NESCAC

[Mr.Right]

Just curious if you had to choose a winner in these "pretend" match ups who you would choose. Ill give you the home field

Coast Guard v Williams

Babson v Amherst

WPI v Tufts

Gordon v Midd

Nichols v Bowdoin

[Alo35]

@ECSUalum.... your team looks like it could be very, very dangerous in the next year or two. I was surprised to see how young that team is. One senior on the entire roster.... not sure I would want to play them in the next two years.

[backyarddawg]

All of this chatter is great but everything still goes through Amherst in the end.  Does anyone believe Tufts can win a back-to-back game in November?  Not proven yet but have the chance to do so this fall.

Brandeis is a great squad but last year played Williams when it mattered and fell short.

Coast Guard who?

Amherst has the proven track record and until someone dethrones them other then Williams we have to believe Amherst is still topdawg.

Should make for an interesting tournament.  Hopefully a few of the schools get shipped out of that region.  Bring them down to the Mid-Atlantic!

[Bucket]

1-0 Castleton beats Midd..That will significantly hurt MIDD. Coach John O'Conner(former U Chicago coah who left for URI and then promptly got fired from URI for turning that program into a hot mess) gets a great win against a Midd team who beat them 9-1 last year. It meant a lot to Castleton to win that game.

We know Nescac teams do not get up for these mid week non-conference games but Midd most likely took them lightly and were not ready to play tonight or thought they could just show up and win.

I didn't know OC was the Castleton coach. Great guy. Former Dartmouth assistant way back when.

Can't speak to the psyche of the Midd team; perhaps you're right. But soccer, as we know, is a funny game. Panthers outshoot Spartans 15-5, have a 7-1 advantage on corners, lose 1-0. It happens.

[Mr.Right]

Yes...In the late 1980's and early 1990's O'Conner and Ferrigno(former Tufts head coach) were Bobby Clarke's assistant's at Dartmouth. Clarke helped Ferrigno get Tufts in 1991 and O'Conner get U Chicago in 1994. When Clarke left Dartmouth for the New Zealand national team in 1994 Fran O'Leary, fresh off taking Kenyon to the 1993 NCAA final 4 got the Dartmouth job. Russo, fresh off hosting and taking Williams to the 1993 NCAA final and losing to a powerhouse UC SanDiego turned down the job because they were not paying as much $$ at the time. This led to 2 questionable decisions most likely based on ego. O'Leary left Dartmouth in 2001 for George Mason and O'Conner left Chicago for URI in 2005. O'Leary bailed George Mason in 2005 for Bowdoin and O'Conner took a decent URI program that played with flair and used to recruit a lot of Jamaicans to an absolute mess in just 5 years. He got fired by a new AD that was hired. Both men left jobs with very good security for D1 and a supposedly higher level D1. Both failed. Ironically, O'Leary repeated the mistake 2 years ago when he left a extremely secure Bowdoin job for Toronto FC, where he got fired.

[ECSUalum]

@ECSUalum.... your team looks like it could be very, very dangerous in the next year or two. I was surprised to see how young that team is. One senior on the entire roster.... not sure I would want to play them in the next two years.

Alo35,
Thanks, I hope so, the loan Senior is Jon Decasanova, who returned from Cancer therapy this year and still regaining his fitness.  The freshmen/sophomores are good players and will get better with experience/playing time which they are getting a lot of this year.  We have an excellent So GK and a real good D now, just need to get some scoring punch.  Hoping 2015 or 16 season will take this team to a level equivalent to Amherst/other top NESCAC teams.
I also thought Eastern would lose 1-0 last night, but their tough D prevailed vs a talented USCGA team.

[All NESCAC]

All of this chatter is great but everything still goes through Amherst in the end.  Does anyone believe Tufts can win a back-to-back game in November?  Not proven yet but have the chance to do so this fall.

Brandeis is a great squad but last year played Williams when it mattered and fell short.

Coast Guard who?

Amherst has the proven track record and until someone dethrones them other then Williams we have to believe Amherst is still topdawg.

Should make for an interesting tournament.  Hopefully a few of the schools get shipped out of that region.  Bring them down to the Mid-Atlantic!

Backyarddog There's gotta be a first time and I think this year Brandeis makes a deep run.  Really like coaches Coven and Margolis and they have some serious talent at Brandeis.  Tufts why not?  They keep getting results and while I was  not impressed with their defense (outside backs are so so) they continue to stay at the top of NESCAC.  Amherst is a good team, but not a great team and their biggest advantage is their keeper Bull he is a  big time game changer.  This is not the Amherst team of 2012 (that was a special team).  Brandeis makes the deepest run this year.

[Off Pitch]

All of this chatter is great but everything still goes through Amherst in the end.  Does anyone believe Tufts can win a back-to-back game in November?  Not proven yet but have the chance to do so this fall.

Amherst has the proven track record and until someone dethrones them other then Williams we have to believe Amherst is still topdawg.

Accepting your assertion that Amherst is top dog, I looked into the other NCAA hopefuls in the conference (Tufts, Wesleyan, Middlebury and Williams) and specifically at their out of conference results.  Removing the 3 wins against the teams with losing records to focus in on half way decent competition, these four teams have surprisingly won only 40% their games (6 of 15) against the remaining non-NESCAC teams.  This is certainly not typical of NESCAC's usual domination of New England, and it may well impact objective rankings.

Since, by default, NESCAC teams win or tie half their games against NESCAC teams, this sample size of 18 games would seem to indicate that either the conference is down this year, or the parity is an indicator that other teams in the region are closing the gap that once existed between them and NESCAC teams.

[Off Pitch]

Or to look at it another way, Tufts, Williams, Wesleyan and Middlebury collectively have a better winning % within the conference than the do outside of the conference.

[Brother Flounder]

Tufts already up on Plymouth State 3-0 at the 12 minute mark.........

[Christan Shirk]

NCAA REGION RANKINGS - OCTOBER 22

NEW ENGLAND REGION (Data Sheet)

Rank	School	Division III Record	Overall Record
1	Brandeis	14-1-0	14-1-0
2	Coast Guard	13-1-0	13-1-0
3	Tufts	8-1-3	8-1-3
4	Amherst	10-1-2	10-1-2
5	Wheaton (Mass.)	14-2-1	14-2-1
6	Babson	11-4-0	11-4-0
7	Wesleyan	7-3-2	7-3-2
8	Gordon	12-3-0	12-3-0
9	Middlebury	7-2-3	7-2-3
10	Williams	7-5-1	7-5-1
11	WPI	11-3-0	11-3-0

[Brother Flounder]

Tufts already up on Plymouth State 3-0 at the 12 minute mark.........

3-0 AT HALF.  Just looked at live stats. Goals by Santos (2) and Hoppenot.  Looks like they rested Greenwood and Kayne for this non-conference match.

[Off Pitch]

Trinity at Wesleyan apparently called because of rain.  Guess they didn't want to destroy Jackson Field like they did in the 2009 NCAA mud bowl.

[FourMoreYears]

Trinity at Wesleyan apparently called because of rain.  Guess they didn't want to destroy Jackson Field like they did in the 2009 NCAA mud bowl.

Delayed 30 minutes due to lightening in the area.
Playing on the turf field so no mud to be found.

[Off Pitch]

WesCast says cancelled.  Why didn't they play on the turf field in the 2009 tournament games?