MBB: North Coast Athletic Conference

[CentralOH]

Good choice to broadcast the EC/DU women...

[billy_pilgrim]

Tremendous.

Denison rallies to beat Earlham, 72-66.

Still waiting on more details...but apparently Brandon Miller was injured and had to leave the game. Preliminary reports said he will be fine, but I'll work on getting more details later.

Losing a home game against Denison cost Earlham the #4 spot last year. Now this puts them back in that same #3, 4, 5 logjam. Wow, what a bad night....

[CentralOH]

Wow - I was happy to hear that it was a 3 pt. ballgame inside 10 minutes.  Didn't see this one coming.  Any details are appreciated.  Huge win for the Big Red!

[GoBigRed]

Miller is fine.

Hodgkinson fouled him out. Great game by Hodgekinson and an excellent win for the big red. Can you say bandwagon for GoBigRed and the Big Red. At 2-8 if you told me they'd be .500 at some point I'd laugh hysterically.

Good game fellas - let see how the momentum does against the Tigers.

Go Big Red!

[imderekpoe]

An UGLY game in Gambier tonight.  The Scots were awful from the field and from the line, didn't take many 3's and often seemed to be somewhat uninspired.  There were some streaks of good play, but not for any extended period of time.  Vandervaart looked especially good with 3 or 4 steals out front from the Kenyon guards, which he converted into a dunk, a missed dunk, and several missed FT's.  Once again the Scots were the victim of an intentional foul when Vandervaart had a breakaway, went up for the dunk only to get a 2-handed shove in his back.  They called the intentional, but that guy should have been out of the game.  If not by the refs then Croce should have done it.

Kenyon has a couple of good players.  Formato, of course, can shoot lights out.  Bediako, their center, had 7 blocked shots - several of the spectacular variety, but he didn't contribute much offensively.

Overall, I'm not too disappointed that the Scots struggled tonight.  I was afraid that with a big win that they might start to feel a little overconfident without Port and that Saturday's game would be a real danger.  Hopefully they'll keep their mind on the game, remember the OT game in Earlham, and make it a long ride back to Richmond for the Quakers.

Go Scots!

[Pat Coleman]

Any Witt update?

[David Collinge]

Witt won by 15, I forget the exact score.

[imderekpoe]

Witt 63  Wabash 48

[David Collinge]

Yeah.  Here's the box score.

[smedindy]

Billy -

I seriously think you were in the wrong gyms - there are an awful lot of good girls high school players in Indiana where I live and they're a joy to watch.

I love the girls / boys doubleheaders. i think they're a neat way to showcase the programs and sometimes the girls outplay the boys, especially in hustle and verve. And I've seen a lot of sloppy boys games with plenty of turnovers this year - the girls don't have a monopoly on that.

Go watch Lebanon play - Maggie Boyer is a player and they are a true team that hustles from start to finish. Crawfordsville has a lot of great sophomores and freshmen. North Montgomery is really good. Attica has a player that could be better than Stephanie White. Twin Lakes has a great sophomore, Benton Central has a super freshman, and as always the Lafayette area has a great bunch of teams and players.

I think whatever your perception you had from your HS days isn't reality. The fans have really warmed to the girls / boys doubleheaders. And Southmont is actually featuring the girls on Friday and Saturday nights at times.

[smedindy]

Now WHO was the one who said the Big Red would rise up to the level of last year???  8)

[smedindy]

The Wabash big men just vanished, it looks, and we needed them to compete with Witt.

Earlham's loss, though, helps Wabash in its quest to host an NCAC tourney game. With OWU and Earlham coming to Chadwick, I think that helps Wabash.

[woosterbooster]

Wooster 76, Kenyon 63

An ugly win by any measuring stick.  Kenyon's game plan, defensively, was to play tough and tight defense on the perimeter.  To a great extent it worked well, as they limited the Scots to only 15 three-point attempts, most of them not good open looks.  Wooster only made three, one each by Witucky, Cooper, and Johnson.

Wooster, though, thanks to this defensive scheme, was able to score inside, both with the post players and on penetration.  If they'd been able to make their free throws, they'd have won by 25.  However, they were a horrific 19-35 from the line.  Vandervaart and Will a combined 4-15. If Evan had put up a few more bricks, he might have broken the front of a spanking new rim.

Geeze, I just took another look at the boxscore. Wooster had only six (!!!) assists for the entire game!!!  That's hard to believe.  Don't you get any assist if you dish it into the postman and he scores?  Does the home bookkeeper get to determine what an assist is?

Kenyon's Formato (25 points on 10-16 shooting) is a nice player, much more than the jump shooter that I expected.  He's strong and quick, can get to the basket, and gave even Brandon Johnson some trouble.  But, he sure got away with lots of pushing off to clear space for himself, none of which was called until 10 minutes to go in the game.

Another cheap shot by an NCAC player as Vandervaart was going up for an open layup on a breakaway.  You could just see it coming, and I was really happy that he didn't go up for the jam as he could have.  Luckily, he was on his was up for the shot, pretty much under control, when he was shoved from behind.  For a change, the intentional foul was called.

To the referreeing crew, just on the off chance that you're able to read:  

You were pathetic.  Players were mauled going to the hoop, on both sides, and you stood there in silence.  A Kenyon player was literally run over at midcourt as the Wooster defender took the ball, and you ignored it.  Not calling these big collision fouls is preposterous.  The skills of the players on the court exceed your meager abilities tenfold.

On a positive note.  Seeing the new Kenyon College athletic facility alone was worth the trip.  It's spectacular, and real.    Almost all glass, inside and out, as you walk along the corridors and inside open spaces you can see all of the action on the tennis courts, track, basketball courts, or in the pool.  The gym where the varsity games are played is small, but state of the art.  And the game was even free, which almost made up for the $8 in gas for the round trip.  

PS - Just read imderekpoe's post which was posted as I was creating mine.  Really similar, but I'll post this anyway.    

[David Collinge]

If the glass walls extend to the locker rooms, I might become a big fan of Kenyon women's swimming! 

[smedindy]

WooBoo -

The home stats crew determines the assists. Now yes, you get an assist if you pass to the postman and he scores without making any kind of move. But if he has to shake and shimmy, or do some fancy stuff - it's no assist. The pass must directly lead to a basket - without much of a move at all.

Except on a fast break - you can give an assist to the outlet man on a fast break if the man you pass to scores off the outlet pass. That's in the NCAA rule book, too.

And definitely it's not an assist if you get fouled in the act of shooting off of a pass and hit two free throws. I think the NCAA came down on a team in the NCAC for padding its assist totals a few years back.

Since I do the computer entry at Wabash, I have a pretty good idea that we do assists the right way. I know some schools give out assists like they were lollipops at a bank, and that's not right - but some schools are so tight with assists it's ridiculous. I know coach Petty had our SID look at the tape at least once this year to try to get assists corrected.

So stats crews out there in NCAC land - do your job. Get the assists right - don't give out gift assists but give the opponents their propers.

(I used to be the official scorer for the Indianapolis Ice in the IHL and CHL - now minor pro hockey players are the WORST when begging for unwarranted assists).