MBB: NESCAC

[Panthernation]

A few responses to your Thompson treatise, which is a great argument in favor of a faulty conclusion, just because it's fun to debunk.

Thompson's NESCAC stats were skewed by lighting up some terrible opponents.  I'm sorry, but I just don't care that his NESCAC shooting percentage (and that is the main stat you are relying on in extolling his superiority) looks great because he shot the lights out vs. the bottom-feeders of NESCAC.  He shot a combined 20-31 from the field and 10-17 from three in four games vs. the worst four teams in NESCAC.  He particularly lit up Conn College, which got blown out in virtually every NESCAC game.  And as I chronicled earlier, he shot (and scored) poorly vs. four games vs. the best teams in NESCAC.  The rest of his numbers were skewed upwards because Midd beat up on poor defensive teams throughout the year.  Amherst and Williams played much tougher schedules, so you have to adjust your statistical analysis accordingly.  Williams played eight games vs. likely NCAA teams (Amherst x3, Midd x2, Springfield, Curry, Stevens), Midd played three, for example.  Amherst played VERY sticky defensive teams like RIC, Babson, Brandeis, Williams three times, etc.  Strength of opponent matters, and if you are going to rely so much on statistical analysis, you can't ignore the elephant in the room. 

One more point: Thompson also gets shots that other candidates do not because he is not the focus when you prep for Midd's offense.  Stop Kizell first, Lynch second, Thompson and Wolfin third.  For Williams, Mayer and Epley will be the focus of the defense.  For Amherst, it's tougher due to 3-4 elite guys, but Toomey and Workman will certainly be the focus.  Kizell produces more than Thompson despite playing vs. the best perimeter defender on other teams, typically.  If you are the third offensive option on the third best team in the league, how can you POSSIBLY be player of the year?  It just makes NO sense.  As an Eph fan I was terrified whenever Kizell and Lynch got the ball one-on-one.  I was only terrified by Thompson when he got the ball one-on-none.  Big, big difference. 

The salient point: you, too, choose a subset of games and statistics to support your point.  I just don't think you choose the right one.  If you consider the overall body of work over the entire season of play, and consider the strength of opponents, Thompson is no better than the fifth best player in NESCAC.  If you focus more heavily on how someone plays in the biggest games vs. the toughest opponents (which is perfectly appropriate to do), then Thompson is a second-teamer at best. 


And I just don't see how Midd goes 0-3 vs. Williams and Amherst (even if those games were all down to the wire, they lost, and Midd also won several other games that went down to the wire this year, so the good/bad fortune evened out) if they truly had the best player in the league, plus another first-teamer who is also in the conversation for the best player in the league in Kizell, plus a second-teamer.  It's not like the Midd supporting cast is bad ... Wolfin, Jensen, Roberts, Merryman are all solid players.

Nescac1, thank you for your response. It's always appreciated, even if disagreed with. A couple of (quick) thoughts. You're still relying on the third-best-player-on-the-third-best-team argument, which implies that you're also still using the best-player-on-the-best-team argument, which I think is pretty clearly flawed. Secondly, you still vastly underrate Nolan's defense, or at the very least its value in this discussion. He should be, and you can tell me if you disagree, the unanimous decision for Defensive Player of the Year. Think about that for a moment. He was unquestionably the best defensive player in the conference. When deciding who is the conference player of the year, we can't just say Nolan is a great defender, but Workman was the second best (maybe?) so those essentially cancel out, while Workman's offensive game was superior to Nolan's (in some ways, absolutely, yes), meaning the award should go to Workman. This is a matter of degrees, and our argument that Nolan's defense was so much better than anyone else's that yes, the third option offensively could win the NESCAC Player of the Year award. Now I know you're not making the case for Toomey, but a strong case could be made for him (and I'm surprised no one really has). However, by your logic, Toomey, one of the three best offensive players in the conference couldn't possibly win NESCAC Player of the Year, because he is not even close to the third best defender on his team and ranks below league average at his position, something that can't be said about Thompson's offense. Don't you think you have a double standard for offense and defense? If, the first time Middlebury and Williams played, Nolan had scored 18 points on good shooting, but allowed Epley to score 15 points, instead of four, would you have been more satisfied with his performance? If so, you have to see that you're not recognizing that holding Epley 14 points below his season average is just as valuable (and I would argue more valuable given that Thompson outscored him and still had 7 of his 14 points) as if Thompson had gone off and scored 14-16 points himself but allowed Epley to score 18-20 points. Similarly, when you point to the Tufts game, in which Nolan had 8 points, he held Ferris to just 4, because he couldn't catch the ball. Now surely that's as impressive a performance (and again, I would argue more impressive) than what Workman did against the Jumbos. Sure, he was 4-5 from the floor and had 13 points, but Tufts' frontcourt of Anderson, Palleschi and Haladyna scored 67 of the teams 89 points and shot 65 percent from the floor. Now I didn't see the game, so I don't know which of the three Workman guarded, but regardless, it wasn't pretty. Is he not just as culpable for his poor defensive play in that game as Nolan is for his poor offensive play? Or will we continue to hold this nonsensical double standard?

