MBB: North Coast Athletic Conference

[Li'l Giant]

It also appears that Charlie Brown's teacher has kidnapped Brent Harris and is calling the game for Wabash. Or maybe he sounds like the Swedish Chef. I can't be sure. And there appears to be some sort of Mexican radio station bleeding in.

I feel a hot wind on my shoulder ...

+k

[woosterbooster]

The CPI announcer has now begun yelling at the refs for perceived bad non-calls.  I think Wooster Booster has seized the microphone and is doing the play-by-play. 

Well, if you're referring to the refs standing idly by as Roberts slid fifteen feet on his back while looking for an open man to pass to, it wasn't just the announcers yelling, it was the whole crowd.  Except, of course, for two clowns sitting in my vicinity, civilian refs, who claimed that he'd never established a pivot foot.  Gimme a break.  If a building was in a flaming blaze, basketball officials would claim it was underwater.

And, of course, there was the obligatory thug foul of Marty Bidwell as he went in for a layup.  Two guys knocked him from behind, into the wall, ala Tom Port.  But that's what you get when you have a dirty team trailing big and lazy refs that want to go home.

[seinfeld]

Some observations:

-- The final margin of the Wooster-Hiram game is not indicative of the talent level between the two teams. Hiram missed some wide open three pointers and shot terribly from the foul line. Correct these two things, which I assume were below the norm, and the game is much closer. I think Wooster is a little bit better than Hiram, but just marginally. It is rare to see a team match Wooster's athleticism, but Hiram certainly can.

-- Ian Franks looked like the player I saw at the start of the year. Looking confident with the ball and with his decisions, and owning the glass. It is strange to see a shooting guard who scored all of his points without making a shot from more than five or six feet. There is no question he is more comfortable as a quasi point guard.

-- The mystery of Bryan Wickliffe continues. But frankly, the mystery, at least from tonight's game, lies with the fact that there seems to be no effort to get him the ball, or anyone else in the paint. The only role Wickliffe seems to have in the offense is setting picks. Unless Wooster gets some sort of consistent post play from someone, they are not going to win the conference. I just don't see it. If you average the scoring of the Scots' three frontline players (Wickliffe, Ross & Sawyer), they average less than 20 points per game of Wooster's nearly 80 ppg. I also think part of the problem for Wickliffe is that he is playing center when he is a forward. I wonder if putting Wickliffe on the floor with Ross from time to time would help this problem.

-- There has been a lot of talk about Wooster's newcomers, but I think Wittenberg's are just as good, maybe even better. Two of their starters are freshmen (Cooper and McKee), who both played a lot as freshmen football players, come to Wittenberg with very distinguished high school resumes. McKee averaged nearly 20 points per game as a senior and was named Clark County Player of the Year. Also one of the top players from that county was Cooper, who went to Springfield South. Wooster knows a little bit about how talented South players can be. Add in two freshmen big men in Clayton Black and Alex Brandt, and the Tigers managed to bring in quite a group of players despite having a mediocre season last year. Wooster may have more depth in its incoming class, but I think the star power lies with Wittenberg right now.

[ScotsFan]

Some observations:

-- Ian Franks looked like the player I saw at the start of the year. Looking confident with the ball and with his decisions, and owning the glass. It is strange to see a shooting guard who scored all of his points without making a shot from more than five or six feet. There is no question he is more comfortable as a quasi point guard.

What a difference a productive Franks makes to this team!  Saturday, he couldn't stay out of foul trouble long enough to make any sort of significant contribution to the game.  And Wooster loses big.

Last night, he drops in an impressive double double and Wooster wins big.

I definitely feel that the more he has the ball in his hands, the better he plays.

As for Wickliffe, I didn't think he had that bad of a game last night.  He did score 9 points in just 19 minutes on 4-7 shooting.  Personally, I'm wondering if he's still 100%.  He seemed to get gassed pretty quick last night so that leads me to think that he hasn't built his stamina back up all the way just yet since before his illness over the break. 

I do agree with you that Wooster needs to make more of a concerted effort to get the ball inside.  It's not a good stat when your shooting guard is leading the team with points in the paint and I think Franks did that last night.

And, of course, there was the obligatory thug foul of Marty Bidwell as he went in for a layup.  Two guys knocked him from behind, into the wall, ala Tom Port. 

I'm claiming that is the reason behind Terrance Williams missing his break-away dunk towards the end of the game.  He heard footsteps behind him and he was bracing himself for having his legs cut out from under him from behind... 

[woosterbooster]

Last night, Franks spent much more time with the ball in his hands at the top of the key.  Seemed to me that he was more of the point guard, Balch the off-guard.  That seemed to help the Wooster offense a lot. 

