WBB: Little East

[7express]

After taking a couple steps forward, Plymouth like usually the last couple seasons takes 5 steps backwards with a putrid offensive performance: 2-16 from the field in trailing the Beacons 19-6 with 7 minutes to play in the first.  The Panthers got the Beacons in a stretch where the Beacons couldn't hit water from a Carnival Cruise Ship traveling in the middle of the Atlantic.

[7express]

Halftime scores:

Western ended the half on a 18-4 run after Keene took a quick 17-14 lead to lead 32-21 at halftime.
Dartmouth/Eastern tied at 22.  Warriors lead by as much as 9.
Boston up 36-14.  Beacons are shooting 50%; Panthers are shooting 19%.
USM up 26-20.  RIC only shooting 21% compared to USM's 46% yet they're only down 6.

Dartmouth/Eastern and USM/RIC games are the only ones worth keeping tabs on in the second half.  Boston & Western should win pretty handedly.  Will have results later on.

[AllStar]

As usual Keene couldn't hit water if they fell out of a boat.

[7express]

Eastern loses at home to Dartmouth and even though RIC got killed by USM, they just clinched home court throughout the LEC.  Here's how from what I can find.
IF USM & RIC finish tied at 10-4: RIC wins based on them being 2-0 vs. Keene while USM was 1-1.
IF RIC & Eastern finish tied at 10-4: RIC wins the tiebreaker since they would have a better record against Dartmouth & Western than Eastern would.  In this scenario, RIC would be 3-1 vs. Western & Dartmouth while Eastern would be 1-3.
Eastern's loss has eliminated the possibility for the 3 way tie at 10-4 to happen since Eastern still has to play USM, though since RIC ended the year at home vs. Plymouth I had the better chance to win the lotto 6 straight years than that 10-4 3 way tie had of happening.

Edit: RIC hasn't clinched just yet.  If Plymouth & Keene finished tied RIC & USM would have to go to some obscure tiebreaker to break it which I believe would be the coin flip.  Since no one else can pass or tie Dartmouth or Western, and RIC has the head to head over Eastern on both of those teams whether they finished tied or one finishes ahead of the other Eastern is officially eliminated from hosting the tournament.
USM is still mathematically alive.....but barely hanging on by a string.  For the LEC tourney to go through Gorham they need ALL of the following to occur: 2 USM wins (@ Boston, home vs. Eastern, both likely to happen), 2 RIC losses (@ Dartmouth, home vs. Plymouth, highly doubt RIC loses them both), 2 Keene losses (home vs. Plymouth & Dartmouth, not likely), and 2 Plymouth wins (@ Keene, @ RIC.  Highly unlikely).  if this miracle scenario did happen to occur, RIC & USM would be: 1-1 vs. each other, 1-1 vs. Eastern, 1-1 vs. Dartmouth, 2-0 vs. Western and 2-0 vs. Boston.  Plymouth & Keene would be tied for 7th and each team would be 1-1 against them (RIC would've lost to Plymouth; USM lost to Keene) and since you can't break the tie that way, they would've exhausted all other tiebreakers and head straight for the coin flip like they did deciding Western/Plymouth men's 6th seed last year (1-1 vs. each other, 2-0 vs. Dartmouth, 0-10 vs. the rest of the league).  So, on top of all of the above scenerios to occur, USM would have to beat RIC in the coin flip as well.  I'll have scenario;s after I do the recap.

I'm officially penciling in RIC as the #1 seed however.

