MBB: Ohio Athletic Conference

[Dr. Acula]

Wow.  Musky is beating ONU by 20 late in the game.  WOW BW is hammering Wilm by almost 40! 

The big game went to Etta.  Looking at the play by play it looks like they were up double digits pretty much the last 6 min.

Mount cruised past Olivet (at Hope) last night but they trail Hope by 8 currently.  Not shooting well at all.

[sac]

Mt. Union's 3 loss have something in common.  Wooster, St. Vincent and Hope all defended them well enough to keep a very good shooting team at 40% or lower.


Bad 3-point shooting nights are always tricky to find a reasoning behind them.  For Mt. Union, a usually very good 3-point shooting team, this was certainly an anomaly to their other games where they shot better than 40% in every game but one and that was 37 at Wooster.    Saturday Mount shot just 21% on 7-33.  There were some good looks here but I really felt a lot of those 2nd half shots were getting deeper and deeper with guys running at them.  You would know this if the $25 Million DeVos Fieldhouse provided video feed.

But, Hope's doing something right in defending 3's.  For the season all 8 of Hope's opponents have shot below and most well below their season average. 

                 Game vs Hope       Season Avg minus the Hope game.
Whitewater     42.9%            44.6%
Steven Point    18.2%            38.2%
Cornerstone     25%              40.3%
Aquinas            23.5%           35.2%
Carthage          16.7%           34.2%
Wheaton          27.3%           38.5%
Greensburg      27.6%           33.3%
Mt. Union          21.2%           43%

Season           44-175   25.1%

I don't think this is a team getting lucky catching all of these team on cold nights.


Fun to see Mt. Union in person, I watched them on video a few times last year.  This team seems a bit different than last year in person.  Defensively they're much better than I thought they'd be, it wasn't easy for Hope to score and they usually had to work the ball a lot to get points.  They also looked much more physical in person and played with an edge I suppose you have to have in the OAC.  Overall enjoyable and I look forward to Hope's potential return trip to Alliance in a couple years.


Unfortunately this was a big loss within the region for Mt. Union and they now have losses to Wooster, St. Vincent and Hope.  It might be tough to get a high ranking within the Great Lakes Region without a good signature out of conference win unless they blow through the OAC, which isn't very likely.

[Ohigy]

Top 4
• Marietta should be in the top 20 by the time 2015 rolls around.  Great start for the 'Neers.  An 8-1 Eastern Conn. team awaits them in Florida.
• MU is off to a solid start but has been unable to get the big win over a traditional power.  Losses to NCAA tournament type teams Wooster, Hope, and St. Vincent take the shine off the Raiders 6-3 start.  Wins vs. MIAA Adrian and Olivet should be forthcoming during the holiday.
• John Carroll - another of the OAC championship hopefuls with no signature win thus far.   2 easy wins should be occur over break.
• BW - Off to a 5-3 start but the 5 wins are over teams who are a combined 11-35.

Middle of the Pack
• Cap - Crusaders are 4-6 overall and squarely a middle of the pack team.  This team could beat a top 4 team or could lose to one of the bottom feeders. 
• Heidelberg is 3-5 and has Carnegie Mellon and a sold Defiance tournament coming up. Look for the Student Princes to be 4-7 heading back to January OAC play.

Bottom 4
• Otterbein is 2-7 before heading to Christopher Newport for a holiday tournament.  The once proud Otterbein program is now 6-29 last year and so far this year.  Cards are young and talented but...
• Ohio Northern - after a 5-0 start, the Polar Bears have lost 4 straight.  A trip to Bethany of New Years Eve may help get ONU back on track.  The Bears have work to do to get back to their 16 win season of a year ago.
• Wilmington - Off to a slow start, they have a chance to do some damage at the Wittenberg tournament, or at least get a  split and come out of the tourney 1-1 as they take on 1-win Alma in the first game.  Quakers almost beat Marietta but get blown out by BW by 35 two weeks later.  Wilmington could upset a top 4 and shake up the league race.
• Muskingum - another year at the bottom as the Muskies appear headed for their 6th straight season with 8 wins or less.  I wonder what Coach Burson thinks about his once well-respected program.  The good news is Franciscan is on the schedule next so win #4 should be headed the Muskies way.

[Dr. Acula]

Mount (8-3) sweeps a pair of MIAA teams this weekend blowing out Adrian yesterday 96-68 and beating Olivet today 103-89.  I would have liked to see them play North Central (the 4th team in Alliance) rather than Olivet again, but oh well.  NCC is 10-1 I think so that would have been more interesting than Olivet again. 

[ohiofan1954]

Good luck Capital tonight in Oxford Someone needs to tell whoever mentioned the next opponent on the Cap website that the Crusaders are playing Miami University, not the University of Miami. There is a considerable difference between those schools as Miami University is one of the finest public institutions in the country. That being said it would certainly please me to see the hated Redhawks lose to a d3 school again.

[Ohigy]

Wilmington wins the Wittenberg tournament with a close win over Waynesburg. 
J Carroll and Marietta each beat ranked teams.  Marietta takes down E. Conn. State and JCU knocks off St. Norbert by 10! BIG wins for the OAC.
BW drills Westminster by 16.  Heidelberg gets crushed by Defiance 78-51.
Otterbein loses by double digits to 3 win Worcester State to fall to 2-9.

