WBB: Northwest Conference

[d3wbbfan]

Whitman advances to its first Final Four, defeating #1 Thomas More 76-60. Both Sarah Anderegg (20 pts/11 rebs) and Meghan White (15 pts/11 rebs) had double-doubles. Heather Johns added 13, Hailey McDonald 10, and Tiffani Traver 9 for the Missionaries, who reached the 30-win plateau for the first time in school history with tonight's win, and are now 30-1 overall.

Thomas More loses for the first time this season, and ends their season at 31-1. Sydni Wainscott led the Saints with 13, while Jenny Burgoyne also hit double-figures with 10.

This game was marred, however, by an untimely knee injury suffered late in the first half by SO Saints star Sydney Moss, who entered the game as the country's DIII scoring leader, at over 28 ppg. Moss checked out with 7:24 left to go in the half, with the score knotted at 19, and was sadly unable to return.

Whitman held a slim 25-23 lead at the half, but started the second stanza on fire, scoring the half's first 13 points out of the gate, all before the first media timeout, to quickly extend their lead to 15, at 38-23. From there, the closest Thomas More could manage to get was to within 8, at 45-37, on a 3 from SR G Katie Kitchen, with 10:48 to play. The Missionaries, however, quickly re-established their 11-16 point cushion, pushing their lead late to as high as 17, before settling for the 16-point margin of victory.

Whitman will next face the Warhawks of #13 Wisconsin-Whitewater, who knocked out the defending champs earlier Saturday, #3 DePauw, 88-71, in a replay of last season's national final, and did it on DePauw's home floor. Whitewater will be the only school with previous Final Four experience, although they return just two starters from last season's national runner-up club. The Warhawks will also have the advantage of having the 2014 Final Four played just over two hours away from their own campus, in nearby Stevens Point, WI.

In the other Final Four national semi-final game, it will be #4 Tufts (30-1), who squeaked past unranked Ithaca at home, 61-59. The Jumbos will face off against the last 13-14 unbeaten DIII team, the #6 Devils of Fairleigh Dickinson Univ.-Florham (31-0), who beat fellow New Jersey DIII power and #8 Montclair State (28-3) 73-53 at home.   

[gordonmann]

Not to detract from Whitman, but that's a disappointing ending for Moss and the Saints' undefeated run. I was looking forward to seeing whether TMC could beat Whitman on the road, but without her, there wasn't much chance of that.

Sadly, this should be a familiar story for NWC fans. 

[d3wbbfan]

Thanks, BruinFan. Believe me when I say that Whitman was playing this weekend for Coach Higgs' Pirates, Coach Meek's Bruins, UPS, L&C and for the entire NWC. I said when the bracket was first announced that I felt it was gonna be much easier for Whitman to win two games the *second* weekend than it was during the first weekend. And it was 100% true. The NWC toughened up all of its top teams. So I truly hope you feel a part of our team's Final Four journey, although I know it's not quite the same.

I am still in disbelief that Whitman was selected as the Sweet 16 host. I think you are spot on, that the NCAA must've felt some huge "buyer's remorse" at their decision. Fair is fair - no how tight the NCAA money is. But the bottom line is that the NWC champs should regularly be hosting the Sweet 16. It's a shame your Bruins had to win so many games on the road, previously. I hope we've done the NWC proud. Honestly, at this point, it's all Whitman can do for you guys.

The only downside is that Whitman will now be getting little or no national credit for the Thomas More win. The pundits will instantly claim "Whitman only won because Sydney Moss got hurt early in the game!" Well, I don't agree with that at all. We'd held them to just 19 points in the nearly 13 minutes before Moss got hurt. She only had 6 points, far below her 28+ppg average. Whitman plays great defense. Every night. Thomas More is used to track meets, and routinely posting 100+ points. Their league is not strong. The Saints are just not used to busting it on D. Whitman had Thomas More playing at OUR pace, not us at their pace. That's the tip-off how it would turn out. Because running teams *hate* playing slowly. And they only were playing slow because they had to. Their shots were being highly contested. Throughout history, how many teams with the Saints' run-and-gun style has ever won a national championship? I can't think of even one.   

