MBB: NESCAC

[formerbant10]

Williams beats Trinity by 20ish.  The good news is, if the Bants sweep next weekend, they still win the whole thing.

[mariner75]

Going to be a great final weekend.......big win today for Tufts over Bates....91-76.

[walzy31]

Williams 77
Trinity 52

WOW. Didn't see that coming. Thanks Williams.
Next weekend will be real interesting. Tufts just put themselves back in the hunt...a long long shot to host (2 wins (over Amherst and Trinity) and Amherst beating Bates).

Williams shot 45% from deep to Trinitys 18%. Rhoten held to 15. Shalvoy with a much better game than last night. Good stuff.

Most likely Bates and Trinity will fall/stay off the top 25 unfortunately.

What's up with Bowdoin???

[fpc85]

Red, you're right that the Amherst fans are cocky.   They've been cocky before and been disappointed by their team in big games (see, Rochester last year or any NCAA game against Williams) and I'm thinking their low class antics (the fans, not the players who play, I hate to say, a beautiful brand of basketball to watch) last night (like jumping around on Williams' court after the game) will come back to haunt them in future years when the talent differential is not what is right now

Red/nescac1
I remeber when this board was riddled with williams suck ups and riders during the Crotty years... let the fans live. You guys should have realized it would come back to bite you. Go Jeffs!
"Too strong for too long"

[carolina]

Williams/Amherst games are always entertaining. Amherst has a great team and Williams is young. As far as the fans go every team runs on the court after a big win over a rival. As long as noone gets hurt let the fans enjoy the game as well. Although I am not an Amherst fan congrats. Your team plays great defense and has great talent. By the way Williams did instigate it by putting the football score up but the same things happens at Amherst so its all in good fun.

[formerbant10]

Trinity for sure is out of the top 25, I don't see them getting many votes this week.

Trinity is still in the driver's seat for next weekend (due to home court).  If they win out, they get the #1 seed even if Amherst sweeps as well.  If Bates takes two, they get the #1.  Amherst needs a Trinity loss and two wins to host.  Tufts needs to win both and a Bates and
Williams loss to take first......I'm losing track of all these possibilities. 
Better to just wait and see what happens next weekend.  I'm just glad I get to see the Bants on Friday and Saturday.

And it would be great for the NESCAC if the 8 teams with records over .500 got into the tourney.  That would make the first round wins for teams a little bit better in the QOWI and help the conferences chances of getting the Pool C bids.

[pinna44]

Watched the game on Jumbocast.  Bates looked like they were in quicksand early in the second half in their motion offense.  Some credit goes to the Tufts defense, but not much.  Late in the first half Bates had a couple of "drive and dish" for open jumpers.  Got away from that in the second half.  They appeared to get frazzled rather easily, landing them down nine for the first time.  Baskets down low were super-easy for Tufts.  Maybe this will be a wake-up call.  I like them to beat Trinity and lose by 15 to Amherst.  Maybe Tufts can upset Amherst.  3-way tie for first b/t Trinity, Amherst, and Bates.  We'll see !

Does Trinity and/or Amherst have video feed on the web?

[Red1]

Pinna,

Nice synopsis on the Tufts/Bates game.  I was wondering how the best defense in NESCAC (statistically)m and one of the best in the country, could give up 91 points.  Now I understand some of the problems. 

To answer your question, Tufts is the only NESCAC school that currently does video broadcasts.  If you check out www.batescast.com you'll notice that it's modeled after Tufts' Jumbocast website.  Bates is hoping to move into video in the next couple of years, but I haven't heard anyone else even thinking about it.   Props to Tufts on being the video feed pioneer.  Along with Bates, Amherst also does free audio webcasting (wamh, see mrmike's posts).  Williams and Bowdoin use "Teamline" which is a pay per minute, or game, service.   You can listen to a whole game, but it's not cheap.  As far as I am aware, and there are a few I haven't checked since last year, no one else does any webcasting.

Cheers,
Red1

[walzy31]

Not much around Williamstown comes cheap. Pitcher of Bud Lite at the Purple Cow ran $10.

