Pool C

[AO]

You start in my view with a false premise: that the eastern teams are relatively weak this year.  The Midwest hasn't exactly featured a slew of really scary teams this season. WIAC is clearly way down.  I've seen Marietta and Hope lose to NESCAC teams, neither of which was in the top two in the conference.  I don't think it's fair to assume that NESCAC would have done any worse if placed in a Midwest-heavy bracket.  It is equally likely that this year in paticular, they would have fared better.  As an Eph fan, Midd and Tufts at full strength are the two most talented teams I've seen this season. 

I think Amherst is the only NESCAC team for which there was a remotely reasonable case to exclude them -- but the Jeffs' numeric credentials were off the charts and I think the win vs. Babson, plus two vs. Williams, was huge for them.  And they were ranked above two OTHER New England teams that got Pool C bids -- Endicott and Keene, both of whom had clearly weaker resumes.  And yet, both of them are now in the Sweet 16 including for Keene beating the top seed in the regional on the road. 

Again, I'm not arguing they shouldn't have been in under the current criteria.  Amherst had a giant SOS and many regionally ranked wins.  If they fixed the home/away multiplier like Knightslappy and I want them to it would drop their SOS from .596 to .545.  Every team that tends to schedule some of their easiest opponents for home games will benefit from the broken multiplier as those games get devalued by the multiplier compared to the tougher NESCAC road games.  Amherst got a special benefit from that this year.  We know the committee is aware of how the single round robin NESCAC helps Amherst's SOS, so they might view .545 very skeptically. 

It doesn't matter to me if Amherst won the whole tournament, they still got in under flawed criteria that favored them.  That's not a matter of disrespect towards them or anybody in the NE.

[HOPEful]

"Certainly not"?  Thanks for clearing that up! 

I think it's clear that Amherst or Wesleyan COULD very well have beaten any of the teams in the Midwest quadrant, none of whom seem like powrhouses right now.  Both certainly had better years than say Wartburg.   But of course it's entirely speculative either way. 

New England, and the Northeast more generally, can not and will not ever get respect here.  Even if New England puts six in the Sweet 16, or two in the Final Four,  it always comes with an asterisk.  It's telling that it's just assumed that the Midwest is always the toughest regional.  In many years that is true.  But not this year.  E.g., midwest posters tend to discount the talent on a team like Endicott because they don't know the name.  But they are very much for real.   As long as New England teams keep winning, it's all good.

This Great Lakes poster made this comment in a different thread before the start of the tournament.

If I were to vote on a "bracket of death", I'd go upper right corner. Middlebury, Lycoming, Neumann, Nichols, Salisbury, Cabrini, Endicott... Neumann has to be a little bummed that their 25-2 record landed them one of the best guard tandems in the country in the first round (Echevarria and Bruton)... Lycoming can't love getting Tyheim Monroe in the first round either.

[BigMike33]

AO

Middlebury beat Illinois Wesleyan in Heroes Classic 12-28.  Great game but it was Middlebury's first game without Zach Baines who transferred to Occidental.  Middlebury changed offenses after the first of the year without Zach and got much better.

Illinois Wesleyan relied heavily on their center who as a giant is a mismatch and played post and kick offense off of his mismatch. Illinois Wesleyan could not make their conference tournament.  They remain at the table crying over spilled milk for a reason.

[Gregory Sager]

The proof is in the pudding, nescac1. The Final Four is where the best teams from the various parts of the country have the opportunity to meet, and after 29 of the 42 Final Fours held thus far by D3, it's been a midwestern team that's cut down the nets -- in spite of the fact that midwestern teams are significantly outnumbered in D3 by teams from the northeast. More recently, midwestern teams have walked away with the Walnut & Bronze after 15 of the last 20 tourneys; in fact, in six of those 20 tourneys, there were two midwestern teams vying for that trophy in the national championship game (including each of the last two tourneys, UWSP vs. Augustana in '15 and St. Thomas vs. Benedictine last March).

By contrast, the only New England teams that have ever won national championships are Amherst and Williams; heck, the last time that a New England team other than Amherst or Williams even reached the national championship game was all the way back in '87, when Clark lost to North Park. New York State, which is chockablock with D3 schools, hasn't done much better; since Potsdam State went into decline in the late '80s, the only teams from the Empire State that have reached the national championship game have been Rochester (won it in '90, lost it in '92 and '05) and NYU (lost it in '94).

