MBB: NESCAC

[nescac1]

Tremendous, dominating win for Williams, playing without their first-team all-league guy.  They controlled the game at both ends from wire to wire.  The Ephs have had to overcome terrible injury luck all season long (Stoddard, Roughley, Spivy, and Cole all with significant injuries) and it looks likely they will face their biggest test yet on that front tomorrow, but it's always a next man up philosophy and the team should at least be fresh for tomorrow.  It does suck that Cole got hurt when he was having such an awesome game, really feeling it and you could see no one on Pomona could control him or Glatzer off the bounce.  Hoping for a miracle and that the injury is not too bad but playing 24 hours later after that seems like a long shot. 

Nate Karren was tremendous in this game and Glatzer had an excellent two-way game with continual drives into the heart of the defense and lock-down defense on Pomona's star, Brendan Mora.  Everyone in the rotation had some nice moments but Cole, Nate and Glatzer were clearly the three stars of the game today. 

What a day so far for NESCAC, 3-0, none of the games coming down to the wire, with Midd still to go as a big favorite at home.

[nescac1]

As Middlebury pulls away, make that four dominating performances by NESCAC.  What a day for the league.  Tomorrow of course is much tougher sledding, at Hopkins, at St. Joe's, at Keene and home vs. a dangerous Nichols team.  But for now, four teams in the round of 32 is extremely impressive, and all four certainly have the ability to make some waves tomorrow. 

[SpringSt7]

Middlebury just a few minutes away from wrapping up a 4-0 today for the big, bad, evil NESCAC, led by their evil athletic directors who devised a single round robin schedule to game the system and get as many undeserved teams into the NCAA tournament as possible, where they can make exactly 0 dollars and 0 cents for the league and their member institutions.

Highlights include a 25 point neutral site win for Williams against a ranked team without their leading scorer and a neutral site win for a Hamilton team that needed to play its way in on the last day against a 22 win NJAC team. Go NESCAC!

[SpringSt7]

Hope that came across as obviously tongue in cheek because all 4 teams are going to get tested tomorrow, assuming St. Joe's holds on and faces Williams. Keene St. has as good of a duo in the country in Jeff Hunter and Octavio Brito but Tufts will have waves of bodies to throw at both. Hamilton is just playing outstanding basketball and seems to match up really well with Johns Hopkins, while Middlebury will face a Nichols team that they beat in November when the Bison were struggling, as opposed to the current version that is riding an 18 game win streak. And then lastly Williams will have to come up with some serious answers for St. Joe's tomorrow, presumably without their two starting guards. But Nate Karren is playing as well as he has all year and like always they will have a size and length advantage. Should be really fun.

Forgot to add: When was the last time two brothers suited up against each other in the NCAA tournament? The Aronson brothers Tyler (Tufts) and Spencer (Keene St.) will do that tomorrow night.

[toad22]

Hope that came across as obviously tongue in cheek because all 4 teams are going to get tested tomorrow, assuming St. Joe's holds on and faces Williams. Keene St. has as good of a duo in the country in Jeff Hunter and Octavio Brito but Tufts will have waves of bodies to throw at both. Hamilton is just playing outstanding basketball and seems to match up really well with Johns Hopkins, while Middlebury will face a Nichols team that they beat in November when the Bison were struggling, as opposed to the current version that is riding an 18 game win streak. And then lastly Williams will have to come up with some serious answers for St. Joe's tomorrow, presumably without their two starting guards. But Nate Karren is playing as well as he has all year and like always they will have a size and length advantage. Should be really fun.

If Williams could pull off a win tomorrow, without 2 of their top 3 players, that would be one seriously special win! Hopefully, Cole can play, if not, play with what we have! I like our players.

[Old Guy]

Middlebury was terrific against a good team: down by four at the half, won by 25 (51-21 in the 2nd half). Big noisy crowd, lotsa fun. Sobel announced he was ready early, got our first three hoops, was outstanding:18 points (7-13), 10 rebounds, 6 blocks! 3 assists — and we shot the ball well: over 50% from the floor and from 3 (9-18) , 5-6 from the line. That was not the case in the last couple of weeks. Osher and Stevens (0-14 against Tufts) were 6-11 from the perimeter last night. We were up three when Nash Goldman hit back-to-back threes to extend the lead to 9 about halfway through the second. As usual, Brennan was ferocious on the glass (of his 9 rebounds, 5 were offensive) — he extends possessions. Jackson McKersie was in street clothes, wrist and hand in a cast: he has done a good job spelling Sobel. Alex played 33 minutes, had one foul! With 8 media timeouts, fatigue is not the same issue as it regularly is. This was a good game for 30 minutes or more: Midd finished on a 20-5 run, every shot went in!

