MBB: NESCAC

[diehardfan]

Wait, I'm confused, what did you correct? You see, this is why I'm not writing my papers now.

Diehardfan, as an expert on excuses: I have tickets to the DI final four. Do you think its possible to use the "But its the final four!!!" excuse twice in one semester, or should I feign sickness for the next one?

You misspelled procrastinate.

My advice:

Skip the DI Final Four; who cares about that junk anyway.

Sell the tickets on ebay and use the money to pay for your trip to the DIII Final Four, and (depending on how good the tickets are) make a down payment on a house. 

[woosterbooster]

It's official, this result just in!  In the AtR preplay (on the money so far, 6-6 in postseason DIII play) Wooster has downed Amherst by the score of 89-77.

Close most of the way, the Scots slowly edged away from the Lord Jeffs to produce the final twelve-point gap.  The differences were a rebounding margin of 33-36 and Amherst having a poor shooting night from range, going only 7-27 from beyond the arc.

Wooster was led, surprisingly by Devin Fulk, who nailed 7-12 three-pointers to total 23 points.  James Cooper threw in 17, while Tim Vandervaart and Evan Will added 15.

Dan Wheeler topped Amherst with 17 and Brian Baskauskas and Kevin Hopkins contributed 15.  Andrew Olson had 8 assists.

I'm hoping to do Virginia Wesleyan vs Washington U. today.

The boxscore:

http://arkski.com/~jwood/amherst_(77)_vs_wooster_(89).html

[lemonjello]

Lol, you have Hopkins attempting a 3.  That alone makes it hard to take that prediction seriously.  I also find it hard to believe that the Jeffs will be out-rebounded by 7, despite their significant height advantage over the Scots.  Also, Amherst going 7-27 from behind the arc would be disastrous, but it is also highly unlikely, given how well the Jeffs have shot from there all year.  You can also count on Walters getting more playing time than just 8 minutes, and he will likely score at least 8-10 points.

[nescac1]

The odds of Brandon Jones scoring as many as Olson and more than either McLaughlin or Walters are infinitesimal. 

[JeffRookie2]

Wow, your point guard is going to get two blocks? I'm looking forward to seeing that. Maybe one will be on Hopkins as he shoots the three. Also, how is 6-6 on the money?

Diehard: tickets definitely not that good. im going anyway.

[woosterbooster]

In doling out playing time for Amherst I took a look at your last game against Rhode Island.  Walters only played 9 minutes and was on the court at the end of the game as he made the final steal.

Brandon Jones had a hot hand, scoring 7 points in 8 minutes.Wooster's point guard, Brandon Johnson, did have only 5 blocks all year, but 'Hey', statistical flukes happen.  He's 6'2", can jump, and is an excellent defender.  I'm actually surprised that he didn't have more blocks this season.

How is 6 for 6 not on the money?  AtR predicted Wooster over Transylvania, Centre over Capital, Wooster over Centre, Wooster over JCU, Brockport over , and Wooster over Brockport.  No misses.  You can go back and check the NCAC thread for boxscores and times posted.

And of course I'm aware that this was just one simulation.  If I ran off 100 I'd have many different results (can't easily do that, it's a manual simulation using Excel and takes about half an hour to play a game).  The same thing would happen if you played the real game 100 times, since these teams are certainly pretty close in ability.

So the 6 for 6 streak is a mix of skill and chance.  But it sure looks like a good omen to me!

[JeffRookie2]

Ahh 6 for 6. I thought you meant 6 correct 6 incorrect.

[fpc85]

Wooster, what is AtR

[VigoTheCarpathian]

You had a kid on Wooster go 7-12 from three?  I won't say its impossible since Shalvoy had a better day than that...but that was on the best day of his career.   Also I appreciate the confidence you've given Salerno taking five shots from the floor.  If he's taking 5, he's made at least 3...I'll say 4 actually.

If you looked at the RIC game for playing time, why didn't you consider it for anything else?  Giving Mac 5 TO, probably the worst day of his life, and Olson in single figures?  Also what happened to Wheeler...did he hit first three and then just start missing...Paint me a picture.

I really was hoping Kevin would turn into Dirk, so keep on giving him those three point attempts...But I think if he starts taking those you might want to imagine him getting pulled from the game instantly.

So what you have done is create a boxscore where Amherst has one of its worst days and Wooster has one of its best?  Really good, informative work for everyone who actually was hoping for something good and informative...oh wait...

[frank uible]

Youse guys do know youse are arguing over the details of a fictional game, don't youse?

