WBB: Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

[Willy Wonka]

And by the way mnbball4, or should I say Jamie? great way to start your posting career. A little jealous of the Gusties record perhaps over there in Northfield? Or just jealous of Vadnais' skills?

Way to go GAC, you called out someone by their real name.  I bet you slept well after that comment. 

In other news to get back on track for GAC's sake.... GAC is the great and I bet if all 5 starters score in double figures they will win every game.... Way to go out on a limb there. 

PR - Her identity is apparent jusy by clicking on her posting name. If she didn't want it known who she was — as 99% of the posters prefer, yourself included — she had a number of different ways she could have gone to make it so. It wasn't a big secret.

That said, posting by current players is generally frowned upon. I know of many MIAC coaches who actually ban it.

In non-Gustie news...where are the Katch haters now? 16, 9, 6 and 5 steals against Carleton is a nice little game, even if it did take her 19 shots to do so. This after going 14, 7, 5, 5 the game before. For those who have seen her of late, is she at least a passable defensive player? She's still the leader in my book, though a Top 3 finish by GAC would likely change that.

[Willy Wonka]

Small sidenote: The MIAC currently has FIVE players shooting better than 85% at the FT line, with three others just below at 83%. Carelton's Ally Weaver leads the way at a ridiculous 97%.

In the last three years the league had only three players shoot 85+ and two were by Vadnais, who sits fourth in the current "race."

Maybe I'm so impressed because I topped out at 60% in college, but still...

[gacbacker]

I still think the MVP race is a three horse race with Katch, Vadnais and Hageman. A lot will be decided in the next 8 days in my mind as the Gusties face St. Ben's, St. Thomas and Concordia in that span. If Vadnais performs well and the Gusties win two of those three games, the MVP might be hers.

WW and others:  Do you think someone can win the MVP if he/she is not the leading scorer on his/her own team. Going into yesterday's games Carrie Embree was actually outscoring Katch by the smallest of margins. Embree is also fourth in the conference in rebounding...perhaps she should be receiving consideration for MVP, given that St. Thomas has made the jump from an average team to a conference leader with the same players except for the addition of Embree.

[PRF2007]

I still think the MVP race is a three horse race with Katch, Vadnais and Hageman. A lot will be decided in the next 8 days in my mind as the Gusties face St. Ben's, St. Thomas and Concordia in that span. If Vadnais performs well and the Gusties win two of those three games, the MVP might be hers.

WW and others:  Do you think someone can win the MVP if he/she is not the leading scorer on his/her own team. Going into yesterday's games Carrie Embree was actually outscoring Katch by the smallest of margins. Embree is also fourth in the conference in rebounding...perhaps she should be receiving consideration for MVP, given that St. Thomas has made the jump from an average team to a conference leader with the same players except for the addition of Embree.

I agree with GAC on this one WW.  Katch is a good player, but I was expecting her to be the clear leader and focal point of St. Thomas.  I think my problem with Katch for MVP is more about how good Embree is than Katch being bad.  In my opinion Embree is the most valuable player on that team and probably #3 in the conference behind Hageman and Vadnais.

That being said, great game by St. Ben's yesterday.  This team is much much different than the team that lost a few straight earlier this season.  Schmidt scored 20 on some very hot shooting and Frank had 18 pts and 15 boards.  Very impressive game by those two along with a freshman off the bench who scored 11 on some hot 3 point shooting.  Should be a great game on Monday!

[Willy Wonka]

There are a lot of factors to weigh in the MVP debate and the team who finishes in the Top 2, presumably with CSB, should have the leg up on the competition. That said, I honestly think Vadnais will win it again.

As MM recently said on the men's board, coaches prefer older players and seem to make it a career award. While Hageman has certainly put up the numbers, Vadnais has done little this year to show she wasn't a worth recipient of the award last season. It's also very easy to recast the same ballot since the number haven't changed much.

The UST situation is a little trickier with the addition of Embree.

Katch is a junior who has started all but 2 games in her career. Embree came out for the first time as a super senior. UST was mediocre, at best, with Katch the first two years (9-16 and 15-11), but had certainly shown improvement. Embree accelerated the curve, but who deserves the credit?

I doubt the coaches would reward a first-year player with the MVP, especially when there is another deserving player on the team. And Katch would be deserving, if he numbers remain strong and the team finishes in the Top 2. It's also possible the two would split votes, though many GACers thought the same last year with Vadnais and Monahan.

Here's a quick breakdown of the alleged top candidates.

Katch
13.6 PPG, up from 10.8
6.7 RPG, down from 7 (The Embree Effect)
4.1 APG, up from 3.0
3.2 SPG, up from 2.8
1.0 BPG, N/A

Vadnais
18.9 PPG, up from 18.4
3.5 RPG, down from 3.9 (After losing Monahan)
2.3 APG, down from 3.2
3.1 SPG, up from 2.2
>0.1 BPG, same

Hageman
18.1 PPG, up from 17.2
7.3 RPG, up from 6.9
0.9 APG, down from 1.4
1.5 SPG, up from 1.0
0.3 BPG, down from 0.6

[Willy Wonka]

buf - You listening to the GAC@CSB game, by chance? Updates would be appreciated. I heard the Bennies were up 1 at the break.

