MBB: Centennial Conference

[Reserved Seat]

F&M struggled with Haverford's tight defense and aggressive offense.  With a lot of shoving and pushing going on under the basket, Moune presence was negated.  However, Cedric was wearing proper equipment to ward off several low blows.  The refs seemed to be ignored walking, as it was seldom called.  F&M's head didn't seem to be in the game, as the Fords several numerous uncontested shots.  Several long passes to uncovered shooters seemed to leave Robinson frustrated with his team's defense.  Wright and Tate were saddled with foul trouble.  Fortunately Figueroa and Federici were on fire, especially for 3-point range.  Figueroa hit 7 of 9 including one from almost half court.  Graves led the Fords with 18 points, mostly on drives to the basket.  F&M will have to step up their game to beat Gettysburg.

[Hoopdog14]

JHU kept there streak alive but they struggled against a seriously overmatched Muhlenberg.  Killing seemed out of sync.  Freshman Rindock took over scoring taking 18 shots for 24 points.  Problem wasn't scoring but defense or more precisely lack of.  Schreer was Hammered (Jimmy) who shot 50% and had 18 points.  Hunter and Rindock on defense was like watching a Road Runner Cartoon beep beep layup.  Mules could not come up with a scheme to hide the lack of defense.  Hoping a team shoot poorly won't win many games in the CC. The coaches had no responses and actually seemed satisfied with the performances

JHU did have some problems with the Mules press and committed a pile of turnovers.  Fortunately the Mules had guys on the court who know how to shoot but none of them knew how to twin. There schedule is not getting better with Dickinson and McDaniel (in Westminster) this week. 

[CCD3Basketball]

I was a little surprised with Ursinus beating McDaniel yesterday. It looks like the Green Terror forgot how to shoot the ball over the last 25 minutes. Good win for the Bears.

Figured Muhlenberg would give Hopkins a little bit of trouble. When the offense for the Mules is clicking they can give almost anyone trouble. Unfortunately, they don't have the defense to back it up.

As for F&M, any time you can go away from home and win by 16, your doing something right.

Gettysburg had to fend off WC for a while yesterday. The bullets were only up 7 at the half despite a distinct difference in shooting and rebounding. WC was within 7 with about 8 minutes left before Pete Christ went on a 8-0 run in just about a minute to push the lead to 15 and put the game away.

And it looks like Dickinson was never seriously threatened by Swarthmore today.

So, the top 3 spots remain unchanged in the CC standings, with the only change being McDaniel falling a game behind Gettysburg thanks to the Ursinus loss. There's 3 big games on tap for Thursday however, as Dickinson heads to Muhlenberg, Gettysburg goes to F&M and McDaniel goes to JHU. Three key games in the CC playoff race.

[Reserved Seat]

snow delay already??

[givengo]

I was a little surprised with Ursinus beating McDaniel yesterday. It looks like the Green Terror forgot how to shoot the ball over the last 25 minutes. Good win for the Bears.

I'm not surprised to see Ursinus win a few of these after watching one of their games.  They literally had a big recruiting year with three 6'7" freshmen.   They might make next year a lot more interesting. 
I always pull for Coach Curley as he's a good coach and a nice man.   The Green Terror is an excellent defensive team, and it's never over 'til it's over with them. The offense will come.
I like what he's doing there. He makes the Centennial a better conference. 

[Hoopdog14]

McDaniel under-rated as a team and Curley as a coach.  Defense will always keep you in a game.  They play a hard physical defense that gives the best offensive teams trouble.  Those stats don't show up in the score book

Ursinus seems to be getting better as the season goes on. 

Some teams are rising at the right time as others start to slide

[Gabriel]

Ursinus is getting better and better each week.  Their defense has improved tremendously, they are physical and rebound competitively.  Still not a good shooting team, but should improve as their confidence builds.  Not a playoff team this year but could be a spoiler.

Many of you are talking about young teams.  As a means of comparison, compute the average experience of your team by giving a freshman a factor of one, sophomore two, junior three and senior four.  Ursinus has six freshman, three sophomores, and one junior for fifteen points and an average of 1.5.  I would suggest that Ursinus has the most inexperienced team in the CC.

