MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[blue_jays]

Congratulations to Andrew Ziemnik and Tyler Peters on being named to the 2014 D3hoops.com All-American team!

http://www.d3hoops.com/awards/all-americans/men/2014

Peters should have been 2nd Team All-Am. But not too surprised: they denied Kent Raymond POTY in his senior season when his team was ranked No. 1 in the country most of the year.

[blue_jays]

Congratulations to Andrew Ziemnik and Tyler Peters on being named to the 2014 D3hoops.com All-American team!

http://www.d3hoops.com/awards/all-americans/men/2014

Peters should have been 2nd Team All-Am. But not too surprised: they denied Kent Raymond POTY in his senior season when his team was ranked No. 1 in the country most of the year.

Obviously these awards are subjective by nature, so not calling anyone out. Just my opinion that Peters was definitely right up there, but just behind Toomey, Walton-Moss and Tillema, and therefore deserving of 2nd Team. He did it all for Wheaton, and they wouldn't have been nearly as successful without him. One of the best rounded skills sets in the country, put up triple-doubles, and shot 50 percent as a point guard.
In terms of Raymond, no one will ever convince me that anyone was better than him that year. When he went out with the injury, as good as Wheaton was, they struggled. He was a force of nature (his King Arena game vs. IWU comes to mind).

[02 Warhawk]

IWU can say they lost to the national champs.   

[iwu70]

Congrats to WW, a very deserving national champion.

IWU70

[bbfan44]

Certainly enjoyed watching the game on TV.  Trying to think back to other great games I've seen and one that comes to mind is Wash U vs Wheaton back in 2009, I believe an elite 8 game.
Anyway, thanks to the CCIW teams for providing a fun way to relieve the pain of a miserable, cold, and snowy winter. 

[Greek Tragedy]

I hear that. No live stats either.

Welcome back to the 1990s

Yeah, the NCAA really dropped the ball on that one! All I got was the two team names and when the game starts. No kidding! Duh! The live stats worked for the semis.

[badgerwarhawk]

Sorry to be late to the party.  I've been at the women's final in Point and off line.  Just wanted to congratulate IWU on an outstanding season.   TQ, good luck to your guys.  I wasn't sure we'd be able to deal with your team size but we've been the shorter guys all season so I guess it's something we've come to take in stride. 

[Gregory Sager]

Certainly enjoyed watching the game on TV.  Trying to think back to other great games I've seen and one that comes to mind is Wash U vs Wheaton back in 2009, I believe an elite 8 game.

I've seen my share of tournament nailbiters over the years, but I've always wished that I could've seen the 1999 championship game that UW-Platteville won by one point in double overtime over Hampden-Sydney. As tight and exciting as last night's game was, that '99 game is still probably the benchmark for close title games.

[bbfan44]

Greg Sager:  I recall some discussion from you on occasion about commentators saying it is hard to best a team 3 times and that you don't necessarily agree with that.  I believe that is the gist of it.  What besides a "perfect storm" enabled Williams to have such a lop-sided win against Amherst who had beaten them 3 times this year?  Maybe Nescac1 talked about it in the Northeast chat.  I'll go back and look.

[nescac1]

bbfan44, it's an interesting question, I kind of think it was, as you note, the perfect storm.