Now I'm not saying Whitman is gonna win it all. But Whitman's style and pace has won championships before. Often. As for Whitewater, they added a highly skilled 6'2" post at mid-season. Kristen Ruchti played two years at DII, but burned out on hoops, and transferred to Whitewater to play volleyball only. But WBB coach Keri Corollo knew how good she was in HS, knew she had enrolled, spoke to her, and left the hoops door open, should she decide to later reconsider. She never did. But once she finished her final volleyball season in Jan., the now fifth-year SR was contacted one more time by a rather desperate Corollo, whose was starting 4 guards, had just lost twice in the D3 classic, and whose team was in dire need of quality size. As in "Uh, Kristen - want one last chance at college hoops - just for the rest of this season?" Kristen still waffled, but finally agreed. Whitewater WBB has lost only once, since she was added. And it was this very same Ruchti who absolutely destroyed DePauw down low Saturday. She's gonna be big trouble vs anybody she goes up against. And Whitman's next. And SR G Mary Merg is *still* eating nails, that her team lost in the final last year. "Focused" and "single-minded" just don't do her justice. Obsessed 24/7? More like it - in a good way. But Whitman has two highly skilled, veteran posts of their own. 

And if the Whits are fortunate enough to beat Whitewater, and reach the final, I'm quite confident of the Whits' chances against the Tufts/FDU-Florham winner. I've seen almost *every* Tufts 13-14 game (as they are my "eastern fave", as luck would have it). But, as objectively as I can possibly be, my eyes say that Whitman is 15+ points better than Tufts. And even worse for the Jumbos, their only reliable threat from 3 (Hannah Foley) was in street clothes all weekend. That left the Jumbos with only *four* highly skilled players. (Kanner, North, Morehead and Moynihan.) And FDU-Florham has feasted all year on pressing/causing turnovers. They are extremely athletic. Just like Christopher Newport was. And we saw how that strategy worked against Whitman. It didn't. And, although it's not a knock, the Devils have also had a very favorable draw so far. But like I said about Thomas More - you can only beat the teams on your schedule. And they have. We'll see. Thanks for still checking in to the NW Board, BruinFan. It's more fun to hang around with my "NWC Buddies" like you!

[d3wbbfan]

Just watched the Saturday Wisconsin-Whitewater post game press conference, after their great win at DePauw. (It's on YouTube). Full credit to the Warhawk players - they were flat-out masterful in victory. But that game ended hours before the Whitman-Thomas More game tipped off. During the interview's final minute, Whitewater HC Keri Corollo clearly said that she expects to play Thomas More next. Period. Doesn't any coach worth their salt at least give the old "no matter who we're playing next, we'll be ready" answer? Instead of giving the later discredited-and-asterisked-in-victory "Whitman only advanced to the FF because Sydney Moss got hurt early" Missionaries even *more* bulletin board material? It's "Press Conference 101". (Of course, Corollo didn't yet know of the Moss injury, since it hadn't happened yet. BTW, I hope and pray Sydney makes a full recovery-the players just work so hard.) I am not making the coach's statement up. Listen to it yourself, NWC fans. Thanks for allowing Whitman to glimpse your true feelings, Coach Corollo. But be careful what you wish for. It will be the Missionaries, not the Saints, that will be playing you next weekend. The staff and players at Whitman are an extremely classy bunch, so I know they'll forgive your snub. But they surely won't forget. As for me? I'm just a fan. So I'm allowed to hold just a bit of a grudge about you trying to eliminate my team prematurely. So I think I will.   

[BruinFan]

Not to detract from Whitman, but that's a disappointing ending for Moss and the Saints' undefeated run. I was looking forward to seeing whether TMC could beat Whitman on the road, but without her, there wasn't much chance of that.

Sadly, this should be a familiar story for NWC fans. 

Gordan, you read my mind. I just went and skimmed the championship game write-up that you linked and I found this amazing statement.

"On Saturday, they trailed early, then caught a bit of a break when George Fox center Hannah Munger went down with a knee injury with 12:40 to go in the first half."

A "bit of a break" -  wow. Hannah Munger was having a terrific tournament and to minimize her departure is amazing. It was probably said to try and not take away from the IWU victory, but folks in Newberg consider that the single greatest factor in the loss.

The difference between that game and last night's Whitman/TM game was that Munger left the game 5 minutes earlier than Moss and the Bruins fought back and even had a lead in the second half.

Again, I would much prefer both teams at full strength. I'm happy for Whitman and the NWC and I do wish a full recovery for Moss.

[Roundball999]

Not to detract from Whitman, but that's a disappointing ending for Moss and the Saints' undefeated run. I was looking forward to seeing whether TMC could beat Whitman on the road, but without her, there wasn't much chance of that.