Now you're right that I chose my own sample to evaluate Nolan versus Workman et. al, but my complaint wasn't so much that you chose your criteria, but simply that the size and the selectivity (picking and choosing games to use) was very misleading. I will also concede that Middlebury's schedule was not nearly as demanding as Amherst's or Williams. But again, that's exactly why it makes so much sense to look at NESCAC play — they all played the same schedule! I don't know how that doesn't make sense. And while you can harp all you'd like about what Nolan did against Hamilton, Colby and the rest of the "bottom-feeders," Willy Workman also played the same schedule. His team beat Hamilton and Conn. College by a combined 12 points. And yes, I know they were sick, or something like that, but Workman profited just as much as Thompson did from playing those teams. Should we discount his two good performances against Conn. College and Hamilton? And is his 1-10 performance against Colby particularly damning, given how poor they are defensively? No, of course not. It all should be taken into consideration, just as we should consider Thompson's conference play and overall season performance as a whole.

12.5 ppg 50/44/82 (season stats) and 14 ppg 54/52/91 (conference) is impressive anyway you slice it. Once again arguing that focusing "more heavily" on Thompson's play in "big games" or versus the "toughest opponents" makes him a second-teamer at best is such an argument that would, if consistently applied, would lead to egregious mistakes in the selection process. I bring up Toomey, not as a straw man, or because you believe that he is deserving of the award, but rather to show you how that logic fails when you apply it to other similar situations. Using your same sample, and applying it to Toomey, we have a player who shot 17-63 from the floor and 9-25 from 3-point range, while playing subpar defense. By your mode of analysis, Toomey wouldn't even sniff a conference team. We have to be able to use analysis that is more objective and more critical than that.

[nescac1]

The last two years, teams who are quick and athletic have done particularly well in the tourney.  Last year, both finalists, Whitewater and Cabrini, were very quick and athletic.  St. Thomas, which won the prior year, used its tremendous team speed to narrowly beat Midd then dominate Wooster in the title game.  I feel like from 2003-2009, there was an era of a few really dominant teams, each stacked with multiple all-American players: Williams, Stevens Point, Virginia Wesleyan, Amherst, and Wash U. each made at least two appearnces in title games, and were head-and-shoulders above much of the competition.  The last few years has been different -- a lot more balance at the top, no 1-2 dominant teams stacked with elite players.  In that situation, where there isn't an overwhelmingly talented team, overall team and athleticism seems to be a trump card.  If that is again the case this year, Amherst and St. Thomas are probably the favorites, with Cabrini, Virginia Wesleyan, and Hampden Sydney as strong dark-horse contenders notwithstanding less-than-stellar records.   

[Bucket]

While we await the bracket announcement, I have this delayed reply to Amh63 re: my time at Sidwell:

Yes, Chelsea Clinton was a student there when I first started working, and I had the opportunity to meet both Bubba and Hillary. Pretty cool.

I had many more occasions to chat with the vice president; I coached Al III in summer league hoops when he was in 10th grade, and I was an assistant lacrosse coach during his junior and senior seasons. VP Gore and Tipper were very engaged parents, at every game, and I greatly enjoyed chatting with them afterward or at team gatherings. A memorable time.

The Sidwell varsity hoops coach at the time was George Leftwich. He's a DC legend, many claim he was the best point guard ever to come out of the city. He was in a bad car accident when he got to Villanova (he never talks about this), and while he was able to come back and play again, he was never the same. I learned so much about basketball from the man and even more about life. A true giant, in my estimation.

