BB: NCAC: North Coast Athletic Conference

[Jim Dixon]

Jim -

Yep, I meant April 29th.  Thanks for the karma point, I've been finding them hard to come by, so I won't give it back, although it was Scotsfan that first mentioned the rule.

Well applause for Scotsfan too.  I've been able to keep my karma level at 10% of responses. 

1984 was just like that 3 of 6 teams were from the same conference.

[woosterbooster]

I've been able to keep my karma level at 10% of responses.

If I can pick up 83 karma points on my next post, I'll be right with you.  I'd better make it a doozy. 

[Spence]

[The only other day that I can see where Marietta could possibly be rebooked would be Sunday May 29th.

If I was Wooster and Marietta.  A game on 29 May would suit me just fine (two days into the Championship round).

hey, being a Marietta fan, I'd LOVE to see MC and Wooster play on May 29th.  In fact I'm thinking that they need to ship one of them to a different regional this year (and Otterbein to a third regional), so they all can meet up in Wisconsin over Memorial Day weekend and beat up on each other there!!

I have a feeling that if they were all shipped to different regions last year, they all would have been playing in Wisconsin......in fact, I'm pretty sure of it.

I think there's a decent chance of it happening this year. I've outlined on another board the likelihood of the Central, Midwest and West all needing team and the South needing to get rid of them.

I'd take a May 29 game LOL. I have to disagree though that if Wooster had been sent to another region that they would have won. They were the 4th best in the regional last year at best, maybe 5th considering how well Adrian showed. There's maybe only one region IMO they might have won. Otterbein I think very likely would have won in New York, Central, South, Midwest and New England. Mid-Atlantic and the Chapman Invitational would have been tough nuts to crack; maybe they do, maybe they don't. Same would go for anyone.

[Spence]

One last thing, explain to me why of all days they could have chosen Wooster chooses a weekend where they don't have a divisional game to worry about for the reschedule date?

This is Wooster's remaining schedule:

April 6 OBERLIN* (2) 1:00
April 7 OBERLIN* (2) 1:00
April 11 at Kent State 3:00
April 12 at Otterbein 4:00
April 14 WABASH (2) 1:00
April 15 WABASH Noon
April 15 MARIETTA 3:00
April 18 MUSKINGUM 4:00
April 19 at Heidelberg 4:00
April 21 at Hiram* (2) 1:00
April 22 at Hiram* (2) 1:00
April 24 OTTERBEIN 4:00
April 25 at Denison 7:00
May 1 at Ohio Northern 4:00
May 2 at John Carroll 4:00
May 5-6 NCAC Tournament Semifinal Series TBD

Kent State and Otterbein fill out next week's schedule because of the two game-date maximum between Mondays and Fridays.  The weekend of the 21st and 22nd is booked full with Hiram.  The following week, again because of the rule that you should now be familiar with, is also full with games against Otterbein and Denison.

On Saturday May 28th Wooster is off but Marietta hosts Heidelberg.  On Sunday May 29th Wooster is again off.  Marietta appears to be also except for a home JV doubleheader.

The following week is full for Wooster with games against Ohio Northern and John Carroll.

The only other day that I can see where Marietta could possibly be rebooked would be Sunday May 29th.  Rather than loudly complaining on here that Marietta is getting screwed, why don't you call the two athletic departments and see if anyone can tell you why that date wasn't chosen?  While you're at it, you might want to ask the Marietta coaching staff if they have any complaints about the cancellation of today's game and the rescheduling date. 

It's very possible, believe it or not, that they preferred playing on the Sunday when Wabash was here rather than waiting until deep into the season when more postponements may pile up and the scheduling of league games becomes a problem.

I'm not going to call anyone. Like I said, I don't care if they don't play at all; suits me better if they don't.

I see other options within their schedule, but whatever. I hope it rains buckets on the 13th. Speaking of weather, it's ridiculous up there in northern Ohio tonight! Single-digit wind chills in early April.

