MBB: Old Dominion Athletic Conference

[ODACfan1]

congratulations to Virginia Wesleyan...I hope they arent looking past wittenburg and can pull it off tonight.  Anyone know if the game is on television?  I saw that it was only gonna be on the radio on the front page...

[mybleedinghands]

New Poll

[Mass Marlin]

The game will be on CSTV (College Sports Television).  Congrats to VWC on another great win.  Good luck tonight!

[Mr. Ypsi]

Best line of the night..When told that the Marlins had just completed the biggest upset of the tourney and what did he think about that Macedo replied..."not to us it wasn't" . Macedo and company did their homework and it gave them the edge.  They haven't been favored the whole tourney, they have had to grind out every win and find a way to beat some of the best teams in d3.  No easy task.  Kudo's to each and every player and coach from VWC..

I would think they were at least favored in their first game.

In my view, at least, last night was the first game they were NOT the favorite.

[Pat Coleman]

Even in the Top 25, they were favored in every game so far.

[shadylady]

Good luck today Titans.. classy fans, and a first class team with some extraordinary talent. It was an incredible game last night and an amazing  Final Four so far ... especially when you consider that 6 points was the total margin of victory for the two games.

[algernon]

The ODAC was 12-11 in the tourney before this year.  I have arbitrarily broken strong conferences as those with a tourney winning percentage of .600.  I think that the ODAC is pushing power status.
 
The Power conferences have sent teams to the Final Four on a perennial basis.  I think that the ODAC is one of the strongest D3 mid-majors, especially at their top.  If they win tomorrow, they will boost the ODAC percentage to 17-11, .607.

Thanks for your acknowledgement of the ODAC, Ralph.  However, I think 17-11 ignores the RMC loss to Wooster in this tournament, but even 17-12 would still be .586, a very good conference percentage.

Plus, it's worth noting that the ODAC is one of only 6 conferences in the country to get a team in the Final Four 3 times in the last 10 years.

Of course, ODAC fans might like to go back beyond the time frame you're looking at and include 1999, when Hampden-Sydney lost the national championship game by 1 point in double overtime.  Hampden-Sydney got a first round bye and Randolph-Macon won their first round game.  The two teams met in the 2nd round and Hampden-Sydney won that one and 3 more (Wooster, John Carroll, and Connecticut) before losing to Platteville.  Add that year's 5-2 ODAC record to a possible 17-12 in 2000-2006, and the ODAC would be 22-14, a .611 win record, from 1999 through 2006.

Now, the Marlins can get the ODAC to 17-12 tonight.  They can extend their win streak to 28 games going into next year, when they will be extremely hard to beat.  (Is there any reason to believe that they won't bring back their whole team except for Marques Fitch?)  The Marlins only need to play as well as they did yesterday against a team that was unbelievably impressive!  It was a great win to watch.  One more game like last night and Adair, Fantin, Balenga, Fitch, Tucker, and company will bring home the national championship trophy that so barely eluded Hampden-Sydney 7 years ago!

[algernon]

Two excerpts from the game story at http://www.roanoke.com/sports/college/wb/57233  ::

Adair scored 29 points, snared eight rebounds and dished out six assists -- the game highs in all three categories -- to lead the Marlins to an 81-79 win over Illinois Wesleyan in an NCAA Division III semifinal Friday at the Salem Civic Center.

But Adair, a 6-foot-5 junior, showed why he was named a first-team All-American by the National Association of Basketball Coaches earlier in the day.  "The game plan was to stop Adair," Titans coach Scott Trost said. "We did a poor job."

