MBB: NESCAC

[Colby Hoops]

Awesome article Colby Hoops, thanks for posting.

Seems like things are turning around at Colby by the way, and I look forward to seeing how the young team develops over the next few years.

Yeah haven't been posting much this year, but Strahorn certainly seems to have everything headed in the right direction. Making the Nescac tournament playing almost entirely freshmen and sophomores was a solid result to the season, probably about as good as Colby fans could have hoped for heading into the year. Some inconsistency and some bumps in the road in the non-conference schedule, which is probably to be expected with such a young team.  Some promising young players in Hudnut and Stewart particularly and hopefully some good recruits on the way.  Will be fun to watch the team trend upwards in the next few years (knock on wood).

[Bombers798891]

One other interesting thing of note, Oztemel entered the game after the 9th team foul sent Nolan Thompson to the free throw line for the second time in anticipation of needing a three to tie the game. He replaced Jordan Healey, a better defender, but not a three-point shooter. But because Thompson missed the front end, Ithaca didn't need the three. Instead, Mitchell made the layup, but Oztemel committed the foul on the other end.

It's always dangerous to play the "what if" game, but it's interesting to note in this case. Of course this isn't the fault of Mullins, who couldn't have foreseen the way things played out. It's just interesting to note that even the good coaching decisions can come back and hurt you, as I believe was the case with Mullins' decision to intentionally foul from the get-go.

I agree with this 100%. The Bombers switch Oztemel with better defenders in late game scenarios all the time. I'm sure Mullins thought the Bombers would hold for the last shot—but when you're down by 1, you need to take the best shot you get when you have a chance. At the end of the day, it was a calculated risk. Midd was shooting well from the line in that game, and making 2-of-2 isn't exactly a challenge. You have to worry about the offense first. If Ithaca had a timeout left, they sub Healey in and the Cinderella story may continue.

Smart move by Midd's coaches though. Rather than call a timeout and give the Bombers a chance to make the sub, they went right at Oztemel. Ithaca didn't "hand" Midd the game. The end game scenario didn't break how they planned and they had a not-great defensive player make a not-great defensive play after Midd forced the issue. It happens.  Both teams played well enough to advance

As for the poster who brought up the mascot...ugh, that turned into a nightmare. I'd rather not rehash it now and get a migraine, but there's info on it out there

[middhoops]

Great to see some NESCAC (east) info here.  Thanks, Colby Hoops.

Outstanding analysis Bomber(phone number?).  That's exactly what I saw.

[Panthernation]

One other interesting thing of note, Oztemel entered the game after the 9th team foul sent Nolan Thompson to the free throw line for the second time in anticipation of needing a three to tie the game. He replaced Jordan Healey, a better defender, but not a three-point shooter. But because Thompson missed the front end, Ithaca didn't need the three. Instead, Mitchell made the layup, but Oztemel committed the foul on the other end.

It's always dangerous to play the "what if" game, but it's interesting to note in this case. Of course this isn't the fault of Mullins, who couldn't have foreseen the way things played out. It's just interesting to note that even the good coaching decisions can come back and hurt you, as I believe was the case with Mullins' decision to intentionally foul from the get-go.

I agree with this 100%. The Bombers switch Oztemel with better defenders in late game scenarios all the time. I'm sure Mullins thought the Bombers would hold for the last shot—but when you're down by 1, you need to take the best shot you get when you have a chance. At the end of the day, it was a calculated risk. Midd was shooting well from the line in that game, and making 2-of-2 isn't exactly a challenge. You have to worry about the offense first. If Ithaca had a timeout left, they sub Healey in and the Cinderella story may continue.

Smart move by Midd's coaches though. Rather than call a timeout and give the Bombers a chance to make the sub, they went right at Oztemel. Ithaca didn't "hand" Midd the game. The end game scenario didn't break how they planned and they had a not-great defensive player make a not-great defensive play after Midd forced the issue. It happens.  Both teams played well enough to advance

As for the poster who brought up the mascot...ugh, that turned into a nightmare. I'd rather not rehash it now and get a migraine, but there's info on it out there

The decision not to call a timeout might have had something to do with Oztemel, but more likely it was because the coaches knew that the best play in that situation is to have Kizel improvise and make a play. He did something very similar a year ago against Scranton before Travis Farrell broke our collective hearts (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOXEHtNrCTo). Thankfully Middlebury has gotten beyond this, and I hope Rochester can soon too.

