, vs. MBBC, vs. WLC
Rockford:   at CUW, vs. Aurora, vs. Edgewood, vs. Dominican

Should CUC and Rockford finish in a tie for the last playoff spot, the Cougars would get in, having swept the Regents head to head. CUC also swept Aurora head to head. Of the above squads, CUC figures to have the easiest schedule, (at least on paper.) Either Aurora or Rockford need to win out and get help -(impossible for both to win out.)

[Captain_Joe08]

Yes WLC has clinched a at least a share of the South division title.

Concordia Wisconsin can clinch at least a share of the North division title with a win against Rockford this weekend. It will be a race to decide who gets the number one overall seed in the tournament.

Currently, WLC has a 1.5 game lead on CUW for the #1 overall seed. CUW needs WLC to lose once and beat them when they hook up at the REX for Winterfest on 2/9 if they want home court advantage in the conference tournament.

Also it seems Dominican still has a long shot to make the conference tournament, but they need to win out and Aurora and Rockford to lose their last remaining games.

[Just Bill]

Currently, WLC has a 1.5 game lead on CUW for the #1 overall seed. CUW needs WLC to lose once and beat them when they hook up at the REX for Winterfest on 2/9 if they want home court advantage in the conference tournament.

Nope, that's not how it's going to work. Conference record won't matter. The #1 or #2 seed will be determined solely based on the result of their one head-to-head matchup. So assuming they each win their division, the winner of the WLC-CUW game will be the #1 seed for the tournament, even if WLC ultimately has a better record. Same thing goes for the #3/#4, the #5/#6 and the #7/#8.

[NACfan215]

Currently, WLC has a 1.5 game lead on CUW for the #1 overall seed. CUW needs WLC to lose once and beat them when they hook up at the REX for Winterfest on 2/9 if they want home court advantage in the conference tournament.

Nope, that's not how it's going to work. Conference record won't matter. The #1 or #2 seed will be determined solely based on the result of their one head-to-head matchup. So assuming they each win their division, the winner of the WLC-CUW game will be the #1 seed for the tournament, even if WLC ultimately has a better record. Same thing goes for the #3/#4, the #5/#6 and the #7/#8.

I thought last year seemed stupid when LC and CUW had to play each other in the first round based on the NAC challenge outcome (both being much stronger than their with counterparts). But this just seems as stupid as that theory, one team could clearly be better on the overall season, but if they have one bad game it could cost them a higher seeding.  I hope next year when they combined the divisions a lot of these scenerios will be fixed

[Just Bill]

It will all work out next year, when there's no divisions and everyone plays the same number of conference games.

Essentially, the coaches couldn't come to an agreement about how to resolve seeding for the tournament, so they choose the simplest (if not the most logical) way.

[NACfan215]

Makes sense in terms of seeding, as long as they can come up with an efficient tie breaker system.  Especially with a rotating schedule where not everyone will play everyone else in the conference twice, but rotate each year who thy play twice and who they play once.  What happens if you get stuck playing WLC and CUW twice in one year and someone else who finished one game ahead of you in the standings played Rockford and Aurora twice instead, but finished ahead of you in the standings by one game even if you beat them head to head by 40 and are clearly the superior team? Still seems like a lot of potential uneven factors! Or I'm just thinking about this too in depth. Haha

[Just Bill]

I'm not certain, but I believe next year's schedule will be a full double round robin. Shouldn't be any issues like that.

[Captain_Joe08]

Only thing I can think of that is a detriment to the double round robin games. is that it cuts down on the number of non-conference games each team gets (MIAC does the same double round-robin format and they have three out of conference games). Kind of makes gauging a team with 20 or so wins due to playing in a possibly a weak conference.

I agree that basing the seeding off of one game is ridiculous especially if one team is clearly better than the other and has an off night and loses and as a result is seeded lower than that team. (Was the NathC Challenge something to determine the seeding for the teams that made the tournament?)

It is nice to get rid of the Challenge game because on the women's side the last place team in the seven team division had to play a non NathC team (such as Mount Mary).

[Just Bill]

The purpose of the challenge game was partially to decide the seedings between the teams in the same position. They used the one regular season game, plus the Challenge game to determine who got the higher seed. The drawback was half the time the Challenge game didn't matter. If the team that won the first game also held the tiebreaker, there was nothing the other team could do. Plus it ate up a date on the schedule. Personally, I thought it was stupid.

The decrease in the non-conference games is an issue, but it's partially relieved with the deaparture of Maranatha next year. Men will play 20 conference games, and 5 non-conference games. Women will play 22 conference games and 3 non-conference games.

The lack of non-conference games would become a bigger issue if the NathCon was routinely putting multiple teams in Pool C consideration. Right now, that's not really happening. The big problem is that so much of the league has losing records, everyone's SOS is dragged down. Unfortunately playing fewer non-conference games might not help that problem, although with 22 NathCon games the records should normalize and there should be more teams near or above .500 than there is this year.

[WLCALUM83]

Marian vs. Lakeland on deck: