MBB: University Athletic Association

[magicman]

Clarkson hits a 3 pointer with 6 seconds left to tie Rochester and send the game into OT.

[y_jack_lok]

Bears take on Webster next. Should be a good warmup before conference play starts. Webster is 4-6 and doesn't look like they're scoring too many points (58.5 ppg).

Actually, Webster was 5-6 going into today's game, having won at Spalding on Saturday. And yes, they have not been putting up a lot of points, although they scored 71 in the Spalding game. But they must be doing something right on defense, holding Wash U to 69 today, and all opponents to an average of 62.6 over 12 games.

I think Wash U must miss Zach Kelly more than people realize.

[magicman]

Rochester loses in overtime to visiting Clarkson College 66-63.

[WUPHF]

The story of the night from the Washington University Field House was the half beards and goatees. 

Otherwise, the Bears started strong and held a comfortable double digit lead for most of the game.  Webster played a good game, but lacked the fire power to make it a game.

I thought the officiating was possibly the worst I have seen at home all season.  Not horrible, but not great either.  I do not expect everyone to agree with me on this issue, but I thought that the Gorlocks got the better of the calls, particularly in the second half.

I think everybody probably understands how important Zach Kelly is to the team.  Kelly did warm-up with the team, so maybe he will return sooner rather than later.

Next up: the University of Chicago Maroons on Saturday afternoon.

[deiscanton]

I went over to Milton, MA (the next town over from where I live) to see Brandeis take on Curry today.

Some notes:

Brandeis added another player to the roster over the semester break.  His name is Wouter van der Eng (#2) from the Netherlands-- played high school ball at Kimball Union (NH)

Wouter van der Eng  transferred to Brandeis from Colby-Sawyer, where he played 39 minutes of action in Colby-Sawyer's first 6 games-- career high is 4 pts vs Rivier-- scored 12 points for the Chargers in the first semester.

He is good friends with Vytas Kriskus from the days of high school ball.

Expect van der Eng to be primarily used in practice with limited action in games while his game develops-- he got 2 minutes of action against Curry today.

As for the game itself:

A big performance from Vytas Kriskus today (26 pts)

Terrell Hollins had a double-double as well.

Curry made things interesting late in the game, but Brandeis held on for the win.

(Additional note:  Curry no longer plays their home games in the small Miller Gym.  A new student center opened up on their campus over the fall, and inside the building is their new home basketball court, which seats 1000.  It has not been dedicated yet, and is being called New Student Center Gymnasium for the time being.)

[WUPHF]

Thanks for the update on the Brandeis game.

I hate to hear about the Rochester loss at home tonight.  It was a mixed holiday weekend in the UAA with the University of Chicago losing to the Milwaukee School of Engineering (64-62), and Carnegie Mellon losing to Widener (67-60) and Alvernia (72-62).

Case Western Reserve did take out Oberlin (55-52) and Emory beat Drew (88-54) but lost to Washington and Lee (76-65).  New York University beat both Wentworth and Lebanon Valley.

The University of Chicago may be one of the more interesting stories in the UAA this season with four straight wins to start the season, a good win over Illinois Weslyan, and now four straight losses.  I have not closely followed the Maroons this year.

Does someone have an explanation?

[Gregory Sager]

Brandeis added another player to the roster over the semester break.  His name is Wouter van der Eng (#2) from the Netherlands-- played high school ball at Kimball Union (NH)

Good ol' Wally From-The-Narrows.

[Wydown Blvd.]

The story of the night from the Washington University Field House was the half beards and goatees. 

Otherwise, the Bears started strong and held a comfortable double digit lead for most of the game.  Webster played a good game, but lacked the fire power to make it a game.

I thought the officiating was possibly the worst I have seen at home all season.  Not horrible, but not great either.  I do not expect everyone to agree with me on this issue, but I thought that the Gorlocks got the better of the calls, particularly in the second half.

I think everybody probably understands how important Zach Kelly is to the team.  Kelly did warm-up with the team, so maybe he will return sooner rather than later.

