MBB: NESCAC

[nescac1]

Article that quotes Dave Hixon quite a bit, also mentions Williams and Midd, among other regional D-III schools:

http://bcblog.weei.com/sports/boston/general/boston-college/2011/02/02/college-basketball-notebook-the-year-of-the-smart-kids/

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

First Regional Rankings: http://www.d3blogs.com/d3hoops/2011/02/02/ncaas-mens-regional-rankings/

[walzy31]

Friday February 4th NESCAC Lines
All Tip-Offs Scheduled for 6pm

Tufts @ Amherst
Amherst -17.0
O/U: 151.5

Williams @ Bowdoin
Williams -21.5
O/U: 146.0

Middlebury @ Colby
Middlebury -15.5
O/U: 135.0

Bates @ Trinity
Bates -3.0
O/U: 143.5

[ziggy]

Thanks Hugenerd.....for the info/effort.   People who make these calculations and equations and weighing factors for BB games must be following teams/games a little......or are they just "blind" to BB and grind out numbers with little notice of possible errors to input data or new weighting factors.  Elms college is an example of your post.  Elms lost to both Williams and Amherst early in the season.  Amherst beat Elms at home by 33 and Williams won by double digits.  Elms has at least 6 losses and is in a relative "Weak" conference this year.  Yet Elms is ranked 4th in the 1/31/11 regional rankings by KnightSlappy.  It would put Elms in a better position for a Pool C bid then WPI and/or West Conn.  You would think the rise of Elms would bring some notice to the blogger to question his calculations.
Anyway...thanks again.   Hope your MIT degree is near.  Best of Luck with that.   What "course" are you in at MIT?

Like I said before, I think when you add in other factors, like the other "primary criteria" the NCAA uses, some common sense will prevail.  In other words, I dont think Elms has a better shot at a Pool C than WPI, West Conn, or Amherst.  Their position on the RPI list is simply due to skewing caused by the weighted SOS.  The NCAA does not calculate an RPI, no one, to my knowledge, has ever published a report telling us how they weight each of the primary criteria. In the end, there is a panel of people doing these rankings, and the NCAA selections, so if they feel the weighted SOS is not a good indicator, they could put more weight in other factors, like overall winning percentage, record versus ranked opponents, or head to head.  We wont know for sure, but I wouldnt lose any sleep over Elms, personally.

Amherst should be fine as long as the other primaries overshadow their horrendous SOS. Results versus regionally ranked will speak well for them. It shows that despite the low SOS, they perform well with other top teams.

[amh63]

Thanks for the numbers Walzy.   Interesting line on the Bates game.....especially since it is at Trinity.
Seems that Amherst and RIC are still in negotiations on a date for the game.  The SID stated that it will be posted on the website when it is set.
Live games are so much better than watching on-line.  In my experience, you can pick up things like how physical players are and share points with fellow watchers.....and watch the coaches  and players on the bench react....and of course the referees.
I noticed that in the Trinity game, Amherst's assistant coaches would talk to the players on the floor a great deal.  Coach Nixon would take the lead when a time out was called and players would huddle about him.  Good training for the younger assistants.  Of course Coach N. would take the lead if the officials needed advice.
Anyway, I will be on the road this weekend and will miss the Bates game.  Will have to watch the Williams and Midd. game on the road.   Hope the Midd. game is free.   This brings up a selfish thought.  If Williams host the conference tournament....which I tread since I will not be able to attend.......it will cost me to watch it online.   Is it possible that Williams will arrange to have the broadcasts be free?

[Hugenerd]

Thanks Hugenerd.....for the info/effort.   People who make these calculations and equations and weighing factors for BB games must be following teams/games a little......or are they just "blind" to BB and grind out numbers with little notice of possible errors to input data or new weighting factors.  Elms college is an example of your post.  Elms lost to both Williams and Amherst early in the season.  Amherst beat Elms at home by 33 and Williams won by double digits.  Elms has at least 6 losses and is in a relative "Weak" conference this year.  Yet Elms is ranked 4th in the 1/31/11 regional rankings by KnightSlappy.  It would put Elms in a better position for a Pool C bid then WPI and/or West Conn.  You would think the rise of Elms would bring some notice to the blogger to question his calculations.
Anyway...thanks again.   Hope your MIT degree is near.  Best of Luck with that.   What "course" are you in at MIT?

Like I said before, I think when you add in other factors, like the other "primary criteria" the NCAA uses, some common sense will prevail.  In other words, I dont think Elms has a better shot at a Pool C than WPI, West Conn, or Amherst.  Their position on the RPI list is simply due to skewing caused by the weighted SOS.  The NCAA does not calculate an RPI, no one, to my knowledge, has ever published a report telling us how they weight each of the primary criteria. In the end, there is a panel of people doing these rankings, and the NCAA selections, so if they feel the weighted SOS is not a good indicator, they could put more weight in other factors, like overall winning percentage, record versus ranked opponents, or head to head.  We wont know for sure, but I wouldnt lose any sleep over Elms, personally.

Amherst should be fine as long as the other primaries overshadow their horrendous SOS. Results versus regionally ranked will speak well for them. It shows that despite the low SOS, they perform well with other top teams.

They were fine in the rankings that came out yesterday.  Just behind Williams and Midd.  I dont think they need to worry about Elms or anyone else much lower on the list with 3+ losses jumping them due to SOS.

[frank uible]

amh63: Williams didn't get rich by giving things away.