[woosterbooster]

AtR stands for Above the Rim, an Excel-based basketball simulation based on an old board game called Statis-Pro.  There are no subjective ratings in the game; all players and teams are created using actual stats.  Strength of Schedule is a factor in creating teams and for DIII I used the Massey SOS.

I try to be as realistic as possible using playing time based upon what knowledge that I have.  With Wooster, that's considerable and up to date.  With other teams, such as Amherst, it's obviously not as good.

It's easy to pick out statistical outliers from practically any boxscore, but that can be done with those from both simulations and actual games.

I don't have a paper trail from the Amherst-Wooster contest because I've not saved it, but the simulation does go play-by-play so everything is there to see as you're doing it.

The game is free to use and there are numerous teams out there to fiddle with including all of the 2006-07 D1 teams that will begin play on Thursday (actually, tonight).  If anyone is interested, just send me a private message with an email address and I'll send you the game, instructions, the D1 teams and the few DIII teams that I've created.

 

[The Historian]

It's been some time since I've contributed to these boards.  To be quite honest, I was really just so taken aback by the unexpected honor of topping nescac hoop's award list.  How do you top that?  I really feared becoming just another Cuba Gooding, Jr., peaking early with an award and a memorable speech but then descending quickly into the forgettable realm of "Snow Dogs" and "Boat Trip," perhaps reemerging only briefly for an unremarkable cameo a la "Pearl Harbor."

But thanks to the encouragement of a few friends -- some known to me, others not (Mr. Goldsmith, I appreciated your well-wishes at Rafters the other night) -- I'm resurrecting my career because, quite frankly, I'm bored and this board needs me.

Enough about JeffRookie2's homework, spelling, DI tickets, race to 200 posts, and inability to use the context of a sentence to determine that "on the money, 6-6" means six for six correct.  I mean, I'm as loyal an Amherst fan as you'll find, but let's keep the level of discourse up to at least that of Vigo's.

As for the AtR, others have already taken their shots.  As a Historian, I respect the effort to use past data to predict the future.  After all, as the old saying goes, "If you forget the past..."  But at the same time, the results read more like a textbook out of communist Russia or a history paper written at Middlebury using Wikipedia (Old Man, were you behind that debacle?).

Let's be serious.  Wooster is a great team, but its top 4 scorers are not going to shoot 59% from the field (team 54%) against an Amherst defense that held opponents to roughly 38% (30% from 3) over the season.  Instead, let's focus on the real history here - the top two winningest teams in the 2000s facing each other.  Hat's off to Wooster for being the only program to have won 200 games this decade (209-31).   Amherst is right behind at 196-37.  Perhaps if the Jeffs hadn't received first round byes the last six years, they'd be over 200 as well.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to making the trip down once again.  From what I hear, more Amherst students are expected to be in attendance than in past years.  It seems many members of Lord Jeff Nation actually delayed their spring break plans this year because they expected a return to Salem.

Finally, any truth to the rumor that Sasha Baron Cohen will be singing the National Anthem on Saturday?  I heard the folks down at the Salem Civic Center love him.

[JeffRookie2]

For those of you that think that hixon is a bad game coach, could you elaborate on why you think this? I have watched him for three years and he seems to me to be at least adequate. He uses his time outs well and generally does a good job managing the flow of the game. Sometimes I feel like he fails to make the proper adjustments when his team is getting beat, like in the nescac championships against williams. Something should have been done about the perimeter defense. That happens rarely though. For the most part I think he does a good job.

[imderekpoe]

Let's be serious.  Wooster is a great team, but its top 4 scorers are not going to shoot 59% from the field (team 54%) against an Amherst defense that held opponents to roughly 38% (30% from 3) over the season. 

I agree that the simulation that Wooster Booster ran perhaps might be slanted towards the Scots.  As he said, he has a lot more familiarity with Wooster and how they run their team than he does with Amherst.  However, before you belittle the results and say that it can't happen, did you look at the Scots box score (http://athletics.wooster.edu/mb/news/2006-07/ncaa/centre.php) from their game against Centre in round 2 of the tourney?  Centre has the #3 scoring defense in the country and holds their opponents to 38.9% from the floor (30.2% from 3).  I'm not saying that the Scots will necessarily have the same results on Friday, but I am saying that they have put up those kind of numbers against a team with similar defensive stats.

[CCsalive]

I haven't posted in a while...congrats to Amherst on their back-to-back Final Fours. With props to Williams, I am happy to speak on behalf of all of us in Camel nation, Salem is a great time. It has got to kill Trinity to have never been there. Other than Amherst, who will be the next NESCAC team to go?