MBB: NESCAC

[Colby Hoops]

The Ephs' top nine features one senior, one junior, four sophomores and three frosh.  That's as many frosh combined as the other seven teams regularly play (and none of the others are starting a first year, like Williams is, rather they are at the back of the rotation). 

Nescac should be pretty loaded next year. I don't really see any teams that will take much of a step back (with the exception of Hamilton and probably Amherst) and lot should be better.

• Williams returns everyone except for Jones and looks like easily a top 10 team.
• Wesleyan loses James and Walker, but seems that Peek will return and along with Nicky Johnson, Maccoux, Ravetz, Dezoynie that's a top 25 team.
• Middlebury returns everyone and should be a top 25ish team as well
• Tufts loses Rogers, Morris and Brady I believe, but still should be a very competitive team.
• Trinity loses Donald Jorden, but Dorion and Callahan-Gold both played really well toward the end of the season and there is enough additional depth with Otoo and Redd to be quite good.
• Colby loses Matt Hannah but still has Noah Tyson and Will King and seemed to find a better supporting cast late in the season. I expect they'll be better.
• Conn, Bowdoin and Bates all have plenty of young guys and returners to be even better next year.
• Hamilton loses several key contributors but won't be totally devoid of talent.
• Amherst loses Day and Robinson, so guard play will be a huge question mark, but they do have a ton of size and more than enough talent to be a good team.

As a side note on some of the recent NCAA games. I think Williams has been impressive given how much they haven't yet had to rely on Karren. Would expect him to a have more impactful offensive games this weekend. Jovan Jones hit a huge three in the second half against Stevens and hit some early ones in the blowouts against Neumann. Overall he's playing very well. I do wonder if App should try to go offense/defense with Stoddard and him late in games. Watching the Stevens game live (before Jones hit that clutch three) I thought that might hurt the Ephs with how much his defender was helping off. But, if Jones keeps hitting then all is good.

On the Wesleyan game I don't want to be overly critical of a single player, but Ravetz took some very iffy shots down the stretch that were costly. That's tended to be his playing style, but there were two that particularly aggressive shots. When Wesleyan struggles offensively and can't get looks for James, they often resort to Peek midrangers and a tough diet of threes. Johnson was the only guy able to get to the rim late in that game.

[nescac1]

Agree that Jovan had been playing really well.  The defense and grit will always be there but the last few games he's played very efficiently on offense, making some big plays without needing a lot of touches.  He needs to be opportunistic, picking his spots on offense given his role on the team, and he's been doing so effectively.   Hopefully that continues.  In general, the Eph role players were fantastic in the first few rounds.  The Ephs' greatest asset continues to be depth and balance.  The team won't have an all-American this year so they need a lot of different guys to step up from game to game. 

I do think NESCAC, while it certainly had a quality group of graduating seniors, was overall younger than most of the power leagues this year.  As Colby Hoops notes, nearly everyone in the league, especially the bottom of the league, projects to be significantly improved next year.  Meanwhile, look at the rest of the top 25.  Maybe some guys stick around for an extra year, but on paper right now, it looks like RMC loses a first team all-American; Marietta loses its top four guys; Oshkosh and CNU each lose a few key players; IWU loses its top three guys; St. Joe's, Emory, Lacrosse, Wabash, Elmhurst, Wheaton, Yeshiva, Platteville all get decimated by graduation.  And so on.  Really, only Oswego, Swarthmore and Stockton, besides the top NESCAC teams, bring back nearly all of their key players (maybe one or two others I'm missing from that list).   I'd say overall it was a slightly down year for NESCAC (even though one team in second round and one team in at least the sweet 16 is not terrible!), but next year the league might leap ahead of some of the other power conferences.  WIAC, CCIW, UAA, OAC all seem poised to have some really good teams look VERY different next season. 

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

I believe a lot of the Marietta guys will be back. Ellis is gone, but I'm pretty sure Isaly has one more year, if he wants it.

[thebear]

Oswego honored 7 players at their last regular season game, but only one starter, Mulson, who splits time in the paint.

They have 4 starters coming back from this years team, and 13 returnees overall.

[WUPHF]

WIAC, CCIW, UAA, OAC all seem poised to have some really good teams look VERY different next season.

I was looking at this over the weekend and I need to go double-check, but I believe only two players from the UAA all-Association team are expected to return next season.  Every team in the UAA, I would argue, looks very different next season. 

It seems like an unprecedented level of turnover, but it could be that each team was more competitive with standout seniors and graduate students and so I am noticing it more.

[nescac1]

Whoops - I meant Oswego, not Oneonta.  Always mix those two up!  Yeah they look loaded next year. 

[Stretch4]

"The Ephs' top nine features one senior, one junior, four sophomores and three frosh.  That's as many frosh combined as the other seven teams regularly play (and none of the others are starting a first year, like Williams is, rather they are at the back of the rotation)."

In the interest of painting a more accurate picture, it should be noted that the freshman starter on Williams is a 21 year old high school class of 2019, Post Grad class of 2020, Covid-gap year 2020-2021.  Should also be noted that two sophomore starters are 22 year old high school class of 2018, Post grad class of 2019, Covid-gap year 2020-2021.  Numerous other Covid-gap year, 5th year post grads on the team as well.  So age wise they are in line with the juniors and seniors on other teams (who had seasons last year and were not 5th year post grad players).  All fair and all within the rules, so more power to them.  Just think it is a bit misleading to make it sound like these guys are a bunch of 19 and 20 year olds.  Obviously due to Covid year and more Covid cancellations this season, they certainly are much less experienced in terms of college games (particularly big games and tournament games), but in terms of age and physical maturity they are pretty much on an even playing field. 