[FISHTANKFAN]

 VWC might have been favored for the other games but not according to the press that the other teams they played received.  Not a word was written about the Marlins in d3hoops when they were going to play Lincoln or William Paterson and very little about them before the IWU game..Even Farmingdale had a nice piece written about them.  So If I erred about them being favored in their last 4 games I meant according to what d3hoops releases said.  And shame on you Pat Coleman for doing such a poor job on your assignment for the final four.  If you couldn't give your assessment of VWC an equal share of press then you should have given the assignment to someone who would have.  I realize how busy you are and what an outstanding job you do with d3hoops but to single out and ignore VWC  and defend your lack of press of VWC to "sue me" I had other things to do, was poor.  After all is said and done , it won't really matter.  The Marlins aren't living and dying by what you say or what anyone says.  The Marlins will go out and play their hearts out and hopefully bring home a National Championship.  If they don't win, they can still be very proud of what they have accomplished this year and no one can take that away from them.   Go Marlins!!!!

[mybleedinghands]

And shame on you Pat Coleman for doing such a poor job on your assignment for the final four.  If you couldn't give your assessment of VWC an equal share of press then you should have given the assignment to someone who would have.  I realize how busy you are and what an outstanding job you do with d3hoops but to single out and ignore VWC  and defend your lack of press of VWC to "sue me" I had other things to do, was poor.  After all is said and done , it won't really matter.

If it doesn't matter, then why are you complaining about it? If it's enough for you to complain then to you it does apparently matter.

[FISHTANKFAN]

 It doesn't matter to the Marlins, but it matters to me.  Simple as that..as a fan I like to see fairness given all teams..and I simply don't believe that VWC was given a fair shake.  The Marlins could probably care less..they are busy with winning basketball games...I just wanted to put my 2cents in...as a loyal fan.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

VWC might have been favored for the other games but not according to the press that the other teams they played received.  Not a word was written about the Marlins in d3hoops when they were going to play Lincoln or William Paterson and very little about them before the IWU game..Even Farmingdale had a nice piece written about them.  So If I erred about them being favored in their last 4 games I meant according to what d3hoops releases said.  And shame on you Pat Coleman for doing such a poor job on your assignment for the final four.  If you couldn't give your assessment of VWC an equal share of press then you should have given the assignment to someone who would have.  I realize how busy you are and what an outstanding job you do with d3hoops but to single out and ignore VWC  and defend your lack of press of VWC to "sue me" I had other things to do, was poor.  After all is said and done , it won't really matter.  The Marlins aren't living and dying by what you say or what anyone says.  The Marlins will go out and play their hearts out and hopefully bring home a National Championship.  If they don't win, they can still be very proud of what they have accomplished this year and no one can take that away from them.   Go Marlins!!!!

It doesn't matter to the Marlins, but it matters to me. Simple as that..as a fan I like to see fairness given all teams..and I simply don't believe that VWC was given a fair shake. The Marlins could probably care less..they are busy with winning basketball games...I just wanted to put my 2cents in...as a loyal fan.

Give me a f--king break!!!

Not only do you rip the coverage... but you also try and congratulate it. Do you realize just how many people are actually trying to give the hundreds of thousands of Division III fans information and material this week leading up to the Final Four in Salem?

FIVE GUYS directly associated with D3hoops.com.

By the way, we all have FULL TIME jobs to account for outside of the site. So forgive us that we can't completly make you happy. You took about five minutes out of your day to post a complaint... how about next time using those five minutes to post your thoughts on your team... and then things could have equaled out.

And you don't want fairness... if you had the big write up and Amherst didn't... YOU WOULD HAVE SAID NOTHING!!! You just wanted to make sure you could bitch about the fact your team didn't get enough words, letters, and sentences on the front page. I will let you know that next time... I will make sure Pat has the exact same amount of letters, words, and sentences for every team. I actually might suggest to him to write NOTHING!!!

If you don't like it, I suggest you check out the other Division III Basketball website (when you find it, let me know where it is so I can see what it looks like).

Good luck to the Marlins... they have proved they are better than many thought. Being an undersized team makes it harder and thus why many thought they might not beat the Titans... but you proved than unbelieveable defense was a key

[ODACfan1]

can anyone give some updates on the game going on right now.  the link is not working for me...

[mybleedinghands]

http://onnidan.net/ncaad3/xlive.htm live stats. wittenberg up 11-8 with 11:42 remaining

[FISHTANKFAN]

7+ minutes 15-11 wittenburg