In sunny central South Carolina (80 degrees at 8 p.m. local), that seems pretty funny.

[woosterbooster]

You won't call anyone because then the actual facts might get in the way of your anti-Wooster rant, which you now seem to be expanding to include all of Northern Ohio.  You see other options in the Wooster schedule?  Why don't you please tell us what they are?

[Spence]

You don't really want to know, you want to shoot down whatever I say. It's not going to change and you haven't acted like you genuinely care what my alternate solutions would have been so I'm not going to bother. I'll just pray for rain, or maybe snow or gale force winds the way it's looking.

Oh relax. Fact, it's really cold in northern Ohio tonight (current wind chill in Wooster, 18, with 13 in Mansfield; and the night's still young). Very cold, for April.

But hey, it's supposed to "cool down" to about 60 for a high here Friday. Of course, I'm going to the coast where it'll be more like 65-67.

[woosterbooster]

The word from the athletic department at the College of Wooster is that rather than postpone the upcoming games against Oberlin due to the wintery weather they will be played inside at Timken Gym.  A temporary, and obviously scaled-down, playing field is now under construction.

Home plate will be situated exactly on the southeast corner of the basketball court, allowing it's sideline and endline to be used as foul lines.  The opposite bleachers, those on the north side, will be retracted to add the necessary distance creating a high wall, sort of a mirror image of Fenway Park.  Wiffle balls, of course, will be substituted for the real thing, but officials from the NCAC have assured both teams that all statistics for the four games will stand.

Game time 1 PM tomorrow.  Admission, as usual, will be free.

[Spence]

Gym wiffle ball was great, especially when you duct taped the holes!

Edit: Weather Underground isn't showing a high out of the 40s for Wooster until next Thursday?! The weather's going to pure crap everywhere up north this weekend, but man that's a long time in April to go without seeing anything even resembling warm.

[ScotsFan]

Wooster improved to 21-0 with a doubleheader sweep of Oberlin yesterday.  Adam Samson picked up the win in game one allowing one hit in 5 innings of work in a 7-1 win.  Samson improved to 4-0 on the season.  In the nightcap, freshman Matt DeGrand improved to 3-0 on the season allowing just 2 hits over 6 innings. 

Wooster will look to push their unbeaten streak to 23 games this afternoon.  That would match Wooster's record for their longest winning streak in school history!  If Wooster can continue the streak today, they will get a very stiff challenge to actually break the record as they will be on the road facing Kent State and Ott on back to back days this coming Wednesday and Thursday.

[BASH6-4-3]

Sheesh ....  I go away for a week, come home to catch up on what's been going on in DIII Baseball and it reads like the movie Groundhog Day.  We had this Wooster-Marietta discussion last year.  Let's move on.

Spence, I actually don't mind you coming onto the NCAC site if you talk baseball.  The game, not the politics.  Last spring we actually had some very interesting baseball discussion, and I know you are capable based on your postings in other threads.  Just leave out the Wooster bashing and NCAC bashing would you when you come here.

[BASH6-4-3]

In my obligatory role of letting the upper half know how the other half lives.
Wabash Baseball takes 2 yesterday from the even worse Earlham Quakers.
Season record for the Little Giants runs to 8-17-1 (3-7 NCAC West).

Word is this is a young, talented team that shoots itself in the foot with untimely errors and inability to hit in the clutch.  In short they have been in most games but can not close.  The core of the team are sophs and several frosh are now regualrs in the line up so maybe there is hope for the future.  Unfortunately, 1-7 against Denison and Witt means we have a ways to go yet.

[Spence]

Is it bashing if I ask why in the world the second Oberlin-Wooster game was called after 4 1/2 innings?

Screw it I don't care if it is bashing.

"Game two was called after four and a half innings of play due to the weather."

That's from the Oberlin writeup...which is already up even though Wooster was the home team. No writeup is yet available from Wooster's site.