Bidwell looked for his shot much more on his penetrations, and that helped a lot, too.  Him having the wraps off his hand might be helping him out.  His defense was so good that Roberts, in the half court, rarely even tried to do anything with the ball.  He knew what he was up against; a guy that is every bit as athletic as he is, plus bigger. 

I thought Wickliffe had a fine game last night, finishing strong inside a few times and bringing down some very tough rebounds. 

Matt Fegan is a fine shooter, but really lacks the quickness and ballhandling skills that are necessary to be a point guard.  He needs to be relieved of his duty of bringing the ball up the court.

The nineteen offensive rebounds that Hiram had are deceiving.  About five of them came in one possession, which resulted in only one basket.  If you're the defensive team, that's actually much better than giving up five OR's on five different possessions, and having them result in five baskets.

On the other hand, Wooster did give up two, maybe three, OR's on free throws.  These were not long rebounds, either; the Hiram guys somehow got the inside position.  Not pretty.

You guys can ding my karma all you want, but this is a fact: there is serious risk of injury, or an incident, when the referees decide to swallow their whistles in lopsided games, and they do it all the time.  Hiram is a very physical team.  If they can get away with something, they will do it.  Nothing will stop them except the consequence of losing the game.  Once that is no longer an issue, only the referees can keep that aggression in check.  When they fail to do that, as they did last night, danger is in the air.  Marty Bidwell could have been hurt badly, and the guilt would have extended beyond the Hiram player that creamed him to the refereeing crew that permitted that overly physical atmosphere to exist.

[smedindy]

I think it's going to come down to who amongst the top 5-7 teams can scratch out road wins against the other top teams, while holding serve on the home court.

Wabash getting blasted at OWU after beating Wooster at home is a case in point.

BTW, I think it would be neat to have the NCAC tourney in little ol' Hiram, Ohio for a change.

[David Collinge]

I think it's going to come down to who amongst the top 5-7 teams can scratch out road wins against the other top teams, while holding serve on the home court.

Wabash getting blasted at OWU after beating Wooster at home is a case in point.

Hiram has a win at OWU.  Wooster has a win at Kenyon.  Wabash has a win at Allegheny.  I can't think of any other key road wins to date.

BTW, I think it would be neat to have the NCAC tourney in little ol' Hiram, Ohio for a change.

I was thinking the same thing yesterday.  It's awfully small*, though, and I don't think they have facilities for videocasting or live stats there (I could be wrong about that).  One nice byproduct of the Wooster/Wittenberg dominance over the years is that the conference tournament is usually played in a 3000+ seat arena.  The other gyms would be stressed to handle the combined weight of Wooster's and Wittenberg's traveling fans.  Although a men's conference tournament would be a nice way to showcase Kenyon's Tomsich Arena.

*I just checked the Hiram website; it says

With seating capacity for 2,000 spectators - all within close proximity to the playing floor [...]

I'll say.  If there were 2000 people in there, they'd ring the playing floor standing about 5 deep.

[woosterbooster]

With seating capacity for 2,000 spectators - all within close proximity to the playing floor [...]

I'll say.  If there were 2000 people in there, they'd ring the playing floor standing about 5 deep.

I don't think the whole town of Hiram could handle an additional 2,000 people.  And if 2,000 people DID go there to attend, 20% would get lost and 70% of the remainder would starve to death.

[ScotsFan]

I can't believe how quiet it is in here for Wooster-Wittenberg week!

Does anyone have any thoughts?

[JohnDaly]

I was at the Hiram/Wooster game on wednesday and I do not know what some of you guys are talking about. Now, I am not a fan of either team, and if you are calling the foul where the Hiram player jumped in the air and tried to deflect a lob pass being thrown to the wooster player and he fouled him and the wooster player ended up into the wall. I do not see the "thugness" out of that. If the hiram player had just ran underneath him then yes that would be a thug like foul, but the kid was making a hustle play and ended up giving a hard fould.

One thug thing I DID see was during the post game handshake. I do not know what was said for sure, but I saw a Wooster player start to jaw at the Hiram players, which made the Hiram players start to jaw back. You'd think a team that boasts the highest winning percentage this decade would know how to take a win. That stuff will just fire up a team for the next time they meet, and the way I saw it was if Hiram would have shot better, then the game would have been interesting. Hopefully this doesn't affect the next meeting to the point where there are intentional fights or people getting in each other's faces.

By the way, the kid that missed the dunk probably missed it because he traveled 

[wooscotsfan]

I think it's going to come down to who amongst the top 5-7 teams can scratch out road wins against the other top teams, while holding serve on the home court.

