Top 25 talk

[Titan Q]

By the way, I suppose somehow I have influenced Massey's computer too?


http://www.mratings.com/rate.php?lg=cb&yr=2009&sub=III&mid=6



#6 Wheaton
#10 Augustana
#11 Elmhurst
#17 Carthage
#23 North Central
#33 Millikin
#43 Illinois Wesleyan
#82 North Park

[Pat Coleman]

OB just trolls to get a rise out of people, people.

[usee]

ToxicBob is on the loose again. 

[Gregory Sager]

That is admittedly a terrible quote. I think it's interesting that Bob is still apparently the Midwest reporter despite not getting to see most of these teams in person this season... it kinda shows in that vague backpedaled answer he doesn't know enough about what he's talking about to speak as an authority on any of this stuff. Greg, are you available to be the Midwest Reporter...  since, you know, I have so much right to decide who the reporters are when I don't even listen to the show anymore?

Actually, I think that Bob explained himself very well in his last post, and given the time that he's putting into catching games both in person and online I'm satisfied that he's doing a good job of covering the Midwest Region beat. In fact, I agree with his assessment of Wheaton with and without Raymond.

Let's not forget that we only had to shoot very slightly better from the line last Wednesday vs. Carthage and we would have won. We were a ridiculous 11-24 and lost by 1 point. We could have shot 54% from the line and won. Yes, we should have won; no, I am not really making excuses.... I am pissed as heck about a stupid loss like that (as annoyed as I am at CLU for that silly loss earlier this season, OxyBob). I don't think that this loss disproves we are Top 25 quality, however, just like I don't think that the CLU crazy loss to Buena Vista necessarily disproved their worthiness to be in the ORV category (though other things later have... they're just too young... this year!) However, Wiele is definitely an All-American caliber player, and it's fairly normal in DIII for a team to be a 15-25 team when they have just one higher team AA and a good supporting cast.

Free-throw shooting isn't some sort of stand-alone category that has no bearing upon a team's competence, April, just because it takes place in a defensive vacuum. It is an integral part of the game. If your team is making its free throws, then your team is performing well in one of the phases of the game that enables us to call it a good team. If your team is clanking 'em off the iron with regularity, and it costs you wins, then it is fair to use that as part of a critique to downgrade your team. 

Yes, Wheaton has gone 17-44 (.386) from the charity stripe in its last two games, both of which were home losses. And, yes, if Wheaton shot them halfway-competently it would've gone 1-1 last week instead of 0-2. But that poor free throw shooting has to be counted against Wheaton's overall competence. You don't get a flier from the pollsters in terms of downgrading your team just because your team happens to be screwing up at the line rather than, say, with its ballhandling or its rebounding.

Andy Wiele has gone 3-12 from the line over those two games -- and I strongly doubt that his foot injury is affecting his free throws. Part of what makes Wiele an All-American candidate is his ability to dominate inside on offense, and part of that ability includes knocking down free throws when he gets fouled. If he's not making them, then he's going to be subject to what one Wheaton poster on CCIW Chat called a "Hack-a-Wiele" strategy that will limit his effectiveness by forcing him to score most of his points via a method in which he has difficulty scoring consistently. In other words, his FT woes are adversely affecting his All-American candidacy as well as his team's fortunes.

Elmhurst has the talent to be a much higher ranked team than they are. However they have been extremely talented AND extremely streaky this season... as they have been for as long as I have been following DIII basketball, come to think of it. Against us (after the 10 minutes delay that flattened a strong Wheaton open to the game) they happened to be on fire, which is logical since they were playing the #1 team.

Elmhurst is doing just about what I had expected it to do thus far. The 'jays have won some big games, and they've lost at least one total head-scratcher (at home to Millikin), and I figured that their season would involve those kinds of swings. I think that a rank somewhere between, say, #12 and #20 is pretty accurate for EC. The Bluejays have what may be one of the best front lines in all of D3, but their backcourt is suspect and has not played consistently all season long. When their backcourt does come through in the big games (McCurdy and Bainter against Wash U, Childs against Wheaton), EC can beat anybody.

(I'm not sure that the Elmhurst-was-on-fire-because-Wheaton-was-#1 theory is valid. Wheaton clearly wasn't going to be #1 anymore after Wednesday's loss to Carthage, and the 'jays were well aware that Wheaton's really not a #1 caliber team without Raymond.)

[Gregory Sager]

OB just trolls to get a rise out of people, people.

Thing is, though, he doesn't really follow the modus operandi of a troll most of the time on his home board. He gives exhaustive and highly-regarded game capsules for SCIAC contests, and his observations regarding SCIAC teams and Chapman seem to be highly valued by the rest of the room's denizens. Since I take it that they're watching SCIAC games, too, and not simply following the season vicariously through OB's eyes, this tells me that he: a) has credibility on the SoCal D3 beat; and b) isn't trying to troll at all on non-Top-25-related topics.

I suppose that he could just be trolling us in this room, but the fact that he has also soiled his nest (and thereby risked his reputation) in the SCIAC room with these goofy "CCIWers think that their dung smells like roses" rants -- and the vehemence and repetition of those rants -- leads me to believe that he's more likely a sincerely agitated observer with a specific ongoing grievance than a madcap troublemaker who's only interested in starting a ruckus for its own sake.

And more's the pity, actually.

[Pat Coleman]

Thanks for expanding my single-sentence post into something that makes more sense. Yes, that's true. But when he posts about Hoopsville and the Top 25 and anything else where he uses that kind of rhetoric, it is clearly only to see what the reaction is.

