2021 NCAA Tournament

[Hopkins92]

I think people overestimate the NESCAC camaraderie. I did not want Conn to win and I did not want Amherst to win. I would have rooted for just about any other team. Obviously Conn should be super proud of what they accomplished and I know they won't care for one second what I think of the matter.

I want Centennial teams to get out of the first weekend, but past that, I'm not rooting for F&M, Haverford or Swat... Just too much history of rivalry for me to swallow that. I was rooting heavily for WashC, and wouldn't root against Gburg, Dickinson or Ursinus.

(I grew up in Ann Arbor, lifelong MI fan... While I want B1G teams to do well on the national stage, I can only stomach success from OSU and MSU in the abstract... Can't actually root for them in real time. Nope. Not ever.)

[College Soccer Observer]

Thoughts on the Final Four:  All 4 teams were deserving of being there and any of them could have won it with a break here or there.  I think both W&L and Chicago played challenging schedules that were about as good as they could make them.  Chicago has an extra week to play with due to not having a UAA tournament, so that frees them up to play 2 more non-conference games, and they obviously opted to challenge themselves as much as possible.

Some thoughts on the whole NESCAC scheduling debate.  @d4_Pace is correct in how the logistical constraints imposed by the conference make it impractical.  Middlebury this year played all their non-conference games on a Tuesday or Wednesday.
Given that they are not allowed to compete before Labor Day and that the conference schedule begins the first weekend, there is not really room to engage in long trips outside New England, even if the desire to do so were there.  The last weekend in October is for the 4 quarterfinal NESCAC games, and the following weekend is for conference semis and finals. 

In terms of non-conference schedules, many of the NESCAC schools operate the same way the SEC does in football.  When your conference strength of schedule is so strong, many will choose the non-conference games as a chance to pick up some easy wins to balance out the conference meatgrinder and ensure a better overall record.  The Maine schools in particular would find it much more challenging to do a midweek trip to play a top caliber opponent than would Conn or Tufts

The whole "we don't want student athletes missing class" thing is how they wind up with Saturday-Sunday doubleheaders.  For example, in both 2019 and 2021, Middlebury played Conn and Amherst on back to back days, one home and one away.  This year, they had a two game set with Bates and Tufts the following weekend.  Now with all that being said, I was surprised that for Middlebury's first and second round games, they arrived at Franklin and Marshall on a Thursday, trained on Friday, and played Sat-Sun. 

Thanks to all for a great season on the boards here. 

 

[PaulNewman]

I know this will shock everyone, but I can do animosity.

As a lifelong UK basketball diehard who grew up 40 miles from Chapel Hill and Durham I absolutely loathe UNC and Duke and especially Duke (and for whatever reason whenever I think of Duke I think of Tufts).  I could never root for either one and when they play each other I just can't get past desperately wanting both to lose.

And I always pick the wrong teams.  Growing up I was a huge Dallas Cowboys, joined the fan club, and had an autographed 8x10 glossy of Bullet Bob Hayes.  I cried and cried and cried when Bart Starr snuck in from the one yard one with 13 seconds left behind Jerry Kramer.  I was sitting in the Spectrum next to my father (in the Duke section because that's how we got tickets) when Laettner hit that shot to beat UK and The Unforgettables in OT 104-103. 

In D3 soccer I equally despise Tufts and OWU, and I'm ambivalent about Messiah and Calvin.  I hate Tufts so bad I cheer for Amherst against them.

There's a difference between rooting for someone and giving credit or tipping your cap respectfully in defeat or after a rival goes on to glory.  I've congratulated Tufts before, and I don't think I've written a single negative word about OWU all season.

As for the NESCAC you all are partly making my point with the "there is nothing we or they can do" narrative as though the restrictions are enshrined for all eternity and the rest of us with presumed greater flexibility should just conceded that.  Is the NESCAC organization more powerful than the NCAA?  Couldn't a school like Colby file a suit?  Would NESCAC security show up at the airport and block Colby from boarding a flight to LAX?

[camosfan]

What would be the rational for a NESCAC team, currently to take on additional expense of travelling 400-500 miles to play an out of conference game? The US goes to Europe to play friendlies when preparing for a tournament, European team don't come here.

[d4_Pace]

I mean I think that's a little of the NESCAC arrogance that people dislike.

I agree the Nescac should change but I think it's one of those old institutions that is set in its ways to its own detriment. I mean they just started playing every other team in football like 3 years ago.

[camosfan]

One day they will change nothing last forever but hard to see that getting much attention at the moment.

[Saint of Old]

What would be the rational for a NESCAC team, currently to take on additional expense of travelling 400-500 miles to play an out of conference game? The US goes to Europe to play friendlies when preparing for a tournament, European team don't come here.

I love it. Football is like war (except in war the bigger teams always play away games).
Remember history though, the Romans used to say "The Britons make poor slaves", then later, the Briton was known as the empire on which the sun never set.

I say that to say, the Liberty League will rise again

[camosfan]

I don't doubt Liberty will rise again, life is a cycle, as a matter of fact was expecting stronger finish from Vassar and RPI, RIT had a season to build on!

[Gregory Sager]

What would be the rational for a NESCAC team, currently to take on additional expense of travelling 400-500 miles to play an out of conference game? The US goes to Europe to play friendlies when preparing for a tournament, European team don't come here.

I love it. Football is like war (except in war the bigger teams always play away games).
Remember history though, the Romans used to say "The Britons make poor slaves", then later, the Briton was known as the empire on which the sun never set.

Yes, Britain became known as the empire on which the sun never sets ... thirteen and a half centuries after the Romans had abandoned the island, that is. That's not very encouraging for those of us who want to see the NESCACers get their comeuppance on the pitch. Who's willing to wait until the year 3370 for the NESCAC to stop dominating the D3 men's soccer tourney?

More importantly, between Rome's abandonment of Britain in the early fifth century and the rise of the British Empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, most of the island of Britain -- including all of the fertile and useful parts -- had been conquered and settled by Germanic invaders (the Angles, Saxons, Frisians, and Jutes), then infiltrated and partially conquered and settled by another group of Germanic invaders (the Vikings), and then re-conquered and ruled by an aristocratic class of French-speaking Germanic invaders (the Normans). The languages that they spoke, and which produced the language in which you and I type posts for this board, weren't and isn't the least bit British in the linguistic sense. It's a Germanic language with a heavy Romance overlay, and it's named after one of those Germanic invader tribes (the Angles, to be precise). And the culture, laws, and folkways that those people developed into what was then disseminated worldwide by the British Empire (including North America) isn't particularly British in the sense of springing from ancient Keltic roots, either. The English (and Lowland Scots) are Germans whose tongue has been gussied up by French overlords, Latin prelates, and scholastic Greek (and, eventually, by colonial terms that washed back up on the island's shores).

Meanwhile, those Britons whom the Romans said made poor slaves remained intact as a people only in Wales, the Scottish highlands and offshore islands, and the tip of the Cornish peninsula, and have for the past millennium mostly been landless peasants lorded over by English-speaking outsiders. Their own languages, which descend from those spoken by those selfsame Britons whom the Romans derided, are either maintaining a fragile minority status in a small corner of the island due largely to heavy-handed government intervention on its behalf (Welsh), on total life support (Scots Gaelic), or have become extinct entirely (Cornish).

TL;DR: You should've opted for a better and more historically sound analogy, for the sake of your beloved Liberty League (two words gifted to us by the Romans, BTW) if nothing else.

[/British History 101]