Speaking with Middlebury coaches and players after the game, it was incredible (though not surprising at all — a contradiction, I suppose) to hear everyone say that all they wanted was Joey to take the ball and make a play. As soon as the ball went in James Jensen, who inbounded the ball, told me all he was thinking was "Where's Joey?"

Joey, meanwhile, saved himself valuable time by flashing by Jensen and then cutting up the sideline so that he was already heading towards the basket when he caught the ball, giving him enough time to split two defenders, maintain his balance and, had he not been fouled with 1.8 seconds left, get to the basket. Joey has made his career on plays like these, and the Ithaca defenders should hardly be faulted for not reacting at quickly as Joey did. As we've been saying, we're not sure there's another Division III payer who is as good as Joey is in that situation.

[Bucket]

And with all that NESCAC love from SI's Jack McCallum, the collective heads of our Midwestern brethren exploded. Heh.

[Panthernation]

By the way, RE: Dave's "gift-wrapping" comment (and I'm really not trying to pile on here, just observe), if you want to see terrible defense on that play, notice the lack of hedging, and then help defense from a really defensively sound Scranton team. Simply put, in the pressure of the moment, defenses often forget their assignments, or are a second slow (or a couple) to hedge on a screen, or identify their man, particularly after that team has just scored to take the lead, as was the case with both Ithaca and Scranton.

Middlebury could have defended Farrell better as well (in that situation you should force the ball handler to turn directions in the backcourt so he can't dribble to a spot on the floor in rhythm), but in none of these cases did the team gift-wrap a win or a loss. That's just how many basketball games are played in pressure situations.

[middhoops]

And with all that NESCAC love from SI's Jack McCallum, the collective heads of our Midwestern brethren exploded. Heh.

Shhhh.  It just got nice again.

[grabtherim]

By the way, RE: Dave's "gift-wrapping" comment (and I'm really not trying to pile on here, just observe), if you want to see terrible defense on that play, notice the lack of hedging, and then help defense from a really defensively sound Scranton team. Simply put, in the pressure of the moment, defenses often forget their assignments, or are a second slow (or a couple) to hedge on a screen, or identify their man, particularly after that team has just scored to take the lead, as was the case with both Ithaca and Scranton.

Middlebury could have defended Farrell better as well (in that situation you should force the ball handler to turn directions in the backcourt so he can't dribble to a spot on the floor in rhythm), but in none of these cases did the team gift-wrap a win or a loss. That's just how many basketball games are played in pressure situations.

IMO you are 100% correct.  In the heat of the moment not calling time out often leads to the best opportunity especially when you have a player who can get up the court with a clock ticking in his head.  The NESCAC has a few guys who come to mind who can do it.  Glad Midd has one who kept his cool under crazy pressure to do so.   

[gordonmann]

There was a very similar play in the women's national semifinal on Friday night.

Amherst scored the game tying layup with six seconds left in overtime against UW-Whitewater.  Instead of UWW calling timeout (I think they had one), they inbounded the ball to a playmaking guard. She sprinted up the floor past the seemingly surprised, pressing defense and hit a floater at the buzzer to win.  Once she turned the corner on the first wave of defenders, it was just a question of whether she'd make whatever open shot she took.

In hindsight, the Amherst defense didn't have a good reason to press after scoring.  They should've dropped back down the court after scoring and played straight up instead of giving the UWW player a chance to sprint by them (which she did) or risking a foul (which Ithaca did).  But in the heat of the moment, the Amherst kids went for the ball and paid the price, just like Ithaca.

Totally understandable, if unfortunate.

[middhoops]

Yup, that's basketball. 
Played in a few of those myself.

[Gregory Sager]

Wow. Where to begin? Let's start with the first bit of paranoid hyperbole :

I really wanted to be done with this (and I apologize to the NESCAC fans having a FAR more fun discussion about comparing players to NBA guys for bringing the periodic Midwest-is-best-and-the-rest-of-D3-doesn't-deserve-to-step-onto-the-same-court cavalcade

Utter nonsense. None of the midwestern posters has said anything like that, either here or on any other board. If you polled all of the midwestern d3boards.com regulars, to a man they would attest to having a healthy amount of respect for Amherst and Williams, both in terms of their current iterations and of the programs in general. F'rinstance, two weeks ago I said this about potential national championship game matchups in the CCIW room:

Granted, I've only seen a limited amount of both teams via webcast, but from what I've seen I'll take St. Thomas over Amherst by a slight margin, based upon the "defense wins championships" principle. They're both excellent teams, though, and if they both get to Atlanta it'll most likely be a barnburner.

