MBB: NESCAC

[Mr. Ypsi]

dman,

Those may seem like impossibly long distances from a Northeast perspective, but they are small by the standards of many conferences with double round-robins.  Think ASC, SCAC, UAA for three.  And I'm sure MOST GL, MW, and  W conferences have many trips as long or longer.

Does Colorado College have ANY d3 opponents within 300 miles?!

[formerbant10]

If you want to be the elite league in New England and get all the respect nationally, you might have to bite the bullet and do the double round robin.  However, if you want to keep gaming the system and getting two teams to the sweet sixteen every year, then keep it up.  To me, they are both equally good choices.

Once again, this board will have absolutely (unfortunately) no affect on the NESCAC changing their schedule.  It will always be academics over athletics (here come the Trinity football haters) in the conference.  Those scholar athletes who want to play by those rules will continue to go to the NESCAC schools, the ones who don't will not.  That will not change the fact that Amherst has been just as good as any of the WIAC teams (save SP the previous 2 years).  Clearly the NESCAC didn't game the system like it wanted to with only getting 1 Pool C.  But I bet the NESCAC will continue to schedule the tougher teams in the NE (Gordon now included) so that when it comes to getting the Pool C's the NESCAC will be at the top of the list regionally.

Is it gaming the system if the top teams of the NESCAC end up with the other top NE teams on their schedule?  After all, those are the teams that the NESCAC is competing against for the Pool C's....so why wouldn't the coaches want to put on teams like WPI, Gordon, CSC so that if one of those frontrunners in the other conferences loses when it shouldn't the NESCAC teams can still be in front of them with the head-to-head.

I think that's the best way to go about scheduling for the NESCAC teams.  Beat the guys who might lose in their conference tournies so their conferences can't steal Pool C's.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Hey, I agree.  I'm just saying the people who criticize for a lack of double round-robin are justified, just as the NESCAC is justified in not having one.  I was just trying to say that both sides have a point and the debate will not be ending because of anyone's arguments.

I was also saying that the distance thing won't get a lot of sympathy in the Midwest as they are far more spread out.

[formerbant10]

Hoops, I understand your point which represents pretty much everyone outside of the NESCAC and their opinion on the matter.

I just don't like the NESCAC being labelled as inferior basketball based on the fact that they don't play a double round robin.  They win the games they play in, and that's what counts.  4 Final Four teams in the past 4 years is pretty good.  Add a championship and a runner-up to that, and it's amazing.  If the success continues for the next few years, I think the argument will die down a bit.  Or at the least one can hope.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

It's not that people view it as inferior basketball, what they view as inferior is the statistical comparisons between conferences.  You can't compare the statistics of the NESCAC with those of the CCIW and the WIAC evenly because those other conferences do play the round-robin. 

It's the claim that the NESCAC is even with those other leagues because of these uneven numbers that people don't like.

I doubt too many people will downplay the talent of Amherst and Tufts this year, but the conference as a whole can't be compared to the other conferences because of the single round robin.

Yeah, they have some sour grapes about it, but that's why there is a tournament.

[nescac1]

The whole double round robin thing is really ridiculous.  If you want to say that NESCAC teams often have an easier path to the final four than midwest schools, fine, I'll buy that, but at least two and often three of the four sections are much easier than what is generally one loaded region heading into the final four, so you can level that critique at pretty much 75 percent of the teams in Division III., including the national champs.  But who cares about a double round robin?  Whose schedule is more legit, Lawrence  and Wooster who get two games apiece against a conference with tons of really bad teams, or teams like Tufts, Amherst, Trinity and Williams who consistently play the best teams regionally and nationally (teams like Wittenberg, at Occidental, WPI, Ursinus, this year) while still playing a pretty hefty conference schedule of between 9 to 11 games (11 for 6 of the ten teams in the conference), plus up to 3 conference tourney games?  Is the Big East not a legit conference because its teams don't play a true double round robin?  Since when is the double round robin indicative of anything?  And would it be as interesting and fun for the players to play 21 conference games a year getting all of around five opportunities to face out of conference foes?  I'm sure if NESCAC did that, people would turn around and say, see, NESCAC only plays internally, they are afraid to compete against tough national competition, etc. etc.  The point is, NESCAC since 1993 has had pretty much at least one and often two legit national contenders every year, and it is as deep as all but two other conferences in the country.  Speaking of thos two, I don't recall anyone bashing the CCIW for having no conference tourney until recently.  No, only NESCAC is held out for consistent abuse.  And it's not like NESCAC's inconsistencies with the rest of Division III all favor the conference.  No one ever comments, well, NESCAC schools deserve more respect nationally because they are severely limited in terms of recruiting, they start practice later, and the conference powers can't admit any kids with less than a 1200 SAT, usually far higher. 

On to actual NESCAC news.  I hear Jimmy O'Keefe, Middlesex league MVP who I believe won Gatorade state player of the year (how that is possible with Gurley in the state I have no idea) and a legit big guy, is headed to Bates next year.  Team him inside with Stockwell and with all of the guard talent they return with Ray, Wholey and a couple of shooters, they will definitely challenge Amherst and should make a strong run at their first NCAA bid. 

And I think Trinity may actually be better -- great test of the Ewing theory as they will have the exact same group of guys back, essentially, except for Rhoten.  Tufts should be pretty even with this year although Martin opened things up a lot for the perimeter guys.  But Weitzen and Black could both explode.  Amherst will keep rolling with guys like McLaughlin and Coulibaly stepping right in.  Colby still has the best player in the league.   Williams should improve somewhat although they may still be a year away with only one senior likely to get major minutes, and a pretty green group of bigs.  Everyone expects Conn College to be much tougher.  Even Midd could spring an upset or two.  Really, other than Bowdoin, who may have a tough time w/out Petrie, everyone in the league could claim to be as good or better than this year.  League should be tougher than ever.   I'll go with these tiers:
1) Amherst until someone else proves otherwise, 2) Bates and Tufts as likely post-season squads, 3) Williams, Trinity and Conn as potential contenders, 4) Colby will be tough given the lack of anyone who can stay with Cohen, 5) Midd / Bowdoin as capable of a few surprises, and 6) Wesleyan as pretty awful unless that big guy returns to the program. 

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Hey, I didn't say anything about the NESCAC not being as good.  I just said you can't compare numbers.


It's really not about single round-robin vs double round-robin, its about the number of conference games a team plays.  I know there have been rumblings about making a minimum number of conference games for NCAA play (unless you're independent, obviously).  I've heard talk of 12, 14 or 16 (or a double round-robin for the smaller conferences).  Having some set minimum would make things more even.  It doesn't help anyone know which conferences are better, but it would make the numbers more even.

I, for one, don't care too much about numbers, but some people do.

An ASC team plays 22 conference games; a NESCAC team plays 9.  That's a pretty big descrepancy.  I think 14  is a good minimum, but honestly, I don't really care.

[Mr. Ypsi]

I, too, am not particularly humg up on the numbers, and have never argued that NESCAC was not among the power conferences.  My post stemmed simply from amusement that dman would try to justify the single round-robin because of the long distances in New England!  Talk to Ralph about travel!

[formerbant10]

Ypsi,

Good point about the travel.  A lot of us Northeasterners don't realize just how big some of those states out west are. 

It's true that Williams does have to do a bit of traveling b/c of their location in the middle of nowhere.  And traveling to Maine is never fun. 

But the travel issue is something the NESCAC looks at for scheduling.  Technically all of those trips could be done same day, but I don't think anyone would want to drive up to Lewiston, Maine then play a game, then drive back to get home just in time for class in the morning. 

I don't know what the travel logistics are for the other conferences, but again with the NESCAC its about academics first.  Most classes at Trin have a strict attendance policy, and athletic contests are generally frowned upon as an excuse. 

Unless the NCAA makes it mandatory, don't expect anything. 

[Gregory Sager]

thanks for noticing my little jab at the wiac.  i know they're an elite league, but i can't help busting on the little remnants of pre-d3 days there.  you are probably right, and this year was just a down year there.  i still think in national terms, the edge they had is now gone.  it will be alot harder (but not impossible) for them to come up with a team that totally dominates like platteville did in the late '90's.....

