MBB: NESCAC

[madzillagd]

Got some inside scoops: the team is definitely still looking to add more recruits for next year.

Oh, you mean like Chris Wright from Detroit's Country Day visiting. 

[lefrakenstein]

Got some inside scoops: the team is definitely still looking to add more recruits for next year.

Oh, you mean like Chris Wright from Detroit's Country Day visiting. 

Wow, did not catch that. He looks like he could be a pretty good pick up. Brief research reveals that Country Day is a top class B team with several DI recruits. Wright was part of an undersized front-court duo that seemed to hold their own in helping the team to a class B title.

Here's an article: http://www.miprepzone.com/oakland/results.asp?ID=9687

[Mr. Ypsi]

Got some inside scoops: the team is definitely still looking to add more recruits for next year.

Oh, you mean like Chris Wright from Detroit's Country Day visiting. 

Wow, did not catch that. He looks like he could be a pretty good pick up. Brief research reveals that Country Day is a top class B team with several DI recruits. Wright was part of an undersized front-court duo that seemed to hold their own in helping the team to a class B title.

Here's an article: http://www.miprepzone.com/oakland/results.asp?ID=9687

If he comes, assign him a time-out coach!   (In case that was too obscure, Chris Webber was from Country Day.)

[WPI89]

A little late, but congrats Amh63 and all of Lord Jeff Nation!

[frank uible]

As was Shane Battier.

[amh63]

Spring weather has arrived with gusto and with it my first gardening chores.  Still saved time to go through all the posts, articles and pics available from both Amherst and D3hoops. on the game and associated celebrations.
First...I want to be the first Amherst fan to thank all the non Amherst posters for their congrats.  My post will be primarily comments to posters and side notes comments.
ECSU and WPI89.....you both early on believed that Amherst would bring the trophy back to New England....for that my thanks again.
LeFrak.....enjoyed your post.  I had the pleasure of being around the Workman family in Salem...great people.  Saw that Willy's father was one of the first people to greet the team's arrival back to the hotel/reception area.   Did you see several of your classmates just 3 rows down, I believe.  Fletcher Walters, Olsen and maybe one other was in the row sitting next to Walzy.  How many of the '07 team was at the reception besides the two assistant coaches?
Me...I watched the game twice!  CBS SportsNetwork covered the game and repeated it again right after to fill the time before the Div 2 game.  I had the pleasure, like Old Guy, to have one of my sons join me.  He was down from NYC with his wife for a wedding.  Being an Amherst grad/fan, it was nice to watch a game together.  The 2nd time around, I was more relaxed and was taking in more of the game atmosphere.  There were two bands playing.....one obvious a CRU student band.  The other.....that played some Amherst songs....must have been brought in...the one in the white shirts.  Oh well....one of the great unknowns in life.  Best of all, my grand daughter called me this morning to tell me that Amherst won.  Am working on another generation.....she is almost 6 going on 16!  Expect her to be a swimmer or a Lax player at Amherst....smart as a whip...has to be to get in.
Jayhawk....thanks for the early link to the John Feinstein article....a fan of his works.....gave me an explanation of "Willy Stuff" used by Coach Hixon in the after the game locker room comments.  Aaron's father is an Orangeman....explains the bb shirt Aaron revealed to the crowd on Saturday.
Old Guy....thank you for your posts of the Atlanta games/scene.  Enjoy the game tonight.  I will watch it.....The Amherst team will be introduced at half time along with the Div2 title winner.  Hope Hixon and his father makes it....back from Augusta.

[madzillagd]

Maybe it was posted here before or I saw it online that it was the Georgia Tech band I believe that was doubling as the Amherst band. 

[NEhoops]

Great win/season for Amherst. I've been to many final fours, but have never seen a D3 national championship live. Based on some conversations with various college coaches, particularly at the D3 level, its clear to see how superior the NESCAC is. 

[wrm238]

Congrats to Amherst on the win. Clearly the best basketball team in Division 3 this season. Not too early to start the discussion of next year shall we....

Early (super early) predictions of NESCAC standings next year:

1. Amherst
2. Tufts
3. Williams
4. Bowdoin
5. Middlebury
6. Connecticut College
7. Trinity
8. Colby
9. Bates
10. Hamilton
11. Wesleyan

All NESCAC Candidates:

1st team: Toomey, Kizel, Epley, Mayer, Vadas, Wohl, Palleschi, Ferris
2nd team: Hurley, Madlinger, Shill, Hart, Green, Hudnut, Starks

POY: Basically any one on the first team
COY: Could be Sheldon if they are able to overtake Amherst at the top spot
DPOY: From the games I have seen, Shill from Conn seems to be the best defender on the guys that I have listed on the All NESCAC teams above. No real stand out defender on either 1st or 2nd team though.
ROY: Do not personally know enough about the freshman coming in and impossible to tell until they have played..