Nobody's said that "the rest of D3 doesn't deserve to step onto the same court" as the midwestern teams, or anything remotely like it. Please don't put words in our mouths.

(1) Greg, if you want to address straw men, as your entire post did, go ahead, but then don't turn around and, ummm, bash me for addressing straw men.  You are getting way, way, way, wayyyyyy off course.  This entire discussion was about a complaint (initially by Dave, but one that echoes many others which have been made in the past, and which others have dropped by to adopt -- other than Pat, who, again, seems to have no complaints about NESCAC's path to this year's Elite Eight) which was, indeed, about bracketing.  You are making an entirely different argument, based on a stray comment of mine which you misconstrued and took out of context.  And of course when discussing bracketing it's irrelevant who people end up playing.  If a 16 seed lost in the NCAA tourney, and an 8 played a 16 in the second round, you'd be laughed out of the room if you said, this bracket was "protecting" the eight seed, and I'll prove it -- they didn't even have to face a top-5 seed in the first two rounds!!!  But that is essentially what someone (I've lost track who) did when they focused on who Midd and Amherst actually PLAYED, as opposed to who they COULD have played sans upsets, in attacking the balance in the brackets, which is all that is relevant when discussing how fair BRACKETS are.  I trust you'll agree with me on that.  You simply can't assess the strengths of the Midd/Amherst brackets while ignoring WPI and Rochester simply because they were upset.

Well, at least you're now acknowledging that I was making an entirely different argument. See? Progress!

As for the rest of it, your conclusion is wrong. I was not attacking a straw man. I repeat: All I was doing was addressing the paths that each team has taken, not the various sections of the bracket themselves. And that is more than relevant -- it's reality. WPI and Rochester do not figure into those paths, because both of those teams lost early.

My initial post was in reply to your "kicking butt" comment, because the reality of what the NESCAC teams have faced thus far does not warrant the conclusion that they would've "kicked butt in any bracket." There's a fair amount of disrespect in that comment towards the likes of St. Thomas, NCC, Calvin, IWU, what have you. I attempted to address it by pointing out that the evidence -- which is the games actually played, not the bracket sections as constructed -- indicate that, at least in the case of Amherst and Middlebury, those words are idle boasting, as neither team has faced a road as tough as those faced by the others.

I asked this question in my last post:

So you're saying, then, that the three NESCAC teams would've gotten just as far if finances hadn't been a factor in setting up the bracket, and if a more evenly-spaced bracket could've been set up?

You didn't answer it. I'd love to see your reply.

As far as the whole bracketology thing goes, your beef is with other posters; it's not with me.

(2) Regarding the kicking butt comment I made, you've totally misconstrued it.  If you see, I was talking primarily about PAST NESCAC teams which have purportedly all had such easy roads to Salem.  I've explained here in painstaking detail how the 2003-04, 07-08 Amherst, 10-11 Williams, and 11 Midd teams ALL proved they belonged in Salem via their ACTUAL play there.  Ask anyone objective who watched those teams and they will tell you that they all passed the eye test, as well.  You instead have chosen to focus on teams from the 1990's (I'll get to that later) and from this year.

Here's what you said about this year's teams, with my emphasis in bold:

It is one of the elite conferences in D-3 and I have little doubt that the 2003-4 Amherst/Williams teams, 2007-08 Amherst teams, the 2011 Midd team, and the 2010-11 Williams teams, to name a few, would have kicked butt in any bracket.  Same with the a few of this year's squads.

That's an extremely straightforward comment, nescac1. It refers to the past ten years, and it refers to the present. How could it possibly be misconstrued by anyone?

So I guess you are implicitly admitted that I'm correct and that all those teams belonged in Salem.  Thanks, appreciate that.

Why should I need to "implicitly admit" something that is obvious? The fact that those 2003-thru-2011 teams acquitted themselves well is a matter of record. Nobody's disputing it, and I don't think that anyone ever has. You're patting yourself on the back here for no reason.

