MBB: North Coast Athletic Conference

[WooMix]

Scots look good at the half.  The video is great however, where are the play by play guys?

You can try doing what I'm doing. Listen to the audio feed while watching the video feed. The video feed however is about four to five seconds behind the audio feed. Might be worth it.

[bufordscot]

Scots look good at the half.  The video is great however, where are the play by play guys?

You can try doing what I'm doing. Listen to the audio feed while watching the video feed. The video feed however is about four to five seconds behind the audio feed. Might be worth it.

Good idea however....after a good first half the scots looked terrible in the second.

[smedindy]

Sorry about no preview. Busy day today with my girls. Early travel day tomorrow as well, so won't have a snapshot for tomorrow.

Around the league:

As noted, Denison got hammered by Catholic.
OWU dismantled Bluffton 75-51.
Wabash fell to Elmhurst at the Elmhurst tourney 80-66.
DPU waxed Connecticut College 79-45.
Allegheny beat CCNY 72-63.
Witt loses to NAIA Taylor 49-42.
Wooster slips past Marietta 59-57.
Hiram plays late against Ramapo.

4-3 slate thus far: 48-29 in the non-conference realm.

[wooscotsfan]

Back from Timken where I watched Wooster nearly give away the game to Marietta in the last 3 minutes.

Wooster led 59 to 50 with 2:45 remaining and then never scored again.  The Scots defense won this game as they denied Marietta on its last two possessions in the last 30 seconds but the game should not have been this close.  Wooster spent too much time milking the clock near the end and never got good shots at the basket.  Scots also missed the front end of one and one free throw opportunities twice in the last minute so Marietta had one last shot to tie or win the game at the end. 

Still a win is a win and this victory now puts Wooster at 4-0 this year versus OAC teams (Marietta, JCU, Ohio Northern, Baldwin Wallace).  It is also interesting that Marietta is 4-0 in the OAC with only 3 losses this year (all to NCAC teams - Woo, Witt and OWU).  Shows the strength of the NCAC this year as Smed has also tracked with the strong non-conference record of NCAC teams.

Wooster is now 10-2, 4-0 NCAC.  Next game is at Sheridan (Canada) on January 4th.

[WooMix]

Just to second what wooscotsfan said, the play in the final 3 minutes by Wooster was just uninspiring. I don't wanna say awful because that may be very harsh seeing that they also did a fairly decent job of defending. Like I said yesterday, we've got to start making free throws and taking better care of the ball. The turnovers were in double digits again today. Here's to hoping that they get better on the line and on minimizing the turnovers as the season progresses.

[woosterbooster]

In defense of the Scots, there were a couple of amazing calls that enabled Marietta to make things close.  Defending against a 2-on-1 break, Doug Thorpe had perfect position as one of the Marietta guards came in from the right side.  Thorpe was there in time, stationary, and got absolutely run over.  So, of course, they called a block on him, and the layup went in, as did the ensuing free throw.  This was one major swing.

The other was when Jake Mays, trailing the play, blocked the layup attempt of another Marietta guard.  Wooster was coming up court, and that guard, chasing back from behind and frustrated, grabbed the arm of a Wooster player and stole the ball.  An obvious foul, in front of everybody at mid-court, and ignored by yet another bunch of incompetent officials.  Marietta came back and scored on that play, too.

Stuff like this is driving fans away.  One of my friends chose to not come to last night's game after watching the officiating debacle vs John Carroll.  I'm moving towards that camp myself.

In D1 women's basketball over the last few years we're finally hearing the top-level coaches, and former name players, denounce the officiating for being too lax, for not allowing their sport's offensive players to perform.  Connecticut's Geno Auriemma and Notre Dame's Muffet McGraw have been very outspoken about this.  In my mind, DIII men's basketball has the same problem.  Lazy officials that allow far to much physicality on the court.  Yeah, the game's faster than it used to be, and so on, but it doesn't need to be the constant backyard brawl that it's become.

At the D1 men's level, it's not.  Those players do far, far less of the reaching, grabbing, holding, and hard slapping that's become a staple at the level we love.  It's not the DIII coaches' fault, directly, but for this to be corrected it's they that need to lead the charge, to put forth an organized campaign to clean up the game.  Because if it's not done soon, there won't be anyone left around who remembers the way basketball used to be when it was still an athletic but artistic endeavor rather than a street brawl. 

[smedindy]

As expected, Ramapo beat Hiram 99-87. 48-30 non conference.

[GoRed]

Denison loses 69-66 to Delaware Valley College in Maryland.  Shooting percentage was better than last night, but their 17 turnovers did them in. 

