MBB: NESCAC

[nescac1]

A few thoughts on the early games:

Wesleyan, with another easy Little 3 win, shows they are absolutely legit.  The Cards are very deep, very long and athletic, with a lot of guys who can defend and make plays off the dribble.  They will not lose a lot of games this year.   Oh and kudos to the Wes announcer who called that the end of first half play would be a three point shot for Edelman. 

Williams with a nice bounce-back win over a bad, and rusty, Worcester State team.  For the second time in his last three games, Aidan Yates really filled the box score in multiple ways -- 16-7-1 plus three blocks and two steals in only 16 minutes of action. He had some very smooth finishes including a dunk in transition.  If he can become more consistent with the outside shot he can be a major factor for the Ephs. His length allows him to accumulate a lot of blocks and rebounds for a wing, even when the shot isn't falling, and I'd love to see him try to get into the paint more where his length is difficult to defend.  Williams has two legit ROTY candidates in the league in Jackson Rein and Yates, both of whom I expect to keep playing big minutes going forward. 

The only nit-pick for Williams was giving up 19 offensive rebounds - granted, Worcester bricked a ton of shots leading to many long rebounds, but the Ephs need all five guys to go hard after the long caroms when playing a better team. 

Conn gave Keene a run but ultimately fell short.  Conn's struggles this year relative to last reflect just how dominant David Murray was on both ends -- I feel like he never really got enough love, even though he was POTY and ultimately an all-American. 

As expected Babson-Trinity is the game of the day.  Huge comeback from Trinity thanks to a massive Vetter game and the teams are headed to OT (unfortunately hard to watch the game as Babson requires some sort of sign-up).  Big game for Alex Stoddard for Babson -- sure wish Williams had grad programs! 

Update: Babson-Trinity headed to second OT.  Would love to watch but Babson is charging.  Come on, man, thought those days were over ...

[SpringSt7]

Took in nearly all of Babson/Trinity, which was an excellent excellent game. Couple thoughts

-Firstly, awesome to see former Williams player Alex Stoddard thriving at Babson. Alex was essentially medically retired a few years ago but decided to hang in there for his last year at Williams with his classmates and then after it went well, decided to use his last year at Babson where his mother is a professor. He had 22 points and 5 rebounds and played 45 minutes tonight, as good as he's ever looked. Made some big shots, showed more driving to the hoop than I can remember seeing before, and played trademark excellent defense including a strip on Will Dorion late in overtime with the lead as he drove to the hoop

-Henry Vetter is outstanding and probably doesn't get enough credit because he doesn't really pop physically or athletically. He is so smart, plays so under control, and is just a winner. Trinity was down 8 with 2:30 left in regulation, got a couple stops, and when he lined up a three down 3 with 30 seconds left there wasn't a chance in the world it wasn't going in.

-Trinity still has everything it needs to make a run in March but today you could really feel the absence of Ben Callahan-Gold and his gravity on offense. Vetter had 20 points at halftime but only 10 the rest of the way as the game slowed down and they were able to key in on him. Drew Lazarre is a nice player and made some big shots but he and Dorion can only take so much of the pressure off. Okorougo only took 1 shot because they weren't able to create a whole lot elsewhere to really make the defense work.

-Despite allowing 99 points there should not be much cause for concern for Trinity's defense. Babson shot it outstanding and there are not a lot of tougher 1 on 1 covers than Nate Amado, who had 24 points on 10-22 and 4-7 from three. Between Amado, Stoddard, and Brown grad transfer Felix Kleiman it was just a lot of great 1 on 1 offense and sometimes on a good offensive night, this is what happens.

-Babson and WPI will once again be an excellent battle for the NEWMAC. Babson got off to a really slow start but has now beaten WPI and previously unbeatens Wooster and Trinity in 3 of their last 4 games, the last being a win over Case Western. They need to avoid any more bad losses really against anyone other than Babson and maaaaaybe Clark (probably not), but they certainly are playing like a tournament team right now.

