MBB: NESCAC

[BullShark09]

WesTech beats Becker to take the Chip, 95-85.  Shasha goes for 29, ROY watch is officially on.  The freshmen seem to be making every bit as big an impact as they were supposed to as Beresford also goes for 17.  Maltz, 13 and 7, Mendell (with an off shooting night) 17 and 8.  Loving seeing the Cards go 2-0 for the first time in recent memory.

Any other updates on games?

[nescac1]

Ephs fell apart after being way up but held on to eek out a win over a credible SUNY Cortland team.  Schultz was clutch from the line down the stretch to seal the victory, but the Ephs can't be happy with their offensive performance in the second half.  Very few assists especially compared to Friday night (which was against a much weaker opponent, of course).   

Williams-Wesleyan should be interesting Tuesday, first leg of the little three.  Williams has a huge size and strength advantage and should pound it inside all day, rather than trying to run and gun with Wesleyan's smaller, quicker line-up. 

Lots of teams losing to iffy opponents this weekend, but NESCAC teams haven't practiced nearly as much as their opponents and the first weekend results historically tends to reflect that.  I still think NESCAC is going to have a very strong year, collectively. 

It seems that Locke is playing after all for Midd, guess the study abroad plans fell through. 

[BullShark09]

Williams-Wesleyan should be interesting Tuesday, first leg of the little three.  Williams has a huge size and strength advantage and should pound it inside all day, rather than trying to run and gun with Wesleyan's smaller, quicker line-up.

How well the young Cards have learned Reilly's defensive rotations will make or break Wes against Williams.  The Ephs will pound it inside, and Maltz will need help with Geoghegan from a double down on the wing.  If the bigs are passing well, and Wes' rotations back to shooters are off or slow, it could be a long night.

Nobody likes to play swarming athletic teams, so if the Cards can do that all night, its gonna be a fun game.  Definitely looking forward to a preview of the NESCAC season this early on.

[muletrain]

Colby beat RIC by 13 with 56 second half points. They looked great and can play with anyone. RIC is a top 25 team so this should show that Colby can be top 3 in the NESCAC. The most encouraging part of the victory was how the role players stepped up and contributed. Of course it does not hurt when Choice and Russell combine for 39 points and 25 rebounds.

[division3]

Bucket...middlebury's edwards and coughlin are hurt but andrew locke played in the swarthmore/haverford tournament

[ephoops]

Williams-Wesleyan should be interesting Tuesday, first leg of the little three.  Williams has a huge size and strength advantage and should pound it inside all day, rather than trying to run and gun with Wesleyan's smaller, quicker line-up. 

Williams - Wes should be very interesting on Tuesday.

It appears that Maker is comfortable playing both Wang and Robertson together for significant minutes in a game.  Those two matched up against freshmen Brown and Beresford will be fun to watch.

I agree that Williams' size and Schultz's athleticism should be the difference.  Williams can't let the game turn into a run and gun affair.  If that happens, it's advantage Wes because the fast pace helps the smaller team.

[ACsDad]

I agree with Muletrain.  The Mules were down 31-19 at halftime but after the break they were nearly unstoppable.  Adam Choice is just a natural scorer who looked like he was on a different level than everyone else on the court. 24 of his 26 points came in the 2nd half.  Also, Gil Haylon went 4-4 from 3-land in the 2nd half, 3 of those either gave them the lead or brought them within 1 point, huge shots.

The biggest issue that Colby seems to have is turnovers and making sure to stay disciplined on defense to avoid foul trouble.  6'8'' Woodward looks like he will be a contributor but he fouled out with 9 mins left in the 2nd half. 

Should be an interesting year for these guys.

[Old Guy]

Middlebury - with wins this weekend over Swarthmore and Haverford: all road wins are good wins.

The Panthers lost a good class to graduation - in the backcourt, Rudin, Dudley, and Westman, and up front, Smith. They return a lot - Sharry, Wholey, Davis, Locke, all frontcourt players (though Wholey and Davis are versatile). Locke missed the preseason as he was studying in South Africa. He's back now.

