MBB: Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association

[sac]

Elmhurst 73 Albion 47
Adrian 70 Case Western 64
Chicago 75 Kalamazoo 63



Augustana 81  Stevens Point 58

[arena]

Tonight's game against Carthage should be of added interest for Knight's fans given that Brad Visser left the team. I'm curious who will begin the audition for the starting 2 spot.

If this is true, no great loss. Wasn't impressed with his game anyway.

[sac]

Massey Conference Ratings
1.  CCIW
2.  UAA
3.  MIAC
4.  MIAA
5.  WIAC


masseyratings.com now has the MIAA as the #4 conference in D3.  Not sure I buy that lofty rating, massey is calculating two exhibitions as real results but we'd still be in the top 10 even without those results.  At least for now the league appears to be flying with lofty company though even at just 24-22, some pretty strong schedules.

Hope #2
Alma #4
Albion #6
Calvin #11*  ex vs Northwood
Trine #83
Olivet #86*  ex vs Lake Superior
Adrian #176
Kzoo  #259


Alma has two really important games this week starting today hosting North Central, next Saturday they play at Wheaton. 

[Dark Knight]

Massey Conference Ratings
1.  CCIW
2.  UAA
3.  MIAC
4.  MIAA
5.  WIAC


masseyratings.com now has the MIAA as the #4 conference in D3.  Not sure I buy that lofty rating, massey is calculating two exhibitions as real results but we'd still be in the top 10 even without those results.  At least for now the league appears to be flying with lofty company though even at just 24-22, some pretty strong schedules.

Hope #2
Alma #4
Albion #6
Calvin #11*  ex vs Northwood
Trine #83
Olivet #86*  ex vs Lake Superior
Adrian #176
Kzoo  #259


Alma has two really important games this week starting today hosting North Central, next Saturday they play at Wheaton.

Olivet did exactly as well as Massey predicted and Calvin did only 4 points better, not even enough difference that taking out the game would change Calvin's Massey ranking, let alone the whole league.

Furthermore, the MIAA is stronger this year than last, and Massey mixes in last year's results for the first part of this season. Last year's results bring the league down a little, so if anything the MIAA is doing better than Massey reports so far this year.

[sac]

To be honest I hadn't checked the league rankings until this morning so I don't know where the league was sitting before the weekend.


Removing those exhibition games would drop Calvin's schedule to #15, Olivet to #119 that's enough to drop the whole league SOS nearly in half, though still #1.  Those are significant games in massey's calculation.

[Dark Knight]

To be honest I hadn't checked the league rankings until this morning so I don't know where the league was sitting before the weekend.


Removing those exhibition games would drop Calvin's schedule to #15, Olivet to #119 that's enough to drop the whole league SOS nearly in half, though still #1.  Those are significant games in massey's calculation.

Last year the MIAA was behind at least CCIW, WIAC, UAA, MIAC, NESCAC, SIAC, ASW, OAC, NJAC, NCAC, and maybe others I didn't immediately recognize as DIII, so no higher than #11. See

http://masseyratings.com/rate.php?s=cb2015&c=1&sub=12801

Also, Massey doesn't use RPI-like strength of schedule in the same way that the NCAA does. It works by noting how well a team does (margin of victory) and opponent power. If you beat a team of power 10 by 5 points, that's a bit of evidence that your team has power 15 (modulo home court advantage).

Massey does not take RPI-style strength of schedule (i.e. OWP, OOWP) into account at all -- only the power of opponents. Massey's strength of schedule is simply the average Massey power of opponents.

So, imagine two teams, A and B, with power 10 and 20. If A loses to B by 10 points at a neutral site, neither team's power changes. That was as expected. It doesn't matter how strong B is, only that A did exactly as expected against B. The strength of schedule for both teams could change a bit, but that wouldn't affect their power.

However, if A beats B by 10 points, A's power is going to go up by 20 divided by a season's worth of games, or about 20/25. It would increase to approximately 10.8. B would drop to about 19.2. All the teams that played A would get a smaller boost because A is stronger now, and all of the teams that played B would drop a bit. I'm not sure about the '25' number, it could be more like 15 or 20. It depends on how much Massey favors recent games. In my experience it seems like using 20 is fairly accurate.

So removing Northwood from Calvin's schedule would lower Massey's strength of schedule estimate for Calvin a bit, but that doesn't really figure into Calvin's or the league's power rating directly. What matters is how Calvin did against Northwood (MOV) added to Northwood's power. In this case Calvin did 4 points better than expected, so Calvin's power would go down approximately 4 points divided by 20, not enough to even drop them one place in the power ranking.

Massey does some other corrections so it's not quite this simple (or should I say even more complicated?), but that's the basic idea. You can read all the details here if interested:

http://masseyratings.com/theory/massey.htm

[sac]

But it does drop them, thus changing the MIAA's ranking basis.

[sac]

Friday night I was lucky enough to overhear a little of how Hope would deal with the aftermath of their double overtime game with Wheaton.  Their two greatest concerns were Brock Benson's health and just having legs for the game.  Nothing definite was known about Brock that night but I think it was probably assumed he either wouldn't be available or at least limited.  The second part was it was pretty obvious Hope was going to have to stretch its roster to keep guys fresh as best they could.

