MBB: Old Dominion Athletic Conference

[allsky7]

Algernon,

I would also add that HSC beat IWU and A WIAC school (Oshkosh I believe) on their way to the 2003 Final Four.  I believe that the WIAC and the CCIW are two outstanding conferences that have traditionally been national powers; however, as Algernon stated, recent history is not on their side.  I also believe that the D3Hoops poll still has a slight bias to the WIAC and CCIW.  What other conferences around the country would have teams with 7 or 8 loses in the top 25.  Say what you want, but the ODAC is a much improved conference and I am hoping that all 3 of our teams will be able to back up what all of us on the ODAC board are saying.  If not then we all look stupid!

     I'm not sure how far H-SC or GC can go in the NCAA tourn. We'll find out shortly. VWC has the talent to win it all again IMO. When they are clicking, they are tough to beat but as Sat. proved, they are  beatable. Maybe Sat. was a wake up call to the Marlins and they will crank it up a notch for the tourn.

[hasanova]

hasanova .... If I have it right, this is the schedule:

Friday, March 2, at VWC:
    6pm:  Hampden-Sydney (18-10) vs. Hood (21-7)
    8pm:  Virginia Wesleyan (23-4) vs. Averett (20-6)

Friday, March 2, at Johns Hopkins:
    6pm:  Guilford (21-4) vs. Manhattanville (23-5)
    8pm:  Johns Hopkins (23-4) vs. Villa Julie (20-7)

Thanks, I agree.  After reading the rule you cited, I see the same schedules.  VWC and JHU are both host schools, so they go at 8 by rule.  By default, GC and HSC will both have to tip-off at 6.  Thanks again.

[sludge]

Its great to have the three teams in.  Go ODAC!

Guilford is tricky to predict.  Their Pool C bid might've been helped by the fact that they beat tournament teams Averett once and H-S twice.
Guilford can beat anybody when they play well, and they can lose to anybody when they don't.  The good news is, now they know it.

Here's one solid prediction:  Guilford will go into their next game(s) wide awake!

[Pat Coleman]

The tournament selection committee is a joke.  We should start calling it the BCS.  How does the ODAC get 3 bids and the MAC Freedom get two when the WIAC and the CCIW get only one?  UW-Oshkosh is ranked 7th, Elmhurst is 14th, and UW-Lacrosse is 18th.  And Messiah gets in with a pansy schedule?

Here are a couple different questions:  Why is UW-Oshkosh ranked as high as 7th, with 5 losses?  And why is UW-Lacrosse ranked 18th, only a step below Guilford, when Lacrosse had 7 losses and Guilford only had 3 losses (2 of them to the defending national champion)? 

Sure, the WIAC is a power conference and has had many national champions, particularly in the 90s, but I'm not at all convinced that the level of play is that much better than it is in the ODAC.  In fact, ODAC teams have played the WIAC pretty even, when we've had the opportunity.  Hampden-Sydney took UW-Platteville to double OT in the national championship game 8 years ago.  Hampden-Sydney returned to the Final Four 4 years ago.  And just last year, Virginia Wesleyan won the national championship, but not one of the 3 WIAC teams given a bid made it to the Final Four.  Even this year, the ODAC's #6 seed, Randolph-Macon (9-9 ODAC record) defeated the WIAC's #5 seed, UW-Platteville (8-8 WIAC record), by a score of 68-64.

There's been a wide-spread assumption that the WIAC and CCIW are significantly better than the ODAC, but I don't think there's really that much difference in the quality of play among these 3 conferences.

Those leagues have some hardware though. I can't believe you're really trying to compare across country based on a couple of games over four years.

Last year's second Pool C team from the CCIW made the Final Four. The two years before that the WIAC won the national title. They've earned respect. Look at the leagues' non-conference record. Etc.

[Sea of Red]

I'm with the Guru on this.  You can't compare from year to year, and as much as it pains me to jock the CCIW, I've seen them play.  I've seen the teams that don't make the tourney took, and top to bottom they are usually rediculous.  The ODAC is a really good, competetive league, from what I've seen, and they are moving up the conference depth charts, but one NC and one year with three teams is a little early to start trash-talking the two mighty widwesterns.

