MBB: NEWMAC

[mass_d3fan]

I had never really looked at the Massey ratings very much, but noticed on the NESCAC forum that someone was referencing Massey Predictions.

http://www.masseyratings.com/pred.php?dt=20110129&days=1&s=101140&sub=11620

This system, for what it is worth, is predicting a 74-63 win for WPI.  If I understand it correctly, it give WPI an 84% chance of winning.

HN – do you have any insight on how accurate these predictions have been?  Just curiosity on my part, I am not a big believer that we can predict these kinds of things very well with algorithms and especially with young men these ages and conference rivalry factored in.  Am I wrong ?   

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Massey gets more and more accurate as the season goes along.  The more data the better the results.  There's also no way for him to take into account injuries and other factors not related to straight numbers.

[Hugenerd]

Like any predictive tool, the Massey predictions assign a likelihood to the final score based on each teams results to this point. I would assume they do pretty well, but when you are talking about a sample size of one (Saturdays game), anything can happen. MIT has also played a relatively weak schedule to this point, which hurts their power ratings and gives them less of a chance to win from the computers perspective.

[mass_d3fan]

Good evening fellow posters,

Wanted to get this up before I head to bed. Sorry it took me so long, but getting my wife to agree to go Cambridge yesterday for a college basketball game came at a high price (oops - "compromise"):  Dinner out after the game & today spent at the Outlet shops in Wrentham.  Perhaps not a fair trade for the $5 to park - LOL.

Anyway, what a battle the two Engineer squads put on. WPI came out on top 62-50 with another strong defensive effort.  This was the 12th game this season that they have held an opponent under 60 points.  This game was closer than the one in Worcester, but there were some common threads to the story.  MIT shot 43.6% from the field & 38.9 from 3-pt land in game 1, but they were held to 37.2% & 29.6% respectively on Saturday.

Both teams played tough gritty defense, many possessions wound the shot clock down under 10 before a shot was attempted.  Quite a few times both teams forced up bad shots to beat the shot clock. WPI carved out an early lead and got it up to 11 with 7:20 in the half, behind 9 by Robinson. MIT cut it to 6, a Carr dunk off a nice entry pass from Brown pushed the lead back up, but MIT sliced it 3 before a Robinson layup made the margin 5 at the half.  Kates & Karraker combined for 13 of their 21 first half points.  Karraker's 2 threes early on kept MIT close.

MIT stormed out in the 2nd half to take the lead 17:21.  The game went back & forth over the next 8 minutes with 3 lead changes and 4 ties.  Many players on both teams were making great plays on both ends of the court. WPI took the lead for good at 8:43 on a nice inside move by Carr.  A Kates three cut the lead to 1 but was offset by a conventional 3pt play by Jamie Shannon.  That was followed up by a 3ptr by Ben Etten off a Robinson assist and WPI was up by 7 with 5 ½ minutes to go. Kates canned a couple of FTs to get back to 5.  Robinson drained a jumper and Carr found Nadeau for a big 3-ptr.  Karraker drilled a 3 and Robinson responded with a slashing layup. Tashman got a putback hoop for MIT's final points and then Shannon hit a ft and Carr went 4-4 from the line to finish the scoring.

Robinson finished the game with 20 points and, with all due respect to Matt Cavalieri of Springfield and Kates, put one hand on the NEWMAC Player of the Year award.  Kyle Nadeau had a big game with 15 pts and 3 steals.  Ben Etten was all over the court on the defensive end and chipped in with 5 points and Shannon had 4.

Mitchell Kates led MIT with 17 and 4 assists before fouling out with a minute to go.  Jamie Karraker played well and posted 14 to go with 2 boards and 2 steals. Eric Zuk contributed 4 points and 3 boards before fouling out early in the 2nd half.

The Tashman/Carr matchup was a great battle, but they effectively cancelled each other out.  Carr put up 12 points and 4 boards and Tashman tallied 10 points and 6 rebounds.  They each had 3 turnovers and neither had any blocks.  The only real separator was that Carr had a game high 4 steals.

I have a suspicion that these two teams will probably meet a 3rd time.  Springfield may have something to say about that, in either case, I think we are in for some great games in the tournament again.

[WPI89]

Your the man Mass D3 - thanks for the update.  Really glad to hear that the game was played at a high level - I feared slow and sloppy given the point totals!

Nice weekend compromise - hope your wife got a new purse out of the deal!  Hope you made it home for the Celts!

[mass_d3fan]

Lets just say there were a few bags in the back seat on the way home.  No I did not get home to see the Celtics, but I saw the highlights.  Hopefully the Lakers will keep playing "Kobe-ball" if these two meet in the finals again!

The game did get sloppy at times, but it was more from the defensive intensity by both teams than just bad play.