Edwards is down for a while with an injury, so the backcourt players are frosh Jake Wolfin, Nolan Thompson, and Luis Alvarez, along with sophs Carl Gayle and Henry Butler. A feshmen starting backcourt can be a scary thought, but (just looking at the box scores), it looks like they did well: Thompson had 17 the first night and Wolfin had 11 the second.

On the other hand, the Panthers had 10 assists and 45 turnovers in the two games. Hope that was early season jitters and lack of practice time together.

[frank uible]

"Run and Gun" is also advantageous to teams which have relative depth.

[ephoops]

"Run and Gun" is also advantageous to teams which have relative depth.

I agree...

[Hugenerd]

Here are some of the over/unders for Tufts University this year.

Jon Pierce PPG @ 22.5.

Jon Pierce Tech Foul @ 3

Tufts Leauge Wins @ 2.5.

Tom Selby leaving bench for no particular reason @ .5


More to come........ please give me some feedback

Thanks Guys

I will take the over on the technical fouls, Im not sure about the others.

Pierce picks up a tech in the second game of the season.

[nescac hoops]

Adam Choice is just a natural scorer who looked like he was on a different level than everyone else on the court. 24 of his 26 points came in the 2nd half.

Huh, I wonder what the AC stands for in "ACs Dad"?

[Bluesky]

It is difficult to learn anything from  the Williams vs Southern Vermont game because Southern Vermont was just not very good. It should be noted that they finished the game with only 4 players on the court due to foul trouble and injury. I last saw that in 5th grade!

Courtland State, on the other hand, was a very good team that would finish in the middle of pack or higher in the Nescac. Williams was in full control of the game but failed to put them away which allowed Courtland State to get back into the game and almost win.

What could be troubling for Williams down the road was the lack of ball movement. Schultz had a great game scoring wise but for a player who had the ball in his hands, one would think there would be more assists. It seems that production from Dodson, Whittington, Rubin, Joe G and others will be directly related to just how much the Ephs learn to share the ball.  It will be crucial for the point guards to buy into that concept. Clearly, Williams has an abundance of scoring options but to have a great year and make it to the dance, they will have to learn how to play together. 

[walzy31]

Congratulations to Coach Hixon on his 600th career win!

[lefrakenstein]

Looking over the Amherst stats from the weekend, I'm a little perplexed to see Holmes getting so few minutes. Maybe he is a little injured or something, because I don't understand why he would be playing less than Willy Workman and way less than fellow sophomore standouts Barrise and Waller.

I understand that Amherst is deep in the post positions, but I'll be really disappointed if Bennett continues to play double the amount of minutes as Holmes. Unless Bennett has taken a huge stride forward in the off-season (and, granted he has played well in his minutes so far) or Holmes has taken a big step back, I think Holmes should get the majority of minutes between the two.

In general thinking about Amherst's rotation when we actually start playing real teams, I would expect it to look something like this:

5 (20 min – Bennett; 20 min - Kaasila)
4 (25 min Holmes, 15 min Waller)
3 (30 min Wheeler, 10 min Waller)
2 (20 min Barrise, 10 min Johnson, 10 min Misc)
1(35 min Meehan, 5 min Misc)

With the miscelaneous minutes being parsed out between Williamson, Workman, Carcieri and the rest. I suppose if one of those guys is playing better than Johnson, they could have his minutes. At center I understand I may be jumping on Kaasila's bandwagon too early, but he's been stellar so far and played a bunch of minutes, so it seems Hixon is high on him too. He was the first player off the bench in the opening game.

One question, since I wasn't able to actually see the games: Who played PG when Meehan sat? It doesn't look like DJ got enough minutes to have been the other option. Is Williamson a 1?

Other notes from the weekend include Wesleyan's froshes looking scary good. Looks like the Little Three will be an actual three-team competition for the forseable future.

Also, awesome that Hixon got his 600th, but too bad that it was the same day as the other coach getting 700. Would have liked to have seen him on the front page. I guess I'll just have to wait another 4 years for 700.