WBB: Little East

[7express]

Plymouth state was a 54-50 loser to Johnson & Wales.  They started the game off trailing 16-0 and 20-3 before they rallied to score 14 of the halves final 27 points to cut it to 33-17 at the break.  A Colleen O'Hara layup with 17 seconds to play made it 53-50, but 1 of 2 J&W free throws sealed the game and the final margin.  Kellie Walsh lead the Panthers with 17, no one else had more than 8.
RIC 62-44 over York.
Cynthia Gaudet lead them with 18, Stephanie Coro had 11 on 4-11 shooting, the other 3 in the starting lineup (Nicole Girard, Courtney Burns & Rachel Riley) combined for only 11.  All 15 players on the RIC roster saw action for at least 4 minutes.
Western 64-44 over CCNY.
That means Western won 2 of the 3 categories I was keeping track of in the RIC/WCSU challenge: Western scored more points (64 to 62) each team gave up 44, and Western had the higher victory margin (18 to 20).  No boxscore of this game, but the shooting for both teams was poor.  Carly Murphy lead all scorers with 15, Melissa DiNino had 10 off the bench, by far her best performance of her college career, Steph Slonski had 8 points, 8 rebounds, 8 assists, and 3 steals a very good performance from our senior leader and team captain.
No score from the Merchant Marine/Boston game, and I've checked both school's athletic website and the Little East website, so not sure what happened there.

Conference off with LEC play resuming Saturday, and here's the schedule:
Keene @ Southern Maine
Boston @ RIC
Dartmouth @ Western
Eastern @ Plymouth.  I'll have predictions for all 4 games tomorrow.

[7express]

Saturday predictions:

Keene 67 @ USM 78
Tough schedule for USM; they play @ RIC on Tuesday.  The key to beating USM is to take Cochran out of the game, Keene state is undersized, and doesn't match up well.  If they can't hit perimeter shots they could end up losing by close to 30.
Boston 46 @ RIC 78.  If Steph Coro can find her jump shot, this team becomes even more dangerous then they are because you add in another shooter in that prolific offense.  No disrespect to Boston, but this game will be over at halftime.
Dartmouth 62 @ Western 65
This probably ends up being the best game of the day.  I'd say Dartmouth has more consistant scorers then West Conn does (Stephanie Houtman, Colleen O'Hara, and Colleen Moriarty).  Steph Slonski is the only person on the Colonial team you know is going to have a consistant game shooting the ball.  Carly Murphy is good from the outside, but if she steps inside she normally gets called for travelling, Nicole Eaniellio is MIA this year, someone should go send out a missing persons report to go find her, Amber Litwinko, Sciarra Brandt, and Jackie Zilnicki are like boxes of chocolates, you just don't know what you're going to get with them this year.  Some games (like early in the season against Conn College & Trinity) like they could be like chocolate and almonds where you can eat the whole box, other times (Skidmore, Mount St. Mary) their all chocolate and caramel where you have to throw the entire box away because you can't eat anything.  This team has been awful from outside the last couple games, and as I said all year this will be a live by the 3, die by the 3 kind of team, but we've won our last couple completely dead from outside.  Even though I wouldn't be surprised at all if we did lose, I can't see this happening at home, we have GOT to take advantage of the home court; good teams split on the road, sweep at home., we've already lost once at home, and still have the top 3 to play on the road this year.  Lose this game and we can all but forget about a top 2 seed this year.
Eastern 57 @ Plymouth 52.
Plymouth has lost 6 of 7, Eastern has lost 5 straight and half of their team.  This and Boston at home are probably PSU's 2 best chances for a conference win, I can't see them winning any games on the road.

[7express]

Sat results:

USM 65-58 over Keene. 
Courtney Cirillio lead the Owls with 17; Courtney Cochran and Haley Jordan combined for 33 points and 17 rebounds to lead the Huskies.  Once again, noone could shut down the front court.  IMO, if USM can somehow win @ RIC Tuesday night (I don't think they will though), they ain't losing again the rest of the season.  They'd get RIC at home in February, where their much better than on the road, and Eastern was the only team in the conference who actually matched up well with them; with their suspensions and deplated roster, they join the rest of the conference (sans RIC) who's mismatched against them.
Eastern pounds Plymouth 73-58.
Nice bounceback for the Warriors.  Shannon McCourt (28) and Kristina Forsman (20) lead the Warriors; Colleen O'Hara lead the Panthers with 13 who shot 2-20 from 3 and only 18-71 from the floor overall.
RIC all over Boston 60-37.  Boston connected on 3 of their first 4 field goal attempts; they hit only 8 of their next 57.   The Beacons went from the 5:00 mark of the first half to the 8:40 mark of the second half making only 1 field goal in that stretch.
Western survives Dartmouth 61-54.  It's amazing how we could've started off playing so well, and now we're playing so bad.  Shouldn't it be reversed??  Aren't you supposed to struggle early on, and get better as the season progresses??  We're getting worse as it progresses.  Should be very fortunate we won as Dartmouth started the second half shooting 4-20; if they start only shooting 7-20, Dartmouth more than likely wins the game.   And it's not like those 16 misses were contested jumpers, they were missing easy one's 5 feet from the basket.  Dartmouth got it to 57-54, but a Jackie Zilnicki layup with 29 seconds to play put the game out of reach, and the final 2 points for the final margin occured on the line.  Free throw shooting for the Colonials was absolutely atrocious 12-29; if you take out Taylor Nkonoki's 5-5, the rest of the team was 7-24 from the Charity stripe.   This will only add to our league worst free throw shooting, really have to improve from the line, teams should start using the hack-a-colonial approach until we prove we can shoot it consistantly from the line.  Why give up an easy layup for 2 points, if the Colonials have proven they can miss 2 free throws??  I'd like to know how the team is so good at shooting 3's yet so bad at shooting free throws??  Is it possible to petition the NCAA and LEC to shoot our free throws from behind the arc for the rest of the season??

With conference games Tuesday, there will be no more Sunday or Monday games until November of 2012, next year.  I'll have Tuesday predictions either Tuesday morning before I leave for Keene or Monday night.
Western @ Keene
Plymouth @ Boston
Eastern @ Dartmouth
USM @ RIC the conference game of the year and very well could decide whether the conf goes through Providence or Gorham, Maine.  If you want to know why, wait until I make my predictions, or ask on here and I'll respond whenever I see the question posted.

[7express]

Tuesday predictions (also starting now I'll list the Massey predictions after mine:

Plymouth 52 @ Boston 58 (massey lists this as a 59-56 Boston win, 59% chance)
Both teams are 0-3 (when you combine the 2 men's squad at also 0-3, the 4 teams at Boston tomorrow combine for a 0-12 conference record).  Neither of them has looked any good this year, but I'll take the Beacons because their at home.

Eastern 62 @ Dartmouth 66 (massey lists it at 66-59 Eastern 69% chance).
Tough game to gauge.  IMO, Dartmouth= last season's Boston.  Get fat eating cupcakes in the OOC portion of the schedule, and then get pounded once they get into conference play.  Boston started 11-2 in the OOC portion of their cupcake non LEC schedule, and finished 2-9 once they had to play LEC teams.  Dartmouth is 8-4 currently and only has 1 or 2 more non LEC games this year.  If they could've shot the ball better to start the second half Saturday, no doubt they would've beaten Western, but they didn't, and therefore, they got hit with the loss.  If Piper, Blodgett, and Lauren Kelleher were still with this Warriors team, I would pick them here by double digits easily, but I'm still not sure how good/bad this team is, so I'll pick Dartmouth in a close one at home.  Truley a coin flip in my opinion.

Western 62 @ Keene 66 (Massey lists 65-61 Western 63% chance).
This team really has not looked good lately.  The Owls had a good showing at USM after I though they would get blown out.  IF (and that's a big if) we can hold Courtney Cirillio to 15 points or fewer, we've got a great chance, if we let her go off like Courtney Cochran did to us, we'll get blown out.  However, this is a very tough and long trip (leave in the morning, get back to school about 1:00 am), and with the way we've been playing, I just can't see it happening.  Hopefully, we can get an split because imo, I can't see the men and women winning both games up here.