Amherst's radio announcers are good and get into the games. Tufts certainly gets props from me as well for their jumbocasting.

[formerbant10]

I knew I liked Hartford better than Williamstown for a reason.  Pitchers of "the Beast" are only 50 cents most of the week.  Thursdays are $1 drinks downtown.  Can't beat that.

[nescac1]

Unbelievable turnaround for the Ephs.  Everything that went wrong against Amherst went right against Trinity -- they played more intense / effective defense, hit some very tough 3's in critical situations (Shalvoy, Nelson, and Snyder all hit loooong 3's with the shot clock winding down), they were smart with the ball, and they worked it inside with some great passes for layups, particularly for Kuntz.  Most balance they have had all year, with 7-8 guys making big time contributions.  The rebounding, in particular, was the biggest difference -- Ephs got lots of second chance points, which is unusual for them, and Kuntz, Nelson, and Weisbrot all hit the boards with a ton of fire.  They were also smart to push the ball really hard early in the game -- Trinity definitely had tired legs.  Still, I find it hard to believe that Trinity beat Amherst, especially at Amherst.  Rhoten was great one on one, but whenever he was double or triple teamed, he either turned the ball over or tossed the ball to a teamate who threw up a brick.  I think Bedford and Rhoten are about even, but the difference is, you can't double Bedford because Amherst usually has 3 or even 4 guys on the floor who can all drive and shoot.  Trinity, meanwhile, seemed to have very few guys who could pop it from downtown, so there is no reason to stop collapsing on Rhoten.  Williams played their best game of the year, but if they had played that well against Amherst the night before, it would have been a close game that could have gone either way, not a 25 point victory.  Maybe Trinity was just tired from their road trip, but I would be surprised if they swept both Tufts and Bates next weekend.  Trinity has the athletes, but does it have the shooters to keep up with Tufts and Bates?  I'm not so sure. 

Ephs have to take care of business against Bowdoin and Colby or the big win means very little -- if they can pull off the sweep (never an easy task in Maine) then they will end up as the 2 or 3 seed in the tourney.  If they lose either game, they could end up as low as 5.  But if they come out with the same kind of fire they had against Trinity, particularly hitting the boards and winning the battles for loose balls, they should be OK.   The key is to get the 2 or 3 seed to avoid a first round match-up with, most likely, Tufts. 

[senatorfrost]

 Victory certainly puts people in a better humor. Some posts ago I read about how Amherst had failed in big games vs The Sainted Ephs. I recalled two years ago and all the tributes to the lunch Pail Guys who beat the Jeffs, who had arrived by Limousine, etc.
  The past is nice but it would be even nicer if those who were boasting paid at least some notice to the crippling injuries Amherst suffered in 03 and 04. It was as if it had been God's Will that the Ephs won. I began to sense that possibility when Jones broke his leg with 7 something left. Yet all you heard from the Eph fans was the greatness of the Lunch Pail trio and how Ephs had more heart, courage, etc. etc. No mention at all about the tremendous and stupendous amount of good fortune that shone down but was deflected from Amherst.
The least I thought, that could have been done was a small acknowledgement Of Heaven sent good fortune or at least an acknowledgement of Frankie Four Leaf, the Ephs invaluable 6th man.
   During the Nogelo years, especially the last 3, I always thought the Ephs had a better team. Last year folks from over the mountains were touting Amherst as a Superpower. Thus to listen to them, anything less than a final four would show Hixon was no good and/or the team had no heart. Well anyone who saw the game knows Rochester simply had a better, and DEEPER squad. I kept waiting to see Amherst show they were as good as Ephs painted them. I waited the whole season-Bottom line=Depth was simply not there.
   Now this year there has been some razzing dished out as a result of Amherst sweeping Williams. I have yet to read anything that implied the Ephs lacked character, heart, guts, etc. I have yet to read anything negative about Paulson.
Personally I think Paulsen is as good as they come when it comes to getting the most out of what he has.
Former Bant-Given Taylor's injury last year, I guess Amherst may have had a taste of good fortune.