Sadly, this should be a familiar story for NWC fans. 

Gordan, you read my mind. I just went and skimmed the championship game write-up that you linked and I found this amazing statement.

"On Saturday, they trailed early, then caught a bit of a break when George Fox center Hannah Munger went down with a knee injury with 12:40 to go in the first half."

A "bit of a break" -  wow. Hannah Munger was having a terrific tournament and to minimize her departure is amazing. It was probably said to try and not take away from the IWU victory, but folks in Newberg consider that the single greatest factor in the loss.

The difference between that game and last night's Whitman/TM game was that Munger left the game 5 minutes earlier than Moss and the Bruins fought back and even had a lead in the second half.

Again, I would much prefer both teams at full strength. I'm happy for Whitman and the NWC and I do wish a full recovery for Moss.

Similarly, I find it amazing that some here minimize the impact of Moss' departure.  For goodness sake, she was a very strong player as just a freshman in a D1 powerhouse conference.  One can't know for sure who would have won if GF had Munger or TM had Moss for full games.  But surely if it is thought Munger's injury was the single biggest loss in GF's loss then one must reasonably conclude the same is true of Moss's loss.  Game was basically tied when Moss went down, Whitman wins by 16 thereafter.

None of this is to take away from Whitman's victory.  It is what it is and all teams play with the cards they are dealt.  We all know other very strong teams that lost an outstanding player or two to injury along the way and it's human nature to speculate "what if".   We can't know.  But TM will not appear in the record books with an asterisk as "could have been national champ" and if Whitman wins it they will have beaten everyone they needed to beat and will be deserving national champs - with no asterisk.  Congratulations to Whitman, they are deserving and have done exactly what they needed to do.  I for one will be cheering for them, however if I were a betting man my money's on Whitewater.

[mkt]

I only caught the last half of the second half of the game against TMC, so thanks again for the write-up d3wbbfan and congrats to the Whitman Missionaries and the NWC.

Sydney Moss's injury is unfortunate all around, for the reasons already given.  I appreciate d3wbbfan's analysis of how much that may have affected the game.

But I don't see people here "minimizing" the impact of Moss's injury; I see them acknowledging it.  An example of minimizing would be that article that GordonMann linked to, which didn't even mention Munger's injury until the 13th paragraph.  At first I assumed that was because it was written by either the Illinois Wesleyan athletic department, or a fan or writer who is close to IWU.  But it came from d3hoops.com.

My first reaction was that I expected better balance from an article at d3hoops.com.  But then I realized that not surprisingly d3hoops.com cannot create all of its own content, it often links to articles on other sites.  E.g. d3hoops' recaps of last night's Whitman-TMC game are links to an article from Whitman (which doesn't mention Moss's injury until the 14th paragraph -- but given that it is a Whitman article about Whitman's team, one has to expect the article to focus on the Whitman players and not TMC's), and an article from Thomas More College (which mentions Moss's injury in its 3rd paragraph).

So, not surprisingly the coverage from Whitman and TMC give different degrees of prominence to Moss's injury.  And for that game, d3hoops currently has little content to add; all it has is links to those two articles.  But they did make sure to link to both the Whitman coverage and the Thomas more coverage, so given their stretched resources that's proper balanced coverage of the game.

d3wbbfan by the way mentioned Moss's injury in the 3rd paragraph of his post.

The coverage of the 2012 IWU-GFU game is still a bit of a mystery however.  IWU's website has an article which covers their championship win and mentions Munger's injury in its 8th paragraph.  I can't find what George Fox Univ had to say about the game but it's safe to assume that Munger's injury was probably at least as prominently mentioned.

But the d3hoops article that GordonMann linked to was not the IWU article, indeed it has a byline which says "Pat Coleman d3sports.com".  At first I wondered if he was some local Illinois reporter that d3hoops hired as a freelancer or stringer, but (assuming it's the same Pat Coleman) he's even won awards for Div 3 reporting.

So Pat Coleman's article should have reflected neutral coverage of the IWU-GFU game.  It does have some neutral aspects, e.g. the very first words of the article are:  "George Fox led by nine early and led by six late" so in that regard it was not failing to mention IWU's opponent.  But to not even mention Munger's injury until the 13th paragraph (even IWU mentioned it in the 8th paragraph of their article)?  That's minimizing an injury.

