WBB: Little East

[7express]

Keene loses to Mary Washington 46-25 (yes, that is not a typo, that was the final score).  Keene actually had a 16-15 lead at halftime.  Just sounds like an awful game to have to sit through: the teams shot a combined 27.8% from the field (25-90), 15.8% from 3 (3-19), 8 combined assits from the 2 teams (MW lead it 5-3) combined with 37 turnovers, so they had an almost 1 to 4.5 assist to turnover ratio, yikes!!  Also, this is one of the few boxscores I've seen where there was not a double digit scorer on either side.  Really, how many times a year do you expect to win scoring 46 points??  Once, possibly twice if your in the NEAC with awful teams, none if your in the WIAC, or NESCAC??  Actually MW is one of the better defensive teams in the country, looks like they'll take that away from Mount St. Mary this year.  Only giving up 39.9 OPPG this year, and haven't given up more than 48 in a single game, so really they'd be in a lot of games scoring 46 this year.
Conference is off tomorrow: Keene plays Plattsburgh down in New Orleans on Friday afternoon, and Southern Maine hosts MCLA a little later on that day.

[7express]

Action from Dec 30:
Keene state rebounds nicely from the egg against Mary Washington to defeat Plattsburgh state 67-57. 
USM survives a scare from MCLA wins 78-75.  This team has looked really unimpressive this year Courtney Cochran had 18, Haley Jordan had 27.

Dec 31 schedule:
Babson 72 @ USM 58.  I hope I'm wrong here, but I think Babson blows them out.   You shut down the front court of USM, and make the backcourt beat you, you've got a great chance to win, and I think that's what Babson will do.

[7express]

USM 34-32 lead on Babson at halftime.  Cochran gave them the lead heading into recess.  Babson started the game up 6-0, so USM did a good job of weathering the storm early.  Babson shooting 44% from the floor, but they've turned it over 11 times.
Final: USM 68-66 over Babson.  Close throughout the 2nd half; Cochran made 2 free throws with 8 seconds to play to give USM the win and Babson turned it over on their possession (their 24th and final of the game).

[BigMac]

I was at the UMW vs. Keene game and it was a defensive battle in the first half. UMW would get a small lead then with the bench in Keene would get it back. In the second half it was anyones game and you knew whoever made a run would win the game.
UMW is #1 for all divisions in scoring defense. Teams have a hard time scoring on them. Would not go by the stats completely as I think they were not well kept. So many "team" stats from all the games. In the play by play had Carol Dye (post player) taking and missing several "3's" She never took a 3 pointer
UMW does a great job on the top scorers and did so in this game.

[7express]

It helps tomorrow (well...today actually), that both LEC games (1 men & 1 women) are each taking place at the same place.

Skidmore 53 vs. Western Connecticut 50 (at Springfield college).
Skidmore, out of the LL is 5-1 this year, 1 of the top teams in the East region, and should compete with Vassar, RPI & William Smith for the LL title.  They held Hamilton (5-5) to 29 points, destroyed Utica (5-4) by 26 points, and have held 4 of their 6 opponents this year to 47 points or less.  Their lone loss was by 16 to Williams; they held the Ephs to only 47 (their lowest total of the season), but they only managed to score 31.  Western is 7-2, and are a couple possessions away from being 9-0, however none of those wins look that impressive.  Considering Western last played on the 10th & Skidmore last played on the 9th, I'd expect a low scoring game, but I think Skidmore takes this by a couple.

[MVP]

In response to 7 express and the USM V Babson game. It was not close during the 2nd half, in fact babson had a 12pt lead w/ just under 15 min to go. Then the home ice advantage really kicked in ...with Wurdeman sitting on the bench for most of the 2nd half, Wurdeman got tagged for her fifth foul on an outrageous call sending Cochran to the line for her 9th and 10th free throw of the game.
[**Babson had a game total 14 FTA,  USM had 28 FTA   Collins, 13-21 FG yet had only 2 FT attempts. She got beat up all night but maintained her poise.
Cochran 5-10 FG and went to the line for10 FTA 
Jordan, named MVP went 4-20 FG but yet again went to the line and had 9 FTA .