Now lets get the debate going. Cant wait until next November

[fpc85]

Congrats to the Lord Jeffs!!! Glad to see that they have done it again. Time for them to play the '07 team on alumni weekend.

[AmherstStudent05]

Got back late last night from my day trip to Atlanta.  It was a long day, but, obviously as an Amherst fan, an incredible one as well.  I have a few thoughts on the weekend, although most of them have been touched on already.

First, let me join those who praised the NCAA for staging the D-3 Championship in Atlanta.  Amherst picked a good year to make a Tourney run as it really was a special and unique atmosphere down in Atlanta.  I don't know if the NCAA could or would make a regular practice of hosting all the men's basketball championship games on the same weekend, but I do hope they consider doing something like this again, particularly if the D-1 tourney will be played in a city that is relatively accessible for many D-3 teams (Indianapolis would be good, anything on the west coast would be bad).  As an Amherst fan, my one regret was that more current Amherst students couldn't make the trip down to Atlanta.  I don't know if the Administration didn't work hard enough to make affordable logistics available, or if there simply wasnt enough interest, but their presence was missed.  On that note though I do want to give a shout out to the Georgia Tech band whom we apparently adopted for the day (kudos to whoever came up with that genius idea).  They really got in to the spirit of things and were our most vocal supporters for most of the game.  They did a particularly good job harassing Cru's free throw attempts.  They were so good that I think we should consider flying them up to Pepin in two years to give Coach Hixon one less chore on his plate (I kid, I kid).

Speaking of Mdd, I sat a few feet away from Coach Brown. He seemed to be very gracious in speaking with a few Amherst fans who came up to him. He also seems to value Old Guy's counsel -- he left his seat with about a minute left to play. Can't say as I blame him.

As for the game itself, to be honest, I didn't think it was an overwhelmingly compelling game and it played out much as I think many people expected.  My thoughts were mostly captured by Gordon and Lefrakenstein, but I will just add one or two more things.  The scouting report on UMHB turned out to be pretty accurate.  Even though a look at their roster would indicate that the Crusaders are a small team, they play ferocious defense in the paint and are very skilled and tenacious rebounders. #3 (Orr) is a very good player and reminded me a fair amount of Cabrini's Walton-Moss: a quick, deceptively strong/tough guard who can seemingly get to the rim at will (despite not having the most visually appealing outside jumper).  The problem for UMHB was that Amherst was simply a much more talented team all-around, and the Crusaders did nothing schematically as a team on either end of the ball that really posed any tough questions for the Jeffs.

For Amherst, this performance actually reminded me a lot of their win over Virginia Wesleyan in 2007.  In both games, Amherst established a fairly commanding lead early on and was able to hold on fairly comfortably the rest of the way.  There were no individual efforts that were especially dominant.  In both games, very talented Amherst teams played smart, disciplined team basketball en route to convincing victories.

I have to say that I think North Central really should have been the second ranked team this year.  I definitely think that they are better than UMHB and I think their body of work in both the regular and post season was deserving of such a lofty ranking. However, I understand why the voters voted the way they did.  I would actually favor Williams and Midd over UMHB as well.

In the view of this Amherst fan, Williams, NCC, and Midd were far and away the three best teams we played this year -- probably in that order (I fully understand that this judgment is based on a limited, and perhaps misleading, sample. Schools like UMHB, Cabrini, and Randolph Macon may be much better than they showed in their games against Amherst -- Lord knows that there have been previous tournaments (2005 and 2012 come immediately to mind) where I didnt think Amherst showed nearly as well as they were capable of).

Finally, I just want to congratulate again the Amherst players and coaches on a phenomenal season.  Like many Amherst fans, I suspect, I started this season with a lot of confidence that the Jeffs would be a strong team.  We were coming off of an undefeated NESCAC season and we were returning our two best players.  However, and this has been commented on by others, what I think turned this team from a strong team to a championship team was the marked improvement of Williamson, Kaasila and Kalema.  My hats off to those three young men.  In their own unique ways, they have each improved tremendously over the past year.  I cannot imagine the off-court work that was necessary to effect such improvement, but I am quite grateful for it.  Credit on this score must also be given to Coach Hixon and his staff.  This board tends to focus a lot on scheme and recruiting (and rightly so), but player development shouldn't get lost in the shuffle.

