MBB: Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

[bball1122]

Took all of one game for my predictions to fall apart.  Kudos to the Oles.  I, too, have sold them short this year.   Fantastic win.

Txg - how did they pull it off? 

[Smitty Oom]

This is a HUGE win for the Oles. They are holding onto an at-large birth still, this one will boost their resume for sure.

Johnnies not looking quite as good as of late, having to claw back at BU and the Oles putting them away today in Skoglund.

Curious to here txg's take on it, as I only watched 10-15 minutes of it.

[SUMMIT!!!!!]

Took the jaunt down to West Northfield today....the game was well worth the trip. The Oles came out with a game plan to spread out the Johnnie defense and they executed perfectly for 40 minutes. This neutralized SJU's advantage off the glass and in the paint, and Olaf more than held their own there. Also, StO shot very very well, connecting on nearly 60% of their shots.  Tobroxen was particularly lethal, from inside as well as from downtown. He clearly outplayed Weiss on both ends. Weiss- who had a soft 13 point game- seemed to be out position under both buckets the entire game-- on defense this was due to Olaf's spread offense which opened up the paint to Ole layups and tip-ins. The Ole guards neutralized SJU's backcourt, holding Stokman to a quiet 11 points. No one else stepped up for the Johnnies. Olaf out-hustled SJU, and towards the end, the johnnies went from looking rattled and confused  to playing chippy and borderline dirty.  Plain and simple, they outplayed SJU in pretty much every aspect and in doing so exposed several chinks in the Johnnies' armor.

Like pretty much everyone else on here I overlooked the Oles and to be honest I wasn't impressed with what I saw of them 3 weeks ago.  They are a young squad but they play poised, aggressively and (most importantly) as a unit and should be on the short list of preseason favorites in 2018-19.

[Drake Palmer]

Nice summary, Mose.  While I didn't have the advantage of viewing in person, I did watch the Ole SJU game via webcast.  And a very nice webcast too, I might add.

One thing I would add to Mose's assessment of the game, was the high number of assists by the Oles.  STO assisted on an incredible 22 out of 31 made baskets.  And only had 11 TOs.  By contrast, the normally high-flying Johnnies had only 11 assists, and 12 TOs.

So, I did a little research to see if this play by the Oles is an aberration, and apparently it's not.  STO is second in the league as they average 17.8/Apg, and a respectable 12.7/TOs game.  The Jays are slightly ahead as they average 17.9/apg.  STO is also second in the league in scoring defense as they only yield a stingy 65.4 ppg.  Carleton is leading the conference in scoring defense as they only allow 63.3 ppg.

The next 2 weeks of the season should make for very compelling basketball. Out of the top current contenders for the playoffs – SJU, STO, AUG, CARL, UST, BET, & a rapidly fading Gustavus, from my perspective, Bethel & SJU have arguably the easiest remaining schedule.

Bethel is at home against a dangerous Hamline team, @ GAC, @ MAC, and finishes with Carleton.

SJU has Carleton & Augsburg at home and finishes off at arch rival UST in the last game of the regular season.

Carleton, St Olaf, St. Thomas, and Augsburg are going to spend the next two weeks beating each other up.  Can't wait to watch!

By the way, I also caught the tail end of the Hamline Gustavus webcast.  Where's Jay Betts been? Also mad props to Nick Powell for the serious man bun, and northwoods beard!  Definitely got the look going on! 

[txg]

Nice summaries.  I would add that the Oles played very good defense, holding a high octane offense to 62 points and about 40% shooting.  And they continued to shoot well.  Over 50% from the floor in each of their last three wins over SJU, Bethel and Carleton.

I know McKenzie will get COY, and justifiably so, but this has been an impressive coaching job by Coach Koz.  They have improved so much over the last month.

[SUMMIT!!!!!]

Well, as I predicted, 20-0 did not happen. But the Johnnies could be the 4th team to ever go 19-1 in MIAC play in the 25 years the league has played a 20-game conference schedule.(This was necessitated by Carleton rejoining the league. The conference had long played 16 games in league play  and upped that to 18 when St Olaf and Bethel were added to replace UMD in 1977-78. No one had ever gone 16-0 in the old format and  no one went unbeaten in the 18 game years either.) I don't see them joining the exclusive 19-1 club either, but they should be comfortable in the group at 18-2 or 17-3.

