MBB: NESCAC

[O-Boards10]

The state of NESCAC is just fine, if not great. At this time last year people were already making predictions of who would be the class of the league next year. That has yet to be done yet which says to me that league will be as competitive and exciting as ever. The true mettle of a league is not whether one or two teams have exceptional years, but whether the league is successful and competitive top to bottom which I feel may be the case next year.

With that being said, any bold predictions for next year? I have a few: Colby will miss Cutrone and will suffer (he does not get nearly enough credit for what he does), Bowdoin will be top four in the league, Porter will be an elite player in the league, and both Wesleyan and Tufts will make the NESCAC playoffs.

[frank uible]

Midwest DIII basketball has been patiently waiting for its opportunity to make fun of the poopy pants NESCAC, and now that opportunity is at hand.

[nescac1]

So far as I can tell Frank, no one from the Midwest cares -- you, however, have apparently been waiting for the opportunity!  Again, I don't think one year without a final four team can be equated to anything more than a blip on the radar.  If NESCAC fails to win a tourney game again next year, then you can start the questions. I would be very surprised if that happened (and even this year, Midd's loss was pretty flukish, a combination of everything that could go wrong, going wrong, at the worst possible moment). 

I do think Amherst and Williams will return to being the class of the league next year (well "returning" for Williams, remaining for Amherst).  As I said before, Williams now has had a year in Maker's system, has unbelievable depth and talent at the 5 in Geoghegan, Whittington, and Timmins-Schiffman, great wing scorers in Schultz, Rubin, and Dodson, and Wang should excel as the full time point guard.   Really the only question are will they get more physical / tougher on the boards and defense, and who will be the back-ups at the guard positions?  They should be able to put up a ton of points on almost anyone.  Amherst was a very young team this year, with three frosh and two sophomores as important players.  Meehan, Wheeler, Waller, Barrise, and Holmes gives them a starting five with tremendous size, athleticism and shooting ability, and now they all have experience.  They will be tough to guard as all five are threats from 3 and four of the five can drive by folks.  Only question for Amherst is depth but the recruiting class plus the other rising sophs who didn't see time this year may address that.  Amherst may be a year away from returning to national contender status but I wouldn't sleep on them either.   I think Midd is a small step behind ... Edwards is a solid player, and they have Div I size in the front court with Davis, Sharry, and Locke, those guys will intimidate anyone in Div III especially with another year of bulk and experience, but lose so much perimeter scoring, and Rudin did it all for them -- much like Olson or Crotty in the past, really irreplaceable. 

As for the rest of the league, there will be no easy outs and I guarantee that you won't be seeing the sort of non-conference records that occurred this year.  Colby brings back every key player except Cutrone -- if they find a good point guard, they will be a contender again.  Bowdoin had some great frosh who should be ready to step in for the guys they graduate without missing a beat.  Bates has a year in the new system under its belt, and returns almost all of its top scorers and an all-conference point guard.  Wesleyan will surely get a boost from Riley's first recruiting class, plus Kaminer returns from injury.  Tufts should be much, much better with a very experienced and hungry line-up led by Pierce and Beyel -- they could be a big time sleeper.  Conn has Bernier and Porter to rely upon.  Trinity is probably a year away with no rising seniors, but still figures to be improved as they, too, played a lot of young guys this year.  I don't think there is any returning team as dominant as the national title teams from Amherst and Williams, but the bottom of the conference should be the strongest it's been in a long time, and the league could easily return to sending its usual two teams deep into the tourney. 

Plus, look around the rest of New England -- MIT, Salem and RIC are decimated by graduation, and Brandeis and WPI lose a lot as well.  Really, only UMass Dartmouth brings back most of its core players, from among the top teams ...

[frank uible]

Maybe with a little luck next year NESCAC can be a one-eyed king.

[booyakasha]

Maybe with a little luck next year NESCAC can be a one-eyed king.

what does that even mean?

[TheHerst2and4]

"In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."
-Erasmus
Think that is where he is heading with that one, not that I agree

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

"In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."
-Erasmus
Think that is where he is heading with that one, not that I agree

There's no way that get's credited to Erasmus; can you give me a specific citation for that?