Bottom line:  Moss's injury was a big deal.  Munger's injury was a big deal.  The partisan writers (at the athletic departments) gave those injuries different degrees of emphasis, as is to be expected.  d3wbbfan gave Moss's injury a high degree of emphasis, which is the right thing to do.  Pat Coleman's d3hoops article is a mystery to me because he failed at that.  He may've won an award, but it's poor writing to bury what was at least the third most important feature of the game in the 13th paragraph.  (Most important feature of course is that IWU won the game and the championship; second most important is arguable although some would argue that Munger's injury was the second most important feature.)

Actually, although I can't find the full text of the award, it appears that Pat Coleman won that award for providing statistical and ranking services to Div 3 schools.  As opposed to sportswriting.  That might explain things a bit.

[mkt]

P.S.  Found Pat Coleman's bio (I was ignoring the d3sports.com urls because I was trying to find articles about him rather than by him).  Executive editor at d3sports so let me quickly say that the d3sports website is a wonderful service because it provides coverage of a frequently overlooked portion of college sports -- and provides the fans a voice as well, namely these very boards that we're using right now.

But that was still a poorly constructed article.  "A bit of a break"?  13th paragraph?   If someone were to write that about Sydney Moss and the Whitman game, what would you think of the writer?  (Again, the athletic departments of Whitman and Illinois Wesleyan get a pass here because their emphasis has to be on their own players.)

[gordonmann]

We essentially have a staff of 4-10 writers so we rely on schools to post their own press releases on games until the championship games when we write our own. The Whitman and Thomas More SIDs do an awesome job posting stuff on our website. I'm grateful to both of them for doing so.

People will discount Whitman's win over Thomas More because of Moss' absence and they should. That doesn't mean Whitman wouldn't have won if Moss played (they may have) or that Whitman isn't a great team (they are). The unfortunate thing is we'll never know who wins the game if Moss is healthy for all of it. Same goes for George Fox against Illinois Wesleyan.

As Roundball noted, Moss' injury will basically be a footnote to Whitman's story if they win it all, and it should be. Whitman is a special team and I look forward to seeing them in Wisconsin this weekend.

[mkt]

Thanks, so it seems that one additional piece of information is that it's up to the college SIDs to post to d3hoops.com, which thankfully both Whitman and Thomas More College did, providing valuable coverage (and of course thanks again to d3wbbfan for providing coverage from the viewpoint of a third party).

And thanks again to D3Sports and it staff, including and especially Pat Coleman, it's a great website. 

But man, I'd expect better from an award-winning sports media guy.  Whitman burying Moss's injury into the 14th paragraph is okay, given the purposes of their coverage (and given that we can see Thomas More College's version, with the links side by side).  Coleman's burying Munger's injury into the 13th paragraph was not okay.

[wildcat11]

But man, I'd expect better from an award-winning sports media guy.  Whitman burying Moss's injury into the 14th paragraph is okay, given the purposes of their coverage (and given that we can see Thomas More College's version, with the links side by side).  Coleman's burying Munger's injury into the 13th paragraph was not okay.

Everybody is a critic... 

[Pat Coleman]

Glad to see a whole page of debate over my trademark understatement.

Just like you guys don't want to see your win vs. Thomas More discounted because of the injury to Sydney Moss, I didn't want to discount Illinois Wesleyan's win vs. George Fox over the same thing. And this isn't a game story, it's a feature on IWU.

Here's the game story:
http://www.d3hoops.com/seasons/women/2011-12/contrib/201203188azay0

My piece is the sidebar, the second story on the game. This is par for the course, mkt.

Indeed, not mentioning a key injury in a game story until 13 paragraphs in? Who would do that?
http://www.d3hoops.com/seasons/women/2013-14/contrib/20140316b1vg0m

[mkt]

Thanks for the link to the game story, and the explanation that your article was a sidebar.  That makes everything much clearer, and better.  I believe that it totally answers the points that we (or at least I) have been raising.

I'm not sure why you're providing that last link though; that is precisely the Whitman article (written by the Whitman athletic dept for the Whitman community) that I've been talking about all along.  Unless you're saying that d3hoops wrote the article and Whitman chose to put it on their website, which is the opposite of the procedure that GordonMann was describing.

[Pat Coleman]

I am aware it is Whitman's article but that's still a long way to bury an important part of the game. I believe even if you are writing your own PR you have some journalistic responsibility as well.

[BruinFan]

Congrats to Whitman. Way to represent the NWC.