WBB: Little East

[7express]

Wednesday schedule:

Bridgewater 65 vs. Keene 62.  Really a tossup.  Bridgewater is more expierenced, so they get the coin flip edge.

[AllStar]

Keene beats Bridgewater.  All I know right now.

[AllStar]

Keene beats Bridgewater 67-64.  Still no box score.  It appears they will play Austin College tomorrow at 5:00 pm.  Austin defeated Emmanuel 55-54 in the second game.  Emmanuel and Bridgewater will play in the consolation game at 3:00 pm.

[7express]

Wednesday results:

Keene over Bridgewater 67-64.  No boxscore

36-25 LEC; 50-16 me.

Thursday:
Boston @ Salve 1 PM
Keene vs. Austin (@ Key Largo, FL) 5 PM.

Boston 67 @ Salve 60.
Could be competitive for a while, but I'm still driving the Beacons bandwagon.
Keene 62 vs. Austin 59.
Literally have no idea.  Austin is located in Sherman, TX, where that is I have no idea, and play in the SCAC.  They bring a 4-4 record into the championship game coming off a win over perennial GNAC power Emmanuel 55-54.

[7express]

Thursday results:

Boston over Salve 60-54.  Meaghan Harden had 12 points and Brianna Del Valle had 14 points and 12 rebounds for the Seahawks.  Kirsten Morrison & Olivia Murphy, like usual, were the only ones that scored more than 8 points, but they finished with 18 & 14 respectively.
Keene beats Austin over overtime 74-68.  No boxscore.

38-25 LEC; 52-16 me.

Next games Saturday:
Eastern @ Plymouth 1 PM (LEC game)
Bowdoin @ RIC 2 PM
St. Joseph's (ME) @ Western 5 PM

[AllStar]

Thursday results:

Boston over Salve 60-54.  Meaghan Harden had 12 points and Brianna Del Valle had 14 points and 12 rebounds for the Seahawks.  Kirsten Morrison & Olivia Murphy, like usual, were the only ones that scored more than 8 points, but they finished with 18 & 14 respectively.
Keene beats Austin over overtime 74-68.  No boxscore.

38-25 LEC; 52-16 me.

Next games Saturday:
Eastern @ Plymouth 1 PM (LEC game)
Bowdoin @ RIC 2 PM
St. Joseph's (ME) @ Western 5 PM

Boston is going to need more scoring options if they want to go anywhere or win consistently.  I know you drive their bandwagon, but I am not overly impressed.

[7express]

Yup.  That's totally true Allstar.  They can get bye with it against Wheelock, Wentworth, whatever else crap teams they play, but once you get into LEC play they'll need players like Andrea Suffradini, Shelby Buck to put some points on the board.  Murphy & Morrison can't carry them the whole year.

[7express]

Quick Saturday predictions:

Eastern 63 @ Plymouth 58.
Plymouth has been playing pretty good basketball, just can't squeak out the wins.  Up there in New Hampshire are very tough, and earlier this season lead Dartmouth most of the game before Dartmouth rallied late to steal the win.  I think Eastern will be in a dog fight, but like Dartmouth, think they can pull it out late in the second.
Bowdoin 67 @ RIC 57.
Bowdoin is 11-0 and won @ USM.  That's enough for me over an up and down RIC team.
SJME 58 @ Western 63.
SJME is 6-2 with a 1 point loss to Husson (bad) and an 11 point loss to USM (not terrible).  Both losses were at home.  Western has been struggling to put points on the board.  Other game in this tournament is Scranton (7-2) vs. William Paterson (5-5).  This would have been a GREAT tournament as recently as last season, but graduation have really hit Paterson & Western hard as each team is struggling out of the gate this year.  If I had to bet, I'd say Scranton looks to be the best of the 4 teams here and should be the favorite to win the championship.

[7express]

SJME beats Western 60-41.  This is embarrassing.  Remember when they beat USM at home last year??  49 weeks and a bunch of defections later, they lose by 19 (and only a late Caroline Brasa layup got it under 20) to a team that lost to Husson College!!

[AllStar]

SJME beats Western 60-41.  This is embarrassing.  Remember when they beat USM at home last year??  49 weeks and a bunch of defections later, they lose by 19 (and only a late Caroline Brasa layup got it under 20) to a team that lost to Husson College!!

Yikes!  What's going on?  It is very rare to see them struggling this mightily.

[7express]

Yikes!  What's going on?  It is very rare to see them struggling this mightily.

Since I haven't actually seen them play yet this season I can't say for certain.  It's probably a couple of things: As usual 3 point shooting was dreadful and when they aren't hitting, they ain;t winning.  They don't score.  This was combated in recent years because we actually had a collection of players that would do just enough.  Last year's team of Jackie Zilnicki, Carly Murphy & Nicole Eanniello wasn't star-studded by any means, but Jackie would have a bunch of hustle plays that didn't show up on the score sheet (tipped passes that lead to steals for others), Murph could play inside-or-outside so you always had to respect her on the perimeter, Nicole Eanniello would nail three's.  They had more depth last year too.  They may have added a few people over Christmas, but last I checked, they had 9 ladies on the active roster and I think 4 or 5 of them are transfers/freshmen so they are still learning how to play as a team.  Losing ShaQuira Palmer to a D-2 school in North Carolina certainly didn't help either.  But this team just got obliterated with defections from last year, which as I said a couple pages back something must have gone on (and in Boston too on the men's side where 6 of the top 7 scorers [all going into their senior years or younger] are no longer with the team) because you can't lose that many kids in 1 summer unless something drastic went on.