[Titan Q]

That is admittedly a terrible quote. I think it's interesting that Bob is still apparently the Midwest reporter despite not getting to see most of these teams in person this season... it kinda shows in that vague backpedaled answer he doesn't know enough about what he's talking about to speak as an authority on any of this stuff. Greg, are you available to be the Midwest Reporter...  since, you know, I have so much right to decide who the reporters are when I don't even listen to the show anymore?

Actually, living away from Bloomington, IL now and no longer having my IWU radio duties has allowed me to see more teams.  In the past, I would basically see the 8 CCIW teams and the 7-8 D3 teams IWU would face in the non-conference.  As I mentioned above, this year I've had the chance to get to several Wash U games and a few SLIAC games.  I've also been able to watch all the CCIW teams come through Wheaton via WETN as well as watching video streams, such as Cal Lutheran twice (vs Carthage, vs Buena Vista) and 5 MWC games.  In the next few weeks, I will get to see several UAA teams come through St. Louis.

I am actually in a much better position now to evaluate both the Midwest region and the national picture.

But thanks for the kind words April.

[Ralph Turner]

Great points about FT shooting, Greg!

One cringes when your own Free Throw clanger goes to the line and when your opponent's ace Free Throw shooter goes to the line!

When evaluating awards at the national level, having a good FT percentage should speak for something.

[sac]

Individual game FT percentage is to often looked upon to seriously.

#1)  Its always a product of who gets to the line, you can have 4 outstanding FT shooters but if #5 ends up getting twice as many FT's as the rest your team FT percentage might not look very good

#2)  Individual games produce small number differences.  What I mean is if you go 8-10 it looks great every raves about the great FT shooting.  If you go 6-10, people start whining about the awfull ft shooting............when in both cases you were 1 shot from being average.

If I'm not mistaken Raymond is an excellent FT shooter (only 92% on the year ) who gets to the line frequently.  Wheaton's FT% will almost assuredly go up the minute Raymond steps back on the court.

Its much more important to focus on the whole season.  Wheaton is still a 74.8% FT shooting team which is excellent by most measures.  Yes they've struggled recently, but haven't they struggled because the best FT shooter isn't on the floor?

[Gregory Sager]

Individual game FT percentage is to often looked upon to seriously.

#1)  Its always a product of who gets to the line, you can have 4 outstanding FT shooters but if #5 ends up getting twice as many FT's as the rest your team FT percentage might not look very good

#2)  Individual games produce small number differences.  What I mean is if you go 8-10 it looks great every raves about the great FT shooting.  If you go 6-10, people start whining about the awfull ft shooting............when in both cases you were 1 shot from being average.

If I'm not mistaken Raymond is an excellent FT shooter (only 92% on the year ) who gets to the line frequently.  Wheaton's FT% will almost assuredly go up the minute Raymond steps back on the court.

Its much more important to focus on the whole season.  Wheaton is still a 74.8% FT shooting team which is excellent by most measures.  Yes they've struggled recently, but haven't they struggled because the best FT shooter isn't on the floor?

I don't think that you can blame their struggles on the absence of Kent Raymond. Even if you take away all of Raymond's makes and attempts the Wheaties were a sparkling 171-231 (.740) from the line this season prior to the frigid spell of the past two games. I find it hard to believe that the boys in orange can only make their free throws if they can look out of the corners of their eyes and see Kent Raymond standing there occupying a lane space.

As for what Wheaton has done from the line over the past two game, it's what stat freaks refer to as "small sample size". Taken as a whole, one game's worth of bad FT shooting really doesn't say much about a team. Two bad FT games are still subject to small-sample-size arguments. But when the two games are back-to-back, and they also happen to be the team's most recent performances, it makes you go "Hmmmm ...".

Still, I wouldn't say that Wheaton is destined for whichever circle of Dante's hell is designated for basketball teams that can't shoot free throws, for the simple reason that the team as a whole (not just Raymond) had shot them so well in the previous fifteen games. We'll have to wait and see if that clank-'em-all trend continues before we pronounce it as something other than an anomaly. All I was saying to April is that team FT shooting has to be taken into account when gauging how pollworthy a team happens to be. Perhaps Wheaton is just, on balance, an above-average FT shooting team rather than a great one.

[Ralph Turner]

sac makes good points about FT's, but we have our own thresholds for which we think that a player should hit for basic competence.

In big men (and maybe 3-5% higher for women), I want to see these FT percentages...

67-70% for 4's and 5's...

70-75% for 2's and 3's

75-80% and higher for 2's and 1's.

[Gregory Sager]

Those FT thresholds look right to me, too, Ralph.

Incidentally, here's Andy Wiele's career FT performance:

yr	FTM	FTA	FT%
2005-06	33	39	.846
2006-07	37	53	.698
2007-08	75	107	.701
2008-09	26	51	.510

[sac]

I don't think that you can blame their struggles on the absence of Kent Raymond. Even if you take away all of Raymond's makes and attempts the Wheaties were a sparkling 171-231 (.740) from the line this season prior to the frigid spell of the past two games.

I come up with 68.4%.

282-377 as a team, Raymond 94-102, team without Raymond 188-275

[Titan Q]

Those FT thresholds look right to me, too, Ralph.

Incidentally, here's Andy Wiele's career FT performance:

yr	FTM	FTA	FT%
2005-06	33	39	.846
2006-07	37	53	.698
2007-08	75	107	.701
2008-09	26	51	.510

I wonder if the decrease is due to all the bulk he's added since his freshman year?

As a freshman, when he was listed at 6-8/215...
http://www.iwuhoops.com/wc2.jpg

As a junior, listed at 6-8/230 (this year he is listed at 6-8/235)...
http://athletics.wheaton.edu/images/mbball/2007/11/28/wiele2.jpg

[sac]

New polls out

http://d3hoops.com/top25/

Whitewater lost and moved up 1.  Thats odd.