[7express]

Sat results:

Dartmouth over Eastern 54-41.  The Corsairs finally did something outside of the Tripp Athletic Center!!  Too little too late I think, but this was a killer loss for Eastern as they fall to 0-2 vs. Dartmouth this year and couple that with their loss to Western earlier in the season, and this loss has officially eliminated the Warriors from hosting the LEC tournament as even if they tie end up tied with RIC at years end, RIC would have a superior winning percentage over Western & Dartmouth than Eastern would (75% for RIC compared to 25% for Eastern).  Beth Constantini had 15 points to lead the Corsairs while Erin Fahey had 6 points & 10 rebounds off the bench.  Jordyn Nappi lead Eastern with 13 and Jill Ritrosky had 6 points and 10 rebounds but only shot 1-10 from the field.
USM over RIC 64-48.  They might've lost the game, but RIC has all but locked up the #1 seed and home court in the LEC.  Steph Prusko had 13 points, but missed 13 shots from the floor, and Vandell Andrade had 17 rebounds and 15 points for RIC and Erin McNamera had a game high 12 for the Huskies.
Western over Keene 61-56.  Kerri Stolle & Chelsea Mone each had 14 for Western while Carly Kiernan had a game high 23 for the Owls.  The Western bench with Caroline Brasa out is terrible.  The 2 players off the bench for the Colonials had as many turnovers (6) as points (6) and field goal attempts (6).
Boston over Plymouth 64-54.  Considering the Beacons were up 36-14 at halftime, the fact the Panthers only lost by 10 should be considered a minor miracle.  No boxscore for this game, think livestats went kaboom up at Plymouth today as there were no live stats for the men's game either.

101-31 on the year

Standings:
1) RIC 10-2 (16-7)
2) Eastern 8-4 (16-7)
2) USM 8-4 (16-7)
4) Western 7-5 (14-9)
4) Dartmouth 7-5 (14-9)
6) Boston 4-8 (13-10)
7) Keene 11-12 (3-9)
8) Plymouth 1-11 (2-19)

Schedule:
Tuesday, February 18:
RIC @ Dartmouth 5:30
Western @ Eastern 5:30
USM @ Boston 5:30
Plymouth @ Keene 5:30.  RIC/Dartmouth and Western/Eastern best of the day.

Saturday, February 22:
Boston @ Western 1
Dartmouth @ Keene 1
Plymouth @ RIC 1
Eastern @ USM 1.  Depending what happens Tuesday, USM/Eastern could be the best or all 4 could be meaningless.  USM/Eastern will be a battle for second, but when the bottom of the conference is so bad like this year and on a neutral court where 2 would play 3 I don't see any difference between the 2 & 3 this year.

[7express]

Scenerios for the final 2 games.  First I'll say which teams can occupy those spots, and the scenerio's for each team.

#1.  This will come down to either RIC or USM.  Eastern CANNOT get #1.  Eastern can still tie RIC, but they lose all tiebreakers to RIC
#2.  Can be any either RIC, Dartmouth, Western, Eastern or USM.  Basically anyone still occupying the top spot can finish here
#3.  Same as #2, except RIC CANNOT finish as the 3 seed, they'll be either 1 or 2, but won't drop below 2.
#4 & #5.  Same as #2 with Eastern, USM, Dartmouth & Western still in the running for the 2-5 seeds.  What an absolute mess the top half of the conference is!
#6.  Either Boston or Keene.
#7.  Boston, Keene or Plymouth.
#8.  Keene or Plymouth.  Now let's go for the team by team results and where they can finish:

There's too many scenerio's to figure out the top 5.  I'll try to update my blog, so I'll post that sometime in the coming days if I can figure it out. 
As I said earlier RIC only needs one of the following to happen to clinch home court: 1 win; OR 1 USM loss; OR 1 Plymouth loss OR 1 Keene win.
USM needs: 2 wins; AND 2 losses by RIC; AND 2 Plymouth wins AND 2 Keene losses AND finally a coin flip in their favor.  In this case, USM and RIC would be tied at 10-4 and would've exhausted all tiebreakers, so the conference would flip George Washington.
2-5 is a mess, not gonna try to figure that out now
to clinch the 6 seed Boston needs 1 win AND 1 Keene loss; if they are tied at the end, the spot will come down to conference standings.  Boston has wins over Dartmouth & Western while Keene is winless against them; while Keene has a win over USM while Boston is winless against them. 
To clinch no worse than the 7 seed Keene needs 1 win OR 1 Plymouth loss.

