WBB: Landmark Conference

[ronk]

 Game w Albright now showing on Thurs in Reading instead of Naples; possibly the Ladies are going to return early from Naples(hopefully, after playing someone on Tuesday) and then bus down to Albright. A fluid situation to be sure. Stay posted!

[Tim the Enchanter]

Hot off the presses:  the Florida games are all off.  Scranton will now be playing at Albright on Thursday:

https://athletics.scranton.edu/sports/wbkb/2021-22/releases/20211227ovdybl

(Which makes sense... why travel that far for one game when the teams are less than a 2 hour drive from each other?)

[ronk]

 Albright game tomorrow is postponed for covid concerns on their team; no new date at this time.

[saratoga]

Looks like the Arcadia women were looking for a Thursday game per the "women's single game site".
Send them a text.
How about Haverford, Ursinus, Muhlenberg...someone has to be looking for games as well.

[saratoga]

William Patterson is also looking for a game.
Where's Danno?

[saratoga]

From what I've seen so far this season...
The two best teams in the country right now are Hope & Christopher Newport.
Hope is just soundly & fundamentally good & CNU keeps getting better each time I see them play.
Their press & zone traps are relentless & they just seem to be playing with a complete understanding of what each players role is.
Conversely, the Lady Royals just don't seem to be making any real headway as the season progresses.
Just not seeing any player development or growth...essentially reliant on two players to provide 75% of their scoring.
Substitution patterns sometimes have 3 & 4 non-shooters on the floor at the same time
Certainly better to have your game come together & peak down the stretch but something is clearly missing with the Lady Royals right now.
It appears they are winning based on sheer talent & not due to taking that talent to another level.
Still time to kick it into high gear & out of cruise control but the clock is ticking.

[Tim the Enchanter]

Lady Royals have a game on January 17 hosting Salisbury which I think was just added.

[ronk]

 It's a replacement for 1 of the canceled games in Florida. Kelly Lewandowski(Baskow) Salisbury HC returns to her alma mater; I frequently see her at our  reunions(we're on the same 5-year cycle) or at AAU tourneys.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

With the New Year comes not only a change to #Hoopsville, but increased concern about #COVID.

Tonight, Hoopsville returns from the holiday break with a move to Monday evenings (from the previous Sunday night position). With the return also comes the return to plenty of cancelations and postponements due to COVID. We chat with Jason Fein, Athletics Director at Bates College Athletics and member of the NCAA Division III Championships Committee and Management Council, about the challenges the Omicron variant is now throwing at college and athletics administrations. What may change in the coming weeks and what we may be talking about still when selections and brackets are released at the end of the season.

Plus, there are plenty of cancelations and postponements to try and weed through.

We also talk to two teams making headlines around #d3hoops. They include Drew Rangers women's basketball who are off to a program best 10-0 start. We chat with th Rangers head coach John Olenowski.

Plus, UW-Platteville Athletics men's basketball is undefeated and getting first place votes in the Top 25. Coach Jeff Guard joins us to talk about his Pioneers.

All that and we breakdown the new Top 25 polls! Ryan Scott and Bob Quillman join Dave to react to the men's poll and to give their Dubious, Deep Dive, and Debatable teams.

Tune LIVE starting at 7:00 PM ET!

You can watch the show LIVE (or on demand) here: https://www.d3hoops.com/hoopsville/archives/2021-22/jan3 or http://www.d3hoops.com/x/fh5lq

We are also simulcasting on our Facebook Live page (www.facebook.com/Hoopsville) AND tonight on our YouTube page (http://www.youtube.com/Hoopsville)

Guests include (order subject to change):
- Jason Fein, Bates Athletics Director and DIII Management Council member
- John Olenowski, Drew women's coach
- Jeff Gard, No. 2 UW-Platteville men's coach
- Top 25 Double-Take with Bob Quillman and Ryan Scott

Hoopsville is hosted by Dave McHugh from the the NABC Studio. It is presented by D3hoops.com and thanks to our partner WBCA. All guests are featured on the BlueFrame Technology Hoopsville Hotline.

If you have questions, ideas, or want to interact with the show, feel free to send them to hoopsville@d3sports.com or use any of the social media options available.

If you enjoy the show via the podcasts, choose your favorite avenue to listen and/or subscribe via the the following four avenues (click on the images when necessary):
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We also have the podcast now on Tune-In and others coming. We will update them once we have better abilities to do so.

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[ronk]

 Lady Royals have added a game with Clark Summit 1/10 so, in combo with recently-added Salisbury on 1/17, it looks like the        postponed game with Albright becomes if needed to fill a 25-game schedule, if not canceled altogether. Clark Summit has a 10-1 record but no victories of note.

[Royals85]

My question for the pollsters is how the hell do you keep Amherst at 3 and didnt play a game since 12-3 but drop Scranton further down the polls even though there last game was there Christmas Tournament on 12/23 please explain Voters ? Just smh is this real ?

[saratoga]

They didn't keep Amherst "at 3"...they actually moved them up from 4 to 3 when they haven't played in a month.
This is a discussion on The Top 25 thread.
The reality is any "pollster' that did that is undeserving of the challenge before them.
But as I've said a thousand times, these "polls" mean absolutely nothing...just get your team ready for the real poll that begins in Feb. & that is the NCAA Regional one.
Gordon & Ryan take their votes seriously as do others but there are obviously some on this group that put very little effort into combining available data with common sense.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

Interesting that voters want Amherst to be "punished" and lose votes because they weren't allowed to travel to Vegas for the D3hoops.com Classic. SMH

Secondly, I didn't realize part of the voters' mandate was to move teams down a poll because they haven't played. I'll have to note that for the next time I do my Top 25 and remove Yeshiva on the men's side because they are in their winter break (same as everyone else's just later). (sarcasm)

As has been explained to this group more times than I can count:
- Voting is not one team compared to another ... there are many teams involved. A team may move up or down with nothing that relates to them. Voters may want to move other teams into a position and that requires other teams to shuffle around that decision.
- Things are also not in a vacuum. There are a lot of factors involved and every voter has their own decision model. Trying to compare the movement of Scranton against Amherst is insane. Maybe look at ALL the teams being voted on and come to a determination. While your at it, drop the infatuation and insane focus on Amherst. There are a lot of basketball teams out there other than the Mammoths and Scranton that deserve the ridiculous amounts of focus you all seem to have.
- BTW if you all hadn't noticed, Scranton has two losses this season. While not bad, in women's basketball two losses at this point is tougher to vote for than on the men's side. There are six other teams with two losses that are in the poll and each has more wins than Scranton (one has a single more win, the rest are 2 or more). There is just one team, UT-Dallas, that has more losses than Scranton and I would definitely argue maybe the Comets shouldn't be in the poll ... that said, when looking at the resumes, UT-Dallas has a conference full of Top 25 type programs and their schedule has been more difficult than Scranton's. Not sure it warrants being ranked, but I can see the argument for voters to keep them ahead of the Royals.

As I said, look at the entire picture and ask these questions ... not just one team. Should Scranton be ranked? Maybe. Is this easy to do especially without the color of one's team tinting the lenses? Absolutely not. Could things change quickly week to week? You betcha.

[NEPAFAN]

Scranton women may be short staffed this weekend, Emma get her feet wet against Juniata?

[saratoga]

No one here said Amherst should be penalized because they couldn't play.
However, how some arrived at the conclusion they should be rewarded by not playing is illogical.
That's it, nothing more.