Bumblin' B's

[Pat Coleman]

Nebraska Wesleyan is not going to be .500 overall at the end of the year. They will not be selected.

[dayv4life]

now i  havent had the chance to see all the teams outwest, but i was at the final four last year and i think that you are really selling the east coast hoops scene short.

granted that the great lakes region is amazing, but look at last year when rochester took down calvin? these squads arent invincible.

and as for York at the FF, granted i am a spartan homer, but no one in DIII could of played with Stevens-Point when they played their A game, and it was the green and white's first trip there.

I see the point made about the great lakes and the mid-west teams being good and i agree, but just because you dont have to go through murderers row to get to the FF does not mean you can not always play with good teams.

I also agree I would have loved to see lincoln play York, i was really disapointed, but just to show how anything can happen, an LVC team that york obliterated one night, came back and snuck up on Lincoln the next day. Now I have no doubt that York and Lincoln would be a game to the wire, but anything can happen.

Give the east coast a little love.....PLEEEEEASE?

[joe smith]

Bethany wins again tonight beating W&J 86-75 in a game where the score was actually closer then the game was.  Bethany led by 15-20 throughout.  They improve to 19-4 and 16-4 in the region.  This win was there 14th in a row.  They have 2 more regular season games and will be the #1 seed in the PrAC conference tourny.  With a first round bye they'll have 2 more games in the tourny.  They should go 4-0 in those games and finish 23-4 and 20-4 in the region.  Not bad for a team that started 5-4 and was left for dead.  Hard to keep a team with 23 wins and 20 wins in their region out of the tournament no matter how bad their QOWI is.  Do you think they are a lock even if they might get upset once?

[fritzdis]

Re: Lincoln...

Ursinus?  Still have another game vs. Hopkins.

Also, the NCAA appears to have Ursinus' regional record incorrect.  They have regional losses to NYU (easily within 200 miles), McDaniel, York, and Washinton College.  All those games were played before Feb. 5, but the NCAA ranking lists them with only 3 regional losses.

[hugenerd]

They should go 4-0 in those games and finish 23-4 and 20-4 in the region.  Not bad for a team that started 5-4 and was left for dead. 

They weren't left for dead, they just played much better teams out of conference then they could ever play in conference.  If they played teams like Carnegie Mellon, Lake Erie and Case Western more often they would have many more losses than they do currently.  They also lost to a team that is currently 4-18.  The PraC cumulative out of conference record is 28-61, subtract from that Bethany's 9-4 mark and you see that Bethany is playing a group of teams that are a combined 19-57 versus out of conference opponents.  Of those 19 wins, only 3 are against teams with winning records (Grove City and Waynesburg each beat Pitt-Greensburg for 2 of these wins, the other is Waynesburg's win over Gallaudet).  I wouldn't say that Bethany is a great team, but they do have a winning percentage that deserves some consideration, although as their QOWI indicates (which is not in the top 100 and probably about 8-9), they have beaten hardly anyone with a great record.

[David Collinge]

FWIW, when Bethany lost to Case a lot of us "left them for dead," more or less.  Losing to Case of years gone by has rarely been an indication of good things to come.  Little did we know that Case would turn out to be a good team. 

[fritzdis]

Hard to keep a team with 23 wins and 20 wins in their region out of the tournament no matter how bad their QOWI is.

Actually, I believe Bethany's QOWI jumped from 8.74 to 9.25 in the past 2 days.  They got a 13 point victory over W&J, while Pitt-Greensburg and Waynesburg each moved into a higher winning % bracket, netting Bethany 6 additional QOWI points.

Of course, that 9.25 is tenuous because now both of those teams, along with W&J and Muskingum, are on the verge of dropping into a lower winning % bracket, while only Case Western and Westminster have much chance of moving up into a higher winning % bracket by the end of the season, and Case Western is probably unlikely.

If none of those teams move either up or down into a different winning % bracket, then I believe Bethany would end up with a QOWI of 9.42 if they win out and face the best possible (i.e., highest winning %) teams in their tournament.  That would likely be enough for a 20-4 team to get a Pool B slot.