The dominance of UW-Platteville in the '90s was an anomaly for the WIAC. UW-Platteville not only completely overwhelmed D3 as a whole, they dominated the WIAC in terms of conference play. The Pioneers went 153-17 in league play from 1989-90 through 1998-99, by far the best ten-year span of any school in WIAC history. The Pioneers had two undefeated seasons in WIAC play during that stretch, the only two undefeated seasons recorded by anyone in the circuit since 1972, and they never went any worse than 13-3 in any of those ten seasons.

Compare that with the recent two-year run of UWSP en route to their national championships. The Pointers had to share the 2005 WIAC title with UW-Platteville, as both teams finished 13-3 in league play. The year before UWSP actually finished in a second-place tie in the WIAC with UW-Whitewater at 11-5, a game behind champion UW-River Falls. In other words, those Kalsow/Bennett UWSP teams that wowed every Williams and Amherst fan in Salem those two years went only 24-8 in WIAC play and didn't even win the conference title one of those years.

UWP's amazing success within its own league during the nineties had nothing to do with redshirting (since, of course, anyone in the league could've and did redshirt in the '90s) and everything to do with the amazing job done by Bo Ryan as UWP's coach.

I don't think that the WIAC has lost its edge at all. It still enjoys very favorable recruiting conditions in terms of cost, facilities, name recognition, academic menu (bigger schools = wider range of course offerings) over other leagues that're working Wisconsin high schools. As Pat said, the reduction of WIAC rosters to fifteen players apiece is probably going to have a lot more impact than the cessation of redshirting by NCAA mandate.

UWL lost to Calvin on a "neutral" floor.  They played at Hope where Calvin had previously played 3 times this year

I'm glad that you put the word "neutral" in quotes, AMcJr. There's a reason why I said that Calvin played that game on a home floor, if only in the de facto sense rather than the de jure sense. If anyone really believes that DeVos Fieldhouse was a neutral floor when UWL played Calvin, I've got a very nice bridge in Brooklyn that I can sell them.

[Gregory Sager]

Those may seem like impossibly long distances from a Northeast perspective, but they are small by the standards of many conferences with double round-robins.  Think ASC, SCAC, UAA for three.  And I'm sure MOST GL, MW, and  W conferences have many trips as long or longer.

Exactly. The "Maine schools are too far for a double round-robin" excuse doesn't wash if you look at what other conferences have to face in terms of distances. The Maine schools could easily be accommodated without a loss of class time if the NESCAC went to a Friday/Saturday or Friday/Sunday schedule for double round-robin purposes. Other spread-out leagues (the UAA, the SCAC, and the MWC) all employ them to get around the distance problem.

And note that those three leagues are all elite circuits in terms of academics. Both formerbant10 and nescac1 aare playing the academic card to excuse the NESCAC's single round-robin scheduling. Thing is, however, the UAA, SCAC, and MWC are also elite leagues in terms of academics. And they all manage to play double round-robins (or in the MWC's case, a modified double). When your league stretches out from Boston to St. Louis, or from Atlanta to San Antonio, and you're nevertheless held to the same stiff classroom standards as the NESCAC, and you still manage to play a double round-robin, then you're putting the NESCAC's scheduling to shame.

I think that's the best way to go about scheduling for the NESCAC teams.  Beat the guys who might lose in their conference tournies so their conferences can't steal Pool C's.

The "gaming the system" accusations may be a bit unwise, since it is apparently in the hands of the league's presidents, not the coaches, to employ a single round-robin. Coaches can only schedule according to the hand they're dealt by their bosses. Your point about strategically scheduling specific upper-level teams in bad neighboring conferences (which is admittedly part of the animus towards the NESCAC on the part of national observers; bad conferences are thick on the ground in the Northeast Region) is actually all about gaming the system within the constraints imposed above and beyond scheduling by the institutional leadership of the NESCAC.

It's not that people view it as inferior basketball, what they view as inferior is the statistical comparisons between conferences.  You can't compare the statistics of the NESCAC with those of the CCIW and the WIAC evenly because those other conferences do play the round-robin. 

It's the claim that the NESCAC is even with those other leagues because of these uneven numbers that people don't like.

I doubt too many people will downplay the talent of Amherst and Tufts this year, but the conference as a whole can't be compared to the other conferences because of the single round robin.

Yeah, they have some sour grapes about it, but that's why there is a tournament.

Exactly, on both points.

Unless the NCAA makes it mandatory, don't expect anything.

