MBB: NESCAC

[SpringSt7]

1st: Toomey, Mayer, Sharry, Wang, Workman

2nd: Kizel, St. Amour, Casey, Heskett, Gilmour


This decade was loaded so some guys had to be left off. Hausman was a stud but overwhelming lack of success in comparison to guys who won national championships and conference championships has to be a factor. Whittington was Class of 2011 so I'm dropping him even if it's unfair. This list feels short an Amherst guy so I bumped Workman to 1st team---they did won the only NESCAC title of the decade so they deserve it.

[nescac1]

Welcome back from hiatus, AmherstStudent05!  And great post.  Honestly, hard to take serious issue with any of those picks.  I think Hausman is worthy, he was just so dominant his last two years.   In fact, I'd have him as my fourth lock after Toomey, Mayer, Sharry.  The fifth spot is really hard.  Wang, Workman, Gilmour, all can make a strong case. Gilmour has the best overall career of those four, Wang the most impactful player when he was at his best, but then his back went out and he was a shadow of himself.  Workman had the best growth as a player and ended on a crazy high note.  I'll go with Gilmour.  Plus, we need SOMEONE from the last four years of the decade. 

Second team, much tougher.  I think Troy has to be on there because he was so dominant for those two years of the decade, and helped lead his team to a title game and a final four, where he played through a broken hand.  NESCAC POY, all-American, etc.  Overall, I actually think I agree with all of AmherstStudent05's picks.  Casey and Kizell are a close call, but I think Kizell gets the edge, with Casey as the first alternate on the squad. 

Here's a tougher topic to come up with: the all-never-made-an-all-NESCAC team for the decade.  For Williams, the obvious candidates are Nate Robertson (just played in a brutally competitive era for NESCAC guards) and Kyle Scadlock (solely due to injury, a shame).   Allen Williamson also comes to mind (crazy talented but only got REALLY good in the second half of his senior year).  Beyond that, I'm blanking out. 

[jumpshot]

Great to see Mike Maker with the St.Thomas University (Minnesota) men's basketball coaching staff today as the Tommies move toward Division I.

[SpringSt7]

In actual basketball news, Conn College played their first and only games of the season this weekend, dropping both to the Merchant Marine Academy. It seems that most of their key returners are away for the semester and not listed on the roster, although Jeff Allen appears on the roster and did not see action, but several of their freshmen played big minutes, most notably the trio of Flynn, Whelan, and Rice. Flynn had 19 on Saturday and Rice had 17 today. Rice seems intriguing, 4-10 from three today and at 6'7 has good NESCAC wing size. Not a lot to glean from however obviously.

[amh63]

SpringSt7...thanks for the post.  Conn college playing a few games adds to the "maverick" nature of the school wrt to the Nescac, IMO.  Several of my classmates married Conn College graduates...when it was an all women college.  Been on the campus a number of times to attend MBB games.  Lovely campus just up from the Coast Guard Academy in New London.....home of Electric Boat Shipyards ...builder of the USN Missile Subs.  One time CONN's MBB teams were very competative.
Only Nescac school without a football team.  Wonder why they are playing actual Basketball games.
Surprised the conference allows them.

[nescac1]

Good catch SpringSt7!  I continue to think that Conn makes a big leap next year, and giving many of its new players a chance for a whole bunch of practice opportunities, and even some competitive game action, while everyone else is just accumulating rust, can only help. 

One of Conn's highly acclaimed frosh (the highest ranked recruit), 6'9 Andrew Hartell, is taking the year off it appears.  But Jarron Flynn, Billy Whelan, Ben Rice and David Murray all seem like they are poised to be big a big part of next year's rotation (Flynn in particular is very highly touted, and Rice does seem like a long-term high-upside sort of guy).  Between those five guys and the top returnees who seem to be taking a year off, in particular Dan Draffan, Jack Zimmerman, and Ben McPherron, Conn is going to have a very different level of competitiveness next year (8-9 or more capable players, instead of basically four guys they could count on).  And Tim Sweeney's recruiting model seems to be to swoop in very late in the Spring to try to nab guys on the scholarship level / D1 border (or transfers), so there is a good chance he adds a few more high-level players between now and the end of May.  In short, do not be surprised to see Conn jump from a 4-20 team last year to a .500 or above team next year ... and they could be very competitive in NESCAC as soon as the 22-23 season ...

Do we now have a sense of which NESCAC guys at each school decided to take a year off for certain?  There really won't be ANY way to have any sort of sense of the competitive landscape next year until that info comes to light.  And even so, there will be effectively two years of entirely new recruits at each school, and every school will have a different level of preparedness for the season depending on how guys spent all that time away from campus, so it's certainly going to be an absolutely impossible to predict, wide-open NESCAC season.  Not to mention, new coaches at Tufts and Amherst, who (based on what has been speculated about who is returning vs. who is sitting out) seem likely to have the strongest groups of seniors in NESCAC, so even they will have a high degree of uncertainty despite relative (presumptive) personnel continuity. 

[Colby Hoops]

Colby is playing a limited scheduled with home and homes against USM and St Joes (ME) -- wearing masks while they play. They kicked off the "season" with a win over Southern Maine last night -- after a slow start the Mules won 87-68. Will King had a triple double and four blocks. He's poised to be one of the top players in the league heading into next year. Jonah Obi and Alec McGovern both had nice games -- 19 points for McGovern and 13 pts and 14 rebounds for Obi. Nice opportunity to get a little experience for those guys and some of the freshman who will have an opportunity to be a part of the rotation next year. I didn't watch the game but Lucas Green seemed to be the freshman to get the most minutes.