Next up: the University of Chicago Maroons on Saturday afternoon.

Wow... worst officiating I have seen at the Fieldhouse in a long time. It was not who the calls were for or against, but it was the inconsistency that bothered me. Sometimes calling handchecks, but then not calling obvious blocking calls. WashU benefited from those moving screen calls (even when Cam Smith had a handful of jersey  ), but then the refs completely ignored when Wallis drew contact or AT was hacked on one of his three point attempts in the second half. The commentator was pretty funny about it all.

I dont know if the Bears really miss ZK this game (not saying he isnt a big part of their team this season). Toth and Gay did a great job controlling the paint defensively, and ZK doesn't contribute too much more offensively... If anything, this game Wallis was looking for calls off of pump fakes and step back moves that the refs werent giving and therefore his shots looked ill-advised. Webster hit a lot of contested shots in the first half to keep them in the game and to come back after WashU had the hot start. The big dog (AT) never really got it going and there werent too many fast break opportunities for easy buckets. Just wasnt the fluid WashU offense I was expecting.

WashU was a little banged up from what I hear though. AT wasnt 100% (cold symptoms or something?) and Kelly obviously not playing. I had given such a big hoot and holler on the Top 25 board that I was a little disappointed in the performance, but sometimes its hard to riled up for SLIAC games. Saturday afternoon I expect WashU to be ready.

[hopefan]

Talked briefly to assistant - Zach may get a couple minutes this weekend only if cleared by medical - My thought is he will be brought back slowly over the next two weeks. 

As solid as Toth is, the offense does seem to run a little smoother with Zach in  -  like the four years of timing makes the screens, the movement away from the ball etc a little more in synch with the starters.  In reality, the last several games I've seen, Wash U is not getting as much out of their offense as usual - fewer back door layups, fewer open looks for Thompson and Knepper, more forced one on one stuff as the clock winds down by Wallis....  of course, maybe teams just come in more pumped up and with a little more knowledge of what the Bears run....  I thought Webster played outstanding defense yesterday...  WUH's description of the flow of the game didn't give Webster enough credit...  that comfortable lead never exceeded 13 in the second half and closed to 8 a couple times... Webster played them tough, and Wash U had to play the 'great 8' the whole game.   Two telling features in the game.... the fast early start by the Bears, and ... get this.... Wash U outscores Webster 16-4 from the foul line - field goals were even despite Webster having a horrible 1st half shooting....   

And by the way, as soon as you saw who was officiating, you knew it was going to be awful  -  those 3, well......   I preach not worrying about the refs.....   two off the ball screens on offense foul calls in the midst of Webster's run just killed them.......

[Titan Q]

This article mentions that Tim Cooney (6-3 Guard, St. Louis U High) is heading to Wash U...

http://stlhighschoolsports.com/uncategorized/athletes-of-the-week-2/

I saw Cooney play earlier this year.  He is a 6-3 "combo guard"- can play both the 1 and the 2, although I'm not sure he is outstanding at either.  Solid in both roles, but not great.  I don't see Cooney being an All-UAA player at Wash U, but I think he'll be a good player.

Again, I've only seen him once, so take it for what it's worth.

[deiscanton]

Thanks, NYU, for videocasting today's game between Brandeis and NYU at Coles Center.  For the second year in a row, my financial situation is preventing me from making the trip to New York in person (I can't afford two nights in a hotel in New Jersey, and it is very expensive having to use Amtrak to do a same day trip just to attend the game.   What about the cheaper buses from Boston, you ask?  They wouldn't arrive back in Boston until after the last commuter rail train left Boston for Canton, MA for the night-- Last train leaves South Station at 11:10 PM, and Brandeis won't leave NYU until 7:30 PM tonight at the earliest.)

Go Judges!!!  (Both women and men, BTW!!!)

Clarification:  http://www.gonyuathletics.com has all the details on the video webcast.  This will be the first time ever that an NYU home basketball game will be video streamed.  NYU plans to video stream all of their home UAA games this season.

Update-- WBRS listed on their website that they have made the trip down.