[7express]

Tuesday predictions:

RIC 59 @ Dartmouth 64.
2 more games left for Dartmouth, win out and they'll be hosting a first round game because since Eastern & USM still have to play, at least 1 of them is guaranteed a 5th loss, and Dartmouth would win a tiebreaker I believe.  At RIC in January, the Anchorwomen completely demolished the Corsairs winning by 29 points.....however, the game was a 4 point RIC lead at halftime before Dartmouth completely fell apart in the second half.  They've been inconsistent, but I don't think their 25 points worse than RIC at home which is what the second half at RIC said, and they've been playing with urgency.  They get the W to stay in the hunt for a home spot.
Western 61 @ Eastern 54.
Another "mild" upset, but in games like this you throw records out the window.  Eastern has 2 wins against a team currently sitting tied for 4th or better out 6 attempts: 1 was by 2 over RIC in overtime on a last second 3 pointer, the other was by 9 over USM without Rebecca Knight, so how much can we put in those 2 games??  The second question is whether Eastern is going to able to score??  They only got 36 a few weeks ago in Danbury, and Western isn't the best team in the world or even the best team in the conference, but their one of the better defensive teams in the conference.  Western started off slow, but is really picking up steam, and even in their losses, they've been within a couple possessions inside 3 minutes against RIC & USM.  If Eastern was only able to put 41 on the board against the Corsairs, they'll struggle against the much better defensive unit the Colonials will throw at them.
USM 57 @ Boston 53.
The Beacons are tough to read this year.  They've lost to Plymouth, and have averaged 42 points in2 games against Eastern and 37 points in 2 games against RIC, yet they've beaten Dartmouth by 15 & Western by 26 both at home in the Clark Athletic Center.  Aside from RIC (twice both in 2012) and USM (twice, once back in December and the other time in 2011), Western hadn't lost a conference game by 15 or more points to any of the other 5 teams since Keene beat them 72-57 way back on February 10, 2007.  They only lost by 8 in Maine, and seem to play a lot better at home.  The Beacons are 13-1 when they get 57 or more points and a dismal 0-9 when they get held to 57 or less.  The Huskies are still the best defensive unit in the conference giving up just a tad more than 50 ppg, and as their 2 seasons go on, the 26 point W over Western is more and more of a fluke than the team their capable of being.  Hope they can pull out, but they won't get enough points.
Plymouth 43 @ Keene 52.
Not a game to watch for the offensive minded fan.  Keene beat them by 3 in Plymouth, but every time I think the Panthers are moving forward they take 5 steps backwards.

Massey ratings:
RIC 68-61 71% win percentage
Eastern 59-50 79% win percentage
USM 55-47 73% win percentage
Keene 66-51 91% win percentage

[7express]

Eastern/Western postponed to tomorrow with the women at 5:30 and the men at 7:30.  Other 3 games tonight, still on as scheduled at the moment.

[7express]

RIC leads 28-26 at halftime.  Dartmouth with 10 more shot attempts because RIC has turned it over 14 times already.  Vandell Andrade already with a double double: 10 points & 11 rebounds.  Erika Borneman with 7 points & 5 rebounds to lead the Corsairs.
USM leads Boston 21-19.  Erin McNamers with 12 to lead the way so far.  Olivia Murphy out for the Beacons with an illness I believe as she hasn't appeared in the half.
Keene clobbering Plymouth 31-14 at the half.  The sad part of this is that Plymouth was actually up 9-5 meaning they got outscored 26-5 to end the half.  No stats for this game, and I'm not even going to pay attention to this in the second half with such a big lead and the other two games 2 point games.  I'll have Allstar post a final later, but Keene probably wins by 20+.