In fact, babson shot 44% for the game, USM barely shot 36% //  FTA's handed the game to the host

PS: the night before USM V Stout,  USM 38 FTA,  Stout 18 FTA
Hopefully, Babson will face them again on a neutral court.

[7express]

You mean MCLA??  The first round was MCLA vs. USM, Stout played Babson.

[7express]

Western loses by 10 57-47.
That's already as many regular season losses this year then we had all of last year and there's still 6 weeks of basketball to play.  Poor rebounding, turnovers, and Skidmore getting out on the perimeter, and limiting our outside shots really hurt us.  Hopefully, they don't send that around the LEC because that's pretty much the game plan against us this year; limit the perimeter shots, press us (which Skidmore did throughout) and make us beat you from the inside, Skidmore played it perfectly.  Caroline Brasa had another great outing from the Colonials (lead them with 17), and with Chelsea Mone injured again (i think), she should be inserted into the starting lineup.  If the season ended today and I was handing out the team MVP award, Carolina Brasa gets it without a doubt.  Nicole Eanillio might have had her worst game of the season; finished with more fouls (3) then points scored (2) and was 0-4 from behind the arc; the team combined from 3 was 5-21.  We get Roger Williams in Monday's consolation game.  Speaking of that game...


...Monday schedule:
Roger Williams 54 vs. Western Connecticut 67 (@ Springfield College)
RWU wasn't impressive.  About the only advantage they have is that their taller so they SHOULD win the rebounding battle, however I thought MSM would win that as well and they didn't.  RWU starts a freshman point guard, so this should be a good game for a defense to come out fired up.  I don't think we'll have a hard time holding RWU to 50 to 60, it's a just a matter of whether the offense can put up enough points, I say this game they break out.  This and CCNY Thursday are 2 good games to get back on track before the real season starts.
Eastern Connecticut 53 @ Conn College 67.
Taking out the 83 Conn College gave up against West Conn earlier this year, this is a team that is allowing only 45.6 ppg, and since that West Conn game have given up: 50, 47, 35, 43 & 41.  Eastern has been involved in 4 straight blowouts heading into Christmas: they beat USM & Westfield state by a combined 21.5 while they lost their next 2 to RIC and Amherst by a combined 23.5.   In ECSU's 4 losses their averaging 54.3 ppg, while in their 4 wins their averaging 83.5 ppg.  Not a blowout, but the Camels are good defensively and ECSU doesn't have enough offensive firepower.  They fall behind early and they can't recover.  I'm probably gonna head down from Springfield to check this out after the championship game up there.

[MVP]

yes, MCLA. The point was the disparity of FTA in both games against the host USM, the 1st night, MCLA and the 2nd night against babson.
Happy New Year to all WBB players and fans!!

[7express]

It's not surprising, they always get the benefit of the calls up there in Maine.  Now onto the recap:

Western 54-39 win over Roger Williams.  This was an awful played game by the Colonials, but luckily aside from Alex Lanieri, nobody else on RWU could buy a basket.   Both teams shot a combined 33.6%, and RWU actually had a higher pecentage (36.2% to 31.7%) but Western took 11 more attempts to RWU did because they had 17 offensive rebounds and forced 31 RWU turnovers (might have actually been more).  Western converted those 31 tuenovers into 25 points.