[Panthernation]

Let me summarize Panthernation's Thompson treatise for the board.

It is illogical to judge a player by their conventional statistics such as rebounds, steals, points/game, assists, turnovers or anything other than shooting percentage. It is illogical to use advanced statistics to judge a player. It is illogical to judge a player by performances in big games. It is illogical to judge a player by whether he is the best player on the best team, or even his own team. It is illogical to value players who are their team's primary ballhandler and run their team's offense. It is illogical to judge a player by whether or not his the best offensive option on his team. It is illogical to judge a player by whether he plays effective help defense.

The only logical way to pick a player of the year is by using the following advanced formula:

Is that player Nolan Thompson?

If yes: That player is the 2013 NESCAC poy
If no: Logic determines that no even remotely defensible case could be made for that player as NESCAC poy.

Lefrakenstein, thank you for taking the time to seriously consider what we have spent hours putting together.

We do not feel that Nolan Thompson is the only deserving candidate, nor have we ever gone so far as to intimate such a thing, or even come remotely close. See where we wrote, "The first two decisions [Coach of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year] should be unanimous, the second two [Rookie of the Year, NESCAC Player of the Year] anything but."

Have no idea how this escapes your attention time and time again, but so be it.

If we truly thought that Nolan Thompson was the only deserving candidate for NESCAC Player of the Year and that any other choice was illogical, we would have left our argument unqualified, as we did with Defensive Player of the Year and Coach of the Year. It is because the award is so close that we feel the need to very carefully determine which metrics and which arguments are used to support one player or another.

If you had the ability to reason objectively and comment intelligently about things you disagree with, as Nescac1 has throughout our entire discussion, you would be able to comprehend that we are not simply disagreeing with every argument made against Nolan's game, and that we are not staving away because we irrationally believe that Nolan is the best player in the conference, but rather that we gain something out of the give and take that we receive on this board. Is that not its very purpose?

But for you, and anyone else who cannot read critically, or write sensibly when differences in opinion rise, I will make things incredibly clear.

1) I do not expect Nolan Thompson to win NESCAC Player of the Year. I believe the award will go to either Aaron Toomey or Willy Workman. Of the two, I think that Workman is more deserving. However, that doesn't mean that discourse and critical reasoning are pointless.

2) I think that Willy Workman is a phenomenal candidate for NESCAC Player of the Year. I believe he has the most unique skill set of any player in the conference, and is more valuable to Amherst than Toomey.

3) We have consistently stated our surprise that a better case is not being made by other posters on this board for why Michael Mayer or Aaron Toomey should be NESCAC Player of the Year. Others have chosen not to, and that's fine. This has been a time-consuming (though thoroughly enjoyable, with a couple of exceptions, this being one of them) project that I would go through again in a heart beat.

4) Understanding that you, and possibly others would respond to our post in this way, we explicitly asked that people at least consider what we were saying. I find it sad that you couldn't do so.

5) Continue to take karma points from us as you like. We will continue, unabated by your antics, to express how we feel in a critical, but respectful manner.

[Panthernation]

One quibble: I would like to see Nate Robertson get some love and I think he may, even though there is just a shortage of slots this year given how many strong players the league has.  Very hard player to evaluate by traditional metrics.  Great defender, leads the leagues in steals and does a great job bottling up opposing point guards (ask Toomey), makes the entire Williams offense go, handles the ball virtually the entire game, creates a ton for his teammates, clutch from the foul line, tough player who never sits, great leader, all the intangibles that you point to for Thompson as POY suggest that Nate belongs on an all-league squad.  On the other hand, his scoring numbers are not high (but much higher in the bigger games, typically, which is significant), he had a few more TO's than you'd like to see, and his three point shot (or rather lack thereof) has been an undeniable hindrance to his play this year.  Put it this way: if you ask any Williams fan if they would trade Nate for Nolan, not one would say yes (I'm sure Midd fans would make the same claim in the other direction, but the point is, they are the same type of guy in terms of the role they play exceeding their stats).  But despite all that, I still can't put Nate on the first team all-league due to the outside shooting issues, let alone argue that he is POY.  I'd definitely take him over Sha Brown, if it comes down to that.  He was a more valuable player.  I very much hope he earns an all-NESCAC nod.  He will really be missed, and PG is the only (albeit enormous) question mark / hole on what will otherwise be a loaded Williams team next year.