Even the Final Four consolation games indicated midwestern dominance before they were discontinued seven years ago. In six of the last eight consolation games, a midwestern team beat a team from another part of the country, and they did so by an average of 11 ppg. Midwestern teams are 21-7 against non-midwestern opponents in national championship games, and they were 18-4 in consolation games against non-midwestern opponents. All told, midwestern teams have gone 70-30 (.700) against non-midwestern teams in Final Four play.

If it's assumed that the midwestern-oriented quadrants are the tougher quadrants, it's because history has borne that out.

[AppletonRocks]

I think NESCAC in general, and New England more generally, was flukishly deep in senior talent this year.  Babson, Keene, and Endicott are likely headed for huge dropoffs next season. Midd loses two elite guys and a role player, as does Tufts.  Amherst loses a ton.  Wesleyan loses its PG and C.  Eastern Conn loses its top three big guys. Williams arguably brings back the most but still graduates its star.  MIT and Nichols should both be better next year but they are exceptions; New England is definitely loaded to a ridiculous degree this year.  Telling stat: two regionals have three New England teams each.  The other two are hosted by teams that lost the only time they faced a New England team. 

And to think, Duncan Robinson and Hunter Sabety could have been seniors this year as well ....

Sounds like you should cancel next NESCAC season and save the eligibility for 2018/19.   

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

It's not really about regions so much as matchups.  Amherst and Wesleyan would've lost to Wartburg or Endicott because they played two insane games in a row.  Keene would've beaten a lot of teams because they've been injury riddled all year and are just now at their strongest.

It's just not a great year to make comparisons.

[BigMike33]

Saw the Middlebury vs Illinois Wesleyan in person 12/29/16 at College of Staten Island.

Game notes:

Middlebury imposed its' physical will on Illinois Wesleyan even though its offensive efficiency was low due to personnel changes.  Baines averaged 13.8 ppg before transferring, this was Game 1 without him.

Here's your coach's quote, Ron Rose, on game from Pantagraph..."It was a really physical game, and we didn't play tough enough during that stretch," Rose said. "They were the aggressors, and we were battling from behind the entire second half."

That stretch that Ron Rose refers to would be the 17-3 Middlebury run to start the second half with adjustments at halftime from NESCAC Coach of the Year Jeff Brown.  Double team the moose, and switch out quickly...more ball pressure on guards to deny entry pass angles. Seibring got frustrated and got a technical to foul out late. Middlebury doubled him, banged him, had guards dive in to swipe at ball.  IWU 3 starting guards each had 5 turnovers.  21 total for team.   We didn't play tough enough Coach Rose??  You got out-coached!!!  Call it for what it was.

So as usual..we hear these lame arguments about the Midwest teams but when pitted against Northeast, the physicality of Northeast basketball style wears on the Midwesterners who lose their cool or get out-coached or both......

Middlebury, Williams, & Tufts...the top teams in NESCAC play suffocating man to man defense. They block and alter shots and get deflections on passes which all lead to turnovers. They push pace at all times. They fast break after your makes..surgically carving up the defense causing mismatches and foul trouble along with delivering high efficiency offense. They close out on 3's, they box out for rebounds, the ball pressure of guards makes post entry difficult.  All 3 teams have primary and secondary stars who you would want to have the ball needing a basket to tie or win. Options!!! Tufts when healthy every bit as good as Middlebury or Williams.

I was at both Middlebury vs. Tufts game..tied with 1 minute to go...and Williams Middlebury NESCAC final which again at halftime adjustments, Coach Brown got it done, this time a 16-0 run to start second half with flawless pick & roll defense, every shot contested and star St. Amour who got 3 in first half...somehow got more room in second half which was a 17 point offensive efficiency clinic for his 20 total.  Maybe a new screen system was employed at halftime???  No looks in 1st....wide open looks all 2nd half...Interesting

I NEVER HEAR ONE THING IN THESE CHAT BOARDS ABOUT COACHES---TIME TO WAKE UP.  COACH & PLAYERS = TEAM

Marietta at home versus Rochester... regional battle. I'm very interested...