[Reserved Seat]

Welcome back, Gabriel.
Ursinus only has 10 players.  They had more on the bench when F&M played them.  Did some leave the team?
F&M  7 freshmen, 3 sophomore,  3 juniors, 1 senior.   26 points--average  1.8

[HoopGuru]

I agree with how Ursinus has improved and I think continues to improve each game, which is important when you have a young team.  In my opinion, one of the biggest signs so far for this young team that could be really nice for the future is how they have performed on their home court.  A formula for great success, regardless of level, is to take care of your home games and steal as many as you can on the road.  If you want to compete for conference championships, you must be able to win consistently at home.  If Ursinus can do that (along with keeping the players on the team) I think it will bode well for the future and getting back to consistently being a threat in the conference.  As a sidenote, I think Coach Small has gotten back to trying to recruit players similar to what he has had in the past. The past few years, I think he got away from recruiting players that fit in to what he wanted to in an attempt to keep up with the way some of the other schools, and it has shown with players leaving/getting kicked off the team.  If these core players can stay together and he continues to get some players that fit in, I think they can get to where they want to be, which is competing more consistently for a conf title.

[Gabriel]

Reserved,

They have only dressed ten this year for each game, including F&M.  Preseason, they had 13 players but one (a junior) tore his ACL, one quit the team and one was an academic casualty.

HoopGuru,

Think you are absolutely correct in what you say.  The current players seem to "buy in" to the program and they are getting back to playing the Ursinus way----work hard and put the team first.  Another good recruiting year and they will contend again.

[CCD3Basketball]

A formula for great success, regardless of level, is to take care of your home games and steal as many as you can on the road

Agree completely. As long as you win your home games (or at least 90% of them, because lets be honest, some teams are just TOO good to beat, regardless of location) and steal a few wins on the road, you will always be in contention to make the playoffs. Which is all you really need to do, because once the conference playoffs start, anything can happen.

As for tomorrows games, I will be surprised if any of them get played with the storm that's coming, with the exception of maybe McDaniel/Johns Hopkins (looks like Baltimore might be spared a little) and possibly Gettysburg/F&M. Either way, this will create for interesting schedule changes. Not necessarily just because of the men's schedule because there are no men's games scheduled for Wednesday/Thursday, but because of the women's schedule as well. Most of the women's programs are working on a Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday schedule this week, which creates for postponements and the potential of crazy schedule changes and such. I guess it would come down to whether schools would be willing to dig into the travel budget to pay for multiple buses to go to the different schools on different days rather than having the teams go together to play the doubleheaders as scheduled. Then, you run into the possibility of having the women's programs playing back to back days with potential back to back road trips if that were the case (it sounds as confusing as I'm sure I just made it look).

Anybody have any thoughts on the potential scheduling situation?

[Reserved Seat]

Have to wait to see what really happens.  Lancaster didn't get as much as expected today.  Only had an inch in my area and it was powder. 

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

More coming... storm is just ramping up.

[CCD3Basketball]

Looks like most of the areas got spared by the storm. Looks like the only postponement has been the WC/Swat matchup. Game on for the big Dickinson/Mules, Gettysburg/F&M and McDaniel/JHU matchups! Lots of conference playoff shuffling potentially on tap tonight!

[hoop master]

Haverford breaks 9 game losing streak and wins a close one 68-63 against Ursinus. Was expecting more of Ursinus based upon recent posts of  their improvement.  Bears are still a big work in progress.  Haverford guards had their pick of easy shots against pourous defense.  Matt Sherman a sophmore is developing into a top guard in conference for Fords. Keep your eye on him in future years for Haverford.  Surprised Ursinus waited untill late to take advantage of Haverford weak interior defense. By the time they figured it out, was too late to overcome 14 pt  hole  they were in. Joseph  Lostracco a 6'8 280 bear had his day with countless 2foot layups to close lead.  Bears with  terrible shot selection at the end- down 3 under a minute, and didnt get a shot off that made it  to hoop.  The growing pains of underclass men.