Links to both the WBRS and WNYU audio feeds have already been posted on D3Hoops.com

[deiscanton]

Now that the doubleheader is over-- I did appreciate all the comments from the faithful on the WBRS audiocast mentioning how much they miss my not being there today at NYU-- but I have to be careful about my finances.  I did miss seeing all of the Brandeis alumni and former Brandeis basketball players who attended today.  I could not be there in person, but thanks to NYU deciding to make this game their first video cast, I felt like I virtually attended the game today, even if I could not be there at Coles personally.

Not a great shooting game for Brandeis today, unfortunately.  However, I think we all knew that the #8 ranking was too high given Brandeis's non-conference play to start with, and as Brandeis coach Brian Meehan always says:  "I don't pay too much attention to the rankings.  Rankings by themselves don't win you ball games."

NYU gets their first victory over the Brandeis men since January of 2006-- Brandeis had won the previous seven matchups over NYU before today. 

PS-- the next goal for a New York trip now will be for Brandeis  to sweep the doubleheader with the Violets down there.    Hopefully within the next ten years, that can be done-- although with next year's trip falling on NYU's Senior Day, the goal will be difficult in the short term.

[WUPHF]

I am going to ignore the non-conference records for a minute and suggest that the University of Chicago Maroons are the best team that Washington University has played all year.  Chicago is a good team.  Very physical and very athletic.  The Bears walked away with a 64-60 win, but this game was an in-and-out three point shot away from overtime.

This was a great team effort by the Bears.  Great play by Cameron Smith and Aaron Thompson.  Zach Kelly returned to the line up tonight and played a tough 16 minutes against the Chicago big guys.  And, Caleb Knepper scored 11 points on 4-7 shooting including a few big shots when the Bears needed the momentum.

Of course, the key to this game was, not surprisingly, Sean Wallis.  This was a game that the Wallis family will remember for a long time.  Words cannot adequately describe the game he played tonight.  Brilliant is the best that I have at the moment!  His 24 points, on 9-15 shooting, gave him 1,000 (and then some) for his career.

______________________

Finally, I know for a fact that nobody wants to hear about the officiating again, but this was the second poorly officiated game in a row.  I would submit as evidence the Jake Pancratz charge on Wallis, who was clearly moving when he was hit and the Toth charge on the Maroon that took the charge.  In addition, the Michael Sustarsic hand checks on Wallis.  It took three to the head to finally garner the call.

______________________

Officiating aside, the Bears move to 10-1 with the next set of UAA teams coming in next weekend.  Also, congratulations to Women's Basketball team for the 63-34 annihilation of the No. 21 University of Chicago Maroons.  Good work.

[Hugenerd]

Not too surprised with either result today.  I was expecting Chicago to play WashU tough because the teams know each other well and always play eachother close.

NYU was not surprising at all either.  NYU has size and some depth, both of which Brandeis lacks.  Couple that with bad games from Kenny Small and Andre Roberson (combined 3-25 from the field) and Brandeis was lucky to keep it this close.  What kept it somewhat close for Brandeis was the 21 turnovers for NYU, compared to only 9 turnovers for Brandeis (Brandeis was +24 on FGAs), and 10 missed FTs by NYU, but NYU dominated every other facet of the game.

[dblock]

Not too surprised with either result today.  I was expecting Chicago to play WashU tough because the teams know each other well and always play eachother close.

NYU was not surprising at all either.  NYU has size and some depth, both of which Brandeis lacks.  Couple that with bad games from Kenny Small and Andre Roberson (combined 3-25 from the field) and Brandeis was lucky to keep it this close.  What kept it somewhat close for Brandeis was the 21 turnovers for NYU, compared to only 9 turnovers for Brandeis (Brandeis was +24 on FGAs), and 10 missed FTs by NYU, but NYU dominated every other facet of the game.

Great defense and sticktoitiveness on the offensive half of the court by NYU. If NYU corrals turnovers and continues to get more 'crispy' on offense, they will turn some heads this year. I think the biggest key for them is WANTING it more than the team that they're playing.