MBB: NESCAC

[Old Guy]

Any truth to the rumor that Harry Rafferty is playing for Bowdoin this weekend?

[P'bearfan]

Any truth to the rumor that Harry Rafferty is playing for Bowdoin this weekend?

That was the plan but apparently after your 4th school transfer the NCAA requires you to sit out a game so the P'bears will need to go with their current roster.

[Vandy74]

Middlebury might have made a mistake playing very good opponents, when they weren't really ready. Middlebury's old method of booking only "cupcakes" for the first few weeks makes a lot more sense to me. Toad

"Cupcakes"? That's kind of "damned if you do," "damned if you don't," isn't it?

This Middlebury team is in transition, an exciting, interesting group, led by Kizel, a very dynamic player. Last weekend, they dropped two to good teams, played far from home, early in the season without much practice time, at a time in the academic calendar of considerable stress. I think I'll not worry myself much at this point with post-season scenarios. Seems a bit premature. Lots of basketball to be played.

I have been following the recent "debate" about scheduling with great interest Amherststudent05

At one time, schools took pride in the rigor of their schedules, used it as part of their recruiting pitch, before the heavy emphasis on the post-season (and overall record), and the proliferation of leagues, complicating scheduling. Now NESCAC teams struggle to get 25 games, playing teams based on proximity, and not necessarily propinquity. True, the "Little Three" play a second game with one another, so do CBB in Maine. For a long time, the State Series was a very big deal in VT (when I played, for example), when Midd played St. Michael's, UVM, and Norwich, two games each. Now D1 UVM and D2 St. Mike's can't/won't schedule D3opponents, and Norwich has dropped us.

I took a look at Midd's schedule from 20 years ago, 1993, when the team was 12-11, and we played Williams, Union, and Tufts twice, and St. Michael's and UVM. We often played Dartmouth in those years too. The only other VT schools we played were Norwich and Castleton. That 92-93 team would have had a much different w-l record with today's schedule. I hasten to say that's true of most NESCAC schools.

Happy to know that despite our differences within the NESCAC, we can all bond over a shared love of the New York Football Giants.

Count me out. I grew up in Maine, long ago, when only the Giants were on TV in New England, every week. I got so sick of Chris Schenkel and his "New York Football Giants," but I can name just about everyone on that team - some of the great sports names: Andy Robustelli, Emlen Tunnell, Harlan Svare, Sam Huff, Y.A, Tittle, Roosevelt Grier, Coach Jim Lee Howell. I was so happy when Boston got their team in the AFL with big Jim Nance, Gino Capelletti, Larry Eisenhauer, Babe Parilli, et al. SuperBowl '08 was hard for me.

Old Guy....Serious kudos on the Midd hoops side of this post...good points made all around.  And right on with the wisdom of the early season  "cupcake" schedule as well.  Any team afraid of the challenge of having to "finish",.....won't....plain and simple.  You know it and I know it.  But still, you are a much more astute basketball head than I.  And I never missed so much as a minute of your illustrious MC hoop career by rushing out of the gym to see the hockey team play period #3 in it's entirety.  Masochist that I am.    And being the age where memory often plays tricks, was that haircut more inspired by Prince Valiant or Buster Brown?  I rate it a toss up?    The mind boggles, however, that a DIE HARD SOX FAN such as yourself can have been so turned off by the G'ints of the 50's and early 60's.  THEY WERE THE RED SOX of pro football!!!!  With the exception of '56 they raised your hopes up and then broke your heart.  It should have been a football match made in heaven for you.  Wrong sport for this board so I'll wait until you get home in a week or so for a holiday visit to rag on you a bit more.  But seriously now and back to basketball, very knowledgeable insight from someone who was here and witnessed it all, to say nothing of having also participated.  How would Dave Nicholson's art form level skill of taking a charge have fared against the new way of calling fouls?  Any ideas.  And one more thing.....Where the H*** do you find old basketball schedules?  I can't find anything prior to the "playing conference"  NESCAC days.  Missy being way up on the food chain in the Athletic Dept. is my only true Midd inroad.  Do I need the secret handshake as well?  See you soon, I hope.

[AmherstStudent05]

While I don't usually put much stock in early season polls, I confess that I was anxious to see how things would shake out in this week's poll (the first of the regular season).  Middlebury only dropped one spot, which appears to be an appropriate recognition of the difficult early season schedule they have faced.  Williams is still (rightly in my view) regarded as a top-10 team.  Old Guy is of course right, everything will sort itself out by February, but that is just such an awful long time from now.

[jumpshot]

Posts from D3 Soccer board:

Sandy
Junior Varsity
*

Sirius90
Second-stringer
**

Re: Top Conferences and NCAA Bids
« Reply #202 on: Yesterday at 07:54:23 am »

Quote from: Sandy on November 24, 2013, 11:40:55 pm

"An Amherst player came over to the crowd after beating SLU and started cursing them out and flipping them off too. I don't really understand why players think it's a good idea to interact like that with an opposing team's fans."

"In the case of Amherst, this behavior is modeled by their classless coaching staff. It's a way of life for Amherst College Soccer."

Why do amherst students, administrators, and alumni tolerate such behavior in recent years as has been noted numerous times on various D3 boards?