Wabash getting blasted at OWU after beating Wooster at home is a case in point.

Hiram has a win at OWU.  Wooster has a win at Kenyon.  Wabash has a win at Allegheny.  I can't think of any other key road wins to date.

I agree on the importance of road wins if a team is going to win the NCAC title.  Thus, it is important to note that Hiram has a built in scheduling advantage because the Terriers only play 7 NCAC road games this year and they have 9 NCAC home games.  This imbalance is due to the NCAC minimizing travel costs by having the Hiram/Allegheny pair only play the Wabash/Earlham pair once each season.  This just happens to be the alternating year when Hiram and Allegheny play host and do not travel to the Indiana schools.

The current effect of this policy is that Hiram only has 3 tough road games left on their schedule (at Witt, at Allegheny, at Kenyon).  Wooster of course has the balanced 8 road, 8 home schedule so the Scots currently have 4 tough road games remaining (at Witt, at Allegheny, at Hiram, at Ohio Wesleyan).  Wittenberg also has the balanced 8/8 schedule and counting tonight they have 5 tough road games left (at Woo, at OWU, at Allegheny, at Kenyon, at Wabash).

The scheduling advantage for Hiram just increases the importance of Wooster winning tonight vs. Witt if they want to keep pace with the Terriers.  This is especially true because Hiram already has a home win vs. Wittenberg and Wooster needs to match that victory.

Should be a great rivalry game tonight.   I hope to see the gym full of black attire when I walk into Timken tonight!

GO SCOTS!

[ScotsFan]

I'm interested to see what kind of crowd is in attendance tonight.  Unfortunately, I won't be a part of the crowd because I have to work... 

This is the first year I can recall in quite sometime where one or both teams aren't even ranked.  The game just doesn't seem to have that normal  buzz about it.  Kind of like the Ohio State-Michigan game this past football season.

I'm sure that the players don't feel the same way and once the ball is tipped, the intensity of the rivalry will be in full effect.  But it just seems strange to see a Wooster/Wittenberg game with only one senior apiece on each team's roster and such heavy contributions from freshmen or first year players for both teams.

As for the game, Wittenberg does seem to be playing better of late, but, could that be contributed by who they have played?  Three of their 4 conference wins are against the bottom 3 in the conference.  And while their lone conference loss looked like a shocker at the time, Hiram has proven that they seem to be a serious challenger to the conference championship so far. 

I do know one thing we can count on and that is Wittenberg coming into Timken and playing out of their minds.  Someone from Witt that we least expect will go off and this game will probably come down to the wire yet again.  After all, it is still Wooster and Wittenberg!

[wally_wabash]

36-25 in favor of Wabash at halftime in C'ville. Oberlin led early but the LGs got hot in the middle of the half and asserted some control. Wabash is being led by Wes Smith and his 11points and 5 rebounds. Oberlin is paced by Jordan Beard with 11 points.

It's pretty critical that Wabash hold serve ok this home stand versus oberlin, earlham, and Denison. These just aren't loseable games if Wabash is going to get back into the top four.

[wally_wabash]

Wabash is on control here 64-49 with 90 seconds to play. Wes just went down pretty hard after being fouled driving to the basket. Looks like it might be a back or tailbone situation. He is definitely in some serious pain here. You hate to see that but it does happen. I certainly didn't see anything malicious on the play. Wes has been helped off the floor. We hope he'll be alright. 

[wally_wabash]

Back from Chadwick where Wabash beat Oberlin this afternoon 69-51.  Oberlin played well early in the game and had a small lead in the first half before Wabash went on a nice run to get ahead by double digits and were never really threatened beyond that.  Oberlin did cut the lead to seven points in the second half, but were never able to get closer than that. 

Aaron Brock went to work in the second half and finished with a game  high 18 points.  Wes Smith was right behind him with 17 points and also added a game high nine rebounds.  Oberlin's Jordan Beard was held to just two second half points and finished with 13 for the game.  Mike Loll led the Yeoman with 15 points.  Wabash outrebounded the Yeomen 39-25 and held a decisive 15-5 edge in offensive rebounding. 

The bigger story here is going to be the status of Wes Smith going forward.  As mentioned, Wes took a pretty nasty fall late in the game and seemed to be hurting pretty bad.  While there's never a good time to lose your best player, Wabash may catch a break here with their next two games against Earlham and Denison both of which are at Chadwick.  If Wes does need miss any time, now would be about the only time that I can see Wabash being able to go without him. 

In other news, Kenyon is all over Allegheny 47-25 with 17 minutes to go in that game.