MBB: NESCAC

[ephoops]

Holy cow.  Wesleyan beats Amherst.  Down goes Frazier!  Upset of the decade in NESCAC basketball.  Incredible. 

Down goes Frazier!... Great line NESCAC1.  I vividly remember Howard Cosell's call of the Foreman / Frazier fight.

HUGE win for Joe Reilly as he takes the first step in bringing Wes basketball out of the stone age. 

When was the last time that Wes beat Amherst.  Must be back in the days of  Jones / K. Johnson / Mills??

[magicman]

Middlebury wins a close won at Plattsburgh St. 68-64

[senatorfrost]

  I am not going to say 'I told you so' because I don't have to. So NESCAC 1 how many points should Amherst be favored over the Ephs by this week end?
  I'd say Amherst -21 1/2. What do you think?

[nescac1]

Hard to say.  Williams has three losses to only one for Amherst, but all three were without Geoghegan.  Looking at common opponents, Amherst beat Springfield by 30, and Amherst beat them by 15.  Then again, Williams beat Wesleyan (at home, granted) by 30, and Amherst lost to them by 3.  Amherst will certainly be very fired up after this loss, but of course so should Williams, in their first Amherst game under Maker.  I'll say Williams by 2 points because they are at home.  Probably comes down to which duo is hitting better from outside, Baskauskas/Wheeler or Schultz/Snyder, unless Geoghegan can really dominate inside.   

[Hugenerd]

Hard to say.  Williams has three losses to only one for Amherst, but all three were without Geoghegan.  Looking at common opponents, Amherst beat Springfield by 30, and Amherst beat them by 15.  Then again, Williams beat Wesleyan (at home, granted) by 30, and Amherst lost to them by 3.  Amherst will certainly be very fired up after this loss, but of course so should Williams, in their first Amherst game under Maker.  I'll say Williams by 2 points because they are at home.  Probably comes down to which duo is hitting better from outside, Baskauskas/Wheeler or Schultz/Snyder, unless Geoghegan can really dominate inside.   

I'll take Williams by 10.

On a side note.  I remember a couple of seasons back there was a rumor that Jimmy Bartolotta of MIT was considering transferring to Williams, which I dismissed as pure nonsense.  It turns out that I was wrong and that was actually being seriously considered, although it never ended up happening.  How good would Williams have been then.  Regardless, I am starting to believe in Williams this year, I think they are becoming the class of the northeast and, although they have a few losses, I would rank them top in the northeast right now after the two undefeated teams lost to really subpar teams this week.

[senatorfrost]

  Kidding aside I would say Williams favored by 8 1/2. As you say losses were without Geohegan.  Middlebury's losses were without Smith. Amherst has to play the Maine teams away. Does anyone think they can win all 4? How about 3?
I still like Middlebury (with Smith) and Williams (with Geohegan) second.

[Hugenerd]

I dont read this board as often as other ones, but have you guys discussed how crappy Amherst's opponents have been.  In their first 10 games (9-1), they have played teams with a combined 37-67 (0.355) record, with only 3 of those teams with winning records (and none more than 2 games over 0.500, 5-4 Lasell, 7-5 Springfield, 7-5 Westfield).  Those wins include 1-10 Mass College, 1-10 Caltech, 2-8 Curry, and 2-8 Pomona-Pitzer.  How do you know if they are good or not if they have been playing the worst schedule imaginable in d3, especially when they go and lose to previously 3-6 Wesleyan?  I think Amherst has a lot to prove on Saturday and they just may not be as good as everyone thinks (top 5 in d3, really?).  It will be interesting to see how they respond.

[nescac1]

Just saw, first win for Wes over Amherst in 17 games, dating back to 2001.  Wow. 
Amherst was  looking good better early in the year because they blew out Springfield and Lasell, both of whom seemed stronger at the time, but both of whom have fallen back to earth.  Those blow-out wins now seem a lot less impressive.  Amherst is clearly down from the last few years, the Williams and Brandeis games coming up should tell just how far they've fallen.  I am sure they looked past Wesleyan and that game isn't all that representative -- Baskauskas was way off and Kaminer, a terrible shooter normally, was on fire.  Still, there is no way a team that just lost to Daniel Webster would be able to hang within 30 of a typical Amherst team.

Baskauskas and Wheeler are great shooters but if they are not both hitting, Amherst seems to lack offensive punch.  Meehan is solid but nothing close to Andrew O. at the point, and Amherst's big men are wayyy too young to be consistent contributors.  They simply don't have the hoards of experienced big guys who have dominated the interior the past few years.  Bennett I am surprised by because Amherst people were hyping him like the second coming before his frosh year (supposed to be the best big man recruit ever at Amherst) and now he is barely playing.  That leaves Holsey who is a defensive role player and Holmes who is a year or so away I imagine. 

Williams with Bartolotta would be insanely good right now.  Ephs have easily the best 1-2-3 punch in the conference but it may be a little early to annoint them favorites, until they get more consistent scoring from the 4-8 guys in the rotation.  Maker has been mixing and matching and can't seem to settle on a supporting cast.   With Amherst's loss Midd probably moves into the favorite role at this point, with Williams and Amherst right behind them.

Rest of the conference looks pretty unimpressive.  Almost every team is in rebuilding mode with lots of young guys getting serious PT and so many coaching changes.  Without a doubt the least impressive collective non-conference performance in recent NESCAC history.  Many teams look to be a year away. 