I also have to acknowledge that we caught some nice "breaks" along the way. Entering the season, depth was always our biggest weakness. We lost some key contributors in Barrise, Waller and Holmes, and while we knew we had a strong nucleus in Toomey, Workman, Kaasila, and Williamson, there was nothing proven behind them.  Fortunately, Kalema improved his game immensely, and we were lucky that two freshmen were able to step up their games in short order to emerge as key contributors (Green was obviously a key factor in Sunday's game).  Also, especially since January, we were rather fortunate on the injury front, so we never really had to put our depth to the ultimate test.

Anyway, thanks again to the players and coaches for a truly memorable and amazing season.

[AmherstStudent05]

I have been interested in reading all of the posts of encouragement for Amherst from other NESCAC posters (Middlebury posters seem to be especially well represented).  You guys are a lot classier and big-hearted than I am!

To be honest, I have never ever been truly disappointed following a Williams loss.  However, as long as Amherst is in the NCAA Tournament, I try to root for Williams and all other NESCAC schools. I do this for three reasons: (1) the success of these schools reflects well on the strength of the NESCAC, which in turn reflects well on Amherst; (2) it makes this board more interesting; and (3) (most importantly) my dream scenario -- never yet realized -- is always for Amherst to beat all NESCAC teams, especially Williams, as many times as possible.  I wanted Amherst to play Middlebury in the Semis and Williams in the Championship game (especially this year).

However, as soon as Amherst is eliminated, I root hard against Williams and all other NESCAC schools. What can I say? I guess I am pretty petty, but I dont want any of our rivals to have what Amherst can't have.  From what I can tell, I am not the Amherst fan who feels this way -- the Amherst cheering section in Salem in 2004 (such as it was) was certainly NOT rooting for Williams in the championship game against UWSP -- much to the evident consternation of the great Michael Crotty.

Anyway, all this is to say how impressed I am by the genuine showing of NESCAC comradeship Amherst has received in recent days.

While I am on this topic of good-feeling, I realize that I forgot to mention something in my brief "game review" posted above.  I was critical of the officiating in Salem, so I feel as though I should mention how well I think the Championship game was officiated.  Sure, there were a few calls I disagreed with -- some strongly -- but overall I thought the officials called an excellent game.  Most importantly, they called a consistent and even game.  They walked a fine line between letting two aggressive teams play and not letting the game get out of hand (like the NESCAC semi-final against Tufts).  I dont know if these officials were in Salem or not, but they did an excellent job.

[AmherstStudent05]

Congrats to Amherst on the win. Clearly the best basketball team in Division 3 this season. Not too early to start the discussion of next year shall we....

Early (super early) predictions of NESCAC standings next year:

1. Amherst
2. Tufts
3. Williams
4. Bowdoin
5. Middlebury
6. Connecticut College
7. Trinity
8. Colby
9. Bates
10. Hamilton
11. Wesleyan

All NESCAC Candidates:

1st team: Toomey, Kizel, Epley, Mayer, Vadas, Wohl, Palleschi, Ferris
2nd team: Hurley, Madlinger, Shill, Hart, Green, Hudnut, Starks

POY: Basically any one on the first team
COY: Could be Sheldon if they are able to overtake Amherst at the top spot
DPOY: From the games I have seen, Shill from Conn seems to be the best defender on the guys that I have listed on the All NESCAC teams above. No real stand out defender on either 1st or 2nd team though.
ROY: Do not personally know enough about the freshman coming in and impossible to tell until they have played..

Now lets get the debate going. Cant wait until next November

Last post for me for the night (although there is a lot more I would like to get to). I appreciate you putting Amherst at the top of your 2014 list. I still want to linger a bit with the accomplishments of the 2013 team, but I am very curious to see how next year's Amherst team plays out.  We return a lot, but obviously lose a lot.  And, as nescac1 pointed out a while ago, it is very difficult to see how we could be a dominant team while getting nothing out of our junior class, so something probably needs to happen there.  However, the point of this post is to say that I actually see a fair number of similarities between the 2013 Amherst team and the 2014 Williams team (I cannot BELIEVE i just said that!).  Like Amherst this year, Williams is coming off a very successful year -- they didn't run the NESCAC table like Amherst did last year, but they did make the Elite Eight which Amherst didnt do -- and is returning their two best players: a First-Team All-NESCAC selection who was the likely runner up for PoY and a Second-Team All-NESCAC performer with a lot of promise.  They also have another proven playmaker in Wohl.  Like Amherst entering the year, however, Williams will start 2014 with a lot of questions about their depth.  However, if like Amherst, they can get a couple of role-players to step up into consistent leaders over the course of the season and if they can stay relatively healthy, Williams could be poised to make a deep run (they will have to get past Amherst first though -- I bet Hixon's 5-game winning streak over Williams is almost (ALMOST) as important to him as his recent national championship.  Of course, Williams has the burden of having to replace its dependable point guard.  In my view, point guard is the most important position in NESCAC basketball, and so that is a hole not to be overlooked.  Anyway, that was a long way of saying that I liked your predictions, but I think that 3d would be a relatively poor outcome for Williams, at least at this admittedly early stage of the game.