I watched the whole first game: Rochester was much taller, got out to a big first half lead, led by 16 at the half, certainly looked the better team. Right away in the second Nichols' shots started to go down. They were just relentless, fast, tough, physical, aggressive. They spread the floor, go hard  to the hoop. They scrap and scrap, contest everything, foul a lot, complain after every call, refs can call some, not all; their coach is . . . very active, stands 3' out on the court, yells constantly, is operatic when a call goes against his team. He's a handful, deserved a couple of Ts. Nichols will come right at us. Sobel's foul situation will be crucial (especially with McKersie out); we'll have to be poised.

Congratulations — and good luck to the Ephs, Continentals, and Jumbos. Hoping for another NESCAC night.

[Hamilton4]

NESCAC is looking like the league that we all know they are so far! Wouldn't be surprised to see all 4 teams advance today. I watched Hopkins play last night and was not impressed at all by them, I expect a Hamilton win tonight on Hopkins home floor. Iron sharpens iron so let's just say that the 4 NESCAC teams are 4 of the sharpest in this tournament!!

[nescac1]

Awesome first half at Keene State.  Very similar to the Midd-Keene game, the two teams look dead even, with very different styles, but both playing at a high level overall.  One of the best crowds in D3, super engaged on every play.  Tyler Aronson, facing his little brother's squad, was sensational in the first half for Tufts, carrying the offense en route to hitting his 1000th career point, made a lot of tough shots off the dribble.  Gyamesi continues to impress with his old school game, a savvy, tough player who always seems to around the action when he is in the game.  Theo Henry has done a good job penetrating but has had a tough time finishing plays.  Josh Bernstein made an impact in short minutes but picked up three quick fouls.  Tufts needs him to be available late in the game to put on Hunter because the other Tufts big guys can't handle him around the rim.  Thoerner, also limited by foul trouble, hit a huge very tough 3 to end the half giving Tufts a small edge.  He needs to get more looks in the second half. 

Tufts has done a great job on Britto who has also just missed a few pretty good looks.  Hunter is such a dominant presence on both ends but had to play more cautiously after picking up two quick fouls. He really hangs in the air when he jumps.  Nate Siow has killed Tufts with his impressive speed, as he did to Midd in that game.  He's a menace at the point of attack defensively and off the bounce.  Keene's D is hyper aggressive and Tufts needs to play calmly and hit a higher percentage of open jumpers if they want to pull this one out.   

[Hamilton4]

30-30 at halftime at Hopkins, foul count is 10-3 in hopkins favor, worst home cooking I've seen in quite some time and yet the game is still tied. Singh may be out for the game with a leg injury that happened with about 6 mins left in half. This is a real dog fight playing 5 on 8 but I guess it's to be expected on the road in the post season

[nescac1]

Brutal half for Williams.  Kudos to Cole Prowitt-Smith playing hurt and leading the team in points despite being limited.  The Ephs have missed way too many free throws and especially some very good looks from 3, which were absolute killers when they did not drop, but even if they were shooting the ball better, they'd still be down by a lot. 

St. Joe's is just so fast and aggressive and strong defensively and Williams can't get the ball into the interior nearly enough.  Williams has been really rattled by the intense ball pressure St. Joe's puts on every man on the floor.  They certainly were hurt by some very tough foul calls that went against their big guys, with Nate picking up three including one totally phantom call, but really, this banged up group just can't hang with St. Joe's huge speed, depth, and athleticism experience.  Hopefully the Ephs can play better in the second half to build some positive experience - every guy who has seen the floor so far will be back next year including three frosh who have played big minutes and will hopefully learn from playing, clearly, one of the best teams in the country and justifiably one of the title favorites. 

[jumpshot]

All four NESCAC teams lose today, including the depleted EPHS who struggled with the city game of St. Joseph's. A 23-5 season by Williams still impressive despite inconsistencies and having to compensate for couple of key missing ingredients in this team's composition.. Rest of the tournament will be entertaining, as lots of talent on display in Division 3.

