WBB: Little East

[7express]

With the onset of the 2011-12 season just a week away, here are the LEC teams, and their games to watch this year, starting in the order I predicted from first to last:

Rhode Island college: This team has a very easy OOC schedule and should waltz through the LEC this year, so picking a game for them is challenging, however I'll go Wednesday, January 4 @ Stevens.  Stevens is a team who, ever since joing the E-8 (start of the 07-08 season) has been extremely competitive and one of the best teams in the E-8.
Southern Maine: Much like RIC they have a pretty easy schedule and aside from the RIC games should waltz through the conference.  IF this matchup happens (and 99% chance it does), the Babson @ Southern Maine game on New Years eve is the LEC OOC game of the year by far.  That's so big, if that ends up happening, I'll be making a second trip to Maine this year.  However, there's that slight 1% chance UW-Stout beats Babson and it doesn't happen, so you go with Tuesday, January 10 @ RIC.  First matchup this year of the titans, and 3 days before USM would have played Keene state the 3rd and final top 3 team.   That'll also end their 3 road games in first 4 conference games stretch.  USM wins that game, they definaitely have the advantage since USM would play RIC in Gorham in February.
Keene state: Tuesday, November 29 @ Amherst.  Their not expected to win, and probably won't, but Keene state has everyone back from last year's squad while Amherst will have to replace some key pieces.  I think they could keep it under 10.
Eastern Connecticut: Saturday, December 10 vs. RIC.  They open up the LEC season with 2 straight home games against USM and RIC.  They can put themselves in the race by winning those 2 games.
Mass-Boston: December 3 vs. Western Connecticut.  When you've only had 4 winning seasons in the last 28 years, it's imperative to get out to a strong start.  They get a depleted West Conn team that got bit by the transfer & graduation bug, so this is about as good of an opponent to get for Boston to get out to that important 1-0 conference start.
Western Connecticut: Tuesday, November 15 @ Oneonta state.  Your probably wondering why I'm listing our game to watch in our first game of the year replacing our 3 top scorers against a team returning it's top 3 scorers on the road no less.    This will be a good measuring stick game; stay competitive, we could get a few wins in conference, compete for that 3/4/5 spot, lose by 10+ and we could be looking at 10 wins or less a year after winning 24.
Mass-Dartmouth: Saturday, February 4 vs. Western Connecticut.  The main reason they snuck into the playoffs last year was because they went 2-0 against Boston.  Going 2-0 against West Conn this year could be the difference between playing in the tournament and not playing in it once again.
Plymouth state: Tuesday, February 2 vs. Johnson state.  Assuming they beat Lesley 2 days prior, winning this game would give them at least 2 wins after New Years; last year they won 1 game after New Years.

[7express]

Plymouth state preview:
http://www.d3hoops.com/seasons/women/2011-12/contrib/plymouth-state-preview

Apparantly Alica Ducet left (quit??) the program, so along with Amanda Kania (graduation) they lost their 2 best players off a team that lost 16 of their final 17 games including their final 13 LEC games.  Write down 1 conference win for my Plymouth prediction.  It will be a nice contest watching Plymouth state basketball this year: which one of their teams can finish with: A) more overall wins and B) more conference wins, because both the men and women shouldn't be winning a lot of games, and both should be losing a lot of LEC games.

[7express]

Little East poll is out, Rhode Island (as expected) is the runaway choice for first snagging all 8 first place votes.  I don't even think Western got all 8 first place votes last year:
http://littleeast.com/sports/wbkb/2011-12/releases/20111114-wbkb-preseason

I would've swapped Eastern & Keene and Boston & Western, but overall looks good.  Top 2 were the easiest to predict.

[7express]

Western roster is online; Got a transfer from Brandeis (Kayla Murkison) but who only played 6 game last year, and 2 CT high school players: Melissa DiNino from Holy Cross, and Amber Litwinko from St. Paul Catholic.  It's extremely possible the 4th best player on this year's edition is at the school mainly because of her softball skills.  That's about all I'll say for the expectations of this year's team.  If this team can somehow finish in the top 3, Rybczyk should be the runaway winner for coach of the year.

[7express]

Women's schedule and predictions for tomorrow:

Plymouth state 56 @ Emerson 76. Emerson is one of the top teams in the GNAC and Plymouth state lost it's 2 best players off a team that lost 16 of their final 17 games last year
Southern Maine 64 @ UNE 57. UNE is decent, but So Maine is better.
RPI 65 @ Keene state 70. Not sure how RPI is, but this is the first game of the new year for Keene state to wash away last year's disaster
Salve Regina 72 @ Mass-Dartmouth 56. Hopefully this is close, but I'm not expecting much from Dartmouth.
Western Connecticut 54 @ Oneonta state 69. Not sure what to expect from this game; Oneonta state's top 3 scorers return, our top 3 leave. Hopefully we can keep it close.

[7express]

3-2 on the women's side to open up; Southern Maine & Plymouth state were the losers.

Emerson 62-51 over Plymouth state.  PSU was 2-21 from behind the Arc, that's not going to get it done.
Southern Maine loses to UNE 65-63.  Courtney Cochran scored 24 points to lead the Huskies, nobody else in the starting 5 scored double digits
Keene state in overtime over Rennsalaer 71-65.  No boxscore for this one
Dartmouth over Salve 65-61.  Nice win over an NCAA tournament team from last year.  The Dartmouth bench combined to play 32 minutes but only recorded 2 points in those 32 minutes.
Western over Oneonta 60-58.  Another nice win.  A couple of problems though: 1) this team doesn't have a true point guard or a true #5.  Chelsea Mone started at the 5 and she took more shots from 3 (6) then from 2 (5).  Granted she hit 2 of those 6, and a couple rimmed in and out, so it'll give us more options to work with if our #5 can hit from outside.  Amber Litwinko had 12 points in her collegiate debut and should be in the starting lineup Friday against Rivier.  As she continues to get more expierence she'll be a great player, really shot the ball well.  We also went 11-26 from behind the arc, could be a live by the 3, die by the 3 kind of team this year.

Wednesday schedule:
Easternm Nazarene 59 @ UMass-Boston 62

[7express]

I'm really starting to like this West Conn team more and more.  After only scoring 60 their first game (and over half of those 60 [33] cam on 3's) they've scored 94 & 89 the last 2 nights.  Unlike last year where we had Karli Spera, Melissa Teel, and Heather Lee as our 3 and only scorers, we have more balanced scoring this year, and so far 3 different players have stepped us: Amber Litwinko had 12 points against Oneonta to lead us, yesterday against Rivier Amber yet us again with 21 and Caroline Brasa scored 12 off the bench, and today against Salem Jackie Zilnicki had 20 (14 in the first half, scored our first 6 points of the game), and Carly Murphy had 22 points to lead us when Amber had a "bad day" to her standards (5-9 only 10 points).  Sciarra Brandt and Nicole Eaniello still haven't gotten on track yet and Stephanie Slonski is still getting used to the PG role, but so far (granted it's only 3 games) I love the way this team is playing.  Everyone gets involved and contributes this year unlike last year where we stood around and waited for the 3 seniors to do something.

[7express]

West Conn improves to 4-0 as they demolish Emerson 82-53.  For the 3rd time this season Western has had a different leading scorer; tonight, it was Stephanie Slonski that lead the way with a game high 17 points; Carly Murphy (14) and Taylor Nkonoki (11) joined Steph in double figures.  We held Emerson to 12-49 from the floor (24.5%).  Granted, we haven't played anyone yet this year, but I thought we were going to struggle on offense and would need defensive turnovers and long rebounds to force fast break points.  So far this year we're doing better offensively than defensively.  So far this year we're avering 81.3 PPG (88.3 if you take out the Oneonta game), and giving up 63.8 PPG (but 65.7 if you take out the Oneonta game).  Not sure where those offensive numbers rank, but I think it's gotta be in the top 10 or 15, I just hope it can last the whole year.  Defense has to step up though, if we can keep the defensive PPG under 60 then we can do some things.

[7express]

I saw the Eastern Manhattanville game last night.  Pretty good game, but Eastern fell apart in the second half though.  Got some good young players on the program, so once they start to get game action, they could be adangerous squad to play come LEC play, but they have 2 huge conference games against USM this Saturday, and RIC the following Saturday.  Imo, both those teams are slightly above the rest of the competition in the LEC.

[7express]

West Conn with a big game tonight against the Conn College Camels.  Both teams come in undefeated (West Conn 4-0, Conn College 3-0), and in the meeting last year Western was down at halftime before they rallied for a 54-41 victory.  In Conn College's last game they started off the game trailing 15-0, but rallied to score 31 of the halves final 44 points and take a 3 point lead at halftime, and never trailed again after that against a good WPI team.  This is the Camels first home game as their first 3 were on the road, and this is Western's final game on a season opening 5 game trip before they return to the O'Neil Center for 3 of their next 4 games beginning with Trinity on Thursday.

This will be a nice offensive vs. defensive matchup: Western comes in averaging 81.3 PPG (88.3 if you take out the Oneonta game though), but the Camels only give up an average of 49.7 PPG: Western has given up an average of 63.8 PPG this year while the Camels have scored 69.3 PPG.  I'm gonna say this all year, but 60 is the magic number we should shoot for this year, if we can get to 60 chances are we'll win most of the games this year, but if we fail to score 60 it will be a lot more difficult.  This season has started better then I could have expected, but this looks like a tougher game I thought it would be when the schedule first came out, and would be another nice confidence booster with LEC play right around the corner.
My pick: Western 61-54.