Eastern was a 57-47 loser to Conn College.
Unfortunately for Eastern, not only did they lose the game, they may have lost the season.  Piper Chapman, Lauren Kellaher, Jessica Blodgett and Rachael Armstrong are currently not listed on the roster.  I heard from somebody at the game, that 4 Eastern players got suspended for the year and kicked off the team (i know Chapman and Blodgett are 2 of them, I assume Armstrong and Kellaher are the other 2 since none of them are listed anymore).  Besides that 2 others were suspended for this game (not sure who those 2 were), so when you add in that, they played this game with 7 players, a couple of whom had never even played a game in college before tonight, and Samantha Riccio is currently the only player that saw ANY minutes last season.  Jaymie Summer was a 3 year softball player (2 at division 2 UMass-Lowell) and finished with 0 points on 0-3 shooting and 4 fouls in 27 minutes.  Hayley Roberts came off the bench, hit 2 of 3 from the floor for a total of 4 points and 1 foul after being a member of the volleyball team in the fall.  They played hard, they scrapped (cut an 18 point second half deficit down to 7), but with their depth issues tonight, and the inexpiernce they have now since 4 of their 5 best players got kicked off, they'll be at a disadvantage from the get-go, and tonight was no different.  Even though they didn't win, I was impressed with the way they fought through adversity, they could've pitched up the tent and got blown out of the building (especially when they trailed by 18), but they kept fighting.  Personally, I don't think they'll be winning many LEC games now, but I really loved the effort.  I wanted to give Kim Rybczyk the conference coach of the year if we managed to finish in 3rd or higher, but if this severely depleted and inexpierencec Eastern squad can manage 6 wins and a tourney bid, Denise Bierly should win it by default.  I just have to point this out: of the 10 players listed on the roster, Eastern has one (yes one, 1!!!) returning letter winner, Sam Riccio.  Every other team in the conference has at least 3 in the starting lineup alone.

Tuesday schedule:
Boston 48 @ Rutgers-Newark 65.
Someone that might be happy with the ECSU situation is Boston (and Plymouth for that matter).  They may actually have company this year.  Newark is 8-3 and 1-1 in the NJAC.  Lost by 11 to Rutgers-Camden, 2 to Mount St. Mary and by 23 to Williams.  They only have 2 wins against teams with winning record; 49-42 against King's (who's 8-3) and 73-72 against Montclair state, who's 8-4.  Boston's 2 wins are against Berkelely college, a USCAA school, and Wheelock, a team that's 0-8, has scored less than 20 points twice this year and has lost by an average of 38 points this year.  Newark will kill them.
Southern Maine 79 @ Husson 54.
Husson is bad this year, but they did make the NCAA tournament last season.  USM is only 4-3 in true road games this year, including an awful lass to St. Joseph's of Maine back in November, and a loss here would be equally as bad.  In 5 losses this year Husson hasn't been closer than 22 points, of of their last 4 losses (since that 22 point L was the first game of the year), the "closet" was a 32 point loss which happen twice; other losses were by 35 & 36.  They've given up at least 74 in all 5 losses and have given up 95+ twice.

[7express]

Also, I wonder what that did to the captains??  Piper was one of them, and IIRC Blodgett was the other.  I didn't get there till about 4 minutes before the game started, so I missed the captains meetings, but I assume Sam Riccio takes over the captancy for the rest of the season.  Hopefully ECSUalum, Warrior, any Eastern fans/LEC fans that know what's going on here can shed some light.

[ECSUalum]

Also, I wonder what that did to the captains??  Piper was one of them, and IIRC Blodgett was the other.  I didn't get there till about 4 minutes before the game started, so I missed the captains meetings, but I assume Sam Riccio takes over the captancy for the rest of the season.  Hopefully ECSUalum, Warrior, any Eastern fans/LEC fans that know what's going on here can shed some light.

Just a real shock!! I feel sorry for everyone left on the ECSU womens BB team, as Coach Bierly has put in soo much time and effort, recruiting, mentoring, and coaching these women, and now to find she has essentially "lost" the 2012 season!! Positive is that some young recruits will get a LOT of experience they would not normally have at this time in their college careers.

[7express]

I agree ECSUalum, even Riccio, a junior had only been the 6th/7th/8th option off the bench the last couple years will now be starting every game the rest of the season.  That, along with Taylor McBride (a freshmen) and the couple people who hadn't played basketball at all will greatly improve in this situation, and if they do make the LEC tournament, even if they ended up losing by 65 points, will do nothing but good.  But it is a shame though.  I know Eastern had played a tough OOC schedule, but with Blodgett and Piper they were one of the 3 or 4 best teams in the LEC, now I'm not so sure.  I said they played hard last night, so at least they have effort, and they get a relatively easy schedule the next couple games: their next 5 games (leading up to the WCSU game on the 17th) are: @ New Paltz (3-7), @ Plymouth state (2-7), @ Dartmouth (7-3), vs. Maine-Presque Isle (3-6), and vs. Boston (2-7).  The only game I'd say ECSU is a deciding underdog is the Dartmouth game, but they could easily win the other 4, and if they do, that could be a huge confidence builder heading into the 2nd half of the season where the schedule is a lot tougher (home game vs. Williams, Western & Keene twice each and road games @ RIC and USM).