USM 62 @ RIC 76 (Massey has it 69-62 RIC 74%).
One of the few games RIC has a chance at losing the rest of the way (really think this @ USM, @ Keene @ Western are the only 4 games their in trouble the rest of the year).  Reason why I'm nominating it as conference game of the year??  If RIC wins, they'll be basically 3 up on their toughest competition (USM) with only 3 losable games the rest of the season.  Win this game, and just win 1 of those other 3, and their the regular season champs.  However, if USM wins, they'll be in the drivers seat.  They'll be tied with RIC, own the tiebreaker (at least for now), like RIC have a favorable schedule (only games I see an L for them is @ Keene & home vs. RIC).  They'll also have a backloaded home schedule the second half and get pretty much all their toughest opponents at home (Western, Eastern & RIC all go to Gorham in late January/ early February).  They also very rarely lose LEC games at home, and I can't see RIC beating them in Gorham in February when they couldn't beat them at home.    If USM was able to beat last year's Western team by 17 points at home, they'll beat this year's RIC team.  As much as I want to see RIC win, they win this, and they can start looking in the rear view mirror at the rest of the confernce.

[7express]

Tuesday recap:
Boston gets first conference win over Plymouth 63-42.
Colleen O'Hara lead the Panthers with 17.  Plymouth shot 5-33 in the second half.

Dartmouth 79-61 over Eastern.
This season will really help the youngsters for Eastern going forward.  Shannon McCourt, only a freshmen and almost never played because she was blocked by Piper Chapman and Lauren Kelleher is turning into their best player lead the team with 22 points and 11 rebounds on 10-20 shooting.  Colleen Moriarty and Erica Bornemann lead Dartmouth with 14 each

RIC runs past USM 74-50.
As usual, you shut down Cochran, and you more then likely win because their guards don't shoot the ball for whatever reason.  Rachel Riley completely dominated Cochran in the post, made her a non factor pretty much (9 points 6 boards 3-10 from the floor), and made someone else beat them which they aren't able to do because it's Cochran or bust for that team.  Really, how do Erin McNamera and Renee Nichols combine for only 2 points on 7 shot attempts??  Also, as usual, USM needs a bench as well.  in 63 minutes, the bench combined for 16 points 6 rebounds and only 15 shot attempts (making 4).  Luckily for them RIC is the only team in the conference that has height, and they have a great home court advantage because this is a 1 dimensional 1 person team this year.  Also, they better hope either Keene or Western can find a way to beat this RIC squad twice because USM is gonna get killed by them if they have to play in Providence again for the tournament. Rachel Riley had 12 and 14 for RIC, Cynthia Gaudet lead them again with 18, what a find she's been for them.

Keene over Western 69-60.
Western shot 24 shots inside the arc and a whopping 39 from.  Even though we made 14 of those shots and had 42 of our 60 points from outside the arc, their can't be that big of a discrepensy, we gotta attack the basket.  A Chelsea Mone 3 made the score 21-12 Western at the 8:52 mark.  11 missed shots later, and a 17-0 run between the 1st and second half made the score 29-21 Keene before Carly Murphy put us back on the board with a 3 at the 19:20 mark.  Second half was back and forth for the majority of the half before Keene pulled away at the end.

Non LEC action Thursday:
Keene state @ Worcester 12:00 noon.  Worcester is doing some Math Madness event whatever the hell that is, but noon starts during the week really screw everything up, especially when you've just played2 nights prior and have to play again 2 days later.  I'll take it though because I'm probably gonna head up there before going down to Eastern
RIC @ Trinity 7:00, Maine-Presque Isle @ Eastern, Boston @ Bridgewater both at 7:30 round out the Thursday slate.  I'll have predictions for those games tomorrow.

[ECSUalum]

Just visited D-II U of Bridgeport's womens BB site and noticed ECSU transfer Tanisha Carter not only leading the 4-10 Purple Knights in scoring (18.4ppg) and rebounds, (9 pg), but is #1 in points per game and #4 in rebounding in the whole East Coast Conference!!!!!.  How did ECSU let her get away???    Anyone know?  Some blogs refer to her even D-1 material!!!

[7express]

When I saw UB earlier in the year (I only live like 20 mins away from there) I was absolutely shocked to see her name on the roster.  Granted, you can't see suspensions happening, but in light of that Carter would've been an incredibly nice addition to have back this year.  I think she should've been playing D-2 ball in the first place (same with DaQuan Brooks for the West Conn men I think he would hold his own in some low level D-1 conferences and would've played D-2).  When you have someone like that, you gotta keep them around.

