MBB: Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association

[sac]

North Central Pod

Offensive efficiency or Points per possession
North Central   1.14
Chatham          1.02       
Loras                1.16
Albion               1.07     

Albion and Chatham are a bit behind what you usually expect offensively from tournament teams.


Defensive efficiency
North Central   1.00
Chatham            .93       
Loras                1.06
Albion                 .99

Chatham probably plays pretty good defense but has probably not played anyone near as good as maybe even all 3 teams in this pod.  Loras is basically Hope defensively so that bodes well for Albion(?).  North Central is probably actually better on defense than the 1.0 ppp, they play a lot of really good offenses.


Pace or possessions per game
North Central     66.89
Chatham            68.39       
Loras                 78.89
Albion                70.31

North Central and Chatham are two of the most deliberate teams in the field.  Loras is one of the fastest, their profile looks more like play fast and try to outscore you.  Albion has really only played 4 high possession games this year, they went 2-2 but one was a loss to D1 Evansville.  One of these teams is going to play at a pace they're uncomfortable playing


Four Factors

eFG%                Off             Def
North Central     54.4             49.9
Chatham            50.0             48.2
Loras                 56.9              55.3
Albion                54.6              50.5

Nothing earth shattering but again Loras isn't great at preventing points


Rebounding
          %Off rebounds   Opp%Off rebounds
North Central     31.0              28.1
Chatham            29.6              30.4
Loras                 32.5              26.1
Albion                28.2               27.5

None of these teams are in the "great" category of rebounding but Loras comes close in cleaning up the defensive boards.  Albion isn't a great offensive rebounding team either but pretty good on the other end.   With four teams being so close rebounding might swing one or two of these games.



FT Rate
North Central     35.3              30.6
Chatham            30.2              33.6
Loras                  36.7              36.8
Albion                 29.2              26.8

Loras and North Central are really good at getting to the line.  Albion doesn't get to the line a bunch but they are very good at keep opponents off the line, while Loras gives up alot of FT's.  Right here we have two teams of opposites.  FT shooting between Albion/Loras could be big if its opposite of either teams season norm.


Turnover Rate
                      TO rate          Opp TO rate          Margin
North Central     15.7              18.9                     3.1
Chatham            17.8              23.5                     5.5
Loras                  17.8              20.7                     2.9
Albion                 17.2              18.4                     1.2

Chatham, Loras and Albion are about or slightly better than the NCAA D3 average for TO rate, North Central slightly better.  Chatham's TO number might not be real, I get weird numbers out of the PAC which had an especially bad year.  Their rate may be more influenced by playing alot of bad teams.  All four are on the positive side of turnover rate which you'd expect from NCAA teams.  I might guess Loras opponent turnover rate is probably highly influenced by the fast pace of their games.



The Albion/Loras matchup is a lot closer on paper than at first look when the bracket came out.  But I think given that Loras has beaten two tournament favorites Nebraska Wesleyan and Augustana the Duhawks have a lot of potential to make a good run in this tournament.  I might even call them the favorite to come out of this pod, but home court always looms large in these things.

Albion might be able to stick with Loras for awhile but I think Loras is likely to pull away and win by 10 or more.  The starting 5 for Loras isn't particularly tall and matches with Albion's 4 guard, 1 big lineup pretty closely.  But Loras will bring 3 or 4 "bigs" off the bench vs Albion's 1.  If Albion has a great day shooting the three ball this could get very interesting late.

[Dutchfan]

I personally would like to see conferences and leagues at all levels be more transparent when it comes to disciplinary/corrective actions, especially as it pertains to officials. How often have we complained about officiating and yet we must take it on pure faith that there is anything even discussed between the conference and officials? A good example is the the NFC championship game. We haven't heard about anything at all about any kind of discussion between the league and the officials about what happened.

[sac]

MIAA doesn't have a lot of control over who officiates games these days.  My understanding is officials are assigned by one individual to multiple leagues and divisions now.  Though you generally see the same guys cycle through the league pretty regularly.

I was really thrown for a loop when the officials for Hope/Calvin at DeVos were all from the Chicago area and not regular MIAA officials.

I do think coaches can give input or "critique" on officials and that is taken into account in some way.   One interesting thing this year was one official who I'm sure multiple coaches were probably not particularly fond of did very few if any MIAA games this Winter.



While we're on the subject.....

Dear Trine, jot down the names of officials for your home games and put it in your boxscores.  Thanks.

[Smitty Oom]

sac, I really enjoyed the breakdown for the NCC pod, now you have about 40 hours to get the other 15 pods done for us!!   

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

Officials are assigned by whomever the MIAA has hired to assign them. In more and more areas, on assignor is assigning multiple conferences ... and more and more officials are driving further to games so to cross pollinate and make for a more diverse set of officials across the region and country.

As for the national assignments for the tournament, for the first time ever the head of DIII officiating (in his second season) has assigned the officials for all games - once the bracket was finalized. He works from a list of officials assignors have given him plus reports and grades done by him (in person or via video) and others. He will assign officials throughout the tournament including having those who have done well work additional games (something we first saw last season) and send those who have earned the right to be at the final four - not those assignors want to pat on the back.

BTW - that national director of officials also oversees all assignors and is working hard to get the game called more consistently across the country. Many fans are starting to notice games called a little differently in some places because old habits and old "styles" had been circumventing what should be done.