[7express]

Western beats Conn College 83-69 to improve their record to 5-0 on the year.  5 scored in double figures leady by Stephanie Slonski's 18.  We have our home opener Thursday against Trinity, LEC opener Saturday @ Boston, before a big game looms next Tuesday against Mount St. Mary.  No reason we shouldn't be 7-0 heading into that game.

Southern Maine knocks off #10 Bowdoin tonight 63-49 while Amherst knocks off Keene 66-45 in other LEC vs. NESCAC games this evening.

[7express]

Boston creams Wheelock last night 73-19.  It was 37-10 at halftime and the Beacons held Wheelock to 8 field goals.  Wheelock only had 3 the entire second half and went from the 17:14 mark to the 1:56 mark without hitting one. 
Western beats Trinity 72-48.  Nicole Eaniello finally got on track; 8-9 from the floor, 3-4 from 3 for a game high 22 points, and Amber Litwinko chipped in 19 off the bench.  Really playing well as a whole unit, but come Saturday these games count.  West Conn (6-0) and Keene state (4-1) are leading the pack, everyone else has at least 2 losses.  For the Saturday schedule:

West Conn 75 @ Boston 45.  With the way were playing I can't see us losing this game.
Southern Maine 62 @ Eastern 60.  Going on the road is always tough, but USM is a better team, and I think they'll find a way.  They play @ Western next weekend, so they could be 0-2 in conference play going into the Christmas break; not a spot you want to be in, but you can easily bounce back from it.
RIC 78 @ Plymouth 48.  Plymouth gets hit with a buzzsaw.  They started 1-0 in conference last year and preceded to lose their final 13 conference games, can they reverse trend this year??
Dartmouth 56 @ Keene state 72.  Another team I can't see losing, especially at home.

[7express]

Even with the 72 points tonight we're still averaging 80 points per game first in the LEC, but giving up 62 per game which is 3rd worst in the conference, but our +18 differential is 3rd best.  Don't think our defense is that bad, but I doubt our offense is that good either.  I'd expect us to be around 65 PPG and 55 OPPG by seasons end. 
Of the conferences scoring leaders, even though West Conn is the only unbeaten, we only have 1 person in the top 10 in scoring (Amber Litwinko 9th at 13.4 ppg), so were getting everyone involved, which will be beneficial later on; USM (4-2) has 2, Dartmouth has 2, RIC has 2 (and neither of them are my preseason pick Stephanie Coro) and Eastern has 3 players in the top 10 in scoring.  Keene state (second in the conference at 4-1) has none in the top 10 in scoring

[AllStar17]

Saturday Results
Keene State (5-1, 1-0) 71, UMass-Dartmouth (4-3, 0-1) 62

Eastern Connecticut (3-2, 1-0) 75, Southern Maine (4-3, 0-1) 57

Rhode Island College (4-2, 1-0) 84, Plymouth State (1-6, 0-1) 55

Western Connecticut (7-0, 1-0) 69, UMass-Boston (2-4, 0-1) 54

I'd say the only surprise was the Eastern/USM game - not really because Eastern won - but because it was so handily.  Southern Maine looks somewhat inconsistent out of the gates: losing in OT at St. Joseph's, beating No. 10 Bowdoin by 14, and being blown out by the Warriors in three games.

[7express]

Western with a big week this week: Tuesday night is Mount St. Mary, Saturday is Southern Maine.
Mount St. Mary's has consistantly been one of the better defensive teams in division 3 women's hoops.  I think last year they gave up something like 47.9 or 49.1 oppg.  Will definitely be the best team we've faced so far in the early going, and will be a nice barometer game to see where we are (only Rivier and Conn College have winning records).
Southern Maine has been inconsistant this year.  I'm not that surprised they lost to Eastern (even though I did pick USM), but the way they did was shocking.  Also, that loss to St. Joes in overtime really stands out; I saw St. Joes against Tufts (at Regis) on Friday night and St. Joes looked absolutely awful.  However, USM realises they can't fall to 0-2 in the conference, and will probably play a lot better.
I'd take a split in a heartbeat (hopefully the loss is to MSM), 2-0 wouldn't be surprising and would prove were a team to look out for, 0-2 wouldn't be all that surprising either but would be a big blow.  Both these games are at home, and the last time this team lost at home (regular season or LEC play) was in February 2009 when Eastern beat us.  Stephanie Slonski (the lone senior who's played all 4 years [Jackie Zilnicki only joined us in 09-10 because of softball]) has only lost 2 games at home in her entire career.  Nobody else on the team (including Jackie) has ever expierenced a home defeat at the O'Neil Center, so that could be the biggest deciding factor this year.