MBB: NESCAC

[ac08]

I meant to say "ring" campaign. Sorry.

[TheHerst2and4]

herst 2and4: First of all that was accident-the other post went first.

Fair enough, i jumped the gun on you. Personally I just think its too early to tell, I certainly couldn't make any worthwhile predictions (Walzy may be better suited with his track record) lots of question marks with a lot of teams  (new players seeing time, players taking on different roles, coaching changes, strategy changes) It should make for an interesting and fun year to watch. I'm looking forward to it.

Walzy what's the latest on odds to win the league?

[lemonjello]

Amherst over Curry 73-45 in their season opener.  I wasn't at the game, but the box score is https://www3.amherst.edu/~sports/current/m-bball/m0809-01.htm. 

Wheeler and Baskauskas led the scoring with 16 and 12 respectively.  While it's hard to tell much because Curry is not exactly a powerhouse (though they were a tournament team), it is worthy of note that the starting 5 included the freshman David Waller at the 2 (along with usual suspects Wheeler, Baskauskas, Meehan, and Holsey).  Waller scored 7 points in 16 minutes of play.  We'll see if he is a starter down the stretch, but his starting today seems to indicate that Hixon is very high on him.  As expected, a number of reserves got significant PT.  Carcieri and Bennett each played 15 minutes and scored 8 points,  and freshmen Taylor Barrise played 17, scoring 9 points.  With so many new starters and freshmen, it will take Hixon a while to figure out his rotation, but I imagine the 4 vets in the starting 5 are likely to stay there. 

[nescac1]

Looks like Amherst reloaded rather than rebuilt, to no one's surprise except perhaps Senator Frost.  It will be interesting to see Amherst against Lasell later this fall, which has to be pretty good (beat Brandeis tonight).  Amherst might beat MCLA by 80. 

Trinity lost to Albertus Magnus?  Ummm, a gnac school that went 2-23 last year?  I realize it's just the first game, and Trinity is a very young team that will undoubtedly need time to gell, but unless AM brought in some serious firepower in the offseason, Trinity should be pretty worried -- a team like that has no business being within 30 of any NESCAC contender.

Tufts loses despite Pierce scoring 40 -- wow.  And that may not be the last time we see that headline. 

More importantly, in the game of the century, which despite being a non-NESCAC game all d-3 fans were eagerly watching, USM beat University of New England.  Yes!

[BankShotCharlie]

Was anybody at the Lasell Brandeis game??  It looks like it was pretty legendary according to the play-by-play.  I guess the dynamic duo of Sainval and Guitian were too much to handle for the Judges.  Let this be a warning to all of the teams in the NESCAC to never take a Northeast team out of conference lightly. 

For the record, I'm jumping on the Lasers' bandwagon! (omitting December 2nd of course and possibly in March if playing the Lord Jeffs)

[BankShotCharlie]

I almost forgot... Great win tonight for Amherst.  I don't think Hixon could have played his cards any better for this game.  Minutes evenly distributed to give each and every player a shot to prove himself.  Also heard from a source of mine that there may be 2 new FLIGHT SQUAD members already?...

Good job fellas, lets get ready for M-C-L-A, M-C-L-A, M-C-L-A!!!

[walzy31]

Fair enough, i jumped the gun on you. Personally I just think its too early to tell, I certainly couldn't make any worthwhile predictions (Walzy may be better suited with his track record) lots of question marks with a lot of teams  (new players seeing time, players taking on different roles, coaching changes, strategy changes) It should make for an interesting and fun year to watch. I'm looking forward to it.

Walzy what's the latest on odds to win the league?

REGULAR SEASON NESCAC ODDS FOR FIRST PLACE:
Middlebury -120
Amherst +110
More teams to come later

[topoftheworld]

Dissapointing loss i would imagine for the jumbos.  what else can you do offensively really?  peirce with 40, 2 starters beyel and gallant with 14 each against a young undersized babson team.  they were up by as much as 16 in the first half and 10 at the halftime.  pierce looking like steph curry last night, putting up a lot of shots, and hitting at a high percentage.  is it just defense with the jumbos?  can they really be that bad on defense that you can't win when 3 starters combine for almost 70 pts?

[golflax99]

Yeah, tough loss for Tufts... especially on a night when everything was going in for Pierce. I was actually surprised when he put up an off balance three at the end of regulation and missed... He had banked in two threes in earlier.

What really hurt tufts was Galvin getting into foul trouble... Morgan replaced him and had a few turnovers late that really cost them.

This young Babson team had 3 players to also score for 68 points, the exact same number scored by Pierce, Gallant and Beyel. Also 63 points of their total points was scored by underclassmen. It was really a fun game to watch and it was fitting to see the Senior Captain Zach Etten to hit the contested game winning jumper with 1 second left.

Pierce seems to just go off against Babson, scoring his season high 36 last season. It will be interesting to see if he can put up 30+ point performances like this more than just a couple times. From the looks of last night, it looks like he will have no problem.

[eclinchy]

What really hurt tufts was Galvin getting into foul trouble...

Yeah... this scares me. I hope it's not a persistent problem.

[senatorfrost]

  I suppose NESCAC1 is correct. Amherst has reloaded. So have a lot of teams. They look at Curry and say 'wow' Amherst is ------- (pick your own superlative) I saw Curry. They have a couple of good players and that's it. It was hardly a great showing by Amherst.
   However reloading in basketball is no different than reloading in hunting. You watch Amherst bring down some small game and you wonder whether or not there are 90 grains of pow(d)er or forty five in the reload. When they try to take down the big boys is when you'll know how many grains of pow(d)er there actually are.

In case anyone forgot Williams has three starters returning from a NESCAC title holder. In my book that's about 85 grains. The league was stronger then and the two frosh and a soph are now 2 Jrs. and a Sr.  It could take them a couple games but I think they look second best (on paper) no matter how much folks want to poor mouth.

[jbergman]

SenFrost:  Your logic re: "3 starters returning from a NESCAC title holder = 2nd best in league this year" is definitely flawed.  You must've forgotten that last year, with five (5) starters returning from that NESCAC title holder, Williams finished 4-5 in the regular season (6th place) and lost in the NESCAC post-season tournament 1st round by 37 points.  This year, Williams has a new coach (& a new system) to deal with and only three (3) starters from that mediocre 4-5 season.  How can they leap-frog to 2nd best (on paper) in NESCAC?  I suppose that it's possible, but definitely not something to count on.  To me, it looks like Middlebury, Colby, Bowdoin, and Amherst - in that order.  The second tier is probably Williams, Bates, Williams, Trinity and Tufts - in that order.  Wesleyan & Conn Coll probably won't make the NESCAC post-season tournament.  But it's early in the season, so we'll see how it plays out.

[ac08]

Senator, You seem to hold on to the fact that the Williams' core started for a team en route to a 'CAC title. Williams might have been better that day, but they weren't better at the end of that season or the next. Game experience is important, this is true, but so is winning.
The question is:
Which is more valuable?

JBerg, are you basing your predictions on returning contributors from last season?

[gobombers15]

Still have most of my attention on football, but what should Ithaca expect to see from Trinity this weekend at the UR Tourney? It looks like they lost to a pretty bad team in their opener. Was that a mirage or is this a rebuilding year?

[jbergman]

ac08:
Yes, I'm basing my predictions on returning contributors from last season, but with a heavy emphasis on whether those contributors actually helped their teams win last year.  Stats and playing time on a losing team are not that impressive to me.