First, I feel that Williams underperformed vs. Amherst all year.  The Ephs lost one game by one point in the first game of the season, and then won every other game, save for the three vs. Amherst.  Before the year, most Eph fans thought Williams would be the more talented team this year, so it was hard to figure.  Second, Williams really struggled with injuries -- Mayer was not the Mayer we saw in the NCAA tourney for much of the year, after missing a lot of time with an ankle injury and taking awhile to get back into game shape.  Epley and Rooke-Ley also missed a lot of time with injuries, and Robinson missed one late in the year plus missed some practice time.  Wohl also missed a lot of practice time although he was able to play in the games. The team didn't really gel as a unit until very late in the year, as they often barely had ten healthy guys to practice.  Third, Williams was a younger team than Amherst.  Amherst was a returning national champion who featured three senior starters on the perimeter.  The Ephs had a frosh point guard take over when Rooke-Ley went down, plus Robinson and a third frosh who saw more significant minutes as the season went on.  All three improved immensely over the course of the season to the point where they were almost unrecognizable from the guys they were a few months ago.  Fourth, Williams just seemed to play tight vs. Amherst, maybe the pressure and frustration of the losing streak, I'm not sure, but Williams played its A game for I'd say one half out of six vs. Amherst, the first half of the NESCAC championship game.  Other than that half, Williams consistently got open looks from three all year vs. Amherst, and consistently missed them, which, again, was hard to explain.  That third game was a game Williams could well have won, but tons of guys were in foul trouble for much of the game, especially Mayer, who never got into a rhythm as a consequence, and also, Williams just missed a lot of makeable threes while Amherst was on fire. 

So, coming into the Final Four, despite the three double-digit losses, I didn't feel like Amherst was the better team.  I thought it was basically a toss-up, or perhaps a very slight edge to the Ephs, with Williams finally fully healthy and coming together as a team, and Amherst, for once, being the team struggling with injuries, with its second and third string centers both out with injuries and no capable back-up for George.  Still, Amherst's perimeter quickness figured to, as usual, pose a challenge for Williams.  Eph fans were quietly confident (unlike Amherst fans, who seemed loudly confident), but no one saw a blow-out coming.

I think a few things factored into what happened.  First, great scouting.  Coach Maker realized that the zone defense had been far more effective, limiting Amherst's speed advantage, and totally committed to it.  It was very effective, to put it mildly, preventing Amherst from getting into any sort of offensive rhythm and also creating a lot of turnovers.  On the other side of things, Amherst had gotten a lot of steals in the first three games by overplaying on the perimeter, so Williams this time exploited the overplays by cutting to the hoop off the ball again and again, leading to a ton of easy baskets.  Second, Williams just played its very best game -- the Ephs were hitting very long distance threes (something they couldn't do, alas, against Whitewater), forcing the defense to extend beyond its comfort zone, and executing its ball movement with tremendous precision, and also rarely seemed to leave shooters open for clean looks in rhythm for three (especially not Toomey), which is something else that turned out differently in the title game.  Third, Coach Hixon is obviously a brilliant hoops mind, but I think he made a huge mistake as the season wore on by not developing his bench at all.  He has some talented frosh on the bench, but they didn't play at all down the stretch and as a result he was counting on four out of five Amherst starters to play 40 minutes.  If Amherst had somehow beaten the Ephs, they surely would have been wiped for the title game.  They looked visibly gassed at times, especially in the second half, and as a consequence were a step slower than I'd seen them before on defense, leading to a lot of tired / frustrated fouls, especially the key fouls on Toomey.  Fourth, Toomey, who had been playing at an unbelievably high level all year (MUCH better than last year) didn't look like himself from the opening tip (or even, I noticed, in warm-ups).  He didn't look to shoot at ALL, didn't drive aggressively, and simply didn't exert his stamp on the game the way other elite players did in the Final Four, or the way he typically does.  He was, for a guy who seemed in total control of most games this year, strangely passive and uninvolved.  I don't know if he was under the weather, or it was just one of those days, but I've never seen him play like that at all. 

A longer answer than you probably wanted, but combine all those answers -- Williams underachieving vs. Amherst early in the year, Williams getting healthy at the right time, the Ephs playing their very best game in the Final Four, Amherst's lack of depth hurting it, and Amherst's superstar having the worst game of his career -- and that accounts for the seemingly discongruous results. 

[Gregory Sager]

Greg Sager:  I recall some discussion from you on occasion about commentators saying it is hard to best a team 3 times and that you don't necessarily agree with that.  I believe that is the gist of it.  What besides a "perfect storm" enabled Williams to have such a lop-sided win against Amherst who had beaten them 3 times this year?  Maybe Nescac1 talked about it in the Northeast chat.  I'll go back and look.