Nescac1, I share your opinion, though probably not to the same degree, of Nate Robertson. He is my favorite non-Middlebury player in the conference. I absolutely love what he brings to every game. To paraphrase what you said less eloquently, Robertson is a gamer, and someone I would absolutely love to have on my team. He and Jake Wolfin stand out together in my mind that way. That's not to say that Wolfin and Robertson have had equivalent seasons, just that they're both guys you love to have on the floor in big games because they are constantly doing the little things right, though both have struggled with certain aspects of their games this year.

While Robertson is one of the first guys left off of our list (I should have mentioned that in our post), I don't think he merits the spot over either Shasha Brown or Ben Ferris. Brown, despite playing for a wildly underachieving Wesleyan team, led the conference in scoring and was at times absolutely unstoppable. Ferris, meanwhile, was the most consistent player for a Tufts team that had so many significant contributors, but only one member of either team. Both players were terrific in the conference tournament, but the difference statistically between the two during the season was too great to be overcome by Robertson's leadership and moxie, though again, I appreciate where the argument comes from.

[lefrakenstein]

1st Team All-NESCAC

G – Aaron Toomey

G – Joey Kizel

G – Nolan Thompson

F – Willy Workman

F – Michael Mayer


2nd-Team All-NESCAC

G – Shasha Brown

G – Ben Ferris

F – Taylor Epley

F – Peter Lynch

C – Peter Kaasila

Normatively, I like these picks a lot. I would replace Epley (really only a scorer) and Lynch (5th in the league in TOs; gets outrebounded by his point guard) with Scott Anderson and Callaghan.

Descriptively, I guarantee you the all-conference teams will not be 80% williams/amherst/midd. Midd will not get two first teamers and a second teamer for a third place finish. Consider that only one team has ever had two first teamers and a second teamer - that elite 2010 Williams team that had Schultz, Wang and Whittington and just dominated the league. Very likely Amherst will also not get two first teamers and a second teamer. If I had to bet on the results I would bet on the following:

1st: Toomey, Kizell, Mayer, Workman, Brown

2nd: Ferris, Epley, Vadas, Anderson, Thompson.

Edit: I SWEAR leaving Thompson out of this was accidental. I don't think he'll get first team though. We'll see.

We'll find out soon!

[nescac1]

Panthernation, defense is probably underappreciated to some degree in player evaluation.  But I think you vastly overrate defense by saying it should be treated exactly the same as offensive ability.  I've never heard of a college player of the year, NBA MVP, D-3 player of the year, NESCAC player of the year, or any other player of the year who was not an elite offensive player, someone who could take their team and place them on their back in a tight game against a tough opponent. On Midd, that is Kizell.  Thompson may be many things, but he is clearly not that.  I'm sorry, but I'd rather have someone like a Steve Nash, who can make an entire offense hum but is not exactly a defensive stopper, on my team than a guy who can shut down an opposing player and do a nice job hitting open shots but is not a creator or a go-to scorer. 

Nolan Thompson, were he to win POY (and he won't) would be by far the least-talented offensive player ever to win that award in NESCAC, in a year in which the league contains some of the best offensive playmakers in the COUNTRY, several of whom also happen to be very good defenders, to boot.   Yes, defense may not get enough attention, but there is a reason that players who are considered to be elite are always guys who can carry a team on their back on the offensive end.  Those are the guys you need to win a title.  A lock-down wing defender is great, but is simply not as valuable.  It's like saying Tim McLaughlin was more valuable to the Amherst title team from a number of years back than Andrew Olsen, or Jaris Cole more valuable than Mike Crotty to the Williams title team. 

Here's one more thing: if a team of five Thompsons played a team of five Workmans, I'm guessing that Team Workman would be favored by around 15-20 points by Walzy.  And rightfully so.  Workman is the second best defender in NESCAC, and one of the top five or six players on offense.  Thompson is the first best defender in NESCAC (and remember, Workman, not Thompson, won DPOY last year, so I don't think that Thompson is VASTLY better), and is, I don't know, maybe the 15th or 20th best offensive player?

Fair thoughts on Nate ... hard to say where he belongs, other than in the conversation .... 

[madzillagd]

Is that player Nolan Thompson?

If yes: That player is the 2013 NESCAC poy
If no: Logic determines that no even remotely defensible case could be made for that player as NESCAC poy.