In yesterday's first half Hope played all 13 guys available delegating 18 minutes to players outside what I would call their normal rotation.  What really caught my eye though was how little Hope was able to put any decent size on the floor at the same time.  I'm sure the plan was to play two of Blackledge, Stuive and Brushwyler together much more than they did but two early fouls on Blackledge followed soon by two on Stuive really scuttled that idea.  For all of the first half and most of the second Hope ended up playing what amounted to a 4 guard offense with Otto and Eidson playing as super small 4's at 6-3 and 6-2.  For most of this game Hope was a pretty small team.   As you might expect Hope had difficulty rebounding against what really is a pretty poor rebounding team in Carthage.  I saw Olivet out-rebound them and Olivet isn't a very good rebounding team either. 

In the second half Hope was able to get Blackledge/Stuive or Blackledge/Brushwyler or Brushwyler/Stuive to play together for a total of 7:19 in two stints of 4:36 and 2:43, oddly Hope had already gained a 10 point lead before being able to do that, but for that first stretch Hope was in control and maintained its 7 to 12 point cushion, the second stint saw Carthage cut the lead to 6 from 10.  Carthage had 7 real offensive rebounds in this game(6 dead ball off rebounds), only 2 came when Hope was able to go with 2 players over 6-5 and those happened on the same possession off long desperate 3-point attempts late in the game.


For the game the average heights on the floor of the two teams was not what you would expect at all:
Carthage  74.32 in.
Hope        73.86 in.

I wouldn't have guessed Hope was the shorter team, but they were.  On Friday night Calvin dominated the boards on Carthage and threw a lineup out there that averaged 75.6 inches even without Cam Denny.  Big difference.

Just 20 minutes from Brock Benson probably flips that by an inch in Hope's favor.  So yes, Hope missed Brock Benson and spent most of this game scrambling to find lineups after Plan A, Plan B and probably Plan C had to be set aside.  So I wasn't all that surprised it took Hope awhile to both get their feet under them and settle on lineups that would get the win.  It was a kind of weird game with a high number of adjustments on the fly for Hope.

Pretty long week for Hope but they survived.

[Dark Knight]

But it does drop them, thus changing the MIAA's ranking basis.

Um, yes, just as I've been saying. It drops Calvin's power about 4/20 or 0.2. It would drop the league power something like 0.2 divide by 8, or 0.025. MIAA's power is 5th place, at -0.76. The sixth place conference is OAC, with power -1.21. Taking out the Northwood game would lower Calvin's power to about -0.79, still well above OAC. Removing Olivet's exhibition game would have no effect.

[GreatScot!?]

Scots with a win over North Central 67-66. Came down to wire with a couple of crucial rebounds to clinch the game. Uncharacteristically bad shooting night for the Scots, 24% from 3 and 44% overall considering the looks that they got. Also weird was that only 4 players scored in the game for them. DJ Beckman had 27 and also put him in the top 10 points scored for Alma College. Grind it out game, which is not something the Scots are used to. The Scots also ended up being undefeated at home for the calendar year of 2015. Next game is at Wheaton this Saturday! #LetsGoScots

[wiz]

Calvin lost a close one to a good Grace team tonight and learned that it takes two hands to handle the whopper.  Big centers will be a problem for Calvin to defend this year and they faced a good one tonight.  The Knights also had a difficult time finishing many of their drives to the hoop.  But there were many signs of improvement tonight as well and the play of Canonie, Wilks, Drews and Siegel continues to improve each game.

[KnightSlappy]

Calvin shot the ball well, cut their turnover rate, and won the rebounding battle, but didn't play great defense and lost to a pretty good Grace team who shot lights-out.

The Bible Tigers are a team Calvin should beat, but it seemed Grace was able to score whenever they needed a bucket.

[sac]

Alma's Scott Nikodemski is leading all of D3 in FG% at 73.6%.  Very unusual for a guard to lead that category.

[GreatScot!?]

Alma's Scott Nikodemski is leading all of D3 in FG% at 73.6%.  Very unusual for a guard to lead that category.

He's very efficient from the post which he has gotten most of his looks. Easily the Scots best back to basket scorer, which is crazy being that he plays the 1. His posts usually are when he has a smaller guard on him

[John Gleich]

Massey Conference Ratings
1.  CCIW
2.  UAA
3.  MIAC
4.  MIAA
5.  WIAC


masseyratings.com now has the MIAA as the #4 conference in D3.  Not sure I buy that lofty rating, massey is calculating two exhibitions as real results but we'd still be in the top 10 even without those results.  At least for now the league appears to be flying with lofty company though even at just 24-22, some pretty strong schedules.

I've got a really difficult time believing that the WIAC is #5 this year.  As of right now, they're sitting at 33-25 (56.9%). Interestingly, everybody has at least 3 wins, which surprised me (I hadn't looked at the standings in a while) but everybody also has at least two losses.

Doesn't seem like that long ago when the conference was winning 80%+ of the non-conference games. And yet, it's in this era of MORE parity that the conference has won the last two, 4 of the last 6, and 6 of the last 12 national titles (maybe going back 12 years is a bit of a stretch).

It seems like there must be an inevitable changing of the guard that must occur, doesn't there?