Lets see how the winner of the Hope sectional fares against Middlebury or Williams...   Wartburg will have to shoot 60% to win

[nescac1]

Way to move the goalposts, Greg.  We are talking about THIS year.  And as I've argued over and over, since it became eligible the NESCAC has the best record in the Final Four of any league save WIAC -- three titles and four second place finishes, two of which came on the last possession of the game so hardly indicative of any talent differential.   Any league is gonna suffer in comparison to WIAC, but only NESCAC comes remotely close over the past 15 years.  NESCAC teams have proven again and again that when they get there, they belong there.  And have the best record of getting to final fours of any league, to boot.  It's funny, when we compared CCIW to NESCAC recently, national titles were suddenly meaningless and all that matters in final four appearances. If titles are all that matters then CCIW is vastly overrated.  What is the CCIW record in the final four over the past twenty years?  Not good at all.  For the record I don't think it is overrated just because they haven't won a titlle! As usual the metrics shift in any discussion to cast NESCAC and New England in the worst possible light.  New England has had a remarkable year THIS year in out of region play (both in regular season and the tourney) regardless of whether one of the remaining six teams -- all of whom have EARNED their place in the final 16 by beating quality opponents from a number of different regions -- take home the walnut and bronze, which doesn't always go to the best team in any given year (though often it does) .  It just gets old when every New England / NESCAC success always has to come with a caveat or asterisk.  I've said before that Midwest often had the toughest regional. I do not think that is remotely the case this year, even if a Midwest team wins the title. 

And also it's silly to use four decades worth of data when for twenty years the best New England league could not even compete in the tourney.   It WIAC was excluded for the last twenty years suddenly the data changes dramatically.  But again I'm not making historic claims in any event.  I'm saying there is no basis to assume this year that the Midwest regional is tougher. 

[Gregory Sager]

Saw the Middlebury vs Illinois Wesleyan in person 12/29/16 at College of Staten Island. [commence rant]

That was one of the silliest posts I've read this season, and that's really saying something. One game, which was played on the East Coast between the NESCAC co-champ and a team that tied for fourth in the CCIW (and which didn't even make the CCIW tourney), a game that was decided on a buzzer-beater, gives rise to this slice of pure genius:

So as usual..we hear these lame arguments about the Midwest teams but when pitted against Northeast, the physicality of Northeast basketball style wears on the Midwesterners who lose their cool or get out-coached or both......

Or how about this gem?

We didn't play tough enough Coach Rose??  You got out-coached!!!  Call it for what it was.

I personally love this one:

Middlebury, Williams, & Tufts...the top teams in NESCAC play suffocating man to man defense. They block and alter shots and get deflections on passes which all lead to turnovers. They push pace at all times. They fast break after your makes..surgically carving up the defense causing mismatches and foul trouble along with delivering high efficiency offense. They close out on 3's, they box out for rebounds, the ball pressure of guards makes post entry difficult.  All 3 teams have primary and secondary stars who you would want to have the ball needing a basket to tie or win. Options!!!

Right! Because nobody west of the Allegheny River has ever thought about doing this stuff! Boxing out for rebounds? C'mon, man, we've gotta try that sometime! Fast break after the other team's makes? That sounds so cool! How do you do that? Suffocating man-to-man defense? How come none of us yokels out here in the tall corn have ever come up with something that innovative?

Yeah, this whole thing about 42 years' worth of midwestern dominance ... that's obviously an optical illusion. The last two years of midwest vs. midwest national championship games? Never happened. Fifteen national titles over the past twenty years? That's gotta be a typo, right? I mean, midwestern players aren't well-coached enough or quick enough or physical enough or smart enough or, well, everything enough to contend with the mighty beasts of the East.

Right?

* * *

I watched the Middlebury vs. Illlinois Wesleyan game. It was played at a level that indicated no separation whatsoever between the two teams, which is exactly what you'd expect from a game that was settled by a buzzer-beater. The Panthers were quicker, the Titans were better shooters. The Titans outshot the Panthers in all three categories; the Panthers had fewer turnovers and more offensive rebounds, and, thus, more FG attempts. Overall rebounds were dead even.

But, hey, since Jack Daly hit a 13' jumper with 1.6 seconds remaining, that erases four decades' worth of data, right?

[Gregory Sager]

Way to move the goalposts, Greg.

Nobody's moved anything. The historical record -- which includes both the dusty past and the past two Marches -- is what it is, and there's no evading it.

  We are talking about THIS year.

We are? Exclusively? Here are your own words:

New England, and the Northeast more generally, can not and will not ever get respect here.  Even if New England puts six in the Sweet 16, or two in the Final Four,  it always comes with an asterisk.  It's telling that it's just assumed that the Midwest is always the toughest regional.

