Empire 8

[lileyes]

Utica beats SUNY IT 80-72. 

[clearconceit]

Visiting my sister in Franklin today, I am going over to the Hartwick tournament to see the Hawks play Fitchburg State and Oneonta play SJ of LI.  I will try to honestly assess them for Bomber and RTH.

Go Utica,  a great win in a rivalry game!!!!!!

[hawks1323]

Part I: Creation of an Empire

Q: What do the Hartwick Hawks have in common with the following Empires:?

1. 1980 Olympic Men's Hockey Team
2. Duke Baseketball
3. USC Trojans
4. New England Patriots
5. New York Yankees
6. Boston Red Soxs
7. The Roman Empire

A: All these programs and the Roman Empire weren't fully developed in one or two years or even three.

The building phase of these programs and the Roman Empire had their fair share of loses before they started to consistantly win.

In terms of Hartwick Basketball. The nucleus has arrived, but it is young. Believe it or not Hartwick Basketball is in the embryonic stages of putting together a strong basketball program.

With this in mind it is important to have perspective. Hartwick currently has 10 freshmen, 2 Sophmores, 3 Juniors, 2 Seniors. Hartwick has been giving a ton of playing time to freshmen and sophmores, who are in turn playing against juniors and seniors. The reality is experience and talent has been overpowering rookie talent. Tell me a NBA or even a College Team who has done well with primarily freshmen or first year players in the lineup? Very few or none at all. If you are a Hartwick fan, it is important to have perspective. Our time will come.

With all of this being said every game Hartwick goes into the players are gaining valuable experience. Win or lose, Hartwick is getting better and moving closer to reaching its final goals. Every team, including the other Empire 8 teams, that has the priveleged to play Hartwick is contributing the creation of an Empire.

Part II will come out later

[fisheralum91]

Hey Spect the hawks,
Um first Red Sox is already is plural - you don't add the s, and second - enjoy the wins - but put down the rose colored glasses.
Wick is enjoying a good start- one that you can "spect" but dear god open your eyes and reread some of your posts!
You are comparing wick to superpowers- apples and well not even oranges- grapes maybe.

[hawks1323]

*****Updated*****My darn staff made a typo..

Part I: Creation of an Empire

Q: What do the Hartwick Hawks have in common with the following Empires:?

1. 1980 Olympic Men's Hockey Team
2. Duke Baseketball
3. USC Trojans
4. New England Patriots
5. New York Yankees
6. Boston Red Sox
7. The Roman Empire

A: All these programs and the Roman Empire weren't fully developed in one or two years or even three.

The building phase of these programs and the Roman Empire had their fair share of loses before they started to consistantly win.

In terms of Hartwick Basketball. The nucleus has arrived, but it is young. Believe it or not Hartwick Basketball is in the embryonic stages of putting together a strong basketball program.

With this in mind it is important to have perspective. Hartwick currently has 10 freshmen, 2 Sophmores, 3 Juniors, 2 Seniors. Hartwick has been giving a ton of playing time to freshmen and sophmores, who are in turn playing against juniors and seniors. The reality is experience and talent has been overpowering rookie talent. Tell me a NBA or even a College Team who has done well with primarily freshmen or first year players in the lineup? Very few or none at all. If you are a Hartwick fan, it is important to have perspective. Our time will come.

With all of this being said every game Hartwick goes into the players are gaining valuable experience. Win or lose, Hartwick is getting better and moving closer to reaching its final goals. Every team, including the other Empire 8 teams, that has the priveleged to play Hartwick is contributing the creation of an Empire.

Part II will come out later

[gobombers15]

Every team, including the other Empire 8 teams, that has the priveleged to play Hartwick is contributing the creation of an Empire.

How can anyone take RTH seriously when he says stuff like this? I'm sure every team that steps on the court with the Hawks stop and reflect on just how lucky they are to even be in the same building with a team bearing Hartwick's vaunted and prestigous logo. If anything, teams are so pleased to be playing 'Wick because they all know it's an automatic win.

Your school is a joke and your team is about two years away from making any noise. Enjoy 7th or 8th place in the conference.

[bamm]

RIT gets a win today over SUNY Oswego.  With that, it looks like the E8 has at least 4, possibly 5 quality teams -- Fisher, Utica, Alfred, RIT, and Naz.  I have no idea what to make of Ithaca or Hartwick.  Elmira is Elmira.

[gobombers15]

Bamm, if you're going to call Naz and Alfred "quality" teams, you have to throw Ithaca in there, too. Naz/Alfred are no better than Ithaca right now. Ithaca's 2-5 record is very deceiving. Except for maybe Alfred, nobody in the E8 has played the schedule Ithaca has. Excluding the Hobart game(which they played an awful 1st half and just couldn't make up that ground), they haven't lost to a bad team yet. Hampden-Sydney will be a top 15 team before the season is over, Roanoke has a very good record and C-State is a very good, consistent SUNYAC team(probably the best right now). Three of Ithaca's five losses have been by 2, 4 and 6 points, respectively.