Have not seen anything here yet from HN, I am not sure if he was there.  The crowd was pretty small.  I will give credit to the one student who kept standing up and reading loudly from a textbook everytime WPI went to the line.  It didn't really affect Robinson, Carr, Nadeau & Shannon as they went 14 of 18 at the stripe.  Still, Gotta love college ball & they way the students get into it!

[BBallers]

One of the problems I had not heard mentioned in the WPI/MIT game was some of the discrepancy of calls.  I do not believe any team can win when their opponent gets the benefit of 30 foul calls.  This is not to make an excuse for MIT because there continues to be some poor defense played, but I believe Robinson and some others had the benefit of some quick whistles.  I wonder when the last NEWMAC home game had a 12-30 foul call ratio or when the home team had 18 more foul calls than the visitors.  Again, I am not blaming the officials, but there definitely was no home court advantage.

I agree that Robinson is the Player of the Year candidate so far and it is perplexing why he is not starting.  Then again, you can never underestimate the value of a great 6th man off the bench.

I believe MIT's changing offense away from the post plays (although still incorporating them) has helped.  If they continue to improve their rebounding and defense along with reducing turnovers (all of which HN mentioned), then MIT has a decent chance in the NEWMAC tournament.  The one turnover on an ill advised pass immediately after a timeout hurt MIT's momentum.  WPI and MIT will most likely meet in the finals and it should be a heck of a game again.

[mass_d3fan]

BBallers,

I wonder when the last NEWMAC home game had a 12-30 foul call ratio or when the home team had 18 more foul calls than the visitors.

You seem to have your facts off a bit.  WPI had 15 fouls and MIT had 26.  four of those MIT fouls came at the end when they had to foul.  Both teams had 9 fouls at halftime. The fouls stayed even through the first 5 minutes in the 2nd half.  WPI got to the bonus at 13:13 to go.  

The game was not officiated very well, but there were calls going badly for each team.

[mass_d3fan]

BBallers,

  My appologies - I see you meant Free Throw attempts.  That discrepancy comes when you take 63% (27 of 43) of your shots from beyond the arc!

WPI only took 38% of their FGs out there.  I do not recall anyone on either team going to the line after being fouled on a 3.

[Hugenerd]

I was at the game, didnt post because I didnt have anything particularly positive to say about the game.

I thought the game was hard fought, but still sloppy.  It was not a pleasant game to watch in my opinion.

Responses to previously made comments:

FT discrepency/Officiating:  The reason that WPI had a FT advantage is simple, they had several guys attacking the basket, while MIT only had 1 player doing so (Kates).  During the game, I never thought to myself, "Wow the refs are really in favor of team _____", it was more likely, "Wow these officials are horrible."  Seriously, the officiating was terrible.  No consistency, sometimes they let players get away with tons of contact, only to call ticky-tack fouls all-too-often in the post.  I dont think this helped game flow at all, because when you are inconsistent in your calls, players cant adjust and it leads to alot of uncertainty for both teams.

Robinson: He played well, but I did not like how MIT did not adjust to guarding him.  A lot of the game, MIT had Sather on him (Sather played 16 minutes, Robinson played 21, I think Sather guarded him most of his 21 minutes), who is just getting back from injury.  In my opinion, Robinson was getting by him too easily, especially near the end of the first half when Robinson beat him 3 times in a row (bailed out one time by a teammate who took a charge).  When Robinson got a step on him, he wasnt tall enough, long enough, or able to jump high enough to effect Robinson's shot.  I am not convinced Robinson is POY, but he is averaging 17.5 ppg on the best team.  Therefore, he has as good a shot as anyone at winning.  I think he probably wins it, despite not being the best player in the league, just like Antoine Coleman and Ryan Cain won it Bartolotta's junior and sophomore seasons, because they were on the best team by far.

MIT's offensive woes: You have to give a lot of credit to WPI for playing very physical man defense.  However, a lot of times I was puzzled by the lineups MIT had out there.  For a chunk of the second half, MIT had McCue, their backup point guard, at the 4 (he was guarding Jameel Galloway at one point).  On top of that, nobody looked comfortable on offense besides Kates and Karraker.  However, Karraker, although a great player, is dependent on ball movement, inside-out looks, and Kates setting him up to get his shots.  He just isnt a player who is going to make his own shot.  Therefore, I felt like the entire burden of winning the game was on Kates' shoulders, and he played like he knew it.  His shooting percentage didnt turn out great, but he played better than anyone in my opinion.  He setup his teammates, made big shots, and competed extremely hard. Unfortunately, WPI was collectively better than his and the rest of MITs performance.  Tash had some good post moves, but as pointed out, he and Carr essentially canceled eachother out.  MIT needs to find some scoring production out of their 3 and 4 (anyone outside of Kates, Karraker, and Tashman) if they are going to compete for a NEWMAC tourney championship.  If not, teams are going to feel all too comfortable helping off those guys to try to shut down MITs top 3 scorers.  MIT has some freshman who have had big offensive outputs out of the 3, 4, and 5 spot, such as Davis, Dickson, and Donegan, so maybe those guys will turn out to be the key.  In any case, it is really hard winning a game with 0 production out of 2/5 players on the court for large stretches of the game.  The combined output of everyone besides Kates, Karraker, and Tashman was 3-11, 9 points, 8 TOs, 1 steal, and 14 fouls in 98 minutes of game action (essentially 50% of MITs minutes).  I am not sure what the PER is on that, but it certainly isnt good. Hopefully things get figured out soon, as there are only 5 games left.