The point is, the implication (or sometimes more than mere implication) that those teams were unworthy of Salem because of an easy path has been disproven, again and again, and simply isn't fair to the players and coaches of those squads.  These were loaded, dominant teams which were all easily capable of winning titles, or in fact did win titles.

I can't tell if you're attacking a straw man here, or merely lumping me in with other people who may or may not have said that those teams were unworthy of Salem. The fact that those teams faced easier paths to Salem is without dispute; the d3hoops.com rankings and Massey ratings consistently have shown that the northeastern quadrant of D3 simply doesn't have the strong depth of the Midwest/West quadrant. Having said that, every midwestern poster that I can recall later said words to the effect of, "Well, they may have had an easier path, but they're a legitimately strong team that deserved to be in Salem, anyway." I know that it doesn't seem to fit the persecution complex that some NESCAC posters have favored, vis-a-vis the midwestern teams -- and, to be perfectly honest, non-NESCAC posters are partly responsible for that persecution complex by harping on the easy-path-to-Salem and single round-robin topics a lot over the years -- but D3 basketball fans in other parts of the country do respect the NESCAC. The teams at the top of the league are always on the short list of national title contenders. This year is no exception, as I myself stated in that CCIW room post two weeks ago. And, yes, that respect comes from midwestern posters as well, including myself. I've never said otherwise.

I also said that a few of this year's NESCACs squads could have made it through any bracket (although I was if you noticed less definitive on that point).

The phrase, "Same with a few of this year's squads" most certainly does not strike me as "less definitive,"  aside from the fact that you didn't name any names. (Why would you need to, though? It's obvious that you weren't talking about Colby or Conn College. )

That is also true.  Williams played a very, very tough group of teams to get to this point, and now has to face Number 1 just to get into the Final Four.  If you don't think Amherst would have been favored vs. practically any team in this year's tourney, you haven't watched much of Amherst this year.  Midd is the only question mark, but even they have proven again and again that they rise to the occasion repeatedly and confound their critics.

I repeat:

So you're saying, then, that the three NESCAC teams would've gotten just as far if finances hadn't been a factor in setting up the bracket, and if a more evenly-spaced bracket could've been set up?

But in all events, it is you who are knocking down a straw man because if you read my commentary I was making a claim which you haven't even addressed.

I'm not knocking down any straw men. I simply want to know if you truly believe that the three NESCAC squads would've "kicked butt in any bracket" this March, regardless of whom they had to face. Hence, the question I've been repeatedly asking about how you believe Amherst, Williams, and Middlebury would've fared in an evenly-constructed, money-is-no-object, let's-fly-teams-around-and-do-some-proper-seeding tourney similar to the one that D1 enjoys.

Again, as far as the NESCAC Final Four teams of the past decade are concerned, it's not even an issue. Nobody's denigrating them. They've earned universal respect. I think that you're overly sensitive to slights from fans from other regions around the country, to the point where you're seeing attacks where none have been made. Like I said, I can understand why to a certain degree, given the protests annually made about the NESCAC's advantages in terms of having easier paths to Salem, a bigger region filled with lackluster teams that can be cherry-picked at will with regard to scheduling, and a single round-robin league schedule that no other league enjoys that allows for even more cherry-picking rather than forcing each NESCAC team to play a home-and-home against its conference rivals (W/A/W and B/C/B excepted). Those of us from outside of maple syrup country have certainly harped on those points ad infinitum in the past, and I can understand why it has made some of you guys so defensive and borderline paranoid about your teams.

(3) Please don't patronize me by snarkily asking why I am "shouting"

I wasn't being patronizing, nor was I being snarky. You posted:

(2) No one has impugned the caliber of play in the Midwest (and by the way, last I checked, most of the recent past champions have actually come from the West region, not the Midwest), NO ONE!!!

All caps and multiple exclamation points is the Internet version of shouting. Hence, I asked why you were shouting. My apologies if you weren't aware of that Internet meme.

about someone claiming the Midwest has been impuged, when someone did get all defensive on that front.  Midwest folks apparently love to come to NESCAC boards to attack NESCAC teams.

... and you apparently love to lump all of us midwestern posters together. Let's do each other the common courtesy of only attributing to each other what the other has actually posted, OK? You clearly speak only for yourself. I'm just asking to be treated in similar fashion.

