MBB: North Coast Athletic Conference

[billy_pilgrim]

Earlham schedule wise, I was able to unearth this today:

The Quakers will play at Washington on Nov. 30 in the 24th annual Lopata Classic...the other teams involved are Babson and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps. Consolation and championship on Dec. 1.

Typically Earlham opens the season with a tourney on the road, which looking at the calendar should fall on Nov. 16 and 17...

[pabegg]

Earlham schedule wise, I was able to unearth this today:

The Quakers will play at Washington on Nov. 30 in the 24th annual Lopata Classic...the other teams involved are Babson and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps. Consolation and championship on Dec. 1.

Typically Earlham opens the season with a tourney on the road, which looking at the calendar should fall on Nov. 16 and 17...

Yeah, they'll be at Case's season opener this year, starting with Lake Erie on the 16th. Their other tournament is at Franklin on 12/28-29

[David Collinge]

Here's Earlham's complete schedule (well, not "complete," as that term has come to be known in PU, as the matchups in the Franklin holiday tournament are not shown.) 

As noted by Billy and Patrick, the Quakers are competing with Ohio Wesleyan for the title of America's Guest, as they too will play in three fairly interesting tournaments:  the lidlifter at Case Western Reserve with Lake Erie and Alma, the Lopata Classic at WUSTL with CMS and Babson, and the Franklin tournament with Aurora and Baldwin-Wallace.  Their other three non-conference games constitute a Tour d'HCAC (at Manchester and RHIT, and home vs. Anderson). 

After opening the NCAC season with Oberlin in December and Hiram as day one of the annual East Meets West trip (this year in Indiana), the Quakers hit a rugged six-game stretch: Allegheny, at Kenyon, Wittenberg, at OWU, Wabash, and at Wooster.  The second half of the conference slate is a little better balanced, which may enable the Quakers to make a late-season run at a decent conference tournament berth.

It's interesting to note that NCAC teams will be guests at holiday tournaments on six of the eight UAA campuses:  Wash U. and CWRU (Earlham), Chicago and Rochester (OWU), NYU (Denison), and Brandeis (Kenyon.)  It's time for CMU and Emory to figure out the prestige that comes with bringing an NCAC team to campus in the fall.   

[smedindy]

Actually, I think Presbyterian is America's Guest. They're moving to D-1 and have just 6 home games this year. Radford, Army, and four D-2 teams. And Radford and Army are home-and-home's this year.

http://www.gobluehose.com/SportSelect.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=18100&KEY=&SPID=10747&SPSID=89799

[David Collinge]

Recap:  here's the schedules for all 10 teams.

Allegheny
Denison
Earlham
Hiram
Kenyon
Oberlin
Ohio Wesleyan
Wabash
Wittenberg
Wooster

Let's lace 'em up! 

[woosterbooster]

Does anybody have a schedule for Wooster's scrimmages yet?  And, although off-topic I'll ask it here since the baseball board is hibernating, does anyone know when the Scots will be playing the fall baseball Black and Gold world series?

[tyrone]

Does anybody have a schedule for Wooster's scrimmages yet?  And, although off-topic I'll ask it here since the baseball board is hibernating, does anyone know when the Scots will be playing the fall baseball Black and Gold world series?

And I'm curious as to Wooster's prognosis/starters...tough to replace last year's talent. Is there any hope for the Dex Battista, who was fervently talked about one year ago at this time in here and the MIAA boards?

[ScotsFan]

And I'm curious as to Wooster's prognosis/starters...tough to replace last year's talent. Is there any hope for the Dex Battista, who was fervently talked about one year ago at this time in here and the MIAA boards?

I think it is going to be tough for Wooster to replace the talent they lost last season.  You don't just replace players like Tom Port and Tim Vandervaart.  With that said, there is still a lot of talent on this team.  Starting at the guard position, you have James Cooper coming back for his senior year.  He was then NCAC POY as a sophomore.   And at the point, Brandon Johnson is pretty good as well.  They were NCAC 1st and 2nd team respectively last season.  Wooster also has arguably one of the best guards not to start in Devin Fulk.  This is a position Wooster is loaded at.  Evan Will was also a starter last year after Vandervaart went down with an injury.  He will probably start at the 4 or the 5.  Marty Bidwell seems like he would start in Andy VanHorns spot.  That leaves  one starting position up in the air.  Does Wooster go bigger with one of their big freshman from a season ago in 6'8" Robert Melick or 6'6" Craig Elam?  Or do any of their freshman have the talent to crack into the starting lineup right away?

As far as Dex Battista, he has not lived up to the hype.  He was often one of the last players to get in during mop up duty for the Scots.  I'm interested if he spent any time working to improve his game at all this offseason. 

[smedindy]

Thanks to the scheduling of Indiana Wesleyan in the tip-off classic, I wonder if Wabash's football team makes the playoffs if they would move that game to Sunday, since it's not really a tournament, just four teams playing two games each at the same site.

Just curious - now that I'm out of the loop I can wildly speculate...heh...

[wooscotsfan]

Does Wooster go bigger with one of their big freshman from a season ago in 6'8" Robert Melick or 6'6" Craig Elam?  Or do any of their freshman have the talent to crack into the starting lineup right away?

As far as Dex Battista, he has not lived up to the hype.  He was often one of the last players to get in during mop up duty for the Scots.  I'm interested if he spent any time working to improve his game at all this offseason. 

I agree with ScotsFan that Robert Melick and Craig Elam have a shot at the starting lineup.  Melick and Elam both got more playing time last year than Battista who underachieved.  The most likely freshman to get playing time is 6'5" Bryan Wickliffe who averaged ~20 points/game in his senior year at Columbus St. Charles.

If my sources are accurate, Dex Battista is not even enrolled at Wooster this year.  My guess is that he has transferred to one of the MIAA colleges (Hope? ...they were his #2 choice when he was a HS senior) but no team rosters are posted yet for this season.  Perhaps another Wooster poster knows where Battista has landed?

[David Collinge]

I went to the Ohio Wesleyan/Kenyon football game this afternoon, where I ran into OWU head coach Mike DeWitt.  He told me that OWU has a new assistant coach for this season, Chad Bostelman.  Chad is a graduate of Ohio Northern and was a key contributor to their 2000-01 Final Four team; in fact, he was ONU's representative on the D3Hoops.com All-Tournament team that season.  Most recently, Chad was an assistant coach at Heidelberg College, helping the Student Princes return to respectability with their 13-13 finish (9-9 OAC) last season.  He should be an outstanding addition to the OWU program, and I welcome him to the NCAC!

[smedindy]

[  Perhaps another Wooster poster knows where Battista has landed?

Cuba??

[David Collinge]

I've got my tentative schedule finished for the season now.  My preliminary plans are to see 58 games in 8 gyms (Wooster, Kenyon, Denison, OWU, Muskingum, Capital, Otterbein, and Mt. Vernon Naz.)  during the regular season (men's and women's, but not counting JV games.)  And that's after I abandoned my plans to go to the Cactus Jam in Phoenix in December (which would have been 12 games in 3 days...still pretty tempting.)  I wonder how close I'll come to fulfilling this ambitious schedule?  Ah, but it's nice to dream...

[Gregory Sager]

[  Perhaps another Wooster poster knows where Battista has landed?

Cuba??

[hopefan]

Dave Collinge  -  what, no trips to St Louis??