MBB: North Coast Athletic Conference

[countyroad]

No flexing by Dupree tonight, right?  Hope he keeps that tongue in his mouth too.

[HopeConvert]

Is there a final score yet?

[kiltedbryan]

Wooster 87
Whitewater 78
Final

Congratulations to the Scots on the trip to the Sweet Sixteen!

[fantastic50]

This was a crazy game, with the Whitewater coach being ejected, then Wooster having an 11-point lead dwindle to just four in a fifteen-second span.  Ian Franks' 30 points once again carried the Scots offensively.  Congrats to the Scots on advancing to the Sweet Sixteen.

I'm guessing that Guilford will host the Scots, EMU, and the Chapman/Whitworth winner.

[nicevilledave]

In the bracket, Guilford 3, Eastern Mennonite 10  and Wooster 17 have won.  The west coast game, Chapman 12 at Whitworth 4 starts later. 

Guesses on who will host the next round?

[nicevilledave]

(Sorry, Didn't mean to step on fantastic50)

[sac]

In the bracket, Guilford 3, Eastern Mennonite 10  and Wooster 17 have won.  The west coast game, Chapman 12 at Whitworth 4 starts later. 

Guesses on who will host the next round?

I think Guilford would be in line to host that Sectional......its one flight for the west coast team no matter who hosts.  I think Guilford is the highest seed remaining.

[ArmingtonCave]

No flexing by Dupree tonight, right?  Hope he keeps that tongue in his mouth too.

Oh he was woofing it up to us and then shot an airball and made some dumb mistakes.   That three he made was clutch though.  Franks was insane the first half, he was the difference but the turning point IMO was the jumper from the top of the key Wick made when the shot clock ran out midway in the second half.  

Also Coach Moore was pumped at the beginning of the half, I haven't seen him like that in some time.  Doug seemed to be pumped too.    Crowd was into it and was a decent turnout.  

As an aside, they had the model of the new student activity center in the foyer.  It extends out parallel to the wooded hill and doesn't take out a large portion of the hill the band and football team march down, which is good.

All in all a good night to be a Fighting Scot.

[drt]

Finally Ohio beats Wisconsin.  Thanks Scots!

[ScotsFan]

SWEET SIXTEEN!!! Wooohooo! 

No flexing by Dupree tonight, right?  Hope he keeps that tongue in his mouth too.

The crowd was ALL over this dude tonight.  At one point he threw up an air ball and I've never heard the crowd outside of the students get into the 'airball' chant, but they did tonight!    And at one point he made a near steal in front of the media table which is the side I was sitting on and he made some incoherent yell while flexing his muscles.  I don't know exactly what transpired but the official called a T on the crowd and the next thing you know, Wooster's assistant SID I believe was being escorted out of the building by one of Wooster's finest?!  It was quite bizarre to say the least.

I don't recognize these officials, but I'd guess they're Ohioans, and I think they're probably not used to a more physical Wisconsin-style game.  In the second half, they've been calling everything, and between that and the media timeouts, this game has very little flow.  Still, the overactive refs have been generally to Wooster's benefit, and as Bryan points out, they've used that benefit to good advantage.

I thought this might happen.  My dad was worried that the WW big man was going to get a lot of calls and get the Wooster bigs in foul trouble.  I mentioned to him that perhaps the WIAC's physical style may be unfamiliar to these officials and Wooster would actually benefit from that.  As it turns out, I would say the later turned out to be true.  Although, the ft discrepancy wasn't all that far off when Bryan made his post.  Wooster had only 3 more attempts at the ft line.  The discrepancy was in makes where Wooster had 12 more.  I haven't had a chance to go back and look at the final stats, so I'm just going by the numbers that Bryan posted.

And speaking of officiating, we had a bit of everything in this game.  I believe we had 4 WW players foul out.  Their coach was ejected after 2 T's and we had Hugh Howard's assistant tossed as mentioned earlier.  And then to make things interesting, the officiating completely blew two calls where Wooster's Brandon Johnson was grabbed by the attitude and was called for traveling.  And if that wasn't bad enough, a couple of possessions later, WW mugged another Wooster player only to see traveling as the call again?!  Fortunately, those horrible calls didn't come back to bite Wooster, although they almost did... 