Are Naz and Alfred better than Ithaca? They may be. But basing my conclusion on the evidence seen over the past 2 years, I wouldn't bet the house on it. This is how I think it shakes out going into the conference season:

Excellent
St.John Fisher

Very Good
Utica

Good
RIT

Slightly Above Average
Ithaca
Naz
Alfred

The Rest
Hartwick
Elmira

This is relative to the conference, not the nation. I just don't think you can discount a team that just put it on a good Potsdam team by 38 points and handled a tough young St.Lawrence squad.

[clearconceit]

OK guys just back home from visiting my sister and seeing Hartwick/Fitchburg and Oneonta/SJ.
Here is what I think.  Oneonta won the tournament and looks to be ok.  The Coffey kid is a solid player who needs screens to score but is a very good shooter.  Other than that not enough talent to win in the State league.  I can se why my Pioneers beat them double digits.
SJ is ok, need not worry about them.
Fitchburgh is ok, but nothing to write home about.

And that brings us to Hartwick.  I don't see the stuff that RTH is talking about.  They are getting better but are they going to beat good teams?  not sure about that.

Their bug guy is fat and slow ad guard play suspect.  But they seem to play together and are defintely more talented than a year ago.

I don't see them where RTH is but I don't think their as bad as Bomber thinks either.
Somewhere in the middle of those guys.

Go Pioneers!!!!!!!!

[bamm]

GB15,

I'm not prepared to include any team that is 2-5 in a list of "quality" teams.  Do I understand that every year Ithaca plays tough early-season competition, much better than what the rest of the E8 plays?  Yes.  Do I think they could be a contender for a playoff spot?  Yes, they could.  But it's going to take more than a win at home over Potsdam to prove it to me, especially after Potsdam lost again the next day.   

I probably should have left my list at 4 teams, instead of saying "possibly 5" and including Naz.  I think the Flyers have more talent than the Bombers, but they are also unproven .  We'll have a better idea around February.

Moving on, I'm pleasantly surprised by the performance of RIT so far.  Nice win over Oswego today, and if they beat Cortland on Tuesday they'll be on a serious roll going into winter break, with their only loss coming down to the last minute against 10th ranked WPI. 

[hawks1323]

Hartwick College Men's Basketball:
The Future Empire 8- Powerhouse

Coming to a Gym near you:

Friday, January 27 -->@RIT, 8pm
Saturday, January 28, --> @Nazareth, 4pm

Friday, February 3 --> @St John Fisher, 8pm
Saturday, February 4 --> @Alfred, 4pm

Friday, February 17, --> @Elmira, 8pm
Saturday, February 18, --> @Ithaca, 4pm*

Tuesday, February 21, --> @Utica, 8pm

* Free Pocahontas bobblehead dolls to the 100 first Ithaca fans. Back by popular demand thanks to Gobombers15.

[gobombers15]

I think we can all agree that RTH is no longer being serious and is simply here for our own entertainment. I'd continue to make fun of him but I have more difficult things to do with my time, such as beating my three year-old cousin at Madden 2006 and then stealing all her toys.

Elsewhere, Cortland St defeats RIT on Tuesday night, 66-52. RIT center Tim Bacon has another big game with 19 points, 10 rebs and 2 blocks. Cortland uses a 23-3 run early in the 2nd half to pull away in a game they led most of the way. All of a sudden, Ithaca's 2-point loss to the Dragons at home doesn't seem too bad considering how Cortland handled RIT and Alfred.

Bamm, I understand why you didn't include Ithaca in your "quality teams" remark, but if your explanation that you can't call a 2-5 team "quality" then how do you call a 2-4 Naz team, who has only defeated one team(Pitt-Bradford) two times, a "quality team?" I think most would agree that both Potsdam and SLU are better teams than P-B...and that's not even considering the fact Ithaca won both those games by comfortable margins. I won't use the fact they only lost to Cortland by 2 or Roanoke by 4(on the road, no less) as evidence, but Ithaca isn't nearly as bad as most, especially RTH, are trying to depict them as.

I'd be very surprised if Ithaca doesn't have a winning record in conference play this year. That said, I'd be very surprised if Hartwick wins more than 1 or 2 conference games this year.

[bamm]

GB15,

That's why, in my last post, I said:

I probably should have left my list at 4 teams, instead of saying "possibly 5" and including Naz.  I think the Flyers have more talent than the Bombers, but they are also unproven .  We'll have a better idea around February.

Cortland looked very good last night.  From the results we've seen so far this year, I have to think they are the favorites to win the SUNYAC. 

[fisheralum91]

Feb 3rd.
Ooooooo.
RTH thanks for the laugh!!

[superman57]

RTH, I will make a bet with you if Hartwick beats fisher I will never say a bad thing about hartwick again in fact I will never post again if Hartwick can beat fisher.  But my guess is that the score to the hartwick fisher game will be similar to the football game in which fisher beat hartwick 70-40.  But if Hartwick loses do us all a favor and go away, at first you were funny, but now your just stupid, no wonder your a Hartwick fan