K+

I haven't jumped too far into this argument because I don't think Thompson really has a chance, so don't see the point.  The 2nd or 3rd most valuable player on the 3rd place team isn't going to get this award unless all the votes somehow get split (not sure how the voting works so not sure if this is possible).  I still think someone on Amherst gets it but even if they didn't, I don't see how any coach would pass up Mayer and pick Thompson instead. 17.9 pts 8.4 rebs  2.6 assts vs 14.0 pts 5.0 rebs 2.0 asts.  I just don't see how you can say Thompson was a better player than Mayer with those offensive stats. 

But of course there's the defensive side of the ball...    No doubt Thompson is the best defender in the league but I think you are putting far too much value on having a single perimeter lockdown defender out there.  The reason Amherst went 10-0 in league is not because Workman is probably the 2nd best 1:1 defender in the league.  The reason Amherst went 10-0 in league is because of Kaasila.  A wing guards his man and can lock him down, but a center guards the entire opposing team.  It's the center that anchors the defense, contests the majority of the shots in the lane, and secures the rebounds.  Kaasila clogs the lane and makes everything difficult for all five guys on the other team.  Thompson doesn't do that.  He locks one guy down and that's great, but that doesn't do much in terms of helping out his teammates. 

Mayer is not quite as effective on defense as Kaasila but he still does a good job of this (I'm not holding it against him that Maker played so much zone).  In terms of overall team defense I think Mayer is more valuable to his team than Thompson is to his.  Thompson is a better defender, but not having Mayer anchor the Williams defense would have a much bigger impact I think than if Thompson was not there.  At the end of the year Williams is probably going to finish with the 7th best defensive fg % in the country and Midd is not even in the top 50. 

For the big 3, the opponents fg % in league was:  Williams = 39.1, Amherst 41.4, Midd= 45.8.  For all of Thompson's individual greatness on defense, it doesn't make up for the fact that he's just guarding one man.  He will get DPOY like he deserves but I don't think he's getting POY nor should he. 

[walzy31]

Haha I am not that good at what I do but I loved the hypothetical 5xWorkman Vs. 5xThompson thought. Yes, team Workman would craftily win that game or series (though I would take NT in a 3pt contest against one another).

My favorite part was the following which made me awkwardly laugh out loud in class.

It's like saying Tim McLaughlin was more valuable to the Amherst title team from a number of years back than Andrew Olsen, or Jaris Cole more valuable than Mike Crotty to the Williams title team.   

[toad22]

I need to defend Taylor Epley. Epley is not just a scorer. He is also the best defensive player on the Williams team. He always gets the toughest assignment, and does it well. At times yesterday, he guarded Toomey and Workman. I thought he did a first class job. That has been his role all year long.

[lefrakenstein]

Let me summarize Panthernation's Thompson treatise for the board.

It is illogical to judge a player by their conventional statistics such as rebounds, steals, points/game, assists, turnovers or anything other than shooting percentage. It is illogical to use advanced statistics to judge a player. It is illogical to judge a player by performances in big games. It is illogical to judge a player by whether he is the best player on the best team, or even his own team. It is illogical to value players who are their team's primary ballhandler and run their team's offense. It is illogical to judge a player by whether or not his the best offensive option on his team. It is illogical to judge a player by whether he plays effective help defense.

The only logical way to pick a player of the year is by using the following advanced formula:

Is that player Nolan Thompson?

If yes: That player is the 2013 NESCAC poy
If no: Logic determines that no even remotely defensible case could be made for that player as NESCAC poy.

Lefrakenstein, thank you for taking the time to seriously consider what we have spent hours putting together.

We do not feel that Nolan Thompson is the only deserving candidate, nor have we ever gone so far as to intimate such a thing, or even come remotely close. See where we wrote, "The first two decisions [Coach of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year] should be unanimous, the second two [Rookie of the Year, NESCAC Player of the Year] anything but."

Have no idea how this escapes your attention time and time again, but so be it.

If we truly thought that Nolan Thompson was the only deserving candidate for NESCAC Player of the Year and that any other choice was illogical, we would have left our argument unqualified, as we did with Defensive Player of the Year and Coach of the Year. It is because the award is so close that we feel the need to very carefully determine which metrics and which arguments are used to support one player or another.

