MBB: Great Northeast Athletic Conference

[D3HoopJunkie]

What a day to be a Falcon!! Outstanding effort by the Falcons and a gutsy performance by all the players and Coach Oliver. St Joes competed well and should be commended for what they accomplished in their first season as a program but the better and tougher team won today. The experience and toughness of the Falcons was without question the biggest outlier in this game.

We did not play well in the 1st half but did just enough to hang around and keep the game within range. We played much better in the 2nd half and as I said our experience and toughness showed. St Joes was simply too soft. Damian Grant was an animal today! Playing his best game as a Falcon to date. Davon Warner found his stroke and nailed some big 3's and Ryan Pittman continued his dominance and leadership as the heartbeat of this team! I have to say, we've all been very fortunate to see some great players come through this program over the years. But I think I can honestly say that Pittman might be the toughest player Oliver has ever had.

Lastly, I think its about time for everyone outside of Albertus to start talking about what Coach Mitch Oliver continues to do year in and year out. This guy can flat out Coach and if you watched the game today he OUT COACHED Jim Calhoun. From inbound plays, to his defensive shift to zone and the last long pass to essentially seal the victory. I am certainly not downplaying what Jim Calhoun has accomplished. Hell, he's a HOF'er for a reason and I am a huge UCONN fan and regard him as a GOD but all that was talked about since Thursday was Calhoun, Calhoun, Calhoun.......How about 8 straight GNAC final appearances for Oliver and 8 GNAC titles overall now in 12 years!!! That's insane! No matter what your conference is that is an incredible streak of consistency and dominance when you know that every single night you are getting every team in your conferences best shot. I get it, Its Jim Calhoun, so his name is going to carry the ratings but not a lot of love for Coach Oliver. He deserves way more!!

[Ferraro13]

This is all you need to know about Mitch Oliver and the Albertus program. Which pretty much has been forgotten. Prior to Mitch arriving, albertus was the bottom feeders of the gnac. 2 win seasons and literally 7 men on the roster. Hell some of my baseball teammates got asked to play just to sit on the bench if someone were to foul out and get hurt, and we wouldn't be down to 4. The first gnac title under Mitch I was still a student, and man it seemed so surreal. He said he was going to do it and he did. Ppl don't like his antics on the sideline and that's fine, but you can't knock his accomplishments. I mean we went from a 2-24 team to a sweet 16 appearance as well as a few NCAA wins, and 8 gnac titles. What Mitch has done here is simply AMAZING

[AllStar]

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

I live in Middletown, DE - it's got to be almost exactly halfway between New Haven and Newport News.  Anyone coming down on Thursday, let me know, we can grab lunch or something.

[Falcons 25]

6- Hour drive....Thanks anyway! I`ll be watching on-line & hopefully enjoy another AMC miracle like
the William Patterson game.

[D3HoopJunkie]

I live in Middletown, DE - it's got to be almost exactly halfway between New Haven and Newport News.  Anyone coming down on Thursday, let me know, we can grab lunch or something.

Ryan, I wish it wasn't such a long drive! Unfortunately I wont be able to make the 8 and a half hour ride down to Newport News for this game. I was really looking forward to maybe playing in a closer draw geographically but yet again I got my hopes up! For the record I am not blaming the NCAA or anyone, just a blanket statement of disappointment. I have been following this tournament long enough now and fortunately my Falcons have made quite a few trips over the past 10 seasons thanks to Mitch Oliver so I understand how difficult it is to place these teams in such a way that geographically it makes sense.

This is certainly an interesting matchup for the Falcons! CNU is a fantastic team but I think we matchup with them a bit better than most people might think. Im not saying we are going to win the game, what I am saying is that I think we have just as good a chance as any to pull off the upset!

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

The men's committee has worked hard to actually get a lot of teams as close to that 500 as possible.  I know it makes travel tougher for fans, but it makes the tourney feel a little more national and gives the players new experiences.  We talked on Hoopsville last night about NJCU going to Marietta - a bunch of kids from Jersey headed to the middle of appalachia will be both an athletic and social experience.

[ronk]

 While it's an admirable objective, I consider it overrated and doubt anyone will achieve it in view of a focus on survive and advance and get back to campus after the weekend. Recommend that they can accomplish most of same objective with a trip limit of 250 miles(4-hr drive), at least for the schools from the Atlantic to Ohio and Massachusetts to Virginia, to the benefit of players, families, students, and fans.