Matt Hanna is taking a gap year and will be back next year. I believe Noah Tyson is also taking a gap year and will have two seasons left. Wallace Tucker played last night, which indicates he is not taking a gap year and likely won't be back next year.

Probably can't take too much from a handful of games with an incomplete roster, but doesn't hurt for the younger guys to get some experience.

[SpringSt7]

I don't know Tucker's or Colby's situation personally, but I would not read too much into which upperclassmen are playing/listed on rosters given the fact that taking the fall semester off would have been enough to earn a 5th year. I would imagine we are just going to have to wait and see until next year.

[Colby Hoops]

I don't know Tucker's or Colby's situation personally, but I would not read too much into which upperclassmen are playing/listed on rosters given the fact that taking the fall semester off would have been enough to earn a 5th year. I would imagine we are just going to have to wait and see until next year.

Good point. The only one I know for sure is Hanna, so perhaps Tucker will be back too.

[Painter66]

This will be true across the NESCAC and other premier conferences, as nobody really knows who will be back. In most cases, we will have two incoming classes of players, along with the remnants of other upperclassmen, depending on what they chose to do this year. In Middlebury's case, it could mean that 7 seniors will or will not return, as they were prepared for an unusually strong season. We will not really know the answers for a few months. Colby seems to have a strategy to get the young guys some experience while holding out the upper class men. Let's just hope they all get back to some form normalcy next year.

[nescac1]

The fact that NESCAC is (appropriately, in my view) allowing for some form of Spring sports competition is a very, very good sign for next year, especially next fall.  Best case scenario, the number of cases continues to drop, more effective treatments are found over time, and most importantly, the vaccine is widely used and successful even at handling all the variants.  Given that the virus tends to bottom out in early fall, and that all fall sports are outdoors, I can't imagine there will be any major issues with fall 2021 sports, maybe just some limits on attendance but, let's face it, those limits are hardly necessary in NESCAC anyway .  By winter, hopefully, life will be pretty much back to normal, unless the variants of the virus prove effective at resisting vaccines, and then all bets are off.  But fingers crossed next year is basically a normal year on NESCAC campuses, and everywhere else. 

In my view, NESCAC really did an excellent job with dealing with COVID (I know mostly about Williams, but seems like the Williams experience was fairly typical across the conference).  I haven't heard of any massive outbreaks on the NESCAC campuses or communities, nor many deaths at all from COVID.  Compare that to what is happening around the country (540,000 dead and counting, countless more fighting severe long term health consequences) and, especially for the schools that had the majority of students on campus, that is a really impressive record of success.  There were really no good options, just less-bad ones, but overall, missing one year (three seasons) of sports, and severely limiting campus life in other painful ways, but not entirely eliminating the student presence on campus, seems to have been the right way to go.  It's easy to be critical, but in the end, the NESCAC presidents seem to have done the best job that anyone could ask for balancing the costs and benefits to that approach. 

It really does suck to have missed a year of sports, but I mean, it's not like even the professional leagues with limitless resources have had ideal experiences -- look how many NBA players have missed extensive time for COVID-related reasons, and how many games have had to be cancelled.  The season has been kind of a mess, despite private planes, constant testing, and the ability to live all of life in a bubble with playing basketball the only thing on the players' agenda. 

Hopefully a lot of players will end up taking a fifth year of eligibility so they get four years of college athletic experience (for Spring sports, it's not truly four years, more like 3.5, kind of, even if they do so).  And maybe some of the really elite players will leverage that extra year into playing a year of D1 sports as a graduate student, which could be a real silver lining for a few dozen star NESCAC athletes.  Especially in sports like tennis, the top tier of NESAC athletes would be in very high demand at a wide variety of D1 schools. 

All in all, it's been a huge bummer of a year, but from NESCAC has done a tremendous job of keeping their on and immediate off-campus communities reasonably safe, and nothing could be more important than that. 

[Colby Hoops]

Colby confirms that Wallace Tucker won't be back next year and will be celebrating him on senior day today. Like many, it's unfortunate to end his senior year under these strange circumstances.

Credit to Tucker for being an integral part of Colby's turnaround. Matt Hanna and Wallace Tucker came in as freshman together and were key players instantly and have seen Colby go from the bottom of the league to the most successful season in 20 plus years last year. Tucker would have been an 1000 point scorer under normal circumstances this year. Kudos to him for a wonderful career.

[Colby Hoops]

Former Ephs coach Dave Paulsen is out at George Mason. Don't follow it closely, but a little surprised by that. His overall record didn't seem to bad, but perhaps high expectations after such success under Jim Larranaga. I suspect he will have other D1 options if he chooses given his success at Bucknell.

[toad22]

The Paulsen firing is head scratching to me. George Mason had a good year this year, winning their last four regular season games. They got to the semifinals of their tournament, and they had the ROY in the league. Coaching can be a very rough business.

[stlawus]

There's not really anything head scratching about it.   They've flamed out early in every conference tournament and never finished at the top of the A10.  Mason has higher expectations than that.