MBB: North Coast Athletic Conference

[wooscotsfan]

Final:  Wooster 74  Oberlin 66

Wooster gets the NCAC road win over the Yeomen.  Scots were led by Xavier Brown with 24 points, Doug Thorpe with 12 points, Jake Mays with 10 points (12 boards - nice double-double) and Evan Pannell with 10 points.

Oberlin's top scorers were Geoff Simpson with 19 points, Emmanuel Lewis with 15 points and Andrew Fox added 12.  Oberlin played a solid game tonight and their 4th scorer with 9 points was Randy Ollie, a 6'9" freshman center who showed some ability around the basket.

Wooster is now 3-1, 1-0 NCAC.   Next game is Wednesday at Ohio Northern.

[kiltedbryan]

Ohio Wesleyan (3-0) vs. Rochester (3-0) or SUNY - Cobleskill (1-2) @ Rochester - Obviously, the powers that be want the Bishops to face the Yellowjackets. That could be one of the better early-season games out there - a real humdinger that will definitely give both clubs a read on how they stack up nationally. If the Bishops face the Fighting Tigers, it'll be a let down for everyone, but at least this writer won't have to give yet another adjective for a team named the "Tigers". Thank God for small favors, I suppose.

Rochester goes to 5-0 and wins its UR/Holiday Inn Airport Thanksgiving Invitational with a 83-68 victory over OWU. Wesleyan takes its first loss and falls to 3-1. Rochester seems likely to enter the Top 25 this week with the 5-0 start after being the "others receiving votes" for the preseason poll.

From the game story, it sounds like a pretty convincing win for the Yellowjackets, with the outcome never seriously in doubt. OWU fell behind 15-5 and never recovered, as the Yellowjackets enjoyed a 37-24 halftime advantage and pushed it to 61-35 midway through the second. Wesleyan never got closer than 15 the rest of the way.

[wallyworld12]

Just sitting down to write my review of the Little Giants game against Illinois Wesleyan yesterday. Was very impressed by Wabash's effort against a good IWU team. As Smed noted above freshman Ross Sponsler did not play, with what is rumored to be a sore knee. Without a key contributor, the LGs looked pretty good.

Was particulary impressed by the post play of Pete Nicksic. Glad to see him fill the footsteps of Nick Curosh. The Titans were very poor from the foul line until it mattered, and those shots along with a late game lane violation sealed the deal for them.

Wabash will play Rose-Hulman on Monday.

[smedindy]

Also, in the league:

DePauw bested Franklin 72-55.

CWRU beat Kenyon 73-63.

A 2-2 slate in non-conference makes it 21-13 overall non-conference.

[smedindy]

Tonight there are two more non-conference games:

Allegheny (2-2) @ Geneva (0-4) - The Gators didn't embarrass themselves against either C-M or Baldwin - Wallace, and now they have a 'breather' against a reeling Geneva team that's finding life in the PrAC and D-3 not to their liking, record-wise. Geneva's lost to a couple of Penn State Hyphens and a Pitt Branch Campus, so struggling would almost be an understatement. Devone McLeod is putting up a nice season for Allegheny - averaging 19 a game while leading the team in assists.

Rose-Hulman (2-1) @ Wabash (1-2) - The plucky young Little Giants squad almost, not quite, but coulda pulled a huge upset Saturday against IWU. But there's no rest as a tough Rose-Hulman squad comes to town. The Engineers lost a tough one in OT to Carroll over the weekend, allowing 14 points in the OT when they only gave up 19 in the second half. The LG's will need to find ways to score as RH will make it darn tough to establish an offense.

[Dr. Acula]

We've got some games going on this weekend, and one finally makes its debut. Plus, we have our first conference game of the year. Wait, what??? 

Saturday, November 24:

Mt. Union (1-2) @ Hiram (0-0) - Terriers finally kick off their season with a game against a bleah OAC team.

Hiram took care of business against my Raiders.  They scored 90+ so no first game rust for the Terriers.  Gonna be a bumpy year on the hardwood in Alliance for the men.  Just have to hope playing the youngsters pays off next year.   

