MBB: North Coast Athletic Conference

[wooscotsfan]

At the Half:  Wooster 39  Ohio Wesleyan 27

Good first half for the Scots in this road game!  Wooster is being led by Doug Thorpe with 10 points and Scott Purcell with 8 points.  Strong defense as the Scots held the Bishops to 39% shooting.  Wooster also made 5 three pointers in the first half.

[wooscotsfan]

Final:  Wooster 79  Ohio Wesleyan 71 

Terrific road win for Wooster at OWU.  Scots were led in scoring by Doug Thorpe with 18 points, freshman Dan Fanelly with 15 points (career high) and Kenny DeBoer with 13 points.  Wooster shot 51% from the floor and also made 10 of 20 three point shots.

Wooster is now 5-0, 2-0 NCAC. 

GO SCOTS!

[smedindy]

Wabash falls to Witt 60-46.

Masin has 17 points and 9 boards for the Old Tigers. No Wabash player scored in double figures. The LGs shot just 29.4% from the floor and shot under 50 percent from the line. Oof.

[smedindy]

The other result that we have is that the New Tigers of DPU bested Denison 66-51. The Big Red are 2-0 in Washington State and o-fer in the Midwest!

[David Collinge]

OWU was just 3 for 22 from the arc. Woeful three-point shooting has been the Bishops' Achilles heel for quite a while, it seems. I wonder why? You might blame the awful sight lines in Rickey, but Wooster hit ten threes tonight, as wsf has noted.

Without the bad outside shooting, OWU shot nearly 59% (27/46) and outrebounded the Scots 37-31 despite there being significantly more rebounds available on the Wesleyan end of the floor (OWU took 68 shots, missing 38, to Wooster's 47 and 23). On the Wooster offensive glass, OWU was dominant, grabbing 21 of 25 available caroms, whereas on the other end, OWU snatched 16 offensive boards (possible many of them being long caroms from errant threes) to Wooster's 27. All of this adds up, on paper, to a game OWU could have won if they could just hit threes with any regularity.

[GoRed]

A fairly sloppy game over in Greencastle with DPU pulling ahead on late shooting and rebounding.
Denison needs to finish better and keep up the defensive pressure through the end of the game to produce wins this season.  DPU could have utilized their height advantage a lot better.  Really a closer game than the score shows, but we have a long way to go.

[WooMix]

Watched my first Wooster game of the year today. Always good to see the Scots win but those final ten minutes were not pretty. The season is early. I'm sure the Scots will work out the kinks.

Shout out to the OWU cheerleaders. I thought they put on a decent show at the interval. 

[ScotsFan]

For as good as Wooster was offensively in the 1st half, they may have been equally bad in the 2nd half.  They were allowing OWU far too much penetration resulting in a ton of easy looks.  Not to mention, as David touched on, they gave up way too many offensive boards which also resulted in far too many 2nd chance points. 

I think it could be argued that just as badly as OWU's perimeter shooting prevented them from winning, their offensive rebounding may have more than made up for their poor shooting.  Wooster was on the verge of breaking the game wide open flirting with a 20 point lead and if they do a better job of keeping the Bishops off of the offensive glass, I don't think the ending would have been as close as it was. 

Credit OWU for not quitting and fighting back from a big deficit.  But this was yet another nice win for the Scots in this young season.  They have been racking up some nice regional wins that should look real nice on their resume come tournament time.

[smedindy]

Kenyon edged Oberlin 64-63 and Hiram eased past Gheny 67-61 to complete last night's slate.

Wabash is now the only winless team in the NCAC (sigh...)

[WoostAr]

May have missed this topic at some point (if so I apologize for the rehashing)...does anyone know why Wooster is playing 2 GSAC schools in AZ??  Are they being paid??...if not, I don't understand why they would play non-NCAA opponents...these games certainly won't help with regional rankings at the end of the season. 

If they don't win the conference tourney these two games could cost them a national tourney bid.

[smedindy]

If Wooster takes care of business I think they're fine for a "C". They beat B/W and Wheaton, so that'll probably be two regional ranked wins (if those teams TCB, of course...)

[David Collinge]

I can't answer WoostAr's question with any authority, but I feel confident that the scheduling choice was some combination of a) wanting to have a "reward" trip for the team, which also helps with (basketball) recruiting down the line, b) pressure, or suggestion at least, from the administration to use a trip to help the college's national profile, which helps with (academic) recruiting down the line, and c), given a) and b), the difficulty of finding suitable D3 opposition who happen to be in the same snowbird locale at the same time, especially one willing to take on a very tough foe. Plus, as smeds points out, the Scots have a strong D3 non-conference schedule otherwise (Marietta, Hanover, and Thiel, in addition to Wheaton and B-W) and the general tide of quality within the NCAC is rising, so they could have reasoned that they could afford to not worry too much about those two particular dates.

[wooscotsfan]

Regional Score of Interest:  Wheaton (IL) 80  Hope 61   Game was played at Calvin College in Michigan

Wooster's win over Wheaton is looking better with each additional win by the Thunder. 

[WoostAr]

Since when is Arizona a reward for anything? ....at least play Westmont in Santa Barbara.

Administration (partially) dictating the schedule would make sense...but just pretend they had lost to either (or both) B/W and/or Wheaton (and those games were not gimmies), their schedule going forward would seem pretty bad right now. 

[woosterbooster]

I know the two Arizona games don't count, but these opponents are no patsies and will give the Scots some nice experience.  Arizona Christian is 8-0 while Westmont is 5-2.  With the excellent pizza available in the area, I see the trip as a positive.  I'm still trying to convince my brother to make the five-minute drive to see the games, but his interest seems to be moderate at best.