One last note, just to remind everyone, only 5 teams make the NEWMAC tourney this year.  There is a 4/5 play-in to see who meets the 1-seed in the semis, with the 1, 2, and 3 teams automatically in the semis.  This was done as a cost-cutting measure (on the women's side, only 6/10 make the tourney).

[jabnike23]

Saturday Springfield dominated Wheaton 86-71.  The game wasn't even as close as 15 points as the Springfield bench was cleared at the 6:00 min. mark when Springfield was up 30...(76-46).  Congratulations to Senior Matt Cavalieri who hit the 1,000 point mark for Springfield.  He needed only 15 and had 21 going into the half.  Cavalieri ended up with 28 pts on 11-15 shooting.  Jordan Rote had a great game for the Pride off the bench with 16 pts.  Rote locked down Coppola and frustrated him the entire game it wasn't until after the 6:00 mark where Rote came out and Coppola took advantage of the Pride's bench to end up with 17 on the game.  As for Wheaton, Grossman stroked it from range going 5-6 from 3, and ended up with 17 pts.  Wheaton travels to Clark on Wed., while Springfield travels to Coast Guard.  Also Congrats to Cavalieri for NEWMAC player of the week.

[mass_d3fan]

HN

Your assessment of the officiating is right on target.  LOL, I was attempting to be kind about it.  I do agree that it made it difficult for all the players to understand exactly how the game was going to be called.

Very often in the span of a couple of possessions, a call would be made on one end of the floor, then completely ignored on the other.  This occurred to both teams.  Tick-tack calls followed up by obvious contact fouls under the basket that went as no-calls.  Inconsistency on the travel call throughout the game as well.  I do think Shannon got away with a couple before being called on one.  His reaction was old palms up to sky.  Understandable since they made no call on the same move on the previous two possesions.

My comment on Robinson & the POY was just that I think he has the inside track on it as of today.  While his scoring numbers are now getting up there where one would have expected, he is also doing a little of everything on the team that is now 3 games up on the field.  As we have discussed in the past, the NEWMAC voting tends to favor the top two teams in terms of this award.  If WPI remains unbeaten in the conference and he continues to put up the numbers he has in conference play, I would think he would have very good odds at winning it.  He is averaging 21.1 in conference play, second only to Coppola's 21.6. Robinson's numbers are up since conference play started as are Kates', Cavalieri's & Vayda's have slipped some.  In my mind those are the top 4 contenders for it at this moment.

[WPI89]

Nerd - thanks for the NEWMAC tourney tid-bit - I had no idea they changed the format - allowing only 5 teams to participate.

[BBallers]

MD3, my bad.  I meant to say FT attempts vs. fouls.  I just do not want to watch a college team shoot 30 free throws, even the team I'm rooting for.  I like to watch teams play.  You are also correct in 3-point shots taken will never draw fouls.  No question WPI deserved to win the game and I do not want to use officiating as an excuse.

HN, agree with your assessment.  WPI played good defense (as usual for them), but it seemed that WPI new the MIT plays before they occurred.  Maybe WPI did a great scouting and coaching job, but I agree with you that some offensive changes in driving to the hole would be warranted.  The top 3 scorers you mentioned, Mitch, Will & Jamie played more than half the minutes, but I agree that there needs to be more diversity in scoring.  I believe Coach Anderson will figure it out and come more prepared for the next meeting, if there is a next meeting.  I also believe he will have a better matchup against Robinson, as MIT typically holds him below his averages.

I also agree with everyone's comments about the inconsistent officiating.  To me, it most high school referees do a better job.  Appreciate everyone's comments and input as I enjoy and always learn new things.  Thanks.

[toooldtoplay]

Great thread on the 2 engineers. The game had great energy and both teams played very hard. I didn't see a big issue with the refs but was watching on webcast so it is hard to form an opinion either way. Too many fouls is never very good for the game.  I did not see the first game but this was basically a neck and neck affair. Looking forward to another meeting.

POY is a 2 horse race at this point with about 2 furlongs to go. Has any player that doesn't consistently start ever won a POY?  Robinson does lead his team in minutes and scoring so that is a coaches decision. He also leads the league in several shooting categories. Kates is top 10 in just about everything except blocks and rebounds but also does so much more for his team. Does it come down to the tournament final. I think so. 

POY Robinson
MVP Kates
All league Vayda, Cavallieri, Tashman, Carr