[nescac1]

Fair point Stretch4 (although I believe - not certain - that only one of the two sophomore starters did a post grad year, but your general point is a good one).  But yes, the Williams team, physically, are not underclassmen.  As you also note, they are very inexperienced in terms of actual college basketball games played.  I still think it's a significant difference when they are playing against a team like Wabash, whose three stars have all played four years of college hoops (and started for 3-4 years).  Porter, for example, played little his post grad year due to an injury, then did not play any sort of organized hoops during his gap year, and then even this year had two major interruptions to games and practices.  So he has a lot of room to grow as a college-level player, still.  Physically, though, I agree -  the Ephs (and the eye test confirms this) are certainly not at any sort of disadvantage against anyone -- only Evan Glatzer is a true first-year in the rotation, and he doesn't really look like a typical first-year guard, anyway. 

[nescac1]

Interesting!!

https://twitter.com/urmenshoops/status/1501633008167698435?s=21

[Bucket]

Interesting!!

https://twitter.com/urmenshoops/status/1501633008167698435?s=21

Very cool.

[AmherstStudent05]

Interesting!!

https://twitter.com/urmenshoops/status/1501633008167698435?s=21

Very cool indeed! I remember several years ago proposing a NESCAC/CCIW showdown to help settle the seemingly annual debate over precisely how I inferior New England basketball is to Midwest basketball (I gather Mr Massey is still brewing some formula somewhere).

My proposal was of course tongue in cheek but perhaps in hindsight it need not have been!

[nescac1]

Here are the highlights of Jack Davidson's last game.  He really is the Steph Curry of D3, shooting it from WAY deep, shooting it off the move in very tight spaces, working hard off the ball to find any kind of space to get his shot off, very tricky handle and crafty finishing in the lane around bigger guys:

https://twitter.com/Skellabrine/status/1501219404788506626?s=20&t=-qNpa-fiAGXiRSLAjRi_Xw

This entire threat of round two highlights is really impressive, in fact, several guys with the ability to hit deep, heavily-contested 3's: https://twitter.com/Skellabrine/status/1500591280241393675?s=20&t=-qNpa-fiAGXiRSLAjRi_Xw

Basketball is a guard-heavy game and there are a TON of big-time shot-making guards left in the D3 tourney.  Most of the top individual players remaining are guards, in fact ... Isaly/Ellis, Anthony/Tolbert, Prince/Johnson, Davidson, Morrison, Campbell, Rhode, Adom, Azor, Hines/Aigner (plus some great ones like Schner and Nolan were knocked out last round).  So many teams left have a team with a guard (or two!) who routinely takes over a game virtually on his own, a whole bunch of those guys are going to be all-American this year. It's notable too that nearly everyone on the list is in his 4th or 5th year of college ball (at worst, his third).   

Williams of course doesn't have one perimeter guy who can simply go off for 35-40, and is one of a few teams remaining that need a balanced approach to win.  WPI is really the ONLY team left that has an approach (and talent) where it is just going to dominate teams in the paint. 

[P'bearfan]

Interesting!!

https://twitter.com/urmenshoops/status/1501633008167698435?s=21

What a great idea!  Selfishly, I hope Emory winds up hosting.

[SpringSt7]

A lot of Davidson's points tonight will be more or less unavoidable, in particular the 30 ft+ bombs, mid range off the dribble when they run him off the line, and his floaters in the paint. But I would also like to think that with a full week to prepare Williams won't lose track of him as often as Emory did, and they should have the size in the paint to prevent the drop offs to others because they won't have to collapse and overhelp as much.

Davidson will probably get 30---such as life against a player of his caliber on this type of run in the tournament---but if they can keep him to 30 and not 40, and limit the supporting cast, they should hopefully be able to overpower Wabash offensively enough to move on.

[nescac1]

Yeah, Davidson makes a lot of ya-gotta-hand-it-to-him sort of shots, I agree, you just have to do what you can to have a bigger player with arms raised in front of him to make his attempts as uncomfortable as possible.  Davidson right now is in an absolutely insane shooting zone, in Wabash's five post-season games (including league tourney games) against very good competition he is averaging 33 ppg on utterly ridiculous shooting numbers (including 58 percent from 3!) and four of those five teams had played Wabash before, so they were certainly prepared for what Davidson could do.

I also agree that the Eph centers have to avoid over-helping off Schreiber because that guy feasts off easy looks (70 percent shooter!) based on dishes from their driving guards and also hits his foul shots.  If you can limit his open looks and make him always be shooting over another big guy, that would be ideal. 

On the offensive end, Williams will certainly have some mismatches to exploit.  I'd look to go at Schreiber early to try to get him in some early foul trouble, both to get Nate going after a quiet last weekend and also because they seem to have a big drop-off inside when he isn't in the game.  Their starting guards are 6'1, 6'0, and 6'2, so Cole and Spivy absolutely need to use their size and strength to get into the lane and finish strong, and this would be a great game for Jovan to grab some offensive rebounds and get some garbage baskets inside.  In fact, in general, the Ephs could really use some second-chance points in this game.  If they put a small guard on Declan, I'd look to post him for sure because he's sneakily effective down there.  The Ephs won't ever be shy about putting up open 3's, but don't want to get into just an up-and-down outside shooting contest with Wabash, that would be playing to Wabash's strengths. 

If the Ephs can get to 80 points in this one, which is very plausible against Wabash's defense, and hold Davidson to around 30, I like our chances.  If Davidson puts up a number like he did against Emory, well, then the Ephs better be very hot from outside themselves, because it just gets very hard to keep up with a team hitting that many 3's  Go Ephs!