That said, anybody who is complaining about the selections this year should take a seat.  If there are upsets in AQ leagues the bubble shrinks.  It's just like if GTeck were to have a great ACC run and take the AQ.  That doesn't mean that all the schools that were projected don't go, it just means that one less bubble team is going to get in.  That's what happened this year.  The ODAC was probably a two-team league this year (if we're all honest) and HS put together run that got them the AQ.  It would be unfair to keep out Guilford (they have a great record and some big wins).  That means that the midwesterns had to have fewer, and frankly, despite the d3hoops rankings, they didn't have the greatest Pool C resumes. 

Could a couple of teams from either of those conferences have been successful?  Of course.  But that's true every year.  Come back strong next year and get those spots back.

Damn.  Long post. Sorry.

Good luck to all the ODAC teams, and congrats on a great conference season.

[Brian Hamilton]

Quance Q. Quance,

I may be mistaken, but I think most of us are simply attempting to justify the ODAC getting 3 teams into the tourney.  There was a poster from another board who was mad and posted here complaining about the selection process, so most of the posts have been in reply to that and attempting to justify the 3 bids.  I agree with what you have said entirely about the strength of the CCIW and the WIAC.  They have a proven history of doing very well in the tourney.  Most of us, however, have been saying that the ODAC, as a conference, has shown drastic improvement in the postseason over the past 8-12 years.  We are not saying that we are as good, but simply that Guilford deserved the pool C bid that they received because they had a good season and had 2 of their 4 loses to last year's National Champion. 
As far as attacks on the WIAC and CCIW, I think that is in response to some people complaining that top 25 teams did not make the tourney.  I believe posters are attempting to point out that their is the potential for bias in polls.  The D3 Hoops poll is an outstanding poll, but it is difficult to conduct a national poll when most teams only play teams within a 200 mile radius.
Thanks for your opinion and feel free to chime in anytime.

[allsky7]

     They could take 84 teams and someone is still going to get left out and someone is still going to scream bloody murder. The thing that makes college basketball so exciting this time of the year is also the thing that makes it controversial. If the system weren't set up so a team like Hampden-Sydney could get on a run and earn an AQ, then the conference tournaments would be pretty much worthless. By the same tolken, when that happens you create situations just about every year where a worthy team can get left out. This time it worked out for Guilford and the ODAC, next year, maybe not.  8)

[Sea of Red]

All true, and I agree that the ODAC deserved every single bid it got.  I do think that WIAC and CCIW teams have a legitimate gripe with a process that skews towards areas of the country with a lot of weak teams for the top teams to inflate their regional rankings with.

This is NOT a shot at the ODAC.  There are a lot of good teams around here, but I was reading on one board about the unique situation of the UAA (which got 4, count'em 4, teams in) and the fact that some of the UAA teams are in an area of the country where there are very few quality opponents and their regional record is grossly inflated.  Along with the UAA is the NESCAC (which got three) and their unique single round robin format.  This leaves them a lot of space to fill up on patsies before the tournament.  I have seen the NESCAC play, and they are deserving of their strong reputation, but their system allows them to work the selection system a little better than others.

thanks for the response, go Guilford (I am an unabashed converted Ben Strong fan)

[justafan02]

Bottom Line:  Each year someone has a legitamate gripe, but it won't change anything. 

Good luck to all the ODAC teams, well except if they play each other.

[David Collinge]

Pat/David C.,

I note on front page a reference to the top two teams in the conference only got two teams into the tourney.

Out of curiosity, would y'all provide your personal opinions on power conference rankings?  Not trying to get into an ODAC is the best discussion at all...honestly looking to get someone's view on the strength of conference's nationwide...

Sorry for the delay in responding, I've had a power outage since the middle of the night.

