BB: NCAC: North Coast Athletic Conference

[EttaFan1]

Kudos to Hiram who isn't the laughing stock of baseball for once. 

[Bishopleftiesdad]

Yes it is good to see Hiram out of the cellar.
Your right TexasDad. Denison and Depauw being the top seeds in the west will host. I still think denison and Depauw will win theirs. Wabash vs. Gheny will be interesting. OWU is getting things together.
Oberlin is much improved, over the last two years. I would not be surprised to see them beat Depauw.

Most likely it will be two from the west and two from the east. The only two with no shot are Witt and Kenyon.

[old scot]

Not a big fan of this cross over series. The whole conference season is played for cross over seeding. One bad day can take out a top team and one good day could put a sub standard team in the NCAC tourney, rendering the whole season meaningless. The NCAC needs a better way to identify the top four teams in the conference. I would like to see three game series throughout the conference and the top four make the tourney.

I can't see the NCAC getting more than one bid to the regionals (tourney champ). Woo has several losses to regional teams and no other NCAC team really can make a stand.

[Bishopleftiesdad]

Old Scott,
I agree, I would love to see them drop from 2 Dh's on the weekend to a 3 game series and do a round robin. They had Round robin for one year, but they still had a DH's on Sat.  against one team and a Dh on Sun against another. Maybe if they dropped it to 3 games schools would be willing to go back to round robin.

[wally_wabash]

Alright, I'm going to need a bit of schooling here.  How does this crossover business work?  Do the winners of the four series this weekend advance to Chillicothe or is there more to it than that? 

[Bishopleftiesdad]

Results from the season seed the teams.
1 from the east hosts 4 from the west
2 from the east hosts 3 from the west
1 from the west hosts 4 from the east
2 from the west host 3 from the east

These are 3 games series, The team that takes two goes on to the tournament. If one of the teams takes the first two the third game is still played because they are considered regular season games.

The two number 5 teams face off with nothing to win, except the opportunity not to finish last.

[wally_wabash]

So this is, in essence, the start of the league tournament.  But I guess they can't really call it that without having to count the games differently or some such nonsense. 

Follow up question- on the league website, they've already got Wooster playing in Chillicothe.  Have they already qualified for some reason or do we just have some kind of clerical error on the website?

[wabashsid]

Wally,

Wooster is Presto school, as is the NCAC website. If a school enters games on the schedule, it will show up on the NCAC site. If the conference had gone Sidearm rather than Presto, the same thing would happen for Sidearm schools that enter the entire schedule (for example, the schedule on the Wabash site).

[wally_wabash]

Wally,

Wooster is Presto school, as is the NCAC website. If a school enters games on the schedule, it will show up on the NCAC site. If the conference had gone Sidearm rather than Presto, the same thing would happen for Sidearm schools that enter the entire schedule (for example, the schedule on the Wabash site).

Gotcha.  Glad to know that Wooster still has to win two this weekend like the rest of us to keep going.   

[Dr. Acula]

My initial reaction is that I don't like the crossover series determining who goes to the conference tourney, but without a full round robin schedule I suppose it does potentially resolve inequalities between the relative strength of the east vs. west. 

[wally_wabash]

My initial reaction is that I don't like the crossover series determining who goes to the conference tourney, but without a full round robin schedule I suppose it does potentially resolve inequalities between the relative strength of the east vs. west.

Yeah, it's goofy.  Like you're saying, it seems like an attempt to take into account division imbalance, but that only exists because of the goofy division setup in the first place.  Obviously, you fix that by playing a round robin (as noted, preferably three 9 inning games over a weekend like adults) but that means you need 9 weekends to play the league schedule.  Counting backward nine weekends from the conference tournament plants you on the weekend of March 8th.  I think we were still knee deep in snow on March 8.  Or it was 7 degrees outside.  Either way, nobody was playing baseball up here. 

I've thought about this a lot and there's just really not an ideal way to go about this.  The issue at hand as much as anything is that the "spring" sports schedule starts in mid-February and Mother Nature is undefeated all-time against baseball in February in the upper Midwest.  It just isn't feasible to play 27 league games in the amount of non-winter time that we have to play in.  So you split the league in half, pray that it doesn't rain all through April, and decide a champion at a small tournament in May.  That part of it I don't think you can get around.  I think you can get around the silly conditional 7/9 double-doubleheader weekend format. 

[Dr. Acula]

I agree.  The only reason the OAC can do the full round robin with 10 teams is that playing only a single DH against each team allows for mid-week conference DH's.  But with the NCAC even that scenario would be problematic as it brings back the issue of geography/travel time being impacted by the spring weather.  I really don't envy the NCAC administration.  I give them credit for not being afraid to switch stuff up and try to figure out a way that is sensible and fair. 

[TexasDad]

Good luck to all this weekend.

[Bishopleftiesdad]

I agree with TexasDad. Some players will be playing the last meaningful baseball of their lives. Good luck to all. Especially all seniors in the NCAC.

[TexasDad]

Looks like the seeds held true to form in cross-over. Good luck to the 4 teams that remain with a chance to get to The Dance.