In other words, you yourself supplied the historical context here.

And as I've argued over and over, since it became eligible the NESCAC has the best record in the Final Four of any league save WIAC -- three titles and four second place finishes, two of which came on the last possession of the game so hardly indicative of any talent differential.   Any league is gonna suffer in comparison to WIAC, but only NESCAC comes remotely close over the past 15 years.  NESCAC teams have proven again and again that when they get there, they belong there.  And have the best record of getting to final fours of any league, to boot.

The last line is the telling one: Getting to Final Fours. What you've left out is that the NESCAC has had the privilege and the pleasure of walking the Yellow Brick Road to Salem as often as not, while by contrast there's been a whole lot of Marches in which those of us west of the Allegheny have grumbled about a Bracket of Death.

Look, every year you and your NESCAC cohorts play the No Respect card here, and every year the Rodney Dangerfield act does not wash. Everybody respects the NESCAC ... including midwesterners. You will not find one single poster in the CCIW room or the WIAC room or the MIAC room or the MIAA room or the OAC room or the NCAC room who fails to put the NESCAC on the short list of D3's top leagues. Furthermore, all of the midwesterners who follow the national trends universally agree that the NESCAC is unusually strong this season. What outcry there has been about the NESCAC getting so many teams into the field has centered around whether they deserved five or only four. Think about that for a moment. Only four. That's hardly an insult.

It's funny, when we compare CCIW to NESCAC, national titles are suddenly meaningless and all that matters in final four appearances.

Who said that? I certainly didn't. My school owns five Big Doorstops, so I'm the last guy on d3boards.com to downplay the importance of a national title.

If titles are all that matters then CCIW is vastly overrated.

Six of 'em (seven, if you count Wheaton's College Division title) is hardly something to sneeze at.

For the record I don't think it is!  As usual the metrics shift in any discussion to cast NESCAC and New England in the worst possible light.

I don't see how they've shifted. I acknowledged in my previous post that Amherst and Williams are conspicuous exceptions:

By contrast, the only New England teams that have ever won national championships are Amherst and Williams; heck, the last time that a New England team other than Amherst or Williams even reached the national championship game was all the way back in '87, when Clark lost to North Park.

New England has had a remarkable year THIS year in out of region play (both in regular season and the tourney) regardless of whether one of the remaining six teams -- all of whom have EARNED their place in the final 16 by beating quality opponents from a number of different regions -- take home the walnut and bronze.  It just gets old when every New England / NESCAC succeed always has to come with a caveat or asterisk.

What gets old, from my point of view, are the NESCAC guys complaining about a lack of respect for their teams that doesn't exist. But the Northeast and East regions in general? That's another matter. Aside from the recent MIT and Babson runs, the New England teams that aren't part of the NESCAC have not distinguished themselves at all on the national scene in decades. And, as I said, the East Region has not exactly covered itself in glory, either. And, since these are the teams that tend to form most of the competition for the NESCAC to get to the Final Four, you're just going to have to get used to our complaining about the comparative difficulty of the roads to Salem.

Now, having said all that, I will add that D3 as a whole really doesn't seem to have any standout team or teams that look like a sure thing to get to the title game ... and that really changes the equation for this season. Whether that will bear out as a long-term trend, though, remains to be seen. All that we can go on for now is what's already happened.

[Pat Coleman]

The proof is in the pudding, nescac1.

Oh, Gregory! I would never have taken you for someone to misstate this trope! The proof of the pudding is in the eating!

[nescac1]

If the argument is "performance in the Final Four is indicative of the strength of the regional," New England Final Four performances over the past 15 years demonstrate conclusively that New England teams that reached the Final Four in the aggregate undoubtedly belonged there.

2003: Williams wins national title
2004: Amherst loses tight game to Williams, Williams loses in title game on last-second shot (Amherst lost in consolation game but they were totally demoralized from losing to their rival at Salem)
2006: Amherst loses by total of 7 points in two games at Salem
2007: Amherst wins national title
2008: Amherst dominates semifinal, gets dominated in title game
2010: Williams wins semifinal, loses tightly-contested title game
2011: Williams and Midd both lose in games that went down to the final possession (and Williams' best player was playing with a broken hand)
2012: MIT loses in semifinal
2013: Amherst wins the national title
2014: Williams dominates Amherst and then loses on last-second shot in title game.
2015: Babson loses badly in semifinal
2016: Amherst loses in semifinal that went down to the last possession