[formerbant10]

Senator, Taylor was not the only one who was injured last year.  Farrell broke his foot in September and played on it the entire year.  Taylor's wrist was a problem and later in the year a bad ankle kept him from most practices.  Rhoten played the last few weeks with a broken bone in his foot as well.  There were a few more pretty serious injuries that kept the team from 100% for most of the year but some times, luck isn't with you. 

I'm sure Amherst's Pat Fitzsimmons would know all about that, he barely played his senior year...which was really too bad because he was a dominant force that no one had an answer for. 

And I'm very excited for this weekend.  Should be some great games in Amherst and Hartford. 

[toad22]

Senator:
To the victor go the spoils. You can write any disparaging remarks about the Ephs you want, because Amherst won, and did it convincingly. However, your suggestion that 1 National Championship, 1 runner up finish, 2 third place finishes are mostly? partly? luck vs. the hard luck Jeffs, is revisionist history at it's worst! Does luck play a role? Sure it does. Has luck been a primary factor in Williams' seccess over the last few years? It is always nice to have good luck, of course, but good players and good coaching are what makes the difference, not luck. Luck ebbs and flows, and at the end of the day usually evens out. The talent disparity between Williams and Amherst is very wide right now, and unless that narrows, no amout of good coaching and good luck is going to make any difference. Amherst seems to me to be the best in the NESCAC, and probably in New England. Beyond that, who knows. I don't want to over estimate their talent as I did last year.

[nescac1]

Senator Frost, you can blame injuries in 04 I guess, although Williams beat a basically healthy Amherst team (with one bench player out due to injury) 2 out of 3 times in the regular season.  But you can't blame injuries in 03 -- Amherst had a total of ZERO players out for their home NESCAC tourney loss and their NCAA blow-out losses to Williams that year; the Ephs, meanwhile, had injury issues of their own, with Folan (one of their top guys going into the season) limited all year, and relegated to bench duty, due to back problems and Kain missing a good chunk of the year and limited with an ankle injury.  Yes, the Ephs needed luck to win the national title (as do generally all teams), but not against Amherst -- luck came into play against Wooster, whose best, unstoppable player was limited by injury, as well as the confusion at the end of the game because of the shot clock going off.  I don't think the 04 Amherst team was better than Williams and I doubt they would have fared better than the Ephs did against Stevens Point in the title game.  But it is certainly hard to argue that the 03 Amherst squad had anything on the Ephs.  Just as it would be ridiculous for Eph fans to say this year's Williams team was "better" than Amherst. 

Amherst this year is clearly better than any team in NESCAC and probably than any team they will face in the early rounds of the NCAA's, with no obvious powerhouses from the New Jersey or New York regions to contend with and a down year, overall, in New England (yes, WPI has a gaudy record but they've only played a few quality teams and their wins in those games have been very, very narrow).  They have seemingly no injuries, tons of playoff experience, and are playing very well as a unit.  This is a year they could well make the final four and after that, who knows.  Of course, they are not unbeatable as Trinity proved -- a good team just needs to play its very best to have a shot, something the Ephs unfortunately have not managed against them.  Even the Ephs' best game wouldn't have beaten Amherst this weekend the way the Jeffs played, I'm afraid; but they would have made things more interesting.

By the way, no one I know of has ever said anything negative about Hixon's coaching ability, nor should they -- he is an outstanding coach and his team always plays hard, intense defense and the Jeff's offense, particulary the last few years, has really run flawlessly and is incredibly difficult to guard.  It was the inability to give credit where credit was due -- to the Ephs -- in the years Amherst fell short that always rubbed Eph fans the wrong way.   I don't think anyone ever implied that the Amherst players had no heart, either.  Guys like Harper, etc. had incredible fortitude.  Some of the fans and some of the players been pretty cocky at times over the years, and I just think until they back it up in the big game, they should hold back a little.  This year does seem to be different -- confident, but without the arrogant swagger that has been off-putting in the past.