[middhoops]

Ooh, jumpshot, this isn't going to sit well.  Maybe better we discuss basketball, here.

[nescac1]

There have been pretty extensive (and repeated) discussions on that topic on the soccer boards ... maybe best to keep them over there, rather than to generalize to other sports, which aren't really relevant to some other coach or group of players. 

I agree that the NESCAC school rankings in the Top 25 are about right.  Williams has not yet consistently played like the top-five team I (and many others) expect they will end up as (at least assuming Mayer gets back to 100 percent soon), but they certainly belong around the 8-15 range, especially with so many other highly-regarded teams losing at least once.  Midd likewise looks like they belong, for now, in the back part of the Top 25, with potential for bigger things down the line.  And Amherst has done nothing to suggest that they aren't still the team to beat.  As Amherst's schedule gets more competitive, we will learn more about whether the Jeffs remain at last year's dominant level, or are a notch below. 

It will be interesting to see how Sabety does against MIT tonight.  MIT is not what they've been in the recent past, but they are still a talented squad, and one thing they do have is a lot of quality, experienced big bodies who can bang him around. 

[nescac1]

Very nice article by the Southern Vermont coach and President.  As an Eph fan, that loss was painful.  But as a basketball fan, it was great to see a program that had just last year been a laughingstock play with such passion and pride (and of course, the influx of new talent didn't hurt), supported by a raucus fan base.  I'm happy to see that SVT has won a few more games since that time, including blowing out Green Mountain by the same margin as Middlebury.  I am still confident in my prediction of a roughly 18-20 game turnaround for SVT in the W-L column this year. 

It's clear that the institution is committed to making the SVT hoops program a centerpiece of their town and college community, and they have the right coach to do so.  If he brings in one more recruiting class with the same level of talent as the group he brought in this past year, they could really make some noise nationally.  The vision for the program aritculated in this article exemplifies the best of what D3 sports can be, and I think this will be a very fun rivalry going forward ... and the Ephs will never look past SVT again . 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karen-gross/when-the-buzzer-sounds-ba_b_4339506.html

[Jumbo Fan]

Thanks for sharing nescac1. A good Vermont story, David and Goliath story, d3 school and Thanksgiving story rolled into one. Vermont (my home for the last 19 years) is a wonderful place to live the SVT coach is adding to that.

[middhoops]

Ooh, jumpshot, this isn't going to sit well.  Maybe better we discuss basketball, here.

Must be some LJ haters out today.  I got smited (smote?) 2 k points. 
(By that I mean folks who lack love for Amherst)

[amh63]

Old Guy.....agreed with respect to the Giants.   My son-in-law and my older brother are Giant fans....but I still like them!
Didn't Gino actually start the Gino food franchise?
Actually the rumor has it that Raf....wanted to transfer to Amherst but there was no room in the inn for him
Middhoops....got your back covered...so to speak.
Wow, my internet goes down and the world still exist.....been down for many reasons and getting the run around.  Actually caught up with chores and some reading...have 4 books that I bought in hardcover that needs to be finished
Plan to watch some games online....so I can make a relevant post here.

[Charles]

Thanks for sharing nescac1. A good Vermont story, David and Goliath story, d3 school and Thanksgiving story rolled into one. Vermont (my home for the last 19 years) is a wonderful place to live the SVT coach is adding to that.

they could have really used Robertson in this game to "take care" of a couple of SVT players!

[Vandy74]

Very nice article by the Southern Vermont coach and President.  As an Eph fan, that loss was painful.  But as a basketball fan, it was great to see a program that had just last year been a laughingstock play with such passion and pride (and of course, the influx of new talent didn't hurt), supported by a raucus fan base.  I'm happy to see that SVT has won a few more games since that time, including blowing out Green Mountain by the same margin as Middlebury.  I am still confident in my prediction of a roughly 18-20 game turnaround for SVT in the W-L column this year. 

It's clear that the institution is committed to making the SVT hoops program a centerpiece of their town and college community, and they have the right coach to do so.  If he brings in one more recruiting class with the same level of talent as the group he brought in this past year, they could really make some noise nationally.  The vision for the program aritculated in this article exemplifies the best of what D3 sports can be, and I think this will be a very fun rivalry going forward ... and the Ephs will never look past SVT again . 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karen-gross/when-the-buzzer-sounds-ba_b_4339506.html

Nice article Nescac1.  Thanks for sharing it.  SVT, in fact, beat GMC by 2 more points than the Panthers did.  SVT did it on the road.  Middlebury played at home.   But seriously, SVT has another interesting Middlebury schedule comparison coming up.  They play Penn St-Harrison on Dec. 21 in the Rotary Holiday Classic hosted by Hood College.  PS-H plays in St. Mary's conference.  Should the Mountaineers happen to pull off the victory they would most likely take on Hood in the championship game.  Hood's conference is the one Stevenson plays out of.  SVT actually beat Stevenson in the 2009-10 season.

[Vandy74]

Ooh, jumpshot, this isn't going to sit well.  Maybe better we discuss basketball, here.

Must be some LJ haters out today.  I got smited (smote?) 2 k points. 
(By that I mean folks who lack love for Amherst)

Whoever smote you isn't very smitten with you.

[middhoops]

Ouf......Vandy, it's not to late to delete that one.