[smedindy]

Hmmm...Wooster only beats Oberlin by 8. Oberlin lost to Earlham by 19.

[WAlum]

Miscellaneous thoughts:
Wooster / Oberlin game MUCH closer than expected.
OWU takes one on the chin at Rochester.
Wabash is getting better. Hoping for a win vs. RH
Allegheny cant get overconfident going into the Geneva game.
DePauw is going to be a tough team to deal with.  Good win over Franklin.

[seinfeld]

Hmmm...Wooster only beats Oberlin by 8. Oberlin lost to Earlham by 19.

Wooster trailed Oberlin at home, in January of last season, with 11 minutes to play and only won by 12. Went on to reach Sweet 16. Mark me down as someone who isn't worried in the least.

[wallyworld12]

How do you spell ugly, at least for tonight? W-A-B-A-S-H

Little Giants take it on the chin at home to Rose-Hulman, 61-37. No offense. None. Played it close in the first half, but if you can't score more than 37 points in a game, you aren't gonna beat anybody.

Yuck.

Back in action on Saturday, NCAC-opener against the Big Red of Denison. Hopefully Coach Carpenter can get the ship righted, and we can get Sponsler back in the rotation, or it could be a LOOOONNNGGG year...

[smedindy]

I'm not surprised at Rose-Hulman's defensive abilities. They put the hurt on almost every team in this young season. A team as fuzzy-cheeked as Wabash (old sportswriter term...) would probably struggle against them. I have confidence that Wabash will turn it around.

Looks like Allegheny won over Geneva 86-66. Ryan Stanko led the Gators with 17

NCAC now 22-14 in the non-conference.

[woosterbooster]

A team as fuzzy-cheeked as Wabash...

Note to Santa: Cancel order of Norelcos enroute to the Wabash players' Christmas stockings.

[kiltedbryan]

Hmmm...Wooster only beats Oberlin by 8. Oberlin lost to Earlham by 19.

You know, I watched that game (great video feed by Oberlin, btw), and what struck me was that while it was evident that Wooster enjoyed a talent advantage at nearly every position, it was also clear that the talent gap was necessary, but not sufficient, for this Wooster squad to be able to impose its will on a less-talented squad. Wooster just doesn't have that level of team flow/cohesion/dynamism (yet, at least) that can turn their individual talent advantages into additional team-wide advantages that would force a less-talented team like Oberlin out of sync.

So instead, I saw a game where Wooster's more skilled offensive players were able to create somewhat better chances for themselves offensively, and correspondingly make more of their shots, but who weren't able to force Oberlin to do a lot of things that Oberlin didn't want to do. Particularly in the first half, Oberlin firmly controlled the tempo, keeping it a slow-paced game, and was able to get decent looks out of their offensive sets more often than not. That they proceeded to then *miss* a lot of those shots thoughout the game speaks to the relative talent levels between the squads. I will give the Scots credit for making Andrew Fox work for his points though--they did a nice job of corraling him and forcing him into 8 3pt attempts of 16 shots, a good idea since he's now only 3-26 from there on the season.

Also, I would give some credit to the intense effort of the Yeomen in what may be their only meeting with the Scots this year - pretty sure they would *love* to nip the Scots someday, and the motivation might have been a bit higher for this one than the non-conference meeting with Earlham.

[kiltedbryan]

Wooster drops to #16 in the first regular-season poll with 173 pts.
Wittenberg stays in others receiving votes (#30) with 46 pts.
OWU drops into others receiving votes (#31) with 39 pts.

As expected, 5-0 Rochester (responsible for OWU's loss) moves into the Top 25 at #17.
5-0 Adrian (responsible for Wooster's loss) also slips into the poll at #20. Not sure when the last time was that the Bulldogs were ranked (or started a season 5-0).

[woosterbooster]

Wooster just doesn't have that level of team flow/cohesion/dynamism (yet, at least) that can turn their individual talent advantages into additional team-wide advantages...

Exactly.  They're not yet a "firing on all cylinders" Hickory or UCONN women-type team, and they may never be.  At least, though, they're not Grinnell, and we can be thankful for that.