MBB: North Coast Athletic Conference

[seinfeld]

Wonder if Mike DeWitt has any tips on playing Guilford? OWU played them very close at the Marietta Tournament, although that was over two months ago. Of course, the refs can just do the visiting team a favor and call a couple of quick fouls on Sanborn.

[sludge]

Bryan Wickliffe is about to face a serious national POY candidate.  This will be something different than what he has seen.

He went toe to toe against the WIAC Player of the Year last Saturday.  I know the ODAC is a very good league, but we're talking about the POY from arguably the toughest conference in the country.  I'd hardly consider Mitchell from Whitewater chopped liver?!  Unless Sanborn is Shaquile O'niel, I wouldn't go as far as to say that Sanborn will be something drastically different than the two talented bigs he faced over the weekend?!

The advantage that I forsee for Guilford in the paint goes beyond "just" Sanborn.  When you are done pushing him around (good luck), you've got fine tough forwards and swingmen to deal with, and after them, you've got the guards.  For Guilford, everyone scores in the paint.  And absolutely everyone rebounds.

I am still concerned about your talent and your shooters, though.

Everyone scores in the paint?  Because it looks like most of your scoring is done by 3 guys as I touched on above.  And of those 3, two of them seem to like to do most of their scoring beyond the arc. 

And Guilford may be a good rebounding team.  I never said anything to the contrary.  I was just basing my observation by the fact that Guilford's tallest players based on minutes played after Sanborn are 6'4", 6'4" and 6'2" and all of your guards or 'swingmen' as you want to call them are all between 6'-6'2".  By comparison, Wooster's starting lineup goes 6'5", 6'7" on the inside. And our 3 guard lineup goes 6'4", 6'2" and 6'1".  And our two smaller guards have the ability to jump out of the gym.  Not to mention, Wooster has even more height coming off the bench with available subs coming in at 6'7", 6'5" and 6'8".  Obviously Guilford can rebound as they are a +12 in that category while averaging 43 rpg.  Of course, having a guy on your team that snags 15 rpg by himself doesn't hurt that statistic.    On the other hand, Wooster's leading rebounder is averaging just over 7rpg of the more than 37 rpg Wooster has been averaging.  So, I think it could be argued that 'absolutely everyone' rebounds for Wooster as well...

Look, I'm not saying I don't think Guilford is very good.  It's going to take one of Wooster's best efforts to win this game.  I was just stating my opinion that I feel, on paper, that Wooster appears to match up very well with Guilford.  And as evidenced by Wooster's win over a very good Whitewater team, the Scots are capable of beating anyone on any given night! 

That's what I'm afraid of.  Should be a great game.

[sludge]

OK, I watched those clips from the Wooster - Whitewater game.  I understand you are deadly from three point range, no doubt about it,  but... what was up with all those drives into the lane?  Where the heck was Whitewater's D on those?

Guilford will have to play better defense than Whitewater did, or it will be Guilford toast by the end of the third.

[seinfeld]

Guilford has an interesting basketball history. They were NAIA for a long time, and had a number of good teams. They also had a couple of famous players, including M.L. Carr and World B. Free. Former Wake Forest coach Dave Odom is also an alum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilford_College#Notable_alumni

[hasanova]

Guilford has an interesting basketball history. They were NAIA for a long time, and had a number of good teams. They also had a couple of famous players, including M.L. Carr and World B. Free. Former Wake Forest coach Dave Odom is also an alum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilford_College#Notable_alumni

Two other NBA players would be Bob Kauffman and Greg Jackson.  Carr and Free were a Senior and a Freshman, respectively, on the 1973 national champions.  I was a Junior that season, so I saw a lot of great basketball!

[ScotsFan]

Great article on Ian Franks in today's Wooster Daily Record:

Unintimidating, but awfully good

Hard to believe he wasn't even recruited by Moore and his staff!  David, I know you joked about kids walking on in division III, but I would consider this about as close as you could get to a D3 walk-on.  Franks just showed up for practice to try and make the team his freshman year and the rest is history!

I also found this quote somewhat amusing from the article:

"We always joke as a team that we might be the most unintimidating team in America."

This is so true.    With Franks especially, but I've never seen a team act so ho-hum after making a great play or after getting a hoop and harm.    Brandon did show some emotion last Saturday after getting a basket to go and a foul.  But, Franks got a hoop and harm earlier and he just walked back to the line and gave some teammates fives like it was just no big deal.     That's just the way Franks is.  He's not a rah-rah, fire the team up kind of player and really, there aren't any with this type of personality on this team.  I've seen Brandon get fired up every once in a while and Nathan shows some emotion as does Wick every now and again, but for the most part, this team just goes about their business and lets their play do the talking.  And really, that is kind of refreshing in a way when you compare it to the jackass from Whitewater last week.  I'd much rater see players that let their play do the talking as opposed to players that don't know when to shut up.

[Gregory Sager]

Great article on Ian Franks in today's Wooster Daily Record:

Unintimidating, but awfully good

Wow! A Michael Harper reference! And it's spot-on and fits the context! And a Tedder and Rowlinson reference, too. Coach Moore really knows his D3 history.