[7express]

Newark beats Boston 51-37.
About the same I predicted; I predicted a 17 point win, but it was only 14.  Kirsten Morrison lead the Beacons with 11 points on 6-17 shooting.  Beacons had 31 turnovers which the Knight's converted into 25 points, and also outscored them 16-2 on the fast break. 
USM was an 82-60 winner over Husson.  No boxscore availible, so not sure what Cochran's final totals were.  That concludes Tuesday's women's schedule, Wednesday schedule:

Eastern 56 @ New Paltz 55.
If the suspension was just 1 game, I wonder who they got back.  In any case they'll be a disadvantage, but effort and hustle helps make up whatever disadvantage you have because you can't teach that, that's out of your control.  With more game expierence Jaymie Sommers will start to make the baskets in the paint that she missed on Monday, and can learn to play better defense to stay out of foul trouble.  New Paltz is 3-7, but have won 3 of their last 6 after starting 0-4, with their wins over a Stevens squad that is surprisingly bad this year (get to them in a second since they play RIC), Fredonia state who's 5-5, but 1-3 in the conference and Plattsburgh state, 4-5 on the year 2-3 in the conference.  New Paltz is 2-2 against SUNYAC opponents and only 1-5 against non SUNYAC opponents.  I'm rooting for them, I really am, hopefully they can pull out the W.
RIC 69 @ Stevens 59.
Not sure what happened to Stevens, maybe they had a lot of roster turnover, but they won the E8 tournament last year after beating Ithaca on their home floor.  They've lost against all the good team's they've played (Kean by 10, Richard Stockton by 15 & Baruch by 21), they've also suffered that setback to New Paltz (3-7) by 12.  Rachel Riley is 1 free throw away from 1,000 points, she'll surpass 1,00 easily.  I'll be down there for this game and have a report when I get back.
Eastern Nazarene 56 @ Dartmouth 61.
Let's see how Dartmouth plays as a favorite.  Eastern Nazarene is 4-4, and has beaten 1 team with a winning record, Framingham state (7-2), 44-43 with a layup as time expired, that game they got 30 offensive rebounds.  Taking out Framingham state, the 3 teams they've beaten have a combined record of 2-22.  Including Framingham the 4 teams they've beaten are only a combined 9-25.  This is a game they MUST win.  @ Western, vs. Eastern, @ Southern Maine, @ RIC, and vs. Keene are their next 6 LEC opponents.

[7express]

Eastern gets pounded by New Paltz 72-41.
This is getting worse for Eastern.  Once again, only 7 people played for the Warriors, but Kristina Forsman was notabable absent from the boxscore after logging 40 minutes on Monday night.  It just looks like the effort wasn't there tonight like it was Monday; New Paltz outrebounded them 59-47, outscored them in the paint 48-18, and the New Paltz bench outscored the Warrior bench 20-1.  Shannon McCourt lead the Warriors with 18 points; Sam Riccio and Taylor McBride (now probably their 2 best players) combined to shoot 1-27, and had more then twice as many turnovers (10) to points (4). When your 2 best shoot 1-27 from the floor chances are you're not going to win.