COY has only gone to nine men, representing seven schools (HU, Mac, SMU & Cord being the four whose coach never received the honor). Surprisingly, Koz has only won it once (2014). At this point, I'm inclined to give the COY to Koz, but with five games left, lots can happen to change that.  With a very young roster, he has quietly put together a formidable team as SJU learned yesterday. This takes nothing away from the job done by McKenzie the Younger, who is doing a great job st SJU...I just think  Koz has done more with less.

To my thinking, there should be two player awards. One for the top individual performer of the season, regardless of team performance. The other for the most valuable player, or that player without whose performance his team would not have enjoyed the level of success they achieved.  The two awards can go to the same guy,  but are not necessarily linked. For example,  back in 2007-08, Tom Conboy had an utterly phenomenal season, leading the league in both scoring and rebounding and doing so despite often being double and triple teamed.. He was clearly the top individual performer of the year. But his Mac team finished 10th (4-16 ) and in no way did he merit the MVP award.

With all that said, at this point, I'd say the MVP award looks to belong to Weiss with Tobroxen a solid second, followed by Olmscheid, Grow and Boll. The battle for Outstanding Performer is a battle between Olmscheid and Grow, with Tobroxen, Weiss, Hanson and Stokman in pursuit.  Results and performances in these final five games could alter this considerably as everyone has a few chances against the other contending teams.

[Smitty Oom]

St. Olaf with ANOTHER great win last night at Auggie. It is definitely their second seed in the MIAC playoffs to lose, and a win home against UST on Saturday would do it. These are two big wins in a row for them, and I am still shocked by how good they are playing this year. Their resume keeps improving and now they are the best chance the MIAC gets a second bid.

[Smitty Oom]

St. Olaf with ANOTHER great win last night at Auggie. It is definitely their second seed in the MIAC playoffs to lose, and a win home against UST on Saturday would do it. These are two big wins in a row for them, and I am still shocked by how good they are playing this year. Their resume keeps improving and now they are the best chance the MIAC gets a second bid.

http://www.fantastic50.net/d3h_reg.html

In fact, Fantastic50 has St. John's behind St. Olaf if his latest regional rankings. St. John's definitely has a softer non-conference schedule and a SOS just above .500 which really hurts them. Olaf has a nice win over UWSP and a loss against UWRF which help their SOS which is projected around the .540 mark.

As miacmaniac noted, I think Koz would capture my vote for COY at this point.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

Men's first regional rankings this season: http://www.d3hoops.com/notables/2018/02/men-regional-rankings-first

[Smitty Oom]

CONGRATS TO THE JOHNNIES!!!

With their win over Augie today on senior night they become the first non-UST team to win the MIAC regular season out right in 12 years! They have a very special group and I am excited to watch them in March!

Elsewhere, STO continues their hot streak and beat UST and moves their win streak to 9 games, which includes some very impressive Ws. Koz and the Oles keep putting themselves in a solid position should they not be able to win the MIAC AQ in the playoffs. I believe they also clinched the other bye, as they are sitting at 14-4 in conference play currently and only BU can tie them as they are 12-6, but STO swept BU in the season series. Congrats to the Oles as well, but they still have a lot to play for in terms of getting an at large bid.

BU inches by GAC, this may be the dagger in the Gustie faithful in terms of '18 playoff chances. BU sitting in third in the conference right now a half game up on Auggie and a full game up on UST and Carleton, but I still feel like they have been a little bit of a let down this year. Bridge is definitely not the player he was in years past and that hurts.

One last week of conference play before Playoffs start!

[GoldandBlueBU]

CONGRATS TO THE JOHNNIES!!!

With their win over Augie today on senior night they become the first non-UST team to win the MIAC regular season out right in 12 years! They have a very special group and I am excited to watch them in March!

Elsewhere, STO continues their hot streak and beat UST and moves their win streak to 9 games, which includes some very impressive Ws. Koz and the Oles keep putting themselves in a solid position should they not be able to win the MIAC AQ in the playoffs. I believe they also clinched the other bye, as they are sitting at 14-4 in conference play currently and only BU can tie them as they are 12-6, but STO swept BU in the season series. Congrats to the Oles as well, but they still have a lot to play for in terms of getting an at large bid.

BU inches by GAC, this may be the dagger in the Gustie faithful in terms of '18 playoff chances. BU sitting in third in the conference right now a half game up on Auggie and a full game up on UST and Carleton, but I still feel like they have been a little bit of a let down this year. Bridge is definitely not the player he was in years past and that hurts.