[KnightSlappy]

Thanks Hugenerd.....for the info/effort.   People who make these calculations and equations and weighing factors for BB games must be following teams/games a little......or are they just "blind" to BB and grind out numbers with little notice of possible errors to input data or new weighting factors.  Elms college is an example of your post.  Elms lost to both Williams and Amherst early in the season.  Amherst beat Elms at home by 33 and Williams won by double digits.  Elms has at least 6 losses and is in a relative "Weak" conference this year.  Yet Elms is ranked 4th in the 1/31/11 regional rankings by KnightSlappy.  It would put Elms in a better position for a Pool C bid then WPI and/or West Conn.  You would think the rise of Elms would bring some notice to the blogger to question his calculations.
Anyway...thanks again.   Hope your MIT degree is near.  Best of Luck with that.   What "course" are you in at MIT?

Like I said before, I think when you add in other factors, like the other "primary criteria" the NCAA uses, some common sense will prevail.  In other words, I dont think Elms has a better shot at a Pool C than WPI, West Conn, or Amherst.  Their position on the RPI list is simply due to skewing caused by the weighted SOS.  The NCAA does not calculate an RPI, no one, to my knowledge, has ever published a report telling us how they weight each of the primary criteria. In the end, there is a panel of people doing these rankings, and the NCAA selections, so if they feel the weighted SOS is not a good indicator, they could put more weight in other factors, like overall winning percentage, record versus ranked opponents, or head to head.  We wont know for sure, but I wouldnt lose any sleep over Elms, personally.

Amherst should be fine as long as the other primaries overshadow their horrendous SOS. Results versus regionally ranked will speak well for them. It shows that despite the low SOS, they perform well with other top teams.

The NCAA has always given the benefit of the doubt to teams with high win percentages. So long as Amherst doesn't loses the rest of their games, they should remian fine in the rankings.

Their SOS should see a nice boost when they finish at Middlebury and at Williams. It won't be enough to give them a 'good' SOS, but it'll be enough that a Win% at or above .900 will completely overshadow it.

[nescac1]

From what I understand, if Williams ends up hosting NESCAC games, those would be webcast for free.  

Walzy, those are some big spreads in the Maine games ... even though Williams and Midd are clearly better teams, that Maine trip is a tough / long one for Williams and Midd, especially given the weather situation.  And Colby and Bowdoin are at least decent.  I'd take the under ... in fact, given that Tufts seems to play some tough defense this year, finally, and Bates is facing a long road trip of its own, I'll take all four dogs.

There is a really nice feature on James Wang posted to the Williams Sports Info site today.  Kind of funny, Paulsen had some lean recruiting years, overall, from the classes of 06-09, which accounted (along with a few key injuries, some chemistry issues, etc.) for Williams' rough batch during that time period, but left Coach Maker some tremendous talent in his last three years, including three all-Americans in Schultz, Whittington, and Wang ... not too bad a parting gift, those three.  

[walzy31]

Walzy, those are some big spreads in the Maine games ... even though Williams and Midd are clearly better teams, that Maine trip is a tough / long one for Williams and Midd, especially given the weather situation.  And Colby and Bowdoin are at least decent.  I'd take the under ... in fact, given that Tufts seems to play some tough defense this year, finally, and Bates is facing a long road trip of its own, I'll take all four dogs.

You're down for all four dogs. My lines were aided this weekend by getting to see Colby and Bowdoin live last weekend (where Bowdoin played well and Colby stunk up both gyms).

So who will be NESCAC Player of the Week next week, Whittington or Toomey?

[JustAFan]

Amh63, you hit on one of my hot buttons re: Williams--its refusal to provide free internet coverage of its games, unlike most of the other NESCAC schools, starting with Amherst.  While it's nice that it will occasionally provide free coverage of 1-2 games a season, there's a bit of arrogance in that approach, at least to me.  Most other NESCAC schools have found a way to incorporate the cost of this service into their athletic budgets but so far Williams has been unable to do so notwithstanding its endowment.  If I was an alum or parent of a player I would be tempted to reduce my alumni fund contribution by extra the costs incurred to follow the Ephs....

[booyakasha]

Not to mention the fact that the quality of the Williams webcast is awful (audio in particular - not announcers, but actual sound). I wanted my money back on Saturday.

[frank uible]

Youse NESCAC brats have a well developed sense of entitlement.

[JustAFan]

No entitlement here, just an expectation of the new normal. Back in the day, and I'll show my age by saying this, college radio was a big deal, and an important extracurricular activity, and it was a coup to be able to broadcast college games on the college radio station.  That world has come and gone like the daily paper, but I'd argue that internet broadcasts are the new version of the old college radio station. The internet broadcasts should/could be an attractive extracurric for kids to participate in, but Williams doesn't seem to embrace this opportunity to showcase their students behind as well as in front of the camera and mike.  A missed opportunity in my book.  The irony is that the 2 NESCAC schools that I would classify as the least "jock-ish"--Tufts and Wesleyan--perhaps do the best job of all of the league schools when it comes to covering their sports teams over the internet.  Go figure.  And if you've ever listened to some of the Tufts broadcasters, go laugh as well, but to their credit the kids' hearts, and energies, are in the right place, as is the institution's.

[mass_d3fan]

At a minimum, every college should be able to do a webcast for their games using work-study students to run a camera and to some audio.

If something better can be done, thats great. We all know they already have the network infrastructure in place to do this, they just need a couple of bodies to actually implement it.