NESCAC fans (other than one crazy dude who based on his karma you'll see is quite unpopular on the NESCAC boards) have no beef whatsoever with Midwest programs, on the other hand, contrary to what miacmiac said, who felt the need to crow about all the titles the Midwest teams have won and complain about an imagined insult to the Midwest which ummm, didn't actually occur.  A common theme here.

Again, I'm not miacmaniac. I'm not AO. I'm not Dave McHugh (who's not even a midwesterner; in fact, he's got NESCAC connections). As I said, I only ask to be held responsible for what I, and I alone, post, and not for what somebody else has said.

[Gregory Sager]

(4) Turning back to Final Four performance. It's telling that you have to go back nearly 20 years to find a NESCAC team that didn't perform well in the Final Four ... you just completely ignore the far larger number of teams, and the far more recent and relevant history, in which NESCAC teams have performed per expectations, which eviscerates the argument pushed by some that they don't belong.

Not true. You've missed the point here.

Let's go back to your original statement:

If the NESCAC teams that made it to Salem were not among the top five or so teams nationally in any given year, they would have tanked in Salem.  Never happened.  The point I made before is that the NESCAC teams PROVED they belonged when they got to the Final Four.  They ALL walked the walk.

You did not qualify this statement by saying that it only applied from 2003 onward. On the contrary, you made absolute statements: "In any given year." "Never happened." "They ALL walked the walk." The meaning here is clear: Every single NESCAC Final Four team is included within the rubric of your statement.

I didn't ignore the last dozen years' worth of NESCAC Final Four teams. I simply didn't mention them because I thought that it was a given, accepted beyond dispute, that they belonged in the Final Four. Apparently, you need to be reassured on this point, so consider it done. But the fact is that those first four teams disprove your argument. More on that below:

But EVEN three of the four teams you cited finished in THIRD, not fourth.  Consolation games are imperfect exercises, but the best evidence we have shows that three of those four teams weren't even the worst team in those Final Fours!!!

Nobody said anything about the NESCAC teams having to be "the worst team in those Final Fours." The burden of proof here is upon you, vis-a-vis your "they ALL walked the walk" comment. And the ineluctable truth is that all four of those 1990s NESCAC Final Four teams lost by double digits in the semifinals -- with two of them, '95 Trinity (CT) and '99 Conn College, being beaten pretty soundly (23 and 16 points, respectively).

Moreover, if you want to start playing the "what if" game,  Williams in 1996 had the bracketing misfortune of playing -- and losing a close game -- to basically a D-1 Rowan team which is one of the most talented I've ever seen in D-3, which ended up beating an absolutely loaded team from IWU for the title.

I don't really want to play the "what if" game, but I should point out that you're talking about a round of sixteen game that Williams lost by eight. I don't see how that's germane, since we're talking about '95 Trinity (CT), '97 Williams, '98 Williams, and '99 Conn College -- teams that made the Final Four, which was the subject of your "they ALL walked the walk" statement.

(Also, the '96 Rowan team didn't beat Illinois Wesleyan for the title. It beat IWU in the semis, and then beat Hope for the title.)

Williams 96 was the best Eph team until the title year (at least, arguably it was just as good or better) and I think one of the very best teams in the country that year, better for sure than the subsequent two teams who each finished third.

Irrelevant, since, again, your point was about the Final Four teams.

Wiliams in 1998 lost to the Plattesville juggernaut and played them pretty tough, no shame there,

No shaming intended, but they did lose by 14 to the Pioneers. That's quite a stretch to call that "walking the walk."

before winning the consolation game.  So yeah, some elite NESCAC teams haven't had a chance to show what they can do in Salem, too.  2003 Amherst is another example.  It doesn't only happen to the almighty Midwest / West teams, believe it or not.  Although I will grant, and I've ALWAYS granted, that it has happened with more frequency to teams from those regions.

Again, this is all irrelevant. The topic at hand is your original statement about NESCAC Final Four teams "walking the walk," not about great teams that fell short of Salem. We could both go on and on about all of our pet teams from yesteryear that never made it to the Final Four, and, while nostalgia is a wonderful thing, it doesn't really advance the discussion any.

Which is why y'all should be happy that now NESCAC teams have to face West/Midwest teams to make it to the Final Four, rather than beating up on New England teams ... which, again, was my whole original point!!!!