The question of ranking the conferences is a thorny and emotionally-charged one all of the time, and especially this week, and it's not one I'm especially anxious to get into.  The problem with the whole concept is that D3 tends not see much inter-regional competition, so it becomes difficult to compare the strength of a West Region conference like the WIAC, which plays mostly West and Midwest teams, with a South Region conference like the ODAC, which plays mostly other South teams.  There's simply not enough common ground on which to rest an opinion.  It gets further complicated by the lack of national exposure.  Between the WIAC and ODAC this season, I've seen two teams play four games (Emory & Henry losing to Mt. Union and beating Cabrini; UW-La Crosse beating Calvin and losing to Ohio Northern.)  I don't know how I should be able to draw a reasonable conclusion about the strength of these conferences from these games.

Another problem is the definition of terms.  Do you compare the top of each conference, or the bottom, or some sort of average strength?  My own conference, the NCAC, is universally recognized as weak in men's basketball, even though we have two teams that are virtually always in the national top 10.  We are "weak" because our bottom 5 or so teams are no threat to beat a good team, and yet we regularly put two teams into the national tournament (not this year, alas.)  Is that right or wrong? 

There are objective measures you can use to compare conferences, such as their non-conference record or the Massey conference ratings.  These, however, fail to resolve the problem of the games being largely regional.  In other words, would the CCIW have fared better or worse in non-conference play if those non-conference games had mostly been against teams from the South or Northeast rather than the West and Midwest?  Many observers have a ready answer to that question, but it's mostly conjecture.

I realize that this (non-)answer is pretty much a cop-out, but I am not particularly interested in "who's the best" discussions.  I'm one of the tiny minority on these boards that prefers the regional nature of D3 ball, and I'm willing to sacrifice certain knowledge of "who's the best" team or conference to maintain it.

Good luck to the three ODAC teams in the tournament.

[tigers]

David,

Thanks for the reply.  I agree...it was a cop out   Just playing...appreciate your response.  I recall the South was always deemed a bit weaker due to historic failures in the NCAA's.  Recent successes have likely limited the strength of that argument.  However, I guess I still sense the WIAC and certain other midwest conferences are still a bit ahead of the Southern conference year in and year out...top to bottom.  But, what do I know???

Anyhow, I think the Tigers will end up receiving a nice home-court advantage at The Batten Center this weekend.  There is a very strong Tiger alumni base in Va. Beach and I expect they will be out in force this weekend.  I've seen games at Wesleyan where the Tigers actually had the home court advantage...back in the Butterfield days.  I sense that "advantage" will not longer exist if in fact VWC/HSC have a rematch...but it will mitigate the 'visitor' nature somewhat.

[tigerphil]

Does anyone know how one can get tickets to the games at VWC, I want to go, but I don't want to make the trip if I can't get tickets. I am a little miffed that all three ODAC teams are in the same sectional, but I guess the travel rules limit splitting teams in the same conference. The only good thing is that it is completely conceivable that one ODAC team could make it to the Third Round if HSC and VWC take care of business. I know as a Tiger fan, if I go to the game, I will stick around and cheer for the Marlins to win after the HSC game no matter what happens in the first. Tournament Time is Conference Time and if all three ODAC teams do well, it will only reaffirm that three teams should have gotten in. I hope GC does well and will be routing for them Friday night.

[rebeltiger]

Been a long time since I posted, but I've continued to read. 

I felt compelled to post following the HSC run in the tourney.  Doesn't look like the same team that I saw earlier in the season. 

A good time of year to get hot...hopefully, the run will continue.  Good luck to the Marlins and Quakers as well, go out and represent the ODAC well.

[baselinejam]

Is the Senior All-Star game going to be played this year?

[rebeltiger]

Baseline-
At the ODAC championship, they announced that the USAC/ODAC Seniors All Star game would be played on Roanoke's campus.  If memory serves me correctly, it will be played on Sunday following the Saturday Championship game and, I do remember this clearly, admission will be free.

Since all three ODAC teams can't make it to the final four, here's hoping that the ODAC squad is short one team's allottment!