Thing is, I fail to see how the weather was any worse than it had been all day. Snow was initially observed at KBJJ (Wayne Co. airport) at 12:56 p.m.; right around game time. The game time temp would have been 25-27, depending on exactly when the game started (-4C at 12:59, -3C at 1:04).  That temperature hardly changed all day...so it didn't get much colder.

Wind gusts were observed at around 25 mph until 3:10 p.m. when they kicked up to 38 mph. That was the strongest wind, the next hour the peak wind was 33 mph. The hour after that, 28...back about where the afternoon started. So the winds weren't any stronger when they quit than when they started. But they were higher a couple hours earlier. So if anything, they should have quit earlier if they were going to.

Visibility, in addition to being self-explanatory, is also a measure of snow intensity under constant conditions...Since the winds were blowing about the same most of the day, the lowest visibility constitutes the times of the heaviest snowfall. At gametime the visibility was 1-2 miles. As would be expected with light snow and flurries, the visibility hopped up and down all day, but the visibility at 4:42 was 1 mile. At 5:40 when the game was called, the visibility was 3 miles. Again, if anything they should have called it an hour before.

National Weather Service radar's total storm precip product is indicating only a trace of precip for pretty much anywhere off the lake, which tells me there shouldnt' have been an issue with accumulation.

Conditions were bad, but they weren't any worse than when the first game of the day started. This was only a 4-1 game; all of Wooster's runs were unearned. Oberlin had their ace pitching. This wasn't a lost cause for Oberlin.

So my very simple question, in light of all the weather data I've produced, what reason was there to call the game when it was called? For anyone that says "ask the umpires", the umpires' names were not included on the Wooster-produced box score.

[Pat Coleman]

Was the game played at the airport??

[Spence]

Obviously not. But this isn't Chardon. Snowfall rates differing wildly over a 6 mile distance is highly unlikely.

Edit: I regularly forecast for locations that are less than 35 miles apart, and the forecasts are usually very very similar, with the differences mainly owing to factors not in play in Wayne County (terrain differences, dust source regions, moisture source regions) and not applicable to synoptic gradient winds and snow.

[Li'l Giant]

Is it bashing if I ask why in the world the second Oberlin-Wooster game was called after 4 1/2 innings?

Screw it I don't care if it is bashing.

"Game two was called after four and a half innings of play due to the weather."

That's from the Oberlin writeup...which is already up even though Wooster was the home team. No writeup is yet available from Wooster's site.

Thing is, I fail to see how the weather was any worse than it had been all day. Snow was initially observed at KBJJ (Wayne Co. airport) at 12:56 p.m.; right around game time. The game time temp would have been 25-27, depending on exactly when the game started (-4C at 12:59, -3C at 1:04).  That temperature hardly changed all day...so it didn't get much colder.

Wind gusts were observed at around 25 mph until 3:10 p.m. when they kicked up to 38 mph. That was the strongest wind, the next hour the peak wind was 33 mph. The hour after that, 28...back about where the afternoon started. So the winds weren't any stronger when they quit than when they started. But they were higher a couple hours earlier. So if anything, they should have quit earlier if they were going to.

Visibility, in addition to being self-explanatory, is also a measure of snow intensity under constant conditions...Since the winds were blowing about the same most of the day, the lowest visibility constitutes the times of the heaviest snowfall. At gametime the visibility was 1-2 miles. As would be expected with light snow and flurries, the visibility hopped up and down all day, but the visibility at 4:42 was 1 mile. At 5:40 when the game was called, the visibility was 3 miles. Again, if anything they should have called it an hour before.

National Weather Service radar's total storm precip product is indicating only a trace of precip for pretty much anywhere off the lake, which tells me there shouldnt' have been an issue with accumulation.

Conditions were bad, but they weren't any worse than when the first game of the day started. This was only a 4-1 game; all of Wooster's runs were unearned. Oberlin had their ace pitching. This wasn't a lost cause for Oberlin.

So my very simple question, in light of all the weather data I've produced, what reason was there to call the game when it was called? For anyone that says "ask the umpires", the umpires' names were not included on the Wooster-produced box score.