If you had the ability to reason objectively and comment intelligently about things you disagree with, as Nescac1 has throughout our entire discussion, you would be able to comprehend that we are not simply disagreeing with every argument made against Nolan's game, and that we are not staving away because we irrationally believe that Nolan is the best player in the conference, but rather that we gain something out of the give and take that we receive on this board. Is that not its very purpose?

But for you, and anyone else who cannot read critically, or write sensibly when differences in opinion rise, I will make things incredibly clear.

1) I do not expect Nolan Thompson to win NESCAC Player of the Year. I believe the award will go to either Aaron Toomey or Willy Workman. Of the two, I think that Workman is more deserving. However, that doesn't mean that discourse and critical reasoning are pointless.

2) I think that Willy Workman is a phenomenal candidate for NESCAC Player of the Year. I believe he has the most unique skill set of any player in the conference, and is more valuable to Amherst than Toomey.

3) We have consistently stated our surprise that a better case is not being made by other posters on this board for why Michael Mayer or Aaron Toomey should be NESCAC Player of the Year. Others have chosen not to, and that's fine. This has been a time-consuming (though thoroughly enjoyable, with a couple of exceptions, this being one of them) project that I would go through again in a heart beat.

4) Understanding that you, and possibly others would respond to our post in this way, we explicitly asked that people at least consider what we were saying. I find it sad that you couldn't do so.

5) Continue to take karma points from us as you like. We will continue, unabated by your antics, to express how we feel in a critical, but respectful manner.

Come on buddy (or buddies I guess), I was just teasing. I have also taken exactly 1 karma point from you: I thought the Amherst announcer thing was a heavy handed remark. Those guys do a nice job, and I appreciate a little homer-ism in my d3 broadcasting, even when it's not Amherst. I think it adds to the uniqueness. I will give it back to you as soon as I post this.

I agree- you have never said that Thompson was the only viable candidate. I was exaggerating to give you a hard time.

I do think you tend to dismiss valid points as "that's illogical", without a good explanation why too often. The response is usually something like (and I'm paraphrasing): Coach Brown has a good reason for not asking Thompson to help on defense, so Nolan shouldn't be faulted for not helping. It would be sub-optimal for Brown to ask him to help. I completely agree with that, 100%. Because it's not his skill set and it's not what would be best for the team. But, when deciding who should be poy, you have to at least credit other players for playing strong help defense and helping their teams win by doing so.

Another example is the steals thing. Sometimes, you're correct, it's bad to over-gamble to go for a steal. But Hixon's defense is super-aggressive and calls for a ton of that. Coming up with those steals helps the team. AT helps the team win when he gets those steals. Now, it's true he's put in a better position to do that than NT b/c of his team's strategy. But on the flip side, NT is in a better position to lock a man down b/c his team doesn't employ the frantic switching that Amherst does.

My point, it's not enough to say: NT shouldn't be faulted for having half as many steals/assists/rebounds per minute as AT. you also have to say that AT shouldn't get any credit for having all those steals/assists/rebounds. I think that's a much harder argument to make.

Let's bury the hatchet. I think you're a very solid addition to the board, and I appreciate the effort you put into your articles and your broadcasting. I was in those shoes not all that long ago!

[lefrakenstein]

I need to defend Taylor Epley. Epley is not just a scorer. He is also the best defensive player on the Williams team. He always gets the toughest assignment, and does it well. At times yesterday, he guarded Toomey and Workman. I thought he did a first class job. That has been his role all year long.

That's fair, I don't get to see as many non-Amherst games any more, so it's tough for me to know who the top defenders are when they are not discussed as much on this board.

[Panthernation]

Panthernation, defense is probably underappreciated to some degree in player evaluation.  But I think you vastly overrate defense by saying it should be treated exactly the same as offensive ability.  I've never heard of a college player of the year, NBA MVP, D-3 player of the year, NESCAC player of the year, or any other player of the year who was not an elite offensive player, someone who could take their team and place them on their back in a tight game against a tough opponent. On Midd, that is Kizell.  Thompson may be many things, but he is clearly not that.  I'm sorry, but I'd rather have someone like a Steve Nash, who can make an entire offense hum but is not exactly a defensive stopper, on my team than a guy who can shut down an opposing player and do a nice job hitting open shots but is not a creator or a go-to scorer. 