[D3BBALL]

It's too bad for trinity, would have been number 1 in country as Emory lost.
Dislike these schools charging to watch games, disgraceful.
Trinity better get an inside game, that hurt them today. They don't even look i side.
Babson took a page out of Suffolk game and kept driving and passing out to wide open shooters. Don't get that defense by Trinity made no sense. Trinity gets back into game with pressure to get in ot and then they stopped pressuring.
Good win for Babson they shot 50% from 3, until very end of game. And made a number of tough 3 point shots. Trinity shot it better more rebounds, but too many turn overs and bad shots in both ot's.
Trinity could have quit down 8 with like 2 minutes to go and they didnt

[flyingdutchman]

Have had enough of all of the Trinity talk. Truly believe that Tufts is going to be the one to dethrone them. Gyimesi is going to be NESCAC POTY and could see some senior contributors such as Cain coming off the bench and having a big impact from behind the arc.

[toad22]

My favorite Trinity player for several years was Dana Smith. He graduated last year, but drew almost no notice on these boards. The coaches noticed, though, as he was the DPOTY. He, along with Callahan-Gold, helped make them an extremely difficult opponent. Callahan-Gold was a bit of a two sided coin, as he could hurt with his extreme shooting as well as help. Smith was very different, solid, steady defense and rebounding every time he was on the court. I think they miss Smith a lot, and they will end up not quite as good as result of his loss. He was really special, in a quiet sort of way.

[nescac1]

Thanks for the recap of Babson-Trinity, SpringSt.  Looking at the NPI rankings, even though they have a bunch of losses, because of the very strong wins, Babson is at 21, so they would be a lock for the tourney if selections were made today.  What's scary about Trinity and Tufts is that Trinity projects to return its top four and 6 of its top 7 scorers, and Tufts projects to return its top five and 8 of its top 9 scorers.  Both also have some highly regarded frosh who have yet to see time but may be able to make an impact next season. 

Taking a deep dive on NPI:

https://d3datacast.com/npi/

There seem to be three tiers of NESCAC teams in NPI:

Wesleyan, Hamilton (after a big weekend for the Conts), Trinity and Tufts are all closely grouped between 8 and 17, and all are very well positioned to earn NCAA bids.  Given that intra-league play is likely to help NESCAC a lot in light of how highly rated nearly all of the league's teams currently are, I'd say something like a 6-4 league record or better would probably get it done for all of them, 7-3, they'd be a virtual lock. Even 5-5 may be good enough for Wesleyan, Hamilton and Trinity.   

Bowdoin, Williams, Middlebury, Amherst and Colby are likewise tightly grouped between 65-80.  All of those teams would, I expect, have a good shot of making the tourney with a very strong (say, 7-3 or better, or certainly if they go 8-2) NESCAC season, especially if they can pull off a few wins against the top four.  But they all have very little margin for error at this point and head into league play as long shots for Pool C contention. 

Conn College at 138 and Bates at 158 are already (barring a miraculous run in league play, which I don't see happening for either) out of contention for Pool C, but both have been solid enough in out of conference play as to still count for statistically solid opponents for the rest of the conference. 

I have a feeling we are going to see a heavy concentration of UAA, NESCAC, CCIW, WIAC, NJAC and ODAC teams in the Pool C bids this year (which is not atypical, but I suspect perhaps even more than usual).  Those conferences all have a lot of highly ranked teams at this point, so the intra-conference games will benefit all of them and the teams that end up in the top 4-5 in each league will be very well positioned going into tourney selection.  I'm not a mathematician, so I could be wrong, but that's typically how it has worked out in D1, relying on similar metrics, for power conference teams as well. 

Looking at the current top 100, just seven conferences (none of whom are any sort of surprise) account for 40 percent of the top 100 and 70 percent (!) of the top 20:

NESCAC - 9 teams in the top 100, 4 in the top 20
UAA - 6/3
WIAC - 5/3
ODAC - 5/2
NJAC - 5/1
CCIW - 5/1
OAC - 5/0

Of those, OAC is by far in the worst shape as no OAC team is ranked higher than 74 - so to get multiple teams in, the top of the conference will have to post gaudy league records.  WIAC, on the other hand, with two of the top six plus number 20, is very likely to end up with multiple Pool C bids.  UAA and NESCAC each had four teams in the tourney last year, and it's hard to do much better than that, but I would suspect we'd see somewhere in the 8-9 range for the two leagues combined once again. For NESCAC, I'd put the over-under on total teams in the tourney at 4.5.  The best case scenario for NESCAC is the top four all go at least 6-4 and one team from the next group either pops with 7 wins or better plus a QF win, or snags the Pool A with a league tourney win. 