[Pat Coleman]

While it's an admirable objective, I consider it overrated and doubt anyone will achieve it in view of a focus on survive and advance and get back to campus after the weekend. Recommend that they can accomplish most of same objective with a trip limit of 250 miles(4-hr drive), at least for the schools from the Atlantic to Ohio and Massachusetts to Virginia, to the benefit of players, families, students, and fans.

Ron,

We might as well go back to the 1990s then and not even try to have a real bracket. 

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

I'll just add: if you're coming from up north, you may want to spring for an extra night in the hotel and come Thursday.  We're (south jersey/delaware) supposed to get snow from 3am-9am Friday - and we don't have very many snowplows in this part of the country.  It won't be bad from a New England perspective, but the roads won't be clear and people around here don't know how to drive in it.

[Saint-Paul]

Hard to believe, but the Saints coach did not win COY.  Not sure what else he would have to do?  He took the exact same players who lost 22 games last year  and turned them around into 18 game winners and 4 points away from the GNAC first place finish.  He did this without a star player, no Saint made first team all GNAC which is correct, but that makes the team accomplishment even better. 
     It is not just about the number of wins, it is the way the Saints were winning games this year, by playing like a team, sharing the ball, taking only open shots, and playing a full forty minutes of defense.  That is the effect of good coaching on the same players who lost 22 games last season. Not sure what influenced the voting. Maybe the coaches who lost home games to the formerly lowly Saints were so embarrassed about the losses that they could not bring themselves to vote for the Saint's coach.  Sometimes it is hard to swallow a loss that you have already checked in the win column before the game is played.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

While it's an admirable objective, I consider it overrated and doubt anyone will achieve it in view of a focus on survive and advance and get back to campus after the weekend. Recommend that they can accomplish most of same objective with a trip limit of 250 miles(4-hr drive), at least for the schools from the Atlantic to Ohio and Massachusetts to Virginia, to the benefit of players, families, students, and fans.

Ron,

We might as well go back to the 1990s then and not even try to have a real bracket. 

This. This 100%!

[D3HoopJunkie]

Well Falcon fans, its the night before the big 1st round matchup and I cant help but continue to sit here and think that maybe, just maybe we have enough chips to pull this game out. CNU is loaded with talent and they are a well coached team, there is no denying that. But every time I stop and think about it I say to myself, "well shoot, we are too."

If you take where this Falcon team started at the beginning of the season to where they are now, the difference is quite remarkable. This might be Coach Oliver's best coaching season yet. It took a while, this teams depth is outstanding, he stuck to playing a lot of players (especially young freshman) and he has gotten tremendous production out of all of them include our key 3 returning players in Pittman, Perkins and Green-Younger not to mention the emergence of Damian Grant in the low post. He found the right mix and rotation of players and this Falcon team looks completley different than the team we all saw back in Nov/Dec.

Tomorrow matchup will be extremely tough but if we bring the same defensive intensity that we showed in the GNAC tourney to the NCAA tourney I think we stand a really good chance of pulling off the first round upset.

Lets Go Falcons....Make us all proud back here in New Haven. I know I speak for a lot of fans when we say we wish we could be there for you guys!

[D3HoopJunkie]

Hard to believe, but the Saints coach did not win COY.  Not sure what else he would have to do?  He took the exact same players who lost 22 games last year  and turned them around into 18 game winners and 4 points away from the GNAC first place finish.  He did this without a star player, no Saint made first team all GNAC which is correct, but that makes the team accomplishment even better. 
     It is not just about the number of wins, it is the way the Saints were winning games this year, by playing like a team, sharing the ball, taking only open shots, and playing a full forty minutes of defense.  That is the effect of good coaching on the same players who lost 22 games last season. Not sure what influenced the voting. Maybe the coaches who lost home games to the formerly lowly Saints were so embarrassed about the losses that they could not bring themselves to vote for the Saint's coach.  Sometimes it is hard to swallow a loss that you have already checked in the win column before the game is played.

Saint,

I was baffled by this decision as well at first but when you look at what Coach Juron accomplished this season at Suffolk I think it was an equally impressive job. Coach Lawson will no doubt have his day, it just wasnt cut out for him quite yet in his first season. Juron has turned the Suffolk program around too, not nearly as quickly as Lawson but I think the Coaches around the league gave Juron his due......I have no doubts that Lawson will be right at the front of the line for next season.

[Ferraro13]

Lol albertus has 9 fouls in first 5 mins of game. I mean do we play that much of a different game up here? Lol fn joke: 9 fouls to 2 lmao