MBB: North Coast Athletic Conference

[smedindy]

Defense and rebounding, with a side of ballhandling, is what this Little Giant team needs right now.

[woosterbooster]

Wally -

Your so-called jokes always have a bit too much bite to them, especially when they're directed at Wooster, which is almost all of the time.  Somehow, they just don't come across that funny to me.

You're correct in that a high percentage of the time the topic in here involves Wooster.  So, change it!  Write something about Wabash, or any other school.  Nobody's stopping you.

Wabash has been struggling with a young team this year.  Have you ever heard me pick on them, or the school, or the coach, or anything Wabash, except for that time a couple of weeks ago when I was retaliating to a comment of yours?  I have nothing, nothing at all against Wabash.  I don't want to have anything against any of that school's posters.  

But you especially seem to feel the necessity to direct a steady stream of sarcasm at either Wooster or its posters.  In my opinion, it's you that needs to lighten up, not me.

[David Collinge]

If the knock on a Hodgkinson candidacy for NCAC POtY is that he's soft on defense, then I don't think that Tom Port is the answer.   

My main problem with Hodgkinson is that he, like all of his teammates, doesn't always hustle.  I'm not sure I can blame them too much; I wouldn't want to be in the situation they are in down there.  Also, although Dan has some good moves for a 6'6" post man, Vandervaart's are better, and neither is a great rebounder.  Borchers is not as good a scorer as these two, but he's a much better rebounder and a much better post defender, so at least for "big man of the year" I'd lean Dane's way right now.

[pennstghs]

wally-people try to change the scenery of this board by bringing up topics other than wooster-related-how much did we run up the score on denison-posts.
i continuously bring up wittenberg games and topics and many just disregard them and throw them out to the ship to dry.

as for POY i will give the edge to cooper at this point. port and vandervaart are too weak on defense to be considered at all. i think it is between borchers and cooper at this point. after seeing markus jewett last night though i would consider him a first team candidate at the very least though. thoughts?

billy? did u notice i did compliment earlham's facilities? haha. if only they had some teams or banners to go along with the singular 2 banners in the gym for cross country championships

[jscwittfan]

I'm resigned to the fact that my karma is going to take a hit whenever I post in this room (or even on a daily basis regardless of whehter or not I post anything).  The karma stat on this board is meaningless.  No accountability equals abuse of the system which in turn ruins any significance that the whole karma stat might have had.  It's a shame really. 

I agree completely with you, Wally.  If I had the power, I'd try to bring you back up.  But, then again, we're probably both going to go down further now.  Oh well. 

Well, I wasn't just making my argument based on the fact that they are all from Wooster.  I was basing my argument on the statistics which are hard to refute.  I was also making a case for Tom Port because it seems that most of the POY talk gets thrown Cooper's way, and when looking at all of the statistics, Port's presense among the leaders almost every statistical category is hard to overlook.

Here's something to add to the whole POY topic: does the number of strong candidates on Wooster's team actually HURT their chances?  I'm not sure of how the voting works, but if you have a contingent of voters who think Borchers is the best player, and a contingent of voters who can't differentiate between the 3 Wooster guys, and all of those votes get split, doesn't that favor Dane all the way?

I'm not saying that any of the Wooster guys don't deserve strong consideration for POY, because as much as I like to root against Wooster, I can still recognize a talented player when I see him, but I would think the number of options if the players stay all about the same level would deter voters from even voting for a Wooster player, because if the top 3 are so even, how do you say that one is that much better than the other to make him POY?  The only similar situation I can think of was 2 (?) years ago in baseball, where both David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez collected votes for their stellar seasons for Boston, and in the end, Ortiz ended up losing by a small margin to A-Rod.

It would make sense for all three of the Wooster guys to make first/second-team all conference, but I myself would have a hard time giving one of them the POY if they all stay on the same level and Dane continues to, 90% of the time, carry Witt.

[goscots]

Wooster fans who have watched most of the Scots game would not agree with the observation that Vandervaart is soft on defense. You are basing you opinion on the Witt/Wooster game where he was saddled with fouls early (unfairly in most Scots fans opinion) and had be careful in the second half to stay in the game. In a typical game it is very easy to see how active he is on defense, creating steals and blocking shots

I don't think its too early to talk about POY and there have been stretches in this season when each of the top three scorers at Wooster have looked the part. Last night Cooper scored 25 on 10-16 shooting. On Wednesday Port scored 17 of Woosters first 20 points and finished with 28. Vandervaart has had several double-doubles this season, most recently in his last game against Calvin.

Besides the Scots, Borchers and Hodgkinson I think you have also think about Ben Chojnacki from OWU, but outside of those 6 players I don't think anyone enters the conversation.

[ScotsFan]

If the knock on a Hodgkinson candidacy for NCAC POtY is that he's soft on defense, then I don't think that Tom Port is the answer.   

You're right about Port's weakness on defense.  Hense, it's not a coincidence that the only category he's not in the top of the NCAC statistically is steals.  Furthermore, it is possible to slow him down offensively by putting a big man that can stay with him on him defensively.  Wittenberg did a pretty good job on him defensively as did Ohio Northern.  Cooper, on the other hand is very difficult to stop, no matter how much you gameplan to stop him.  A team might have success for a while and then the next thing you know he's dropped in 10-15 just like that.  

after seeing markus jewett last night though i would consider him a first team candidate at the very least though. thoughts?

I agree about your thoughts on Jewett.  He played very well in Earlham's visit to Timken.  The problem for Earlham is that they don't have much around him and I think he feels the need to do it all at times.  He seemed to run out of gas in the 2nd half as a result of this.  That's not meant as a knock btw.