[CCC Talk]

As long as we're attributing random things:

"In the kingdom of heaven the last shall be first and the first shall be last"
-Harold Reynolds

[JustAFan]

The bigger question, Frank, is whether the golden age of the NESCAC is over academically? Ephblog.com reports a story from Bloomberg that says that applications at 7 of the top 8 USN&WR liberal arts colleges are down this year, led by a 20% drop at Williams and a 12% decline at Middlebury.  Amherst had the smallest decline at 1%, while Wellesley was the only one of the eight colleges to see an increase. Meanwhile, applications are up at all of the Ivies as well as MIT, Duke, Stanford and UNC.

Does this mean the end to the Amherst/Williams domination of the US News & World Report liberal arts top rankings?  Time will tell.  Of course, Williams' 20% decline is on the heels of last year's record setting 17% increase, with the result that this year's Eph applicant pool is still the third largest in school history, so, like the performance of the NESCAC teams in this year's tournament, despite the apparently disappointing results, the glass is still more than half full both as we reflect on the accomplishments of most NESCAC teams this season and as we head into the next academic year and hoops season....

[frank uible]

Williams is cooked. Rumor has it that henceforth its name will be Northwestern Massachusetts School of Cosmetology. If and only if Amherst changes its name to Connecticut River Junior Tonsorial College, then the basketball rivalry between the two will continue. If Wesleyan should become Charles Atlas Institute of Synthetic Testosterone, it will be permitted to join in the fun.

[nescac1]

I hate to get into academic discussions, but there is approximately a zero percent chance of Williams or Amherst ever falling out of the top five in US News rankings, and likely both will be in the top three almost every year.  In Williams' case, the school instituted a new policy (not mentioned by that article) for a Williams-specific essay, which undoubtedly scared off a lot of folks who just applied for the heck of it without being all that interested.  Despite that fact, and despite the rough economy, the school still received far more applications than it did just five years ago.  For all the NESCAC schools, as tough as times are for them, they are far tougher for almost every other college and university in the country -- Williams and Amherst, for example, still have over 1 billion each in endowments -- how many much bigger schools would kill for those source of resources?   All the NESCAC schools will cut back, and this will be felt everywhere, including athletics I'm sure.  But I haven't heard, for example, any rumors of any varsity sports teams being cut (just to bring this discussion back to relevance here); the situation is hardly drastic like it is at other small schools outside of NESCAC, Swarthmore, Pomona and a few otehrs, who are generally far more reliant on tuition revenue ...

[nescac1]

This is pretty good.  Note "Middlebury v. Williams College" at 1:10 ...

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/ncaa_expands_march_madness_to?utm_source=a-section

(I also love the picture for this on the onion front page, featuring a 120 pound or so Swarthmore player ...)

[amh63]

nescac1,
   I think Frank is a sheep in wolf's clothing.  He is trying a little too hard to excite this board's posters.  There is a Frank by the same name that is part of ephblog.com( called out in an earlier post).  Frank's recent comments are from a person that tries too hard to show how clever it is....in his own mind.  That being said,  I agreed that both Amherst and Williams will continue (along with other NESCAC members) to be need-blind in admission to all applicants and to require no loans.  In the discussions on this board, one often tends to forget the difficult admission standards of the conference as well as the enrollment size of its member schools (i.e. Bates and Amherst being less than 1700 students).  Many of the students playing sports in the league are there instead of the ivies or Div. 1 because they are allowed to participate in more than one sport and/or encouraged to do explore their other talents.  How about discussions more directed to member bb players....rumors, recruits, etc.

[amh63]

Back again,
    Next year, Amherst should be good at point guard.  C Meehan should continue to improve...become all league.  DJ Carcieri  hopefully will be fully recovered from his injuries and return to his quickness and on ball defense that he showed his freshman year.  He was quite a point guard in high school.  R. Fugett should finally recover from back surgery and become an impact player down low in the post.  He was a very good BB player in Baltimore, even while he was all-state in football.  Like father, like son...I hope!  What Amherst really needs in the "recruiting class" are point guards...will there be an Olsen clone somewhere?  Someone that can develop into a starter several years down the line when the "bigs" reach their BB prime.

[Gabriel]

About five years ago, the Centennial Conference changed its scheduling format.  Now the ten team league schedules home and away contests with each team every year---- 18 required games already on the schedule for each team.  The league has improved every year since.  This year, 9 of the 10 teams were very competitive and the 10th team, Swarthmore, actually beat two of the contenders at the end of the year. 

A similar format might work for the NESCAC and fuel the rivalries as it has in the Centennial Conference.  The Centennial Conference is now a much stronger conference and, I think, for this reason.