[Ohigy]

Random Facts:
Otterbein has won 7 of their last 44 games.  Yes, 7-37.  Cardinals are 14-50 since 2012-13.  Winning % of .218

Muskingum is 12-48 since the beginning of 2012-13.  Winning % of .200

Marietta is 50-15 during that same time.  Winning % of .769

[EttaFan1]

The Marietta vs. ECSU was a wild affair.  Marietta seemingly had control in the second half, until they didn't.  The Pioneers were leading by 5-6 points with about 2 minutes when they started to falter.  Turnovers, a missed front end of a 1 and 1, some key baskets by ECSU got it to a very exciting 38 seconds of basketball.  After scoring to cut the pioneer lead to 3 with 38 seconds, the following happened.

Marietta turned the ball over under heavy full court pressure.  The turnover occurred under the basket in the back court which led to an easy ECSU layup.  The lead was now 1, and there was 33 seconds remaining.

Marietta advanced the ball across the division line, where freshman Dillon Young was trapped.  When pivoting to avoid some pressure, an ECSU player went down.  The officials called a player control foul. 

ECSU brought the ball down the floor and ran their offense.  They had a lot of success with a back door play, and ran it again for an easy layup and a on point lead.  10 seconds remained.

Marietta inbounded the ball to RaNeal Ewing who dribbled the length of the floor for a layup which was not contested very aggressively.  Marietta back up 1.

ECSU quickly inbounded the ball and drove the length of the floor and missed a shot at the buzzer.

Two quality opponents, and an exciting finish for the unbeaten Pioneers.

[wooscotsfan]

J Carroll and Marietta each beat ranked teams.  Marietta takes down E. Conn. State and JCU knocks off St. Norbert by 10! BIG wins for the OAC.

Great point -- Congrats to both the Blue Streaks and the Pioneers on huge wins yesterday!  Very nice to see Ohio teams (Great Lakes region) knocking off other nationally ranked teams in D3. 

[ohiofan1954]

Random Facts:
Otterbein has won 7 of their last 44 games.  Yes, 7-37.  Cardinals are 14-50 since 2012-13.  Winning % of .218

Muskingum is 12-48 since the beginning of 2012-13.  Winning % of .200

Marietta is 50-15 during that same time.  Winning % of .769

Maybe Dick Reynolds wasn't the problem after all.

[Pat Coleman]

Couldn't be that the program was in such poor shape that it might take a few seasons to turn it around, not at all.

[sac]

Random Facts:
Otterbein has won 7 of their last 44 games.  Yes, 7-37.  Cardinals are 14-50 since 2012-13.  Winning % of .218

Muskingum is 12-48 since the beginning of 2012-13.  Winning % of .200

Marietta is 50-15 during that same time.  Winning % of .769

I think you'll find, through time, Jon VanderWal at Marietta is one of the best coaches in the region.


Otterbein has 1 Sr. and 1 Jr., 6 soph and 11 Freshmen.  Hard for anyone to win much with a team makeup like that.

[David Collinge]

I think you'll find, through time, Jon VanderWal at Marietta is one of the best coaches in the region.

Agreed.

Otterbein has 1 Sr. and 1 Jr., 6 soph and 11 Freshmen.  Hard for anyone to win much with a team makeup like that.

Kind of raises the question of why the team is constructed that way. What happened to all the upperclassmen you would expect to be on the team? I must admit that I know nothing whatever about the situation at Otterbein, but I see that the current head coach is in his third season, which means whatever frosh were around in Reynolds' last season are gone now (all but one), and all but one of the kids recruited that summer (by whomever) are gone too. Why didn't they stick around?

[Dr. Acula]

It's year 3 and they've made no progress.  I've seen them in person several times this year and, quite frankly, that looks like a year 1 of the rebuilding project team.  They might grow into a solid team in a couple years, but this isn't football where you need years of recruiting to build depth.  They should be better by now and they aren't. Mike Fuline inherited a program that hadn't even had a winning record in the OAC for 7 straight years.  In year 3 he won the OAC.  Ott was a disaster when Adrian came, but in year 3 they're still there.  If I'm a Cards fan I'm willing to give it another year before I panic though.  Let's see what they do next year with a bunch of juniors and sophomores that have played. 

[Pat Coleman]

I think you'll find, through time, Jon VanderWal at Marietta is one of the best coaches in the region.

Agreed.

Otterbein has 1 Sr. and 1 Jr., 6 soph and 11 Freshmen.  Hard for anyone to win much with a team makeup like that.

Kind of raises the question of why the team is constructed that way. What happened to all the upperclassmen you would expect to be on the team? I must admit that I know nothing whatever about the situation at Otterbein, but I see that the current head coach is in his third season, which means whatever frosh were around in Reynolds' last season are gone now (all but one), and all but one of the kids recruited that summer (by whomever) are gone too. Why didn't they stick around?

The new coach didn't get hired until May 22, so I'm sure there weren't a lot of recruits for that class. That leaves two classes under Todd Adrian, which have a total of 17 players.