... and, again, that wasn't my complaint. I'm as aware as anyone of what sort of limitations the D3 men's basketball championship committee is under with regard to expenditures. I'm fully cognizant of the fact that the bizarre, one-game-per-week nature of this year's dance makes it even tougher upon midwestern teams with regard to constructing a fair bracket, because the opportunity to bring far-flung teams together in one first-weekend pod of four isn't there. In one sense, I'm simply reacting to a yahoo comment like this one:

3 NESCACS in the Elite 8... shows how this league is the Toughest in the Country.

... which I realize is not a position held by the more astute NESCAC posters, of which I would include you as one.

(5) Next, please don't start going off on insupportable conjectures and then turning around and complaining about how WPI was overrated in your view.

I never said that my take on WPI's being overrated was anything other than an opinion:

WPI (Massey #35) was badly overrated in the d3hoops.com poll, IMO.

IMO = In My Opinion

I clearly stated that I was making a subjective statement, because it's just as empirically impossible for me to prove WPI's unworthiness as it is for the d3hoops.com pollsters to empirically prove the opposite. But I can at least point to the discrepancy between the d3hoops.com ranking of the Engineers and where Massey puts them. Here's how the current d3hoops.com top ten teams sit with regard to their Massey ratings:

1. UST	1
2. Amherst	5
3. NCC	2
4. WPI	35
5. UWW	3
6. Whitworth	14
7. Middlebury	19
8. Williams	8
9. Catholic	22
10. IWU	7

It should be pretty obvious how much WPI sticks out like a sore thumb in the view of Ken Massey's computer rating.

Well, VWU, Ithaca, and Wesley were both underrated in my view (and the view of many others I'm sure).  So there.

What empirical data can you invoke to back up your view?

(By the way, it's VWC -- Virginia Wesleyan College -- not VWU.)

We can either go by the D3hoops.com ratings, which have proven over the years to be a pretty solid ranking system, or we can go by subjective impression of teams. I'll stick with the former.

The d3hoops.com poll does an excellent job of ranking D3 teams across the country, given the severe limitations under which it has to operate. But it's not perfect, as Pat Coleman would be the first to admit. And the evidence strongly seems to indicate that WPI was overrated by the pollsters, for reasons that I stated in my last post. (The phenomenon used to be called "the Chapman Effect," since that southern California school was the similar beneficiary of upward ranking creep a few years ago. The guys who participate in the Posters' Poll room talk about this phenomenon all the time.)

And based on the D3hoops.com ratings, the brackets, while hardly perfect, resulted in a pretty darn good distribution of teams in the Elite 8, and had Whitworth won, it would have been damn near perfect, since Cabrini is a pretty unusual team which added several key pieces in the mid-season and had to knock off three high seeds to get here.  In the end, an Elite 8 which features five of the top eight teams in the country, and at least two undeniably talented teams in the other slots (I know nothing about the Texas team, but presumably they are pretty darn good if they beat Whitworth at Whitworth), is about as good as you can ask for.

Given the bracket limitations, I agree.

(6) Finally, regarding rating the best programs right now, there are plenty of criteria you can look to.  You can look to historical success over the past 10-15 years.  You can look to the team's record over the past 5 years.  You can look to the team's average ranking / number of years making the top 10 over the past whatever number of years.  You can ask whether they've ever won a title.  You can look to how the program is positioned going forward.  You can ask how many Final Fours they've made, or how many tourneys they've participated in in recent years.  How many all-Americans they've produced.  You can judge success of coaching alumni in securing higher-level jobs or players in joining pro leagues.  By virtually any combination of criteria, Williams and Amherst are two of the very top programs in the NCAA over the past 5, 10, 15, 20 years, and are both positioned to remain that way for the foreseeable future.  Only Midd is questionable because the Panthers' success has been relatively recent, but enough years have gone by now, with enough consistent success (and not just success, overwhelming success over the past five years), and with a team that is positioned to keep that success going, that in my view they clearly belong.  I'm not saying Rochester, for example, is not a powerful program.  On a few criteria however, they fall short, and part of the issue was a legendary coach leaving without (yet) matching the prior success.  Williams, on the other hand, replaces coaches with other coaches who experience even more success.  Rochester (which also graduates a first-team all-American with no obvious replacement) isn't right now a more powerful program than the three elite NESCAC teams.