RIC 63 Stevens 52.
Quite possibly their worst played game of the year, but I'm telling you they have some shooters, and can really make shots when the games on the line, and they need a big basket.  After a 9 point RIC lead got dwindeled down to 1 with about 5:00 minutes to play Cynthia Gaudet just took over.  On RIC's next possession she completed the old fashioned 3 point play.  Then a steal by Ashley O'Dell followed a perfect pass from Gaudet to Rachel Riley for an easy layup, and then after another steal by O'Dell, Gaudet did it herself, and buried the Ducks with a 3 from the top of the key to get it back to a 9 point lead and that was all she wrote, and they play some defense too, really get in your face defensively, they give you nothing easily, you have to earn it against them this year; they finished with 15 steals on the night and could have had a lot more on top of that.  Gaudet lead the Anchorwomen with 24 points, and Riley followed with 16, easily surpassing the 1,000 point plateau.  BTW, what the hell has happened to Stephanie Coro this year??  My preseason player of the year (after I had forgotten Rachel Riley had another year of eligibility) has been a complete bust this year.  Granted, they have a lot more options this year, but after leading the LEC in scoring last year (over the likes of Melissa Teel, Kaylie DeMillio, Jess Moriarty, Karli Spera, Courtney Cirillio) at over 17 a game she's way down the list at 20th in the LEC in scoring (you can barely see her down there) at not even 10 per game.  Today she finished a measley 1-12 from the floor; the 1 she hit was a layup, and she wasn't even close on any of the jumpers she attempted.

Dartmouth a 57-55 winner over Eastern Nazarene. 
After having a 12 point lead at halftime, and being up 13 at the 11:00 minute mark, they almost blew it, but hung out to tie themselves with Western for the 4th best record in the conference at 8-3 (Keen and RIC are tied for 1st at 7-2, USM is next at 7-3).  Colleen Moriarty lead the Corsairs with 17 points and 9 rebounds; Alexis Malloy and Shardee Brown each had 20 for ENU, the other 6 that played for ENU combined for 15.

Thursday schedule:
Boston 54 @ Merchant Marine 51.
Both teams are terrible, both teams have 2 wins, and each of these teams beat a non D-3 team for 1 of their wins, and beat a crappy d-3 team for their other win.  Boston's non d-3 win was against the music school Berkeley college (out of the USCAA) while Merchant Marine's non d-3 win was against Vaughn (I have no clue who they are what conference/division they are a part of).  Boston's D-3 win is against Wheelock (winless), while Merchant's D-3 win is against CCNY (1 win).  Normally in these games I pick the home team, so why am I picking the road??  Boston beat Berkeley college 74-40, while Merchant Marine lost to Berkeley college 49-44; therein lies the difference.
Plymouth state 49 @ Johnson & Wales 52.
Another crap vs, crap game.  Plymouth has been off since they lost by 17 to Dartmouth on Dec 10, J&W is coming off a 41-40 loss to Gordon last Saturday in which the score at halftime was 10-9.  Each has 2 common opponents: J&W lost @ Dartmouth by 15, Plymouth lost there by 17.  Plymouth lost at home to RIC by 29, J&W lost @ RIC by 48.
RIC 86 @ York 42.
I have a feeling they'll play a lot better here.  Actually I'm even more sure Marcus Reilley can have Rachel Riley, Cynthia Gaudet, Ashley O'Dell, Courtney Burns, Nicole Girard, and Stephanie Coro put on street clothes and I'm sure they'll win this going away.  York is 0-11 on the season, have lost only 2 games by single digits, and have lost by an average of 33.8 their last 5 games.  They haven't scored more then 43 points those 5 games, and have been held to 53 or fewer in 10 of their 11 games this year.  They got beat by 50 by William Paterson and by 80 (yes 80, 8-0) against Eastern Mennonite.  This could be an easier win then the West Conn men had against SUNY-Cobleskill back in December.
Western Connecticut 85 @ CCNY 43.
Another game where coach Rybczyk could put Stephanie Slonski, Carly Muphy, Nicole Eanillio, Sciarra Brandt, Jackie Zilnicki, and Amber Litwinko in street clothes, and we'll probably win fairly easily.  Actually, I'm gonna do a running count tomorrow between RIC & Western comparing 3 things because they both play absolutely awful CUNY teams: 1) Which team scores more points 2) which team gives up less points and 3) which team has a higher winning margin.   I have RIC winning each category by the slighest margin (86 to 85, 42 to 43 and 44 to 42).  CCNY's lone win is against New Rochelle, and haven't lost by fewer than 10 this year, but have been playing better in December then they did in November.  CCNY has cracked 60 just twice this year.