[7express]

Keene state 63 @ Worcester 49.
Both teams played Tuesday night, and both teams play again Saturday afternoon.  On a noon start in the middle of a week in between conference games, the home team gets the edge because as I said last night noon starts (and any afternoon start before 4:00 PM), really screws up teams.  At least the home team has the advantage where they don't have to get on a bus at 8:30 AM and travel to the game.  All season Worcester has altered what they did: the started off with a loss, than they won their next game.  They followed that up losing 3 straight before winning 3 straight.  They followed that losing 2 straight in Hawaii, before coming back to the US and winning 2 straight.  Their current streak is at L1, so if we go by this logic, their due for a loss.  Worcester is 0-1 against the LEC so far losing to Dartmouth in November, and have a matchup against RIC in February; The Owls are 1-0 against the MASCAC beating Westfield state earlier and are done with the conference after this matchup.

RIC 73 @ Trinity (CT) 60.
The dreaded sandwich game.  Have a big victory against USM Tuesday, have a big road test @ Keene Saturday, and in between the 2 play a not-so-good Trinity team.  Those sandwich games are the one's you have to worry about, especially when they come on the road.  I think they take control in the second half after a sluggish first 20 minutes.

Boston 56 @ Bridgewater 73.
Bridgewater upset MCLA in the MASCAC tournament to win their conference last season.  They have a record of 7-5, but started the year 5-2, and have really feasted on sub .500 teams; 56 point win over Thomas (2-10), 29 point win over Trinity (5-6), and a 25 point win over Middlebury (3-8).  Last Saturday, they handed Fitchburg state their first loss of the season, who was in the ORV category of the women's top 25 poll.  Boston has won 2 of 3 after starting the season losing 8 of their first 10.

Presque Isle 54 @ Eastern Connecticut 82.
Presque Isle have already played SUNY-Canton (NAIA team), and Williams (tonight) on this trip through the East.  Presque Isle is 4-7 overall, but 3-2 against NAIA opponents while only 1-5 against D-3 opponents.  The Owls lone matchup against an LEC team this year wasn an 85-44 thrashing at the hands of Southern Maine.  A nice confidence builder for this Warriors team who have lost 5 of 6, with the majority of those losses implementing an entire new team.

Massey ratings:
Keene 61-49 (89%)
RIC 68-55 (89%)
Bridgewater 77-55 (98%)
Eastern 80-38 (100%)

[7express]

Worcester leads 26-17 at halftime over the Owls.  Keene has shot just 3-22 in the half, and started off just 1-16, so at least they ended the half making 2 of their final 6, about the only thing that has gone right for them.  Worcester's lead by as many as 14.
Keene state forced overtime tied at 49 all.  Sara Laudano missed what would have been the game winner with 2 seconds left after Worcester state turned it over with a chance to win.  Keene ended regulation on a 22-14 run to erase an 8 point deficit.
Final: Worcester wins 58-52.  Courtney Cirillio lead all scorers with 23.  Owls scored only 3 points and had no field goals made in the overtime session.  When you combine the first half and the overtime period, Keene state shot 3-31, a measley 9.7% in 25 minutes.  Not gonna win you many games.

[AllStar]

Hopefully for KSC's sake, it was the "sandwich" game you like to talk about.  Coming off a big win and with a big game coming up.  Worcester State is just 7-7...and is not very good in all honesty.

[7express]

RIC leads 34-26 at halftime, Gaudet with 10 points, Rachel Riley with 8 and 5 so far.  Anchorwomen shooting 48% from the floor.
Bridgewater 23-16 11:08 left, not sure of the Eastern score.
RIC 57-48 over Trinity.  Cynthia Gaudet lead them with 17, Rachel Riley had 13 and 12
Bridgewater 68-58 over Boston.  Lauren Perra lead the Beacons with 22; Jenna Williamson lead Bridgewater with a game high 26
Eastern 63-45 over Presque Isle.  Shannon McCourt had a game high 19 points; the teams combined for 3-20 shooting from 3.  Watching this game on LEC TV for the first half, Presque Isle brought down 0 assistants, so it was just the coach on the bench for the Owls.  What would have happened to them if the coach had picked up 2 technical's??

Saturday schedule:
Western @ Plymouth
Boston @ Eastern
RIC @ Keene
Dartmouth @ USM.  I'll have predictions tomorrow.