My guess is that of the 22 Pool C bids, NESCAC, UAA, WIAC and ODAC will combine for at least half of them, unless there are a slew of upsets from the bottom-tier teams in league play. But they all did so well in out-of-conference play that a lot of league games between two highly ranked teams are going to really help them pop statistically. 

[jumbomumbo]

Have had enough of all of the Trinity talk. Truly believe that Tufts is going to be the one to dethrone them. Gyimesi is going to be NESCAC POTY and could see some senior contributors such as Cain coming off the bench and having a big impact from behind the arc.

Very excited to see Cain getting some minutes and hitting some big 3s lately. He also looks a lot quicker on defense than I remember. A good sign for the jumbos. Additionally, happy to see bench contributions from Zion Watt and Liam Kennelly lately. The roster is absolutely stacked and I too believe Tufts will win the NESCAC in 2025. Nichols was a bad loss but these guys know how to internalize it and turn it into the best thing that has ever happened to them. In NESCAC play, hoping for at least a 7-3 record. Wins over Wesleyan and Trinity would be absolutely massive, and would make the Jumbo faithful very happy. Bring on the NESCAC!!!

[D3BBALL]

My favorite Trinity player for several years was Dana Smith. He graduated last year, but drew almost no notice on these boards. The coaches noticed, though, as he was the DPOTY. He, along with Callahan-Gold, helped make them an extremely difficult opponent. Callahan-Gold was a bit of a two sided coin, as he could hurt with his extreme shooting as well as help. Smith was very different, solid, steady defense and rebounding every time he was on the court. I think they miss Smith a lot, and they will end up not quite as good as result of his loss. He was really special, in a quiet sort of way.

Would very much agree on Smith, he was the best player on the trinity team last. He shut down the other teams best scorer almost every game and he was a good offensive player. Trinity offense is better than last year, better ball movement, defense not as good. Still good defensively but not like last year.

[jumbomumbo]

My favorite Trinity player for several years was Dana Smith. He graduated last year, but drew almost no notice on these boards. The coaches noticed, though, as he was the DPOTY. He, along with Callahan-Gold, helped make them an extremely difficult opponent. Callahan-Gold was a bit of a two sided coin, as he could hurt with his extreme shooting as well as help. Smith was very different, solid, steady defense and rebounding every time he was on the court. I think they miss Smith a lot, and they will end up not quite as good as result of his loss. He was really special, in a quiet sort of way.

Would very much agree on Smith, he was the best player on the trinity team last. He shut down the other teams best scorer almost every game and he was a good offensive player. Trinity offense is better than last year, better ball movement, defense not as good. Still good defensively but not like last year.

Having competed against Dana Smith - can attest to the competitor and impact he had on that Trinity team. Absolute beast

[jumbomumbo]

Bowdoin 36
Harvard 32 w a min left in 1H
NESCAC!!

[SpringSt7]

Bowdoin up 9 at half against Harvard because why not? Polar Bears might want to hope there are no higher level coaches taking note of Ray Cuevas' showing...

[jumbomumbo]

Bowdoin up 9 at half against Harvard because why not? Polar Bears might want to hope there are no higher level coaches taking note of Ray Cuevas' showing...

Was just thinking that. kid will have scholly opportunity

[jumbomumbo]

Just a thought. If NESCAC tuition prices are currently $95k per year, and grow at a 4% annual rate, tuition will be $250k, and over $1M just for a family to send one athlete to the NESCAC. I think it is a ticking time bomb, and something NESCAC coaches and athletic directors will have to address in the coming decades. Thinking this because it is becoming a no brainer for top level NESCAC kids to transfer for scholarships if available.

[midrangepullup]

Just a thought. If NESCAC tuition prices are currently $95k per year, and grow at a 4% annual rate, tuition will be $250k, and over $1M just for a family to send one athlete to the NESCAC. I think it is a ticking time bomb, and something NESCAC coaches and athletic directors will have to address in the coming decades. Thinking this because it is becoming a no brainer for top level NESCAC kids to transfer for scholarships if available.

I do think this is a bit hyperbole. I would say the average kids actually pay is in 35-50 range with 'merit' scholarships. Price is definitely is a consideration/issue for nescac athletics. However to say people will be paying 1M for a nescac education in the next 20 years seems somewhat outlandish to me.

[quicksilver]

My Polar Bears ended up falling to Harvard 71 to 65 but put on a good show for a D3 team.