[7express]

Dartmouth wins 58-54 and since Western's game was postponed, they flip in the standings.
Boston and USM tied at 47 with 27 seconds left.  USM is 61-0 all time vs. Boston.  Dartmouth was only 1-65 against USM heading into their matchup on the 8th and Dartmouth won, can the Beacons do the same??
Erin McNamera hit 1-2 free throws to put USM up 1.  Boston ball 20 seconds left, shot clock off.
Lauren Perra called for traveling, so ball goes back to USM up 1.
McNamera going back to the line for 2 free throws.  Even if she makes both, USM will still have a chance to tie with a 3.
McNamera hits 1-2 again to put USM up 2; Andrea Suffredini pushes the ball, gets fouled with 2 tenths of a second left, and misses the first free throw.  And of course she hits the second free throw trying to miss, so the Beacons fall by 1 49-48 and fall to 0-62 all time vs. the Huskies.
Plymouth ended up winning by around 30, not sure of the exact final.

[7express]

Eastern isn't officially dead yet like I declared them the other way, but USM has officially been taken off life support.  At most they'll be playing 1 game in Gorham.
IF RIC & USM both tie at 10-4: RIC wins the tiebreaker because they'd have a better record vs. Keene (2-0) while USM is 1-1.  With Keene's win over Plymouth it is mathematically impossible to for Plymouth to tie/pass Keene.  So USM is officially out.  The ones with Eastern are a bit more complicated.
IF RIC & Eastern tie at 10-4, we have 2 scenerio's: scenario A & scenario B:
Scenario A has Dartmouth beating Keene.  In this case, USM & Dartmouth would be tied for 3rd at 9-5.  Since each were 1-1 vs. each other, it goes down to record vs. conference opponents starting from the top.  Each team finished .500 vs. USM & Dartmouth, but each took different routes: RIC split with each, while Eastern would've swept USM and gotten swept by Dartmouth.  However, since they'll be tied I don't think you can use the "superior winning %" strategy, so it goes down to the next team: Western.  RIC would be 2-0, eastern 1-1.  So RIC wins the conference in scenario A
Scenario B has Keene beating Dartmouth: In this case USM would finish in sole possession of 3rd, so the superior winning % Eastern has over USM would take precedent so they'd win the conference.

Of course all of this is a moot point since RIC hosts Plymouth (I think Massey has RIC with a 100% win probability for that game).  That would be the upset of the century if Plymouth was able to win that game.   

[7express]

Tuesday results:

Dartmouth over RIC 58-54.  Definitely peaking at the right time.  Megan Ronaghan had 16 points and 16 rebounds while Vandell Andrade filled up the stat sheet for RIC: 23 points, 18 rebounds, 6 blocks, and 6 steals.  Too bad Cara Paladino had the next highest point total which was 9.  RIC was down, but Cara Paladino missed 2 jumpers from close inside the final 15 seconds.
USM by 1 over Boston 49-48.  Kirsten Morrison, filling in for a sick Olivia Murphy had 18 points, and Andrea Suffredini added 13 for the Beacons but missed a free throw that would've forced overtime.  Erin McNamera lead all scorers with 19 points.  The Beacons had the ball in a tie game inside of 60 seconds, but turned it over.  After Erin McNamera knocked down 1-2 free throws, Lauren Parra got called for traveling with 7 seconds to go down 1.  Erin mcNamera hit 1-2 free throws again to go up 2, and Mariah Callender fouled Suffredini with 2 tenths of a second left.  Suffredini missed the first and made the second trying for a miracle put back for the 1 point margin.
Keene wallops Plymouth 66-34.  Christan Wojtas with 12 for the Owls, DeAsia Lawrence had a game high 14 for the Panthers.  No Owls player logged more than 22 minutes in this game.  In the first 4:15 of the contest, Plymouth hit 3 of their first 6 field goal attempts, and only had 2 turnovers.  The final 35:45 the Panthers shot 8-39 and committed 27 turnovers.