All in all, Wooster played every bit as good defensively tonight as they did last night. The difference tonight is that the offense showed up for the Scots!  While freaking Ian Franks will steal the spotlight and rightfully so with his 30 points, I'm going to have to say that Brandon Johnson hands down gets the game ball tonight!!!  I know that Dupree (aka the attitude) had twenty points, but Johnson frustrated him all night long when matched up with the attitude.  Not to mention it took the attitude 18 shots to get his 20 points.  And how about Johnson scoring 15 points.  Brandon picked a pretty good time to score your season high!

Well, now it looks like the Scots are off to ODAC land as both Guilford and EMU knocked the OAC from the tournament tonight.  Wooster should go into the round of 16 with no pressure!  No one expected them to get past WW and they proved all the doubters wrong tonight!  Well, now I'm sure that no one is going to expect them to topple mighty Guilford down in tobacco country.  Keep proving them wrong Wooster!

[seinfeld]

I'm almost certain that wasn't the assistant Wooster SID that was ejected, as I saw him helping the photographer with some video during the game.

Quick question and then a few comments. Does anyone know what are the guidelines officials are supposed to follow in terms of handing out technical fouls for trash talking and taunting fans? Fletcher did both last night, and did it again tonight. The instance that ScotsFan pointed out took place right in front of the Wooster radio guy, and right in front of an official, and nothing was called. In fact, Fletcher played 36 minutes, was physical the entire game, and didn't pick up his first foul until the last two minutes of the game when they were fouling on purpose. Hard to believe there wasn't some reluctance to call a foul on him for whatever reason.

As for the officiating, not going to spend much time on this, because no one wants to hear it, but when you can predict how the officials are going to call a game over a series of minutes based on two factors -- what the scoreboard says in terms of number of fouls on each team, or a coach giving a ref an earful or picking up a technical -- you know the officials are not up to the challenge. The Whitewater coach picked up a technical with 2:40 to play in the first half. Interesting in that at Whitewater had not been called for a foul in nearly six minutes and had only two more fouls than Wooster at that point. But as soon as the technical was called, you could see how the refs changed the way they called the game. They overcompensated, and Whitewater was getting away with almost anything. Six of the next seven fouls called were against Wooster, and the only one they called against Whitewater was so blatant that they had not choice but to call it.

I completely misjudged Whitewater's defense when considering who was going to win this game. Despite their height and athleticism, their interior players are lousy defenders. They let Defiance score in the paint a lot last night, and they did with Wooster tonight, especially in the first half. Mitchell especially should be much more active defensively inside to block or alter shots. Of course you also couldn't have predicted how bad Whitewater would be at the line. If they shoot even a little bit better, they probably stay within a couple of possessions the whole second half, and with the way they finished these two games, who knows what could have happened.

Brandon Johnson's recovery from his knee surgeries really is remarkable. You would never know by the way he played tonight that nine months ago he tore his ACL for a second time. Remarkable.

But now the question is, can Wooster win a tournament game on the road? They have lost their last six in a row and haven't won on the road since 1997.

[David Collinge]

If Wooster, John Carroll, and Wilmington (all playing top 10 opponents) all win tonight, the sectional would likely be at Wooster.

Who's with me?  O-H!!!  I-O!!!  O-H!!!  I-O!!!

Well, the OAC guys didn't hold up their end of the bargain, so the Scots get to take a little Tabacky Road vacation.  I'm not complaining! 

Defiance showed that Whitewater could be beaten, and Wooster came along and finished the job.  Tonight, JCU had Guilford on the ropes, so maybe on Friday the Scots can once again finish what another Ohio squad started.  It's certainly shaping up as a terrific sectional; I only wish I could be there!  (If the NCAA would award the sectional to the Whitworth/Chapman winner, I'd be there!)

[goscots]

Not sure what you mean by "on the road". I'm guessing that does not include neutral site games.

[seinfeld]

What I should have said is "true" road game.

[goscots]

Understood. I hadn't thought of Wooster's recent tournament play in that fashion as they have ended their seasons in both neutral and "true road" game fashion.

I couldn't attend tonight's game as my twin daughters had a birthday party tonight but I had it up on internet radio and live stats. My take away from this game was the same as David's- Ian Franks carried the team in the first half but Brandon Johnson is showing his leadership here at the end of the season. His defense against Wittenberg, Grove City, and WW have been unbelievable. It all started with in the away game at Wabash. I think Brandon should be recognized as one of the best Wooster guards (certainly this decade).