[wally_wabash]

POY is an interesting topic.  My quick takes on the names that have been dropped so far:

Hodgkinson - He's got nice numbers, but I think the reality of the situation is that any player from a team in the league's cellar isn't getting POY unless his stats completely blow everybody else in the league out of water.  Hodgkinson's stats don't fit that description.  Plus you have to consider how many of Hodgkinson's numbers are coming in garbage time against the end of the other team's bench.  Honestly, I don't know the answer, but that is a perfectly legit reason to see inflated stats from a guy who's team doesn't win very often.  If I had a POY vote, it's something I'd probably at least take a cursory glance at.  When Hodgkinson gets his stats is important when evaluating his candidacy.  This is no way a slight to Hodgkinson...he's a fine player, but I don't see POY here. 

Cooportvaart - The Wooster triumerate here are all pretty legit contenders and the concern that they might be stealing votes from one another is also legit.  I think Vandervaart missing time with injury makes him a fairly easy elimination for voters who can't decide which Scot to pick.  Cooper and Port are probably a toss up, but Cooper probably has an edge by virtue of his being the reigning POY (unless Cooper got votes from people who didn't vote for Port last year because of his injury).  I think the choice boils down to which of these two really carry the team against Witt. 

Dane Borchers - The guy is completely carrying Witt right now, has POY numbers, but if he can't get over the Wooster hump I don't think he'll have enough votes to steal it from either of the Scot frontrunners.  Heck of a player for sure, but those guys up in Wooster are every bit as good and have scoreboard on Dane this year. 

Really, with only a few conference games having been played, it might be a little early to make even an educated guess at this.  It'll clear up a lot after a few weeks. 

[David Collinge]

I could be wrong, and am far too lazy (and not interested enough) to scoll back and research, but I think we had a similar conversation last year about how Port and Cooper might split the "Wooster vote" and hand the crown to the dominant (and deserving) Dan Russ, but it didn't happen.  It could be different this year (after all Russ had Borchers, and Borchers has, well, Hemenway), but I'm not sure that the possibility of vote-splitting is as big a factor as it might seem.

I realize that I sometimes must sound like I have a man-crush on Hodgkinson , but I don't think he benefits much from garbage time.  As has been well-documented over the past couple of years , Bob Ghiloni likes to use his bench.  Those who were at Wooster on Saturday saw Ghiloni empty his bench before Steve Moore did (actually, at the same timeout, but Moore seemed to be responding to Ghiloni's bench-clearing), and it's something I've seen in other DU games this year (including last night's blowout win, so it cuts both ways.)  I think the better explanation for his statistical dominance is the Borchers one, only more so:  he's just far and away the best player on the team.  There's just not many guys on the Big Red who can score, so when Dan is on the floor, they try to get him the ball whenever they can.  Opponents know that, and he's double and triple teamed, but he usually gets his points, a lot of them on putbacks.  I don't think he's POY for a number of reasons, not least of which is Wally's "cellar-dweller" reason, but I think he deserves 1st team all-conference based on his play to date.

I wouldn't say that Tim Vandervaart is "soft" on defense, but I wouldn't put him in the same class as Dane Borchers or any of the Wooster centers from the past 10 years or so.  In fact, when the opponent has two decent big men, it seems to me Tim usually gets assigned to the lesser of the two, with Tom Port taking on the stronger threat.  They're both adequate on defense, and they're both so stellar on the other end of the floor that I'm happy to take adequate defense. 

[smedindy]

Perhaps Ghiloni uses his bench because he realizes that it's D-3 and the kids want to play, even for a few minutes at a time. Mac Petty has always used his bench liberally, and I wouldn't argue with his results.

[smedindy]

I do think that some love needs to be given to Chojnacki and Rudegeair (or however you spell his darn name) at OWU. They stats aren't eye popping, but I think that's due to the system OWU plays. They have a fine, fine team that I think could contend for second if another scorer steps up for them against the big boys.

[David Collinge]

I'm sure you're right.  Personally, I haven't mentioned them as OWU is one of the three NCAC teams I haven't yet seen this season (Wabash and Allegheny being the others.)

[smedindy]

It's a typical OWU team...they like to pop it from 3 and crash the boards.

[ScotsFan]

Here's something to add to the whole POY topic: does the number of strong candidates on Wooster's team actually HURT their chances?  I'm not sure of how the voting works, but if you have a contingent of voters who think Borchers is the best player, and a contingent of voters who can't differentiate between the 3 Wooster guys, and all of those votes get split, doesn't that favor Dane all the way?

I think you might be on to something there jsc.  This topic comes up a lot in any type of MVP or Heisman talk.  What if there happens to be more than one MVP or Heisman candidate on one specific team.  Does it hurt those players' chances because they end up splitting up votes?  That may have been why Cooper ended up with the POY last year because Russ and Borchers split some of their votes, but you could probably argue that Port and Cooper could have caused  the same type of split.  Although, Port's missed time due to his injury may have swung enough of his votes over to Cooper.

To add to that point, if Borchers ends up winning it would probably be because of that type of scenario...   Just kidding there.  If Borchers were to win POY, it wouldn't be like he didn't deserve it.  As you said jscwittfan, at least 90% of the time he is carrying that team to another hard faught win.  Whenever Witt needs a basket, more times than not, Dane has the answer.  I think it's going to come down to who actually wins the NCAC.  As was said earlier, Borchers wins IMO if Witt wins the regular season title.  Cooper wins if Wooster wins.  And as goscots said, let's not forget about OWU and Chojnacki.  He is quietly putting togeter a very impressive campaign including shooting nearly 57% from downtown!  And that's having made 27 treys which is the same number that Port has made so far this season.

[Li'l Giant]

My only comment on the POY conversation is that I agree that a cellar-dweller POY better have seriously crazy numbers. I think any of the Scots or Borchers would be appropriate at this point. But who knows what the rest of the season holds.