If New England teams were only getting to Salem, as you claim, because they were emerging through weak regionals, you would expect that they would be consistently losing, and losing badly, in semifinal games.  Instead, they generally perform to roughly the statistical average, and when they DO lose, it's generally in a title game or in an extremely close semifinal game.  My point is that I think the strength of other New England teams is generally underrated by many of the posters here who are unfamiliar with them.  In particular THIS YEAR.  The reason no one ever sees them in Salem is that they have the difficult task of beating NESCAC teams to get there -- just like lots of midwest teams have the misfortunate of going through WIAC teams.  But there HAVE in my view been a good number of New England teams that could have performed well in Salem had they not been blocked by Williams/Amherst juggernauts. 

And more generally, you are extremely frustrating to argue you with because you ignore the ENTIRE CONTEXT of this argument, which started with my rebuttal to the following pointed "observation" by AO:

"They can't prove they would be in by any other set of criteria by beating the relatively weak Eastern teams in the tournament."

That is claim entirely specific to THIS YEAR and is what started this whole discussion.  That has NOTHING TO DO WITH what titles CCIW teams may have won in 1982.  I myself said that this year was an atypically strong year for New England as a region, and I stand by that.  So by definition, my very point is that this year is an outlier in terms of New England's exceptional, unusual strength, thanks to a spectacular group of seniors in the reason.  As such, what may have happened decades ago is entirely irrelevant to this discussion.  I took umbrage to AO's initial comment, and you seem to, again, be ignoring the entire context of the argument.  Then you exacerbated things by claiming with no basis (because it's an impossible claim to test) that NESCAC THIS YEAR would have performed worse in the midwest regional, or at least, without any doubt would not have performed better.  Come on, dude, that is a silly statement dripping with disrespect.  Your biases are so ingrained that you can't even recognize it, I guess, and suddenly started bringing in decades of irrelevant data in.  Sorry but the North Park teams from the 1980s have exactly zero to do with the strength of midwest and northeastern teams in 2017.  Zero.  And this year, New England teams beat the two Midwest teams now hosting regionals, which is a pretty good data point. 

As for the CCIW, no national title in TWO DECADES.  By your own logic, that means the CCIW teams who make it to Salem are likely just skating into final fours and when they get there, can't get the job done, right?  Again, I don't think that is remotely the case.  Results in any one game are of course a bit arbitrary and more CCIW teams could easily have won titles, just as three Williams teams were in coin-toss title games, only one of which went our way.  CCIW deserves respect for the final fours and title games it has made over the past few decades, just as NESCAC does, even when those teams don't win. 

[nescac1]

Last thing I'll say: when I bring up historical complaints / disrespect, it's because it seems like we ONLY have these conversations, over and over again, about New England and NESCAC.  No one else is generally denigrating the caliber of play in an entire region (as happened on this thread) or gone on ad infinitum about double-round robins or purported schedule manipulation or the unfairness of so many New England teams at Salem.  It's always New England, and in particular NESCAC, that is the target of perpetual whining and complaints.  So yeah, I do think folks respect the strength of NESCAC generally, but you can't seriously deny that by an overwhelming margin complaints at these boards are focused on a particular region, and a particular league within that region.  I'm not making this up out of thin air or something!

[Gregory Sager]

The proof is in the pudding, nescac1.

Oh, Gregory! I would never have taken you for someone to misstate this trope! The proof of the pudding is in the eating!

Guilty as charged, Patrick. I read Big Mike's post and got too greedy to pay attention to what I know full well is a misquote.

For penance, I will whack myself on the forehead with the office copy of Bartlett's.

[BigMike33]

Just remember since you parsed my post..you conveniently left out the part of it was Middlebury's Game 1 without their second leading scorer who transferred a day later.

Therefore your outshot point is moot based on new Middlebury offense installed after tournament, oh yeah that finished 7th in nation averaging 90 points a game against 31st SoS.... that is current team.

You caught Middlebury at their weakest both in terms of strategy, game play (first after break), and mental preparation as no one knew the final situation of their teammate Zach Baines, just that he was not there, zero communication

And yes Jack Daly patiently backed your defender down and faked two jab steps and on third jab step got seperation and drained a 10 footer which proved the difference. St. Amour decoy.  See my point of primary and secondary stars to get a hoop in clutch, Middlebury has 3, including Jake Brown