I don't think anyone is expecting anything. It's not the critics' league, for one thing, and even if it was it's not likely that the presidents of the member schools would listen to their basketball fanbase and act accordingly. But the lack of a viable avenue to effect change certainly doesn't stop D3 fans from hopping on their pet hobby horses (see: D3 national tournament, selection criteria of).

The whole double round robin thing is really ridiculous. [snip]  But who cares about a double round robin?

You're kidding, right? As formerbant10 and dman have admitted, the complaints raised about the NESCAC's single round-robin scheduling are legion among D3 observers.

If you want to say that NESCAC teams often have an easier path to the final four than midwest schools, fine, I'll buy that, but at least two and often three of the four sections are much easier than what is generally one loaded region heading into the final four, so you can level that critique at pretty much 75 percent of the teams in Division III., including the national champs.

Not true. There's generally two loaded sections, not one, representing the two sections that contain the bulk of the West, Midwest, and Great Lakes regions. Did you look at the bracket this year? Seven of the ten teams that finished in the D3hoops.com Top Ten were in the two western sections, and 17 of the Top 25 teams were in those sections (including Albion, which didn't make the tourney field). Take nothing away from Virginia Wesleyan and their remarkable run to garner the Big Doorstop ten days ago, but if they'd been placed in one of the two western sections (as their ODAC rival Randolph-Macon was) their chances of making it to Salem would've been a lot more problematic.

Whose schedule is more legit, Lawrence  and Wooster who get two games apiece against a conference with tons of really bad teams, or teams like Tufts, Amherst, Trinity and Williams who consistently play the best teams regionally and nationally (teams like Wittenberg, at Occidental, WPI, Ursinus, this year) while still playing a pretty hefty conference schedule of between 9 to 11 games (11 for 6 of the ten teams in the conference), plus up to 3 conference tourney games?

Lawrence's schedule was probably comparable. They had the onus of playing the MWC's near double round-robin, and as anyone will tell you conference games have an intrinsic difficulty in terms of rivalries and competition in the standings not found in non-conference games. But their non-conference competition, with the exception of UW-Oshkosh and Vanguard, was pretty lackluster. Wooster, on the other hand, did what they always do to compensate for a top-heavy league -- they scheduled some tough non-conf competition. They brought in two teams that eventually made the national tourney, UW-Stout and St. Thomas, for their tipoff tournament. They played Baldwin-Wallace, the eventual OAC champion. And they faced a good NJAC team, College of New Jersey, on a neutral floor in another regular-season tourney.

Calling the NESCAC's conference schedule "pretty hefty" is a laugh. The whole point behind the animosity directed at the NESCAC is that it isn't hefty at all to only play nine conference games.

Is the Big East not a legit conference because its teams don't play a true double round robin?  Since when is the double round robin indicative of anything?  And would it be as interesting and fun for the players to play 21 conference games a year getting all of around five opportunities to face out of conference foes?

Apples and oranges on the Big East thing. The Big East is a purposefully-constructed collection of D1 basketball powers. Even so, it's too ungainly in its current form and should move to a divisional format.

The double round-robin is indicative of everything as far as a conference's stature is concerned. How can you properly take the measure of a conference if everyone doesn't get the chance to host a conference rival as well as be forced to play in that rival's gym? What sort of standard can be set when only nine (or eleven, if you count the non-conf WAW and CBB games as conference tilts) of a possible 25 regular-season games are held within the conference, while every other fully-fledged D3 league plays between 12 and 22 of them?

Finally, your math is a bit off. If the NESCAC were to go to a full double round-robin, league members would play 18 conference games and would have seven slots open for non-conf games. Plenty of other leagues (the NCAC, the ODAC, etc.) have that setup.

The point is, NESCAC since 1993 has had pretty much at least one and often two legit national contenders every year, and it is as deep as all but two other conferences in the country.  Speaking of thos two, I don't recall anyone bashing the CCIW for having no conference tourney until recently.  No, only NESCAC is held out for consistent abuse.