[nescac1]

Williams played much better in the second half, cutting the deficit all the way to 8 early in the half before running out of gas.  Ephs just didn't have enough offense out there with Cole ailing, Spivy out, Declan a bit off from outside, and Nate (who was awesome when in the game) fouling out on some pretty bogus foul calls.  Ephs also killed themselves with turnovers (21 leading to 29 points of turnovers, way too much over-dribbling and careless passes, but also gotta give St. Joe's lightning quick guards a ton of credit) and from the line (10-21, while St. Joe's nailed 32-37).  This game could have gone differently if the Ephs just hit some of the wide open 3's and FTAs that just could not drop, as well as avoided so many turnovers leading to easy buckets, but it was just not to be. 

The positives for Williams - the entire lineup who was out there this game returns.  The four frosh who saw playing time, especially Alex Lee and Hudson Hansen, got invaluable tourney experience this weekend and I expect will make a much bigger collective impact next year and throughout their careers.  Even though Lee's shot was a bit off, he really looked like he belonged out there with the St. Joe's guards and has a very bright future.  Hansen can do some spectacular things and just needs to get a bit stronger and improve his finishing touch going towards the rim.  Sammy Cooley barely played all year but whenever he comes into the game good things seem to happen and I hope we see more of him next year -- he gives the Ephs some badly needed quickness going to the rim and hopefully has a big off-season. McGraw had some nice moments down the stretch as well.

Kudos to Cole Prowitt-Smith for gutting out 13 minutes and scoring 7 on a bum ankle.  He clearly had no burst whatsoever.  He and Nate will both be well over 1000 point career scorers next year if they stay healthy.  Nate was awesome down the stretch of the season, including in both NCAA games, and hopefully builds on that for an all-American senior campaign. 

For the second straight year the Ephs were really jinxed by illness / injury.  Last year was crazy for every team, but this year, Alex Stoddard missed the entire year, Brandon Roughley suffered two serious foot injuries and never looked quite right when he managed to play, and of course, Spencer Spivy, who was having a spectacular senior year, ended the season on the bench, along with Cole suffering a few tough injuries during the year including yesterday's rough one. I feel especially bad for Spencer that he had to miss these tourney games after working so hard to improve his game. 

Given that slate of injuries, winning 23 games, the NESCAC regular season title, and a great NCAA win is an excellent result, even if this team certainly had its eyes set on bigger prizes and the talent (on paper) to achieve them.  Hopefully they grow from some of the late season adversity and come back hungry and poised behind a big senior group which has now played five NESCAC tourney games and five NCAA games over the past two seasons. 

Crazy that the NESCAC season is, suddenly, over.  Four teams in the second round is a solid result but would have been nice to have at least one advance.  Oh well. 

[toad22]

I just got back from the Williams-St. Joseph game. The first thing to note is that St. Joseph is certainly the best team the Ephs played this year. They played very well and deserved to win. Second, I thought that Williams moved the ball well on offense, and when they were able to get a shot off, got very good looks. Unfortunately, we committed a ton of turnovers, so the volume of our shots was quite low. Our shooting was about as poor tonight as it was good last night. The Ephs really can't afford to have a poor shooting night against a team as good as St. Joseph, particularly when our two top guards were hurt. Cole Prowitt-Smith was game to try to play, but he was a shadow of his normal self. That put enormous pressure on our two young guards (Glatzer and Lee) who were left with most of the ball handling duties. Our defense was severely hampered by the extraordinary number of shooting fouls we were called for. The opponents took37 foul shots. The previous high for Williams had been 22. That statistic probably did us in, considering St. Joseph made 32 of them.

With all the frustration of losing the last game, something most teams do every year! It was a very good year for Williams. As others have noted, losing 2 of our top 6 players before the season even began probably put a ceiling on what the team was likely to accomplish. Given that, it was a great year! Thank you to the coaches and players for representing Williams so well!

[Hamilton4]

Final foul count last night at Hopkins was 33-9, I wish I could say we were outplayed but that hust wasn't the case. I know it sounds like sour grapes but I've never witnessed anything like this even in high school games I've witnessed home cooking but nothing close to last night smh.

[Bucket]

Final foul count last night at Hopkins was 33-9, I wish I could say we were outplayed but that hust wasn't the case. I know it sounds like sour grapes but I've never witnessed anything like this even in high school games I've witnessed home cooking but nothing close to last night smh.

Yes, it sounds like sour grapes. especially after denigrating Hopkins as "not very good" prior to the game.