[7express]

Saturday results:

Eastern clobbers Plymouth 59-38.  Well, so much for Plymouth keeping it close.  Taylor Perry had 15 for Plymouth; Jill Ritrosky had 27 points & 12 rebounds for Eastern and Jordyn Nappi chipped in 12 points of her own.
RIC defeats Bowdoin 72-61.  Another one I whiffed on.  Shannon Brady had a game high 25 for the Polar Bears. RIC had 4 score in double figures lead by Alex Moore's 22.  The starters for both sides combined to score more than 92% of the games total points as the 2 teams benches contributed a measley 11 of 133 total points.
SJME over Western 60-41.  2-16 for 3 from Western.  During this 5 game losing streak they are shooting 12-80 (15%) from 3 point land.  Yikes!  Morgan Cahill had a game high 23 for the Monks on 11-16 shooting.  Carolina Brasa had 15 for Western.  Can we get her in the starting lineup??  bringing her off the bench obviously isn't working.  She almost single-handidly outscored the Colonial starting 5 by herself, but Colleen Casker's 6 points was enough for the starting 5 to beat out Brasa 19-15.   Even the Plymouth starting 5 is probably better then this group.   The last time ANYONE in the Western starting 5 scored in double digits??  You have to go all the way back to November 23!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! when Sciarra Brandt & Colleen Casker broke 10 with 14 & 16 respectable.  That is a joke.  That's pre-Thanksgiving we're talking about here.  When your bench player (Caroline Brasa) is the only one scoring ANY points WHY IS SHE COMING OFF THE BENCH?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?  Makes no sense to me.  Plymouth is winless this year, but somehow in 7 of the 9 games they've played this season they've managed to have at least 1 person score 10 points, and Western goes 5 straight games without someone in the starting lineup score 10+ points?

39-26 LEC; 53-18 me

Sunday schedule:
William Paterson @ Western 2 PM

William Paterson 67 @ Western 48.
Just 2 seasons ago William Paterson was 26-3, but like Western graduation have turned them into a middle of the road NJAC team.  That's where the similarities end between Paterson & Western though.  For 1 Paterson has been competitive in their 6 losses to better teams: losing by 4 to top 7 Montclair, losing by 1 @ 7-2 TCNJ, losing to 6-3 Stevens by 10 and 7-3 Gettysburg by 4.  For another, the team they played (Scranton) is a whole lot better than the team Western played (St. Joseph's Maine) and if not for a garbage time Brasa layup, each team would've lost by 21 points.  Finally, Paterson actually scores a lot more points than Western does.  In 11 games, Paterson averages 71.5 ppg; in 6 losses they average 64 points per game.  Not much difference then their overall scoring total which gets skewed by the 95 points they scored in a win over Rowan, and the 86 they scored in a win over Frostburg.  If you take those games out of the equation, that overall ppg number goes down to 67.3.  Western's overall total is a dismal 52.8 ppg and an even worse 43.4 in their 5 losses.  If you take out Western's 1 outlier, the 72 they scored on a win over Farmingdale on opening night the overall total drops down to an even more dismal 50.5.  The only reason I took that outlier out is even though they have a 68 on their total points scored vs. Trinity, that 68 was an overtime game in which they scored 14 points in the extra session, so if that game ends in regulation, they end up with 54 points, right at their overall number and about right where their other 2 scores in wins are (59 & 60).  Western hasn't cracked 60 points in a regulation game since November 15.  Only Plymouth has failed to crack 60 points in that same time frame and their 0-9!!!! Since November 26 when Western starting this current 5 game losing streak, you can even argue Plymouth state is a better offensive team than the Colonials are (I certainly wouldn't disagree).  In that time frame while Western's ppg was 43.4, Plymouth's ppg is 46.5.  Plymouth's low water mark was 32 while Western's was 31 (a layup right at the regulation buzzer in a 38 point game got Western above 30 that game), Western has only cracked 50 points twice, and hasn't had a higher total than 52.  Plymouth meanwhile has gotten above 50 also only twice, but they managed point totals of 54 & 59 in those games.  Eastern, RIC & keene, 3 teams that couldn't score at all last season have managed multiple games scoring 60+ points.

[7express]

Sunday results:

Western gets a win, 78-69 over Paterson.  Hey, look at that.  Not only did we actually score some points, we actually got starters (notice that plural??) in double figures!!  What a novel concept that is!!  Floriana Borova lead Paterson with 16 points off the bench, Chelsea Mone had 17 for Western, and Caroline Brasa had 15 points and 10 rebounds.

40-26 LEC; 53-19 me

Monday schedule:
Boston @ Brandeis 6 PM.

Boston 55 @ Brandeis 59.
Who knows??  Knowing Boston, this is a game they'll probably lose, even though they should win.

[AllStar]

7, ready to jump off the Beacons bandwagon?  Not only did they lose to Brandeis, they lost by almost 40.  Brandeis wins 73-35.

[7express]

7, ready to jump off the Beacons bandwagon?  Not only did they lose to Brandeis, they lost by almost 40.  Brandeis wins 73-35.

Remember what I wrote yesterday: "Who knows??  Knowing Boston, this is a game they'll probably lose, even though they should win."