Nolan Thompson, were he to win POY (and he won't) would be by far the least-talented offensive player ever to win that award in NESCAC, in a year in which the league contains some of the best offensive playmakers in the COUNTRY, several of whom also happen to be very good defenders, to boot.   Yes, defense may not get enough attention, but there is a reason that players who are considered to be elite are always guys who can carry a team on their back on the offensive end.  Those are the guys you need to win a title.  A lock-down wing defender is great, but is simply not as valuable.  It's like saying Tim McLaughlin was more valuable to the Amherst title team from a number of years back than Andrew Olsen, or Jaris Cole more valuable than Mike Crotty to the Williams title team. 

Here's one more thing: if a team of five Thompsons played a team of five Workmans, I'm guessing that Team Workman would be favored by around 15-20 points by Walzy.  And rightfully so.  Workman is the second best defender in NESCAC, and one of the top five or six players on offense.  Thompson is the first best defender in NESCAC (and remember, Workman, not Thompson, won DPOY last year, so I don't think that Thompson is VASTLY better), and is, I don't know, maybe the 15th or 20th best offensive player?

Fair thoughts on Nate ... hard to say where he belongs, other than in the conversation ....

Nescac1, continue to agree with you on Robertson and can't speak to the Amherst/Williams teams that pre-date my time at Middlebury, unfortunately.

However, your characterization of defense vs. offense is exactly why we are making such a consistent case. When attempting to demonstrate the flaws in conventional thinking, one often has to point out where the issues are in conventional thinking, which is exactly what we're doing. Responding that Nolan Thompson is not the conventional pick for conference Player of the Year is an argument for why he won't win it (and I agree with you that he won't), but it is not an argument for why he does not deserve to win it. Lefrakenstein mistakenly argued that we're not in favor of advanced metrics to determine this. I could not be a bigger supporter of advanced metrics, and enjoy that he calculates the PER of players regularly. However, and almost any knowledgeable basketball fan will agree, the one area that PER, and advanced metrics in general, is lagging is in measuring defensive ability. We choose, therefore, advanced reasoning rather than advanced statistics to make Nolan's case defensively.

Imagining 5 Willy Workman's playing 5 Nolan Thompson's is fascinating, though I'm not sure it's particularly pertinent to this discussion. There have been many past MVP winners at all levels who would be beaten in a 5-on-5 game against other great players at their level. When Steve Nash won back-to-back MVPs, it's highly unlikely that he would have beaten Kobe Bryant in a game of 5-on-5, or Dwyane Wade, or any host of other players who are bad matchups for Nash. The MVP and, in my mind, the NESCAC PoY is awarded to the player who brings the most value to his team, and is determined by what he accomplished in a season, not how his skills translate into a 5-on-5 game where he and four of his clones play another player and four of his clones. Workman, regardless of whether he shoots 40 percent from three, or 30 percent from three in a season, would have an advantage over anyone he played because of his versatility. Not sure that 5 Ryan Sharrys would beat 5 Willy Workmans simply because the Workmans could press the Sharrys and force turnovers and then run the pick and roll on offense, forcing the slower Sharrys into chasing Workmans around screens. Again, fascinating to imagine, but not necessarily pertinent.

And finally, Workman won Defensive Player of the Year last year, but (and this may not surprise you) Nolan should have won. He's doing almost exactly the same thing defensively this year as he did last year. To make another football analogy, players who cumulate stats, (picks in football, steals and blocks in basketball) are far more likely to be selected for awards. Charles Woodson beating out Darrelle Revis for Defensive Player of the Year during the 2009-2010 season is a great example of this. Woodson had better tangible stats, and had an excellent season, playing at an All-Pro level. Revis, meanwhile, had one of the greatest seasons a cornerback has had in the history of the league, allowing just 36 percent of the passes thrown at his receiver to be completed. Once again this isn't equating Thompson's season to one of the best ever, just to argue that the absence of stats defensively is often more indicative of great defensive play, in both football and basketball.

[madzillagd]

PLEASE DO NOT POST A POLL ON THE TOP OF THE PAGE!!!!

But, since we do have a lot of Midd posters, I'd like to hear from just the Midd folks who they think is the POY on their team.  Does everyone think it is Nolan or are there some of you that think it's Lynch or Kizel? 

If we are doing the same for Williams I think we all agree it's Mayer although anybody can tell me differently. 

[middhoops]

Live coverage of bracket.  So far Williams plays Wesley from Delaware.