Well, nescac1 has dealt with the specifics of the Williams/Amherst thing in detail in the post above, so I won't add to that. I'll simply confine my response to you in general terms, since the hard-to-beat-a-team-three-times cliché obviously existed in a general context long before the specific instance of the 2013-14 edition of the Williams vs. Amherst rivalry.

It's a good question, because I don't think that I've ever really taken the time to explain in detail my objection to the cliché.

Given two teams of equal ability, the odds of one team beating the other three times over the course of one season is one in eight (12.5%).

And if one of those teams should win the first two battles, what are the odds that it will win the third battle? Well, they aren't one in eight (12.5%) anymore, that's for sure. They're now one in two (50%), just the same as they were for each of the first two games.

But you almost never find two teams that are of equal ability. Either one team is to some degree (however small or large) better than the other, or one has matchup advantages over the other that it is able to exploit. Thus, the usual scenario is that a team that has beaten an opponent on two previous occasions is likely to win that third game because it has demonstrated that it has some virtue -- be it sheer ability, matchup advantages, experience, health, or something else -- that gives it the upper hand over that opponent.

It doesn't always happen, of course. Part of the reason why is because each basketball game is loaded with variables that cause each team to deviate somewhat from that team's established norms. Consistent teams, both good and bad, don't deviate that much from game to game. But a lot of teams will deviate, sometimes wildly so, from one game to the next, especially in terms of FG shooting (and the further from the basket you get, the more likely you are to see a deviation in shooting percentage). It's why you often hear basketball analysts say something to the effect of, "Throw out their best game and their worst game if you want to see what that team is really like." Because of that kind of deviation -- and the variables can be anything from home-court advantage to one team's star player having an upset stomach that night to a referee who calls the game differently than that team has been used to seeing -- it's entirely possible for the team that lost the first two matchups to win the third contest.

Of course, that's far more likely to happen if the difference in overall ability between the two teams is not that great -- which brings us back to the whole 50%-chance-of-winning thing. When you get two teams that are close to each other in overall ability, the outcome for any given game played between the two teams obviously becomes harder to predict -- and if there clearly hasn't been some exploiting of matchups that made one team prevail over the other twice, then the third game remains just as hard to predict as were the other two, regardless of the outcome of those first two games.

In short, the cliché that it's hard to beat a team three times is utterly empty of meaning. Either the winner of the first two games is clearly the better squad, which therefore means that the third time around most likely won't prove to be any different; or the circumstances change between Game Two and Game Three (which is what nescac1 said happened to a large degree with Williams and Amherst, except that it was Game Three and Game Four for the two NESCAC teams); or the two teams are so close together in ability than anything can happen when those two teams tangle -- and the outcomes of the first two games therefore don't mean diddly-squat in terms of predicting the outcome of the third game. Any way you slice it, there's nothing in the way of proof that can substantiate the cliché.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

For the record, its hard to beat a team four times in a season! LOL

[AppletonRocks]

For the record, its hard to beat a team four times in a season! LOL

Well played Dave.  Brevity is apparently not taught in the CCIW. 

[bbfan44]

d-mac.....good one.
Greg Sager and nescac1, thanks for the detailed reply.  I appreciate the obvious passion that you show for D3 b'ball in general and your willingness to provide the insightful analysis of games and teams and conferences through out the year.  It's kind of like reading John Feinstein or Jon Wertheim and makes this board so much more interesting and it is what keeps me coming back.

Of interest to me is that 6 of the 8 man rotation on this years Whitewater team were in the rotation on last years team which was beaten by North Central by 4 points in the first or second round on a neutral court (Benedictine).  One of those heavy-weight early match ups that D3 is so famous for.  NC of course went on to the Final Four.  That was a really good NC team.

[izzy stradlin]

I've heard the Rothschild kid is going to prep school next year.  Will try to improve his stock-  not sure how often that works.  He had offers from NIU, UIC, Chicago St and one other D1 I can't remember.