[7express]

Sat predictions:

Western 62 @ Plymouth 49.
Western had a good November start, but has looked bad since then.  Plymouth state has been bad all season.  Call me a homer, but I still like Western to challenge RIC & USM, but that mean's winning games like this
Boston 54 @ Eastern 60.
A coin flip game, but I like Eastern at home.  Boston has been playing very well since 2012 rolled around
RIC 67 @ Keene 59.
RIC is in a class by themselves.  Keene will give them a challenge for 30 minutes or so, but RIC's talent wins out in the end.
Dartmouth 54 @ USM 70.
At home and coming off a pounding at RIC Tuesday.  Not a good posistion for Dartmouth to be in.

[7express]

Sat results:

RIC pounds Keene 77-46.
Just proves their the team to beat now, they hadn't been playing as well as they could have been since they came back from Christmas break, but broke out in a big way.  Keene was down 41-12 at the half, shooting 18.5%, and shot only 25% for the game.
Boston 68-55 over Eastern.
Granted, it's over a depleted Warriors squad, but this is Boston's first win over Eastern since 2008, and puts them in the think of the LEC playoff race.  Shannon McCourt had 22 and 13 for the Warriors, while Krystina Forsman, Taylor McBride and Sam Riccio contributed to the loss shooting a combined 10-28; Kirsten Morrison was the only Beacon in double figures, but she finished with 31, as the Beacons have gone 3-3 so far in 2012 after compiling a 2-7 record in 2011.
USM 89-60 over Dartmouth.
Haley Jordan and Courtney Cochran combined for 38 points and 16 rebounds.  Colleen Moriarty lead the Corsairs with 13; no one else had more than 7.
Western 67-60 over Plymouth.
Another team that got shorter.  Kristen Mooney is not playing anymore, and Jackie Zilnicki is out until at least the Southern Maine game on the 28th as she's in a walking boot for the next 2 weeks.  Melissa DiNino with by far her best game of her young carer; 13 points 10 rebounds in 24 minutes.

Tuesday schedule (rivalry day), will have predictions Monday:
So Maine @ Boston
Plymouth @ Keene
Dartmouth @ RIC
Western @ Eastern

[7express]

Tuesday predictions:

USM 73 @ Boston 50.
Boston has alternated wins and losses their last 6 games; last game for them was a win.  The Beacons have been playing better, but USM is clearly better.

Plymouth 56 @ Keene 67.
Keene can't score, but neither can the Panthers.  Owls win a defensive slug fest.

Dartmouth 56 @ RIC 82.
I stand by my prediction this seasons Dartmouth= last seasons Boston.  No one is playing better then RIC in the conference right now, they win going away.

Western 56 @ Eastern 49.
Will be a low scoring affair; Western has had trouble putting the ball in the basket and are playing short handed with Jackie Zilnicki out with a foot injury, and it looks like Shannon McCourt is the only player that's putting up consistant offensive numbers for the Warriors.

Massey ratings:
USM 68-52 (93%)
Keene 73-50 (98%)
RIC 74-53 (98%)
Western 68-61 (72%)

[7express]

Tuesday results:

Keene 70-42 over Plymouth. 
Krystin Corlis had 7 off the bench for Plymouth who shot 20.7% for the game.  The starting 5 for the Panthers contributed a grand total of 14 points.

Western 61-57 over Eastern.
Kristina Forsman lead Eastern with 14, but Shannon McCourt snatched another double double with 13 and 12.  Carly Murphy lead Western with 14.  Amber Litwinko played 3 minutes, all in the first half.  She was playing 20 25+ minutes the first semester, and she's had 2 games the past week where she's played 6 minutes and 4 minutes.  Sitting in front of Karli Spera at the game today, late in the game she was taking to Bam's mom, thinking about transfering where she would play more.  Hopefully she sticks around because she's got a ton of talent that she hasn't displayed yet.

USM 83-60.
Cochran and Haley Jordan only went for 30 and 12 combined, but it was more then enough for the Huskies who went into halftime up 23.

RIC by 39 over Dartmouth 62-23.
RIC held Dartmouth to 8 first half points, and 8 of 67 shooting from the floor (2 of 18 from 3).  Dartmouth sank a 3 pointer on their first possession of the game, and only scored 5 more times the final 19:08 of the first half.  All 15 players for the Anchorwomen played, and 14 of the 15 registered at least 7 minutes of action.  Rachel Rilry lead RIC with 18; Stephanie Coro and Cythia Gaudet chipped in 12 and 11 respectively.

1 game Thursday, and that will be Williams @ Eastern.  I'll have a prediction Wednesday, but Williams should throttle them.