WBB: Little East

[7express]

Eastern beats Baruch to advance to the sweet 16.
Keene totally imploded vs Westfield.  They were up by 8 at halftime lead the entire second half and lost at the buzzer by 1.

[remsleep]

7....what are you hearing about the USM vacancy?   Names out there as a possible successor to Coach Fifield?   

[AllStar]

7....what are you hearing about the USM vacancy?   Names out there as a possible successor to Coach Fifield?

Somebody I'd keep an eye on is the Regis (MA) coach who played at Southern Maine.

[remsleep]

not that there is a requirement that future coach has Maine ties but there is a collection of coaches out there who do have in-state ties:

the aforementioned  Angela Santa Fe at Regis
Mandy King at Kean
Christine Clancy at Washington & Lee
Sara Akashian at MIT
Julie Plant at St A's
....and of course Amy Vachon at UMO

[7express]

Wasn't Julie Plant the former coach at Regis??  I doubt she'd go backwards from division 2 St. Anselm to division 3 USM.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

Some wouldn't call it going backwards... to be honest.

[Roundball999]

Some wouldn't call it going backwards... to be honest.

I definitely agree.  I know at least two very successful D3 coaches that have turned down multiple offers from D1 or D2 programs because they felt their D3 situations were better.  Dave you must know many such examples. 

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

Yes... there are plenty. And there are some who were assistants in D1 and decided they really wanted to coach and stay in D3. There are others who have been higher up and come down... Emerson men's basketball comes to mind! Jim O'Brien anyone?

[7express]

Eastern @ Tufts.
They won @ Scranton, but beating the Jumbos in Medford is a whole different animal.  they played earlier this year in Willimantic with the Jumbos winning by 13, I'd expect around the same score this time around.  Jumbos are favored by 14.5 with an over/under of 114.5; I'll take Tufts 63-50.

[7express]

Eastern loses 45-31.  Not gonna win many games scoring 31 points overall, but this was a really ugly game as the score at halftime was 20-11.  Cant imagine you win many games scoring 45 points, Tufts will need to play a lot better vs. Florham tomorrow to advance to Grand Rapids.  Congrats to  Kristina Forsman, Taylor McBride and Shannon McCourt!  What they battled through their freshmen year to advance to sweet 16 is remarkable achievement and those 3 should hold their heads up high.

[remsleep]

7....what are you hearing about the USM vacancy?   Names out there as a possible successor to Coach Fifield?

Any more updates on this question?  Surprised there has not been any announcement....times awasting!

[cantdothat]

Hearing Sam Allen, Angela Santa Fe, and Gavin Kane with Allen the frontrunner.

[remsleep]

hmmmm...very interesting...could be a good match with Allen.   Can USM pay anybody?....current view of the school is that it is in serious decline financially...not sure if this is true or not..would be shocked if Gavin Kane took this job....why would he do that?

[remsleep]

of course now we get to see what will happen at Bates....that could be an attractive opportunity for somebody with the ability to out-recruit Shibles and Veilleux...will be VERY interesting to see if Bates thinks a little outside the box in this search...hope they do

[7express]

Any news regarding USM??

Btw, Liz Stritch is out at Plymouth.  She got a raw deal there as when she came in there was absolutely no talent to speak of she inherited.  Interesting development for coaches in the Northeast since Jim Murphy at Bates is out too.