MBB: NESCAC

[Route9_Cassie]

Might have to bump library, dvden, beard and other beard from the VIP table tonight.  A hearty helping of a Jones Special and challah toast will be waiting there instead.

Round of pinks on the Godfather.

[frank uible]

feces: How much do you think Cousy or Russell allowed himself to be distracted from his play by exerting an effort to seek public attention?

[fpc85]

who is killing my karma? why!!!!!! don't hate

[JeffRookie2]

Final seeding should be interesting. Williams and Midd are down now, but they have the 2 easiest weekends ahead of them (Tufts, Bates, Wes, Conn) Both teams should get at least 3 wins out of that. Should be a battle between Midd/Bowdoin/Trinity for the second spot, but I see all of them hosting, with Williams the 5 seed. Bates/Conn will likely be 6/7 in some order and it should be fun to watch Tufts/Colby/Wes battle for the 8 seed. Will Tufts really miss the playoffs all together? I hope so, wouldn't want to see them in the first round.

[eclinchy]

Early favorites for POY? I would have said Pierce, but I think thats probably out the window. Should be Stone vs. Olson

Pierce is slowly drifting out the window, yes.  I'm leaning Stone after this weekend.

[fpc85]

what about walters? he is having a really good year.

[ILive4This]

So I able to catch bits and pieces of the game at Tufts today, and I must say both the Jumbos and Wesleyan were playing much better ball then I expected.

[tradereyes]

Just got a chance to see Colby play for the first time. They lost an absolute heartbreaker at the buzzer.

I can't take away anything from Aaron Westbrooks obviously for hitting a clutch shot, but when Artie Cutrone on Colby hit a shot with 3.8 seconds left, I found it incredible how Pat Hasiuk had enough time to drive the length of the floor, stop in the middle of the lane, and then pass to Aaron and hit the game winner. Everyone who was there knows Trinity got a couple extra seconds before the time-keeper started the clock. I guess thats how it goes on the road.

I expect Colby will find a way to get into the playoffs. They are obviously playing well, losing extremely tight games to good teams, but need to find a way down the stretch to get the W. Their 3 games left against Bates, Bowdoin and Tufts are all very winnable and I would not want to be a 1 or 2 seed and have to play them in the 7 or 8 spot.

[JeffRookie2]

CANIDATES:
Amherst: Olson, Walters, Baskauskas, Hopkins
Williams:Shalvoy
Bowdoin: Hippert, Fleigel, Sargeantson
Trinity: Hasiuk, R. Martin, Taylor
Midd: Rudin, Smith,
Conn: Stone
Bates: Wholey
Colby: Choice
Tufts:Pierce
Wes: N/A

1st team:
Olson, Walters, Hippert, Stone, Pierce

2nd team:
Baskauskas, Shalvoy, Taylor, Rudin, Wholey

POY: Olson (if you vote amherst, you vote olson, so no walters, and its hard to pick a poy from a team not in the top 4 in the league, so no stone)
ROY: Brian Ellis
DPOY: Sargeantson
COY: Joe Reilly (Bates)
Most over-rated player in the history of the NESCAC (MORPITHOTNESCAC): Chris Rose

Hard to pick this year. Adam Choice is the last one off, but i feel like i need to find him a spot. He is probably more individually deserving than Rudin, but there has to be somebody from Midd. I know 3 from amherst, 1 for everybody else is a bit biased, but who do you leave off? Maybe Baskauskas won't make it, but that would be criminal, almost as bad as leaving McLaughlin off last year. Also, Pierce might be second team if Tufts doesnt, you know, win a game.

[feces monkey]

feces: How much do you think Cousy or Russell allowed himself to be distracted from his play by exerting an effort to seek public attention?

Frank, let's stay on task here. It's the NESCAC board. I figured we were talking about NESCAC "stars." Plugging Cousy and Russell into a discussion about a silly Bowdoin underclassman pimping his team seems a bit incongruous.

The kid obviously feels stupid. Why fire the "dishonesty" arrow? Are you really that offended, especially considering the Central Mass., slop we must wade through on a daily basis?

[JeffRookie2]

you wouldnt expect a poster by the name of 'feces monkey' to take the high road

[eclinchy]

Notable omissions include Jones, Geohegan, Pelletier, Weitzen, Black and obviously... Rose.  I'd love to hear your reasoning behind calling Rose the MORPITHOTNESCAC.

[JeffRookie2]

Omissions, yes, but not omissions without consideration. I dont think any of those players stand much of chance of making all-nescac. if i wanted to include every good player in the nescac, the list of omissions would have been a lot longer than the ones you site.

As for Rose, he is shooting a .365 clip from the field, and yet shoots enough to be the second leading scorer on the team. To give you an idea of how bad that is, there is not a single player on amherst who shoots worse than 40% from the field, and only Pat Sullivan on your Jumbos team has a worse shooting % than Rose, and he has the good sense not to shoot very much. Rose also shoots under 70% from the line and is not a particurally good rebounder. He is also a terrible defender, although this is not entirely his fault, as he plays out of position at the 4. Yet, despite all of this, some people not only seem to think he is good, but a contender for an all-conference spot.