[Pat Coleman]

This game is being updated on our front-page scoreboard. I saw at least three different updates, including GAC trailing out of the gate 12-2 and rallying to cut it to ... I think 18-14.

[Pat Coleman]

And now there's a update about five minutes into the second half.

[gacbacker]

Gusties lay an egg in the second half up in St Joseph...couldn't really do anything right in the second half, but that's a tough place to win I guess.

Looks like St. Thomas won as well, so the Gusties fall two games behind the leaders. Looks like the Kitties beat the Cobbers, so the Gusties remain in a tie for third. Carleton gains a game on GAC and Concordia with a come from behind two point win at home vs. Bethel.

If I'm the Gusties and I'm looking at my playoff position, I want to do anything I can to avoid St. Ben's in the semifinals. St. Thomas still doesn't scare me, but St. Ben's at home is a tough match-up.

[blazerguy]

It was a very tight game with GAC actually taking the lead midway through the 1st half. One point game at half but CSB dominated the second half to win by around 20. Our 6'4 post, Danielle Frank played great the second half with around a dozen rebounds, 8-10 points and she must have had 6 or 8 blocks. Mindy Schmidt had 20 to lead the Blazers and she had alot of help. It looked to me like Vadnais was either hurt or under the weather.  She took herself out with about 8 minutes to go and only came back with around 3 minutes left. She also didn't score in the second half. Now i would like to say my blazers just stopped her but I'm not sure if there was anything wrong or not.

[Collegeville Magic]

Here's one fan happy (from afar) with the results in St. Joseph tonight.  Danielle Frank has really developed into a major threat in this conference, with an almost nightly box score of double-doubles.  Hopefully all the top teams will remain healthy and injury-free, so that the conference race can be decided without anybody complaining.  (except Tammy, who always complains about something )

Seems to me like Coach Durbin is doing a great job this year, especially after graduating 5 seniors last spring, all of whom were starters for at least a portion of their respective careers.  Of course, Mike will probably get ignored in the Coach of the Year voting AGAIN, since being consistently good apparently doesn't get you respect in that category.

Heck, Mickey Haller has 3 COY awards in recent years, and GAC has only ONE conference title since the beginning of MIAC women's hoops in 1982, compared to CSB and UST, with 10 each. 

[gacbacker]

Oh Collegeville Magic, settle down. Durbin gets plenty of respect within the conference.

And if you just want to give the Coach of the Year award to the coach of the conference winner, as your last post seems to imply, why even have the award?

[LA RAMS]

CSB run in the 2nd half doomed the Gusties as they weren't going to pull out of that canyon.  Actually, I thought GAC was in pretty decent shape at the half after getting themselves out of a hole early on.  Disappointing to say the least but I've got to tip my hat off to CSB as they can hurt you in a lot of ways - both down low with Frank and/or Gillund or on the perimeter with Schmidt, Falvey, or Carter.  Looks like the regular season title will likely boil down to that meeting on February 23 at Schoenecker between CSB and UST - just like the good ol' days I guess.

Wow, was surprised to see that St. Kate's took it to Concordia last night although I wonder if the second trip down to the Cities in as many days had something to do with that.  I thought they would have spent Super Bowl weekend here in town but one of the Concordia players told me they were going back after Saturday's game with Mac (over at St. Kate's, of course).  Anyone there to see what went down last night? 

[Collegeville Magic]

Gacbacker- I'm not saying that conference champion is automatically the COY, but if we often discuss the MVP as a competition mostly between the best players from the best teams, and the winner is often from the top team, there's no coincidence that team performance plays a major role in MVP (which makes sense).

However, I find it odd that Durbin could win National COY in a year (twice, in 02-03 and 97-98) in which he wasn't even the conference COY.   That's like having a first team All-American who doesn't make the All-Conference team.  It's just odd.

[Willy Wonka]

CM - Who named him national COY during those seasons? If it was D3hoops, I can provide other examples of such...odd...decisions that I know Pat loves reading so much about

And I've got to imagine league expectations played a large role in those "losses." Was CSB a unanimous pick as conference champs those years? Meeting expectations is often less impressive than exceeding them.

I'm interested in seeing UST play on Saturday. Katch put up 16-6-6-4-2 again Wednesday (on nights when Vadnais and Hageman were both well below their lofty standards), but I've heard good things about Embree. Both were extremely tough last time against GAC, as Katch went for 15-15-4 and Embree posted 13-8.

It's a huge game for playoff implications, too. A Gustie loss has them staring at a playoff road game, where a win puts them in contention to receive a first-round bye.

GB - Is Vadnais nursing an injury? She's 8-29 in her last 2, posted no floor game stats (19-0-1-0-0) against SMU and is playing significantly fewer minutes than normal over that stretch (28 and 30 when she was averaging almost 35 prior). What's the scoop?