104-31.

Wednesday schedule:
Western @ Eastern 5:30 PM

Standings:
1) RIC 10-3 (16-8)
2) USM 9-4 (17-7)
3) Eastern 8-4 (16-7)
4) Dartmouth 8-5 (15-9)
5) Western 7-5 (14-9)
6) Keene 4-9 (12-12)
6) Boston 4-9 (13-11)
8) Plymouth 1-12 (2-20)
Note: Keene currently holds the tiebreaker (1-1 vs. USM while Boston was 0-2).

Tournament picture:
What a mess.  I'll wait for the Eastern/Western game to play out because an eastern win would make it about 10 times less cloudy. Not only do we still have scenerio's where we could see multiple teams tied, but the 4 team tie for second at 9-5 is still mathematically possible.  What a mess that would take to figure out.  The only thing we learned today:
Plymouth is locked in at #8
USM is officially OUT as running for the #1 seed
RIC would officially clinch the #1 seed with a Western win over Eastern.  I'll leave the rest alone.  Even the 6/7 seed between Keene/Boston isn't very easy to figure out especially if we get the 4 team's at 9-5.

[AllStar]

Some interesting results tonight in my opinion.  It is clear that this league does have some parity this year despite being down (just like the men).  However, if RIC ends up hosting the tournament I'd still favor them to win it.  I do believe however that the prospects of any teams in this league doing much damage come March is not great.  Even RIC I don't think is good enough to.  Dartmouth does seem to be playing better for the moment, getting very nice wins recently over RIC and USM.  I'm still not really sure what USM is...struggling at Boston and Plymouth (!!??) recently.

[7express]

Some interesting results tonight in my opinion.  It is clear that this league does have some parity this year despite being down (just like the men).  However, if RIC ends up hosting the tournament I'd still favor them to win it.  I do believe however that the prospects of any teams in this league doing much damage come March is not great.  Even RIC I don't think is good enough to.  Dartmouth does seem to be playing better for the moment, getting very nice wins recently over RIC and USM.  I'm still not really sure what USM is...struggling at Boston and Plymouth (!!??) recently.

RIC has been the most consistent team the whole season, and Dartmouth is playing the best basketball of anyone in the conference.
USM has been so incosnstant.  They clobber RIC, yet struggle against Plymouth & Boston.  Outside of Maine where they'll be after the quarterfinals isn't a good place for them.
Eastern is overrated.  Have eaten cupcakes this year.  IMO, it's imperative that they beat Western.  If they end up in the 4/5 game (which could still happen even with a Eastern win) I'll take the other team.  Eastern has looked terrible against the top tier teams this year.
Western is the darkhorse in this thing.  They've been playing really well, and outside of Boston (which was a fluke) and USM which took place in December when they were terrible, they've been competitive in every other LEC game they've played.  They may not have beaten RIC or USM but they were within 6 points or fewer against both of them inside of 4 minutes, so they have the capability of being either team.
Still, I'd put RIC & Dartmouth as the front runners.  Don't see anyone beating RIC in the Murray Center.  Dartmouth won't lose by 30 there again, but they likely won't win either.

[7express]

RR's.  RIC 8th, Eastern 9th, USM gets in at #12.  Neither of these 3 will be getting pool C's however, and RIC is going to take a tumble in next week's rankings since their loss to Dartmouth last night wasn't factored in this weeks:

Northeast
1 Tufts 23-1 23-1
2 Amherst 22-2 22-2
3 Williams 20-4 20-4
4 Bowdoin 20-4 20-4
5 New England 21-2 21-2
6 Wheaton (Mass.) 19-5 19-5
7 Roger Williams 19-4 19-4
8 Rhode Island College 16-7 16-7
9 Eastern Connecticut State 16-7 16-7
10 Emmanuel (Mass.) 17-6 17-6
11 Castleton 21-3 21-3
12 Southern Maine 16-7 16-7