I am loving it, honestly.

[HOPEful]

Dear Trine, jot down the names of officials for your home games and put it in your boxscores.  Thanks.

Seconded!

[sac]

Officials are assigned by whomever the MIAA has hired to assign them.

to paraphrase. 
"Here's who you are going to hire to assign your officials and you don't have a choice"

[Jameswys]

Official Olivet Press release on Coach Ernst.
https://www.olivetcomets.com/sports/mbkb/2018-19/releases/20190226n8iqe7

[Gregory Sager]

Steve Ernst leaves Olivet as the first and only head coach that the Comets have ever had who won more MIAA games than he lost. Considering that Olivet has been in the MIAA for 88 years now, during which Ernst had 19 predecessors (not counting that redoubtable coaching talent Unknown), that's a pretty impressive achievement.

[Flying Dutch Fan]

Steve Ernst leaves Olivet as the first and only head coach that the Comets have ever had who won more MIAA games than he lost. Considering that Olivet has been in the MIAA for 88 years now, during which Ernst had 19 predecessors (not counting that redoubtable coaching talent Unknown), that's a pretty impressive achievement.

I'll probably get some -k for this, but it's an honest question (based on my opinion of course).

Yes, he achieved the wins, but at what cost to the reputation of the institution, the team, and the players?

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

He also probably broke the records for technical fouls.

[Gregory Sager]

... and naughty expletives.

[Flying Dutch Fan]

... and timeouts used for the sole purpose of staring angrily at an official

[sac]

Ernst did a lot of good things at Olivet most of which the average fan probably can't see, some will probably endure.  But a decent foundation has been put in place for the next guy.  Unfortunately, Olivet is a pretty tough sell for basketball recruits, it always has been.  Ernst built his program around transfers from Juco's and guys in need of a basketball home, gave chances to guys others wouldn't.  All of that is in a way admirable but next years roster is going to look a lot different.

I can't even describe how enjoyable it was to watch talents like Jalen Adams, Trevor Manuel and Tracy Edmond play in this league.  Those kinds of guys don't come around very often.

Not long before Ernst took over at Olivet I attended a game in early December there, at tip-off there were no more than 20 people in the stands.  Nearly every game the last 3 years have seen crowds of 400+ and near capacity for some of the bigger games, this year they hit 600 in almost every home game.  Outside of Hope/Calvin games there wasn't a better college atmosphere than at Olivet in this league these 3 years.  Inside Cutler its a better college atmosphere than its ever been from the banners, scoring tables, band, cheerleaders pretty much everything.

   
Closing the Steve Ernst file.

16-17      9-16        5-9
17-18     16-11     10-4   -MIAA Co-Champions
18-19     13-14       8-6
             38-41      23-19
 
I can never say it wasn't entertaining. 

[Gregory Sager]

Steve Ernst leaves Olivet as the first and only head coach that the Comets have ever had who won more MIAA games than he lost. Considering that Olivet has been in the MIAA for 88 years now, during which Ernst had 19 predecessors (not counting that redoubtable coaching talent Unknown), that's a pretty impressive achievement.

I'll probably get some -k for this, but it's an honest question (based on my opinion of course).

Yes, he achieved the wins, but at what cost to the reputation of the institution, the team, and the players?

Those are fair questions. I don't think that the answers are necessarily binary. As sac points out, Olivet is a tough sell; the fact that Steve Ernst is the first Comets coach to post a winning career MIAA record in the history of a program that has been a part of this league since the First World War tells you everything that you need to know about just how tough a sell it really is. To put it another way, Olivet's reputation has been terrible in terms of its competence in this sport.

On the one hand, he's not the most genteel human being, and it can be fairly asked whether his combustible and confrontational style is necessary to achieving success at Olivet or is only an individual quirk that need not be characteristic of another coach who can tap into the same sort of pipelines that sac described. And Ernst's players are certainly rough around the edges in terms of their deportment, too. (Perhaps his combative personality on the court is conducive to recruiting that sort of player, in the sense that they may feel akin to him in terms of being the snubbed blue-collar underdogs that have to scratch and claw for whatever respect they get in a league full of well-heeled types.) On the other hand, the Comets achieved success on the hardwood under Ernst by taking on what sac described as "transfers from jucos and guys in need of a basketball home", and this raises the question as to whether or not this fits with Olivet's mission as an institution. If part of what Olivet College is all about is providing a resource for higher education for student-athletes who fit that description, then you can't argue with his recruiting if you're being objective and honest with yourself. If players like that stick out like a sore thumb on the Olivet campus, however -- I simply don't know enough about Olivet to say anything one way or the other, and I'm not going to make any pronouncements out of ignorance -- then they're not going to hang around for more than a season, anyway, and retention will always be a problem for the program. It'll be a different type of retention problem than the retention problem of the past, which was that few people are ever willing to stick around and play for a perennial loser, but it'll be a retention problem just the same. It's hard to thrive on a campus where you feel like a fish out of water whose one and only reason for being there is to play basketball.

It's easy to cast judgment upon somebody else's program and/or school, especially if that program and/or school is very different than the one that you follow. But I think that it's always a good exercise to try to put yourself in the other guy's shoes and to try to understand where his school is coming from -- the advantages it enjoys, the disadvantages it has to overcome, the mission of his school, the sort of fit it's looking for in its student body and its coaches, etc.