Anyway, enough about 2014. I would still like to talk about 2013!

[madzillagd]

Am05 - In your last couple of posts you touched on something I've been thinking about for months regarding development and then the Williams rotation.  I totally agree with you that there are questions about depth that need to be answered for Williams, but I probably have a different take on that most folks that observed the team this year.

For me, the difference between where Williams finished the season in the Elite 8 and where Amherst finished the season as the National Champion, comes down to the two players that Maker did not play and the two players that Hixon did play.  That sounds very clear cut, but let me explain that a bit.  I believe Williams had the best starting five of any team in the country. I believe their starting five was better than Amherst's but I do believe Amherst had the better overall team.  For me, Killian was a weak link in the starting five for Amherst and I don't think Williams had a weak link.  The weak link for Williams of course was their bench.  They got no production from their bench all year long whereas Amherst had Kalema, Green and Pollack contributing. 

The choice that Maker made at the beginning of the year and he stuck with it the entire year was to go with his upperclassmen.  I believe the thinking was that the starters were so good that they would be able to carry the team through the extended format playoffs.  What was expected from the bench was to play a support role, not have a lot of turnovers, and just take up a few minutes a game but scoring wasn't really needed.

Hixon took the opposite approach with his big recruits.  He played Green and Pollack early and often - between the two of them they averaged 32 minutes a game in the first two months of the season.  As you mentioned, that's development time for them so that they could be prepared for a tough league schedule and ultimately the tournament.  That investment was evident throughout the Amherst championship run.

The difference between the two approaches is somewhat shocking when you look at the results.  For Williams, two of the upperclassmen that Maker went with in the rotation during the regular season racked up 7 DNP-CDs in 4 tournament games with one of those players getting in for a single play to avoid the straight sweep.  For the two other upperclassmen rotation players, they scored a total of 20 points during the entire 4 game play off run.  Obviously that's just 5 points a game on average, and they did that even though they played nearly 22 minutes a game combined.  Contrast that with what Green and Pollack did and I think that is the difference between an Elite Eight team and a National Champion.  Green/Pollack scored 20 points in the Championship game alone and 78 points total over 5 games.  That's a huge lift off the bench and why Amherst was such a difficult team the last two months of the season.   

The question is, did Williams have talent on the bench that could have been utilized and as we look ahead to next year, will that talent be enough going forward?  In my opinion the simple answer is yes*.  This is probably where I differ from a lot of folks that watched the team and assumed the 'best' guys played off the bench.  I personally do not believe we ever saw Williams put their most talented team on the floor last year.  They put their most experienced team on the floor, but not their most talented.  I'm not going to get into the individual statistics and capabilities but I think folks can look up what they want and draw their own conclusions.  We also have to remember there are things outside of performance such as time in the program etc. that come into play as well so I'm not naïve enough to not consider that as a factor.

I answered the question above with a Yes* - and here is why I put that *.  I'm confident that Williams will have an extremely talented team next year and that the past talent is going to be replaced with existing and new guys.  What I have no idea about after watching this year is how Maker is going to utilize that talent.  I do not believe if Maker sticks with a heavy upperclassmen rotation that Williams is a Final Four level team let alone an Elite Eight level team.  However, if Maker changes his philosophy next near and embraces the young guys I do believe they have a chance of going deep in the tournament if everyone responds well with the playing time.  The difference I think is the seniors next year that were coming off the bench this year are not elite players like Klemm and Robertson were.  I'm hoping for example that Maker doesn't automatically slot in the seniors into starting positions because there wasn't much that I saw this year that would convince me they were the best option to play key minutes.  I can't imagine with what I've seen of Duncan Robinson for example, that he would be riding the pine like the freshmen did this year.  If that happens and he's stuck behind some guys with more experience but less talent, I'm not sure how far Williams will be able to go because their starters will not be as good as they were this year if it is all upperclassmen. 

[walzy31]

2007
2013