[hugenerd]

It goes to show you how strong the UAA is when people are saying a team that is 10-10 and 2-7 in the conference is a good team.  I agree that Case is a good team, but in conference they are the same as they have been for years and I have seen them play for the past 5 years.  If you had left Bethany for dead at the beginning of the season, what has changed?  They haven't beaten anyone special, so if they were dead then they should be now too.  On a national scale, they are slightly better than average team and the only team that is even close to average in that conference.  There was little doubt that they would win that conference, maybe some people thought the Westminster's "system" offense could rack up some wins, but it has been obvious all season that Bethany is the best team in the PrAC.  They will most likely get an NCAA bid, unless some unforeseen losses occur in the next couple of weeks, and they will be ill prepared to play at a high level because they have played 14 straight cupcakes (it will be 18 by the time the tourney starts).  They will have their 20 plus win season and they have two exceptional players (the Drahos brothers), but in my opinion they will have very little else to show for it and do nothing in the tourney again, like last year when they lost by 28 in the first round after posting an eerily similar record of 24-3 in the regular season (they are on pace for 23-4 this season).

[hugenerd]

Hard to keep a team with 23 wins and 20 wins in their region out of the tournament no matter how bad their QOWI is.

Actually, I believe Bethany's QOWI jumped from 8.74 to 9.25 in the past 2 days.  They got a 13 point victory over W&J, while Pitt-Greensburg and Waynesburg each moved into a higher winning % bracket, netting Bethany 6 additional QOWI points.

Of course, that 9.25 is tenuous because now both of those teams, along with W&J and Muskingum, are on the verge of dropping into a lower winning % bracket, while only Case Western and Westminster have much chance of moving up into a higher winning % bracket by the end of the season, and Case Western is probably unlikely.

If none of those teams move either up or down into a different winning % bracket, then I believe Bethany would end up with a QOWI of 9.42 if they win out and face the best possible (i.e., highest winning %) teams in their tournament.  That would likely be enough for a 20-4 team to get a Pool B slot.

I am not saying that Bethany does not deserve an NCAA bid, I am just saying that once they get there, they shouldnt hope for too much.  Also, I realize that some of the teams in the PrAC have winning records in region, but that doesnt mean that those are quality wins (I understand by QOWI standards they may be 10, 11, 12, or 13 point wins).  When two bad teams play eachother, one has to win, and if this process is repeated over and over many times, one of the bad teams is ineveitably going to have a winning record in region.

[njlincolnlion]

Lincoln at #4 in the Regionals?    .  How could two teams (Widener & Ursinus) not ranked, and not receiving votes for the national polls be ranked higher than the Lions?  Additionally, If Fritzdis is correct regarding Ursinus' record, will it be corrected?

Ralph, I agree that if Widener comes out unscathed in the games with Albright, Etown, and Messiah, I will have a new found respect for them.

It appears the Regional voters (in the case of the Mid-Atlantic) went soley on records and not necessarily SOS.  I agree with you Hoops Fan, I think Lincoln "got robbed", but that's why they play the games to have issues settled on the court.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

I think Bethany is getting in more because no one else seems to want it.

Chapman is still alive.  Despite that unconscionable loss to the Banana Slugs, their other losses were all to respectable teams.

St Joe's of Maine has Husson and Bowdoin coming up, if they can win those games, they might have a shot still as well.

Baptist Bible and Villa Julie are both over .750 in-region and have top 100 QOWI, so they are possibilities.

[njlincolnlion]

I just saw that Widener beat Albright by 13 at home.  One down and two to go for Widener.

We should change yesterday from Wednesday to "Wheaton"    as both schools (Ill. & Mass) beat ranked teams. 

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

I think it may be between Baptist Bible and Bethany at this point.  BB has a better QOWI and an identical in-region winning percentage.  They have two more in-region games.  Does the NEAC have a tournament and do the provisionals get to compete?

[joe smith]

    I agree that Bethany since going 5-4 has pretty much played a cupcake schedule.  3 out of those 4 losses I believe were less then 3 points or more so they can compete with the CMU's of the nation.  I disagree with the notion that they're an above average team.  The one bad loss came to Marietta where Matt D. didn't play the whole 2nd half.  They are humiliating teams within the conference by an average of 20 points a game.  Everyone is entitled to their opinion but I think this team will make a little more noise in this postseason then they did last year.   

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

They belong; I'm just not sure if it will be a pool B bid.  A twenty win in-region record would put them up for a pool C bid too, if they get left out of the B party.