First of all, you're making way too much of a subjective reach across regions to make this assertion. If there is anything that distinguishes D3, aside from the lack of athletic scholarships, it's the division's regionality. Aside from the UAA schools, teams don't hop on planes and fly to other parts of the country to play each other as a matter of course. We'll never know how Whitworth would stack up if it was consistently playing ODAC teams in November and December, or how Calvin and Hope would fare if they stopped duking it out with NAIA teams in the lower right-hand corner of the mitten in non-conference play and started scheduling, say, Franklin & Marshall or Wash U or Ramapo with regularity. And we certainly have no way of knowing how Williams, Amherst, and Middlebury would do if they each started making regular trips to Illinois and Wisconsin to face CCIW and WIAC teams.

Different regions, different competition, different standards. The only place where this ever gets sorted out is in the rarefied air of Salem -- which, in a fortunate twist, takes place one round earlier this year, which is I think the one saving grace of this protracted tournament schedule. But even that sorting-out process is limited in value. To quote mlevy128's excellent post from earlier today:

The problem that is missing here is the multiple purposes the NCAA tournament serves. To crown a champion, sure, but as a method for determining the best team in the country, it's pretty poor. We don't need 62-68 teams just to determine who's the best.

Often -- I'll even go so far as to say usually -- the best team wins. But that doesn't always happen (cf. '85 Villanova in the D1 tourney). From my admittedly-limited observations of webcasts, I think that St. Thomas is the best team in the country, followed successively by Amherst and North Central. But the Tommies are no guarantee to win it all. In fact, it's perfectly possible that none of the above three teams will cut down the nets in Atlanta. That's what makes it so much fun to watch ... the uncertainty of it all.

Second, I question your familiarity with the other programs that have been mentioned. My riposte, which was that "three of the top twenty or twenty-five" was more accurate, was just as much to acknowledge the necessary leeway caused by unfamiliarity as anything. But you don't seem to let your lack of familiarity with, say, Calvin or Rochester or St. Mary's (MD) stop you from making declarative statements that Middlebury's program is superior, which is why I blew the whistle on that.

I can't remember now who scoffed at the idea that those three teams were three of the top 10 programs, instead knocking them down to three of the top 25-30 or whatever, but to me that is laughable.

Don't misquote me. I said:

NESCAC right now has three of the top ten hoops programs in the NCAA.  No doubt about that.

Plenty of doubt about that. Three of the top twenty or twenty-five? I wouldn't question that. Three of the top ten? Very, very much open to debate.

"Top twenty or twenty-five" is not "top 25-30". I do not find being misquoted to be laughable at all.

[Gregory Sager]

3.  Nescac1 provided me with a date that conference Teams could participate in the NCAA tournaments.  Was looking for it and it was not clear on the NESCAC website.  Know that the D3 BB tournaments went back towards  the mid 70's a time period when the North Park poster's teams dominated.

Late '70s, actually. The first D3 tourney was held in March '75. NPU won its first title in '78, followed by '79, '80, '85, and '87.

And with all that NESCAC love from SI's Jack McCallum, the collective heads of our Midwestern brethren exploded. Heh.

Shhhh.  It just got nice again.

Sorry. I guess I just went ahead and ruined the mood.

[madzillagd]

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[Mr. Ypsi]

I wish middhoops had posted the link before.  Here it is (I couldn't find it on si.com):

http://www.jackmccallum.net/2013/03/19/an-elite-three-in-an-elite-eight/#.UUkgglepG00

Very good write up, though I wonder how much knowledge he really has about d3.  I found it interesting that the first two responses were from Pat Coleman and middhoops.

In the context of the overall column, it fit, but I really wish people would quit playing 'the academic card'.  I quit 40+ years ago when (as an IWU grad) I unexpectedly got an NSF grant for grad school (I had planned to take a year or two off, and totally forgot even applying).  I applied to U of Michigan WAY after applications were normally accepted, and quickly discovered that if you are bringing your own grant money, you are welcome anytime!  When I started classes, I quickly discovered that my classmates were graduates of Harvard, Stanford, NESCAC schools, etc., and felt like "oops! what have I gotten myself into?"  By the end of the first year, I relaxed, realizing I was much better prepared for most classes than most of my classmates.  Institutional reputation don't mean squat - it is who YOU are, and who your specific professors were.

BTW, my head didn't explode upon reading the column.