In fact, Colby, Bowdoin, Bates, and CC all do not have a single player with more than 50 shots with a fg% as bad as Rose's.

The only players in the entire NESCAC with a significant # of shots (again, over 50) with a worse shooting % than rose are:

Andrew Harris, Pat Hasiuk, Ian Fels, Kevin Scura, Jeremy Kaminer.

By that logic, Rose barely misses 1st team All-Cant-Shoot-Straight. And yet, he takes more shots than anyone else on his team, and the 5th most of anyone in the NESCAC (Pierce, Wholey, Choice, Taylor--all of whom shoot at least .430)

Is that a persuasive arguement?

[eclinchy]

Agent_Zero (and any other Tufts fans who care to weigh in on this),

I've been doing a little thinking about this Pierce/Weitzen dilemma.  I think the numbers you threw out there regarding Weitzen's shot totals were really interesting, and I wanted to explore them a little bit further.

As anyone who follows this board knows, I've been one of Jake's biggest fans since day one.  He's always been an excellent passer, an excellent rebounder, and even though he's not always the quickest guy out there, his defense has been good.  He's a true all-around player in a league where you don't see all that many of those.

His FG percentages in his first three seasons were 56.2, 51.1 and 51.6.  All easily top-10 in the conference.  He's never been Tufts' leading scorer in a season, but he's always been consistent, and I've admired him for that.

His 44.7 mark this year has scared me, because I expected to see a movement in the opposite direction.  With Pierce getting better and better, he's only going to draw more coverage, which will only free up open looks for Weitzen.  But for some reason, that hasn't helped.  Weitzen's numbers have gone down.

AZ, when I saw your post, something about it didn't sit right with me.  I refused to admit that it was that simple.  In a way, it's kind of insulting to Bob Sheldon -- the man's got 298 career wins, and you think he didn't think of the "hey, let's let our leading scorer shoot more!" explanation?  There's got to be more to it than that, right?

So I dug a little bit deeper.  Here's what I realized:

When Jeremy Black takes 5 shots or less, Tufts is 0-4.
When Black takes between 6 and 8 shots, Tufts is 6-4.
When Black takes 9 shots or more, Tufts is 4-1.

When Aaron Gallant takes 5 shots or less, Tufts is 5-6.
When Gallant takes 6 shots or more, Tufts is 5-3.

When Ryan O'Keefe takes 7 shots or less, Tufts is 1-3.
When O'Keefe takes 8 shots or more, Tufts is 5-2.

When Dave Beyel takes 5 shots or less, Tufts is 6-6.
When Beyel takes 6 shots or more, Tufts is 4-3.

It turns out that Pierce is not at all alone -- all the Jumbos' scorers have the same trend.  So what does this mean?  Jake Weitzen is a terrible scorer and everyone else on the team is better than him?  No.  The real explanation is either...

...A: Stats can say anything you want if you bend them enough.  The fact is, we both chose arbitrary cutoffs for these numbers just to frame our viewpoints and make them look better.  You pointed out that Tufts is 6-2 when Pierce takes 16+ shots; you neglected to mention than they're 0-3 when he takes 15.  There's all sorts of random facts you can dig up by poking around a spreadsheet for two minutes.  They're 6-1 when Beyel makes exactly 3 buckets.  They're 5-1 when Black's missed FG are a prime number.  They're 4-0 on Tuesday.  Nobody cares.

...B: Tufts, in general, just needs to share the ball better.  Pierce alone isn't the answer; a strong team effort is.  When they crushed a strong MIT team, they had five guys in double figures.  When they came within seconds of beating Brandeis, they had four.  The team looks best in games like that, not when Pierce takes over by himself.

...or C: It's a combination of the two.  I'd bet my last dime that it's this one.

Anyway, I just realized that I've written my longest post ever about a team that's 0-5 in the NESCAC, and probably 90% of the people on this board don't have any interest in my rambling.  To those 90% I apologize; to the other 10%, I conclude by saying this.

1) Jake Weitzen is a lot better than he's recently gotten credit for.  When a career 53% shooter goes into a slump, he deserves the benefit of the doubt that he'll break out of it.  The guy's too talented not to.

2) I really, really hope the Jumbos can play like a team for these last two weeks.  One of the reasons they lost to Wesleyan was that Pierce underestimated how good Pelletier and Grayson were defensively, he took a few ill-advised shots with four hands in his face, and he went 1 for 7 in the second half.  If that doesn't happen again, Tufts will actually be a decent team down the stretch.  Pierce is a tremendously good player -- I'll never doubt that -- but he's got a lot of other talent around him and he needs to use it.

Anyway, I'm done talking about this publicly... I've wasted enough space.  If anyone wants to discuss this stuff further, my email's in my profile.  Fire away.

You can all go back to talking about teams with wins now.

[JeffRookie2]

I just looked up Rose's shooting % in NESCAC games this year: .255. 25%!!! Clinchy, I'll be impressed if you can find a way to bend that stat to make Rose look good. Some numbers just dont lie. And people say he should be considered for all conference!!