One last week of conference play before Playoffs start!

Indeed!  SJU came to play this year...I still wish they would've pulled off 20-0.

Curious to see how slots 3-6 will shake out, given that we know who is in, just not where they'll land.

Current MIAC Standings
1 - SJU - Locked in
2 - STO - Locked in
3 - BU - 12-6 -  @MAC on Wednesday, home vs. CARL on Saturday.  I predict 2 wins, finishing 14-6, though Carl could tip them, and lead to 13-7.
4 - AUG  - 12-7- Home vs Mac - Win - they'll win and finish 13-7
5 - Carl - 11-7 - Home vs. STO, and on the road vs BU.  0-2 is most likely, IMO.  finishing 11-7
6 - UST - 11-7 - Hosts ST. M, and SJU - probably a split bringing them to 12-8.

so we'd land
1 - SJU
2 - STO
3 - BU
4 - AUG
5 - UST
6 - Carl

Could get murky as BU, Aug, UST, and Carl could all potentially end up 13-7, though that doesn't seem likely.  I don't know all of the mutual results, but if BU loses on saturday to Carl, they'd have split the season with all of the other three teams they'd be potentially tied with.

[txg]

Using Massey probabilities, I'm getting:

Bethel:  78% 3rd, 19% 4th, 3% 5th
Augsburg:  11% 3rd, 78% 4th, 8% 5th, 3% 6th
Carleton:  8% 3rd, 3% 4th, 89% 6th
UST:  3% 3rd, 89% 5th, 8% 6th

If Bethel beats Carleton then the order is Bethel - Augsburg - UST - Carleton.  Ausgburg swept UST and UST swept Carleton.

I won't do all the other scenarios, but I think the 4 way tie shakes out as follows.  All the teams would be 3-3 in that group.  Tommies would get third by virtue of beating St John's.  Then you look at the remaining three teams and Carleton gets fourth due to sweeping Augsburg.

And I did this quickly so easily could have made a mistake.

[Smitty Oom]

So Hoopsville talked about women having first priority in terms of hosting this year (which I forgot about until now) and how no teams outside of Whitman are going to run into this problem. I have two questions for Dave/D3hoops aficionados:

1. Since St. Bens and St. Johns are sister schools but different campuses could they both host the first weekend should their resumes allow it? (I know it would be a long shot at this point for St. Bens minus a MIAC playoff championship, but I was more curious than anything).

2. Is it possible for a school to host for both men and women if their facilities could accommodate all teams? For some reason I remember this coming up at some point but don't remember exactly.

Thanks!

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

So Hoopsville talked about women having first priority in terms of hosting this year (which I forgot about until now) and how no teams outside of Whitman are going to run into this problem. I have two questions for Dave/D3hoops aficionados:

1. Since St. Bens and St. Johns are sister schools but different campuses could they both host the first weekend should their resumes allow it? (I know it would be a long shot at this point for St. Bens minus a MIAC playoff championship, but I was more curious than anything).

They have different campuses and different gyms, if memory serves. And run as two different schools. So, they don't apply.

That said, I don't see St. Bens being in a situation where they would be hosting in the NCAAs.

2. Is it possible for a school to host for both men and women if their facilities could accommodate all teams? For some reason I remember this coming up at some point but don't remember exactly.

No. It will not happen. There used to be some allowances when men had 62-teams and thus two teams hosting one game on Saturday (with women hosting one game Saturday after two on Friday). It was shutdown in the final couple of years. The logistics of enough locker rooms, practice and shoot-around times, etc. along with concerns about one event outshing another was enough to end the practice.

They aren't about to do it with six teams traveling to one school for two pods of games.

They don't even allow UWSP to do it and they have two different gyms that they use for both genders.

[txg]

I won't do all the other scenarios, but I think the 4 way tie shakes out as follows.  All the teams would be 3-3 in that group.  Tommies would get third by virtue of beating St John's.  Then you look at the remaining three teams and Carleton gets fourth due to sweeping Augsburg.

Now that I look at the tiebreakers, after head-to-head you look at combined record against teams above.  So UST third 2-2, Bethel sixth 0-4, Carleton fourth 1-3 and swept Augsburg, and Augsburg fifth.  I originally had Bethel fifth.

"This is very interesting and valuable" said no one.