The legitimacy of the NESCAC's national contenders is still a bit of an open question. Aside from the two-year Williams run, only one NESCAC team (Conn College in '99) has managed to win a Final Four game, as was pointed out in this room not too long ago by a NESCAC fan. The recent Williams and Amherst teams have certainly enjoyed the respect of those from other regions who saw them in Salem, but a lot of national observers can't help but wonder how the NESCAC teams would fare if they weren't playing East Region and other Northeast Region teams in the first four rounds of the tournament. Again, though, that's wishing for a changed outcome in playing conditions that nobody outside of the D3 circle of school presidents and ADs has the power to change.

The CCIW plays a full fourteen-game double round-robin. That's more than satisfactory in the eyes of observers from other leagues. By comparison, the only way a NESCAC team can face fourteen other NESCAC teams before the national tourney is if they're one of the WAW or CBB triads and they make it all the way to the NESCAC conference tourney title game. The vast majority of NESCAC teams fall far short of that fourteen-game mark. As for the NESCAC being the only league singled out for abuse, it's because the NESCAC is the only league in D3 that plays a single round-robin.

No one ever comments, well, NESCAC schools deserve more respect nationally because they are severely limited in terms of recruiting, they start practice later, and the conference powers can't admit any kids with less than a 1200 SAT, usually far higher.

Again, playing the academic card doesn't work. Other leagues manage to play a double round-robin with those same restrictions and high standards in place. And the NESCAC is able to compensate for those high standards because: a) selectivity can be an advantage in recruiting as well as a disadvantage; and b) several NESCAC teams have the resources to recruit nationally, while the vast majority of D3 teams (their Northeast Region neighbors in particular) are essentially restricted to local recruiting. You don't see kids from California, Colorado, Michigan, and Virginia on other NE Region teams.

[formerbant10]

Mr. Sager,

I don't know how long that post took you, but the info is endless.  Simply amazing.

I've posted about the single round robin topic quite a few times now and the main thing that the posters here need to realize is that the players (or majority of) would love to play a double round robin.  In many ways it is a shame that they don't play it.

It's obvious that the conference is not going to change, which is too bad.  I've talked to an assistant coach at a UAA team and we discussed this for about an hour.  He questioned the same thing citing how their league (which is just as highly academic) travels more and has the double round robin.  If the NESCAC really wanted to do it, all they'd have to do is start the conference schedule in the 1st semester.  Playing some games in December and early January would enable that.

On the flipside, that would mean that some of the traditional games on teams schedules might have to come off.  Some of the teams in the NE have been playing each other forever, but are not part of the same leagues.  I know that Amherst plays in the Pioneer Valley Classic along with hosting a Tournament, which would mean that if they played in those 4 games plus the 18 conference games that would leave them with 2 regular season games for other non-conference opponents. 

I'm not saying the change would be a terrible thing, but in the small Northeast region, there is quite a bit of rivalry between the leagues, not just within the leagues.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Greg,

Thanks for attacking the 'academics' card as an explanation.  I've gotten so sick of hearing that, that I didn't even notice when they played it!  The NESCAC obviously has some very fine schools, but the rest of d3 is chopped liver?  UAA?!  Lawrence, Grinnell, etc., from the MWC?!

I HATE it when people post grades or otherwise try to pull the 'academic' card, but I think I am being forced to by this excuse.  My SATs were well over 1500 and I went to IWU - 'academic' card-players, what were yours?

If the NESCAC chooses to do single round-robin, that is their choice, but please spare us the garbage reasons.  'Smarter-than-thou' doesn't fly any better than 'holier-than-thou'.

[edit]: formerbant10: your post came up while I was composing mine - obviously I would exclude you from my tirade!

[Mr. Ypsi]

formerbant10,

It would not even necessarily mean starting in December.  Just schedule near-by double-headers for Fri and Sat nights.  NO class time lost (as long as players schedule classes so as not to have Fri afternoon).  The Fri nite motel would not seriously excede the two travels - MIGHT even be less, with current gas prices!

I teach at a d1 school - my bball player this term missed exactly ONE class.

The NESCAC excuses (at least as expressed on this board) do not hold water.  They can do as they wish, but please spare us either the long distances or the academics excuses.  While they can choose the single round-robin if they wish, they have NEVER come up with a legitimate reason (non bs) for it.

[senatorfrost]

 Mr. Ypsi, well I guess I'm forced to divulge also.-My SAT's were only a little higher than yours. 1610. I did not go to IWU.