[ScotsFan]

Great article on Ian Franks in today's Wooster Daily Record:

Unintimidating, but awfully good

Wow! A Michael Harper reference! And it's spot-on and fits the context! And a Tedder and Rowlinson reference, too. Coach Moore really knows his D3 history.

The year Tedder and Rowlinson were leading OWU to their National Championship was Moore's first year at Wooster so I'm sure he became real familiar with how talented those 2 were for the Bishops.

Also, seeing that he played for Witt and then went on to be an assistant for the Tigers back in the 70's, I'm sure he was also quite familiar with how good of a program North Park had going at that time as well.

Not to mention, when you've been involved in D3 basketball for as long as Moore has including the last 26 years as a head coach at the D3 level, you're bound to pick up a thing or two wrt D3 basketball history. 

[Gregory Sager]

Great article on Ian Franks in today's Wooster Daily Record:

Unintimidating, but awfully good

Wow! A Michael Harper reference! And it's spot-on and fits the context! And a Tedder and Rowlinson reference, too. Coach Moore really knows his D3 history.

Also, seeing that he played for Witt and then went on to be an assistant for the Tigers back in the 70's, I'm sure he was also quite familiar with how good of a program North Park had going at that time as well.

After looking at his profile page on the Wooster site, I've figured it out: Moore was an assistant coach under Larry Hunter at Wittenberg from 1976-81. In 1980 Wittenberg was in the Final Four with North Park, although they didn't play each other (North Park beat Longwood and Upsala beat Wittenberg in the semifinals; Wittenberg beat Longwood in the consolation game and North Park beat Upsala in the championship game). This is undoubtedly how he became familiar with Harper's story, since, of course, Harper was the primus inter pares of the three All-Americans who played for North Park in that Final Four.

[WooHoopsntrack01]

Yeah, absolutely fantastic article on Franks today.  Congrats!!

Now, in terms of the Scots chances this weekend.  They can get Guilford.  Not sure if anyone has ever been to the barn down there, but its a decent gym.  Backdrop makes it interesting for shooters.  With that being said, the Scots are going to have to do 3 things (no brainers)

1) Control the glass
2) Control the tempo
3) Hallowell is going to need to show up and have a game.  Franks and the other guys have really been carrying the Scots.  If JH can step it up and give more offensively- because Guilford will do all it can to clamp down on Franks, then the Scots will come away with a big game. I don't think GC is expecting Hallowell to have a good game, and boy oh boy is he due!!!

LETS GO SCOTS!!!!

[sludge]

Yeah, absolutely fantastic article on Franks today.  Congrats!!

Now, in terms of the Scots chances this weekend.  They can get Guilford.  Not sure if anyone has ever been to the barn down there, but its a decent gym.  Backdrop makes it interesting for shooters.  With that being said, the Scots are going to have to do 3 things (no brainers)

1) Control the glass
2) Control the tempo
3) Hallowell is going to need to show up and have a game.  Franks and the other guys have really been carrying the Scots.  If JH can step it up and give more offensively- because Guilford will do all it can to clamp down on Franks, then the Scots will come away with a big game. I don't think GC is expecting Hallowell to have a good game, and boy oh boy is he due!!!

LETS GO SCOTS!!!!

Just curious, what tempo would be your preference?

I think Guilford is pretty tempo agnostic, with maybe a preference to run.  We can certainly grind out half court when we need to.

[ScotsFan]

Just curious, what tempo would be your preference?

I think Guilford is pretty tempo agnostic, with maybe a preference to run.  We can certainly grind out half court when we need to.

I'd say Wooster would prefer an up-tempo game.  That said, they to can play a more deliberate half-court set if needed.  Just look at last weekend's games for a perfect example.  Grove City dictated the tempo and Wooster struggled to put the Wolverines away with the slower tempo Grove City was playing.  Conversely, the next night vs. a much better team in Whitewater, the Warhawks allowed the pace to be a bit more wide open and Wooster was thriving building up as much as a 16 point lead in the 2nd half before Whitewater tried to pull off another miracle comeback?! 

Wooster has had success playing both up-tempo and more of a grind it out style, but I think it's safe to say the Scots would prefer to get out and run when they have the chance.

[imderekpoe]

Coach Moore will be on Hoopsville tonight...

[imderekpoe]

I put together the stats and rosters for the teams in the Guilford Sectional. 

They can be accessed here:  http://www.jtaswell.com/D3BB/2010_Guilford_Sectional.htm

[sludge]

I put together the stats and rosters for the teams in the Guilford Sectional. 

They can be accessed here:  http://www.jtaswell.com/D3BB/2010_Guilford_Sectional.htm

Thanks for that excellent presentation of thoses stats, imderekpoe.   Really nice layout.

For a running team, Wooster doesn't score all that much.  It looks like the running-est team in the Guilford sectional is... Eastern Mennonite.  That's believable to me.

It looks like Wooster is actually getting it done more with defense.  Interesting.