[senatorfrost]

 NESCAC 1: I agree with your second paragraph except I would add that Wheeler is not a 'scorer'. Baskauskas is maybe a scorer.  I would also add that the Middlebury trio of Rudin, Smith and Edwards are very good. Old Guy summed up Edwards very well. The Williams trio has three starters from the NESCAC championship team. I seem to remember getting flak when I brought that up before.
I agree that wasn't the greatest NESCAC title holder in terms of total talent but two of the starters were frosh and one was a soph. That's not too shabby.

I saw the loss in 2001. Leo Jones put on a one man show and Johnson out performed whoever was in the middle for Amherst. Johnson was a frosh as I remember. The show that Jones put on was maybe the best I ever saw and if not it was close. I suppose Nogelo could have done the same thing but he never had to.

[walzy31]

Wow. I can't believe that. Not the kind of headline on D3hoops one hopes for. Serves me right for saying Wesleyan would beat Caltech by 20-25.

Huge game on Saturday for Amherst. They need to bounce back with a well played game. Williams will certainly be gunning for them.

Amherst -7.5 in a game that neither team leads by more that 14 at any point and is single digits with 5 minutes remaining. Ahhh I hate Williams.

[Hugenerd]

I agree that you could argue that Middlebury is the favorite at this point.  That win over Richard Stockton looks huge now.  I still like Williams, but thats just my opinion.

[Hugenerd]

walzy31 wrote:  Amherst's competition lived up to the stereotype of being the worst college basketball team in the country.

You have to wonder why a top D3 power would be scheduling a game against CalTech.

walzy31 wrote:   Last Caltch comment (more of an instruction than a suggestion): You have to change your pregame warm-up drills! No one who is older than 4th graders gets in two lines facing each other near half court with two ball handlers dribbling at each other and then crossing over to the other hand when they reach the other dribbler. No one.

Well, it is my understanding that most if not all of the CalTech players did not play varsity basketball in high school.  Maybe this is the level of basketball development that they are currently at.

Like the NCAA says in their ad, the CalTech players will be going pro in something other than sports.   

T990,

First of all, thank you for putting my quotes in purple...purple is the best.

Second, Amherst didn't call up Caltech and ask them if they wanted a game. Amherst signed up for the Holiday Classic which had 6 or 8 teams (Amherst, Babson, Pomona, Caltech, Whittier, Occidental etc.). Pomona was the lone guarenteed game, and Amherst was also guarenteed they wouldn't get Babson for the second game (Amherst plays them in a week). The rest was left up to chance. I am sure that if you asked Hixon or any of the 20 guys on the Amherst roster if they would have preferred to play Occidental or Caltech that you would get a unanimous response to Oxy. In fact, I bet if you asked them if they would have preferred to play Caltech or the IM champion from Trinity or Tufts, they would have voted the IM route.

Third, good point about Caltech needing to work on dribbling and crossovers. They also should mix in some bounce passing, rebounding, and shooting to their practice routine.

I must have missed this post, and some posts on the previous page, but I was catching up on this board and I found some innacuracies.  1)Caltech, Amherst, Babson, Oxy, Pomona and UMD were involved in the classic, Whittier and whoever else "etc." is were involved in a seperate holiday classic. 2) From what I know about these tournaments and what I hear about the scheduling of this particular classic, the holiday classic games were scheduled well in advance and Amherst knew it was scheduling Caltech (maybe they were going for the weakest non-conference schedule ever).

Also, with regards to their pregame exercise: 1) Is this really worth criticizing?, 2) you obviously need to go to more games because there are teams that do this (I know for certain WPI has done it in the past and i believe I remember at least 1 other NEWMAC school doing this at one point over the last couple of years), albeit it may not be that common, 3) even if the whole team does not practice dribbling, when I was playing at CMU, for example, we always had a block of time when the big men would warm up working on post moves at the basket and the guards would be near half court doing 1 on 1 dribble moves back and forth (and I dont remember anyyone ever criticizing the drill or making a big deal about it), and 4) you are going to have to dribble in the game, why is it so shocking and egregious that someone would do dribble moves in warms ups, its not like Caltech pulled up a chess board and then went at it for the full 20 minutes of warm ups and then transitioned directly into the tip, this seems to me like a legitimate drill, regardless of how basic you may think it is. In reality, this drill likely gets you more "warmed up" than layup lines, where you stand in line and take a shot every 30 seconds to 1 minute.

[nescac1]

Anyone have a link to a video of Kaminer's shot?  Sounds incredible.  It would be great to get it up on youtube.  If only to torment Walzy ...

Senator, before you get tooo carried away by one loss (even a bad one), I will remind you that you were pretty down on last year's team as well, and they only made the national title game.  That being said, no way last year's team would have lost to Wesleyan.  The good news for the 'Hurst is that the rest of NESCAC is so bad this year, Amherst still has as good a shot as anyone at the conference title.  Williams does have its big three, but no one else on the team is close to averaging even 10 a game -- they really need a bit more balance / production from the supporting cast in conference play.  Dodson and Rubin both have the potential to ignite for more offense but Dodson has been so banged up and Rubin hasn't received consistent P.T.  Midd has the most talent but they still have to prove they can win the big game with a bullseye on their back.  Everyone else has lost at least one game, often more,  to someone pretty terrible. 

[topoftheworld]

some credit is due to joe reilly.  he obviously got his team to play hard and believe they had a chance to win against an undefeated team they hadn't beaten in 8 years.  a definite change is happening at wes. hopefully sooner than later.

[T990]

Jimmy Bartolotta and Kevin Snyder (Williams) were HS teammates.  They won the HS state championship in Colorado.  I believe another HS teammate of theirs is playing D1 (not sure who/where).