These holiday road trips haven't been very good to Bob and the Big Red.  Since 2005, they have mustered just two wins when traveling out of Ohio for the holidays.  Maybe we should stay put.  Record now 4-7 heading into conference play.

[smedindy]

Good news on the other two non-conference games that are completed:

DPU beats LaGrange (how, how, how, how...) 83-63
Kenyon beats Earlham 74-68.

Allegheny plays Berkeley College in NJ tonight.

50-31 non conference pending Allegheny.

[smedindy]

Gheny lost 57-54 to Berkeley (NJ). Now 50-32.

By my count, here are all of the non-conference games left pending the NCAA tournament:

Jan 2 - Kenyon @ Washington & Lee
Jan 3 - Kenyon vs. Emory & Henry @ W&L
Jan 3 - Oberlin @ Elmira
Jan 3 - Capital @ Denison
Jan 4 - Wooster @ Sheridan
Jan 7 - Denison @ UC Clermont
Jan 12 - Oberlin @ Yale

[woosterbooster]

Does anyone know the story as to why Wooster is going to Canada?  I love when they take a Holiday, or pre-or-post-Holiday, trip.  But, you know, usually it's to the Bahamas, Florida, or Southern California.  It's winter.  It's winterer in Canada.  Not only that, this game doesn't count at all.  Did Wittenberg or Wabash trick them into this?  Did Sheridan, at the point of scheduling, deceive the Scots, telling them that they were moving their campus to Arizona, and everything would be completed by now?  What's up here?

[smedindy]

Let's take a quick peek at the next two days of games:

January 2:

Kenyon (6-5) @ Washington & Lee (5-4) - The Lords travel to the great state of Virginia for a couple of games. The first finds them face the Generals on their home court. As Kenyon is part of the muddled middle of the NCAC, W & L is part of the same of the ODAC. Thing is, the ODAC is usually a tougher league than the NCAC, but the Generals wins aren't exactly against top notch competition. Well, neither have Kenyon's either. I'm giving this one a shrug and a who knows, really?

January 3:

Kenyon (6-5) vs. Emory & Henry (2-5) @ Washington & Lee - Now, this is a game that favors Kenyon. The Wasps have won two in a row, but their best win is against Berry and they've been traditionally a weak sister in the ODAC. If the Lords' experience comes to play, they should at least have one win coming out of Virginia. 

Oberlin (4-6) @ Elmira (0-10) - Some of us who frequent the "Undefeated & Winless" board were pointing to this game as a chance for Elmira to get off the schneid. Probably not. The Yeomen have been pretty darn competitive and have won three of four. Oberlin did lose to Earlham, though (albiet early) so this is one that isn't lock stock and barrel cinch. The Soaring Eagles will need a great game and the Yeomen a stinker for this one to go against the NCAC.

Capital (7-4) @ Denison (4-7) - Welp, it was a lost weekend for the Big Red in Washington DC. They got run out of the gym by Catholic (expected) and lost to Delaware Valley (not as expected). Now, they face a Capital squad that has jumped out to an undefeated start in the OAC. The teams that the Crusaders have lost to have a combined record of 39-6, with Wittenberg taking credit for three of those losses. So it's going to be a tall order for Denison Thursday.

[seinfeld]

Does anyone know the story as to why Wooster is going to Canada?  I love when they take a Holiday, or pre-or-post-Holiday, trip.  But, you know, usually it's to the Bahamas, Florida, or Southern California.  It's winter.  It's winterer in Canada.  Not only that, this game doesn't count at all.  Did Wittenberg or Wabash trick them into this?  Did Sheridan, at the point of scheduling, deceive the Scots, telling them that they were moving their campus to Arizona, and everything would be completed by now?  What's up here?

The name escapes me, but a former Scot basketball player (a really good one) is in some type of important capacity there.

[woosterbooster]

Ok, that hint was all that it turned out I needed to find this on the Sheridan basketball page:

Blue notes: Former head coach Wayne Allison graduated from Wooster in 1978 after an illustrious career that saw him named All-Ohio Athletic Conference twice and All-American once. He was inducted into the Wooster Athletic Hall of Fame in 1988.

He's well before my time, but that answers my question.  Sheridan has a nice record, and they've been playing since September, but I suspect that their competition is suspect.  They lost to Daemen College by the score of 113-53.  I wonder what Canadian referees are like.  Do they use any, or is it chainsaws and axes to the death?

By the way, Kenny DeBoer attempted a triple-Vandervaart against Marietta and stayed on the beam.  Missed the shot, though, or maybe still didn't get one off.  Still, fun to watch, as he develops his inside offensive game.

[smedindy]

Does anyone know why OWU is short a game this year?