WBB: NESCAC

Started by Senator Frost, March 12, 2005, 09:18:11 AM

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d3wbbfan

Hoopsinfo, you've only made a few posts since you've joined last year. Still, while reading them, it is crystal clear that you are a big Amherst WBB fan who is not at all a fan of Coach Gromacki's coaching ability. Which is fine. I accept that. You 100% remind me of my sister Lee. She is a lifelong, diehard, Yankee fan who, like clockwork, would call or e-mail me *every* single time Mariano Rivera ever blew a save, throughout his long career. She has always thought him to be completely worthless as a baseball player, and will continue to until the day she dies. Even in his retirement, I'm sure he's managing to do something new that's pissing Lee off. Now I will always love Lee, but I noticed that she never, ever called or e-mailed me when he did save a game, or help them win another championship. But that's just my sister's personality. She really is at her happiest only when she's complaining, but at least she's cool enough to admit exactly that to all of us. So I don't begrudge you, either. You're entitled to your opinion.    :)

To me, tonight's loss wasn't all that big a surprise. After all, three of Amherst's four losses last year all happened at the very same place: Cousens Gym, including their OT loss to Ithaca in last year's NCAAs. The 4 SO starters have yet to win there, which does play a part in the team's psyche, just as it obviously helps the LJs to play at LeFrak.

I do agree that Carla Berube clearly out-coached GP Gromacki tonight. It was no contest. Now you and I are both happen to be big Marley Giddins fans. But tonight the Jumbos didn't give her one millimeter to maneuver inside. She's unusually crafty and nimble in the paint, so Marley doesn't need much daylight to be extremely productive down low. She's just so undersized as a 4/5, what's honestly amazed me is how many points she's able to put up, game in and game out. But Tufts was on her so closely tonight, after getting the ball down low, she was "in jail" 3-4 different times, and even picked up a legit 3-second violation for it once. She also picked up two quick first-half fouls. None of that was GP's fault. Or Marley's. She's had good games against Tufts in the past. But tonight, Tufts turned up the defensive pressure, big-time, and Amherst simply had no answer. North also starts this year, giving Tufts two "legit" 6'2" twin towers. Berube played either Kanner OR North last year, whereas they now play together, making the Jumbos far tougher to deal with down low in 14-15. And Michela's understanding/overall job on the defensive end also has been much improved as a SO.

That said, I must also cut Amherst some slack here. They're trying to re-assimilate SR Megan Robertson, post-ACL, into the team's flow ASAP. It's both a challenge, and a work in progress. I could tell Gromacki was trying to speed it up, because he hardly played Giddins at all in the Monday win up at St. Lawrence, opting instead for huge minutes for Robertson, surely with the January road games at Tufts, Williams and Bowdoin on his mind. Megan's making good progress each game. I think it's important to keep the season and its ultimate goals in mind here. It's not March yet. It's only mid-January. And I think Coach Gromacki is doing exactly that. This loss didn't end his team's season. His team will learn and grow from tonight's loss. And Tufts is no slouch. They made the Final Four last year, and all of their top players returned. Berube and FY backup PG Lauren Dillon deserve further kudos for how quickly and seamlessly she's stepped in for the injured Kelsey Morehead.

I do think that, one-on-one, each of the Tufts players had a quickness advantage on the Amherst player who was guarding them tonight, and Coach Berube was able to repeatedly exploit that to her advantage. That was an astute observation by her. In hoops, most benefits come with a consequence. Amherst is a very tall team, but I would describe their overall team speed as below average. These two things do normally go hand-in-hand.     

And a little over-achieveing good fortune doesn't hurt, either. FY Melissa Baptista absolutely had the first half of her *life* Friday night. Carla has smartly reduced her primary player rotation to just 7 this season (down from 9 a year ago), with only SO Josie Lee and Baptista playing regular minutes. The experience these two have gotten has proven invaluable. Lee has had several excellent games already, and tonight it was Baptista's turn to shine. She sank the first two 3-ptrs of her college career early on, and had a toe on the line for a third long jumper that connected. And her quick hands repeatedly created havoc for the struggling LJ offense. And although she did pick up 3 early PF's in the process, her contributions tonight were 100% positive, and very significant. Baptista's unexpected spark from deep also hid the fact that Hannah Foley was cold from bonus range, and allowed Tufts to match Amherst's 1st-half 3-ptrs made, at 3 each.

So while tonight's 23-point Amherst loss was only topped by an 87-60 LJ loss to St. Thomas (MN) in the consolation game of the 2011-12 Final Four, I'm thinking Coach Gromacki still isn't quite ready to throw in the towel yet on this season. His 8-year Amherst record now drops to 221-19. And for anyone wishing that someone else were coaching their favorite team, I would only caution you to be careful what you wish for. No, he's not perfect. But he's still pretty darn good in my book. Thanks as always for reading!

bowdoin74

D3wbbfan,
Thank you for your classy response.  That game is memorable to me because it was my last visit to LeFrak and the last play was unforgettable if you were there; the final play is comparable to Liz Moynihan's epic 3 at the buzzer against UNE last March.  Both final plays are noteworthy. 

Amh63,
Pouring sunlight on a game that has as much significance as Amherst's lone loss at home is a positive contribution to this board.




NE Jeffs Fan

Maybe NY Times is as bad luck as SI covers.  I think they'll bounce back today, and be ready for Tufts come tournament time.  Young teams sometimes have to learn by fire.

Pat Coleman

Quote from: d3wbbfan on January 17, 2015, 03:46:11 AM
You 100% remind me of my sister Lee. She is a lifelong, diehard, Yankee fan who, like clockwork, would call or e-mail me *every* single time Mariano Rivera ever blew a save, throughout his long career.

Thankfully that wasn't a lot of emails!
Publisher. Questions? Check our FAQ for D3f, D3h.
Quote from: old 40 on September 25, 2007, 08:23:57 PMLet's discuss (sports) in a positive way, sometimes kidding each other with no disrespect.

magicman

Worth mentioning on this board is the free throw shooting percentage of Marle Curle, sophomore guard for Bowdoin. The NCAA leader in free throw shooting, Kiley Shoemaker, from Wheaton (MA) has made 39 out of 41 attempts for a percentage of 95.1%. Marle has made 40 out of 41 attempts for a percentage of 97.6%, clearly the best in the country. She isn't listed on the NCAA stat sheet because you have to have a minimum of 2.5 free throws made per game. Marle is 3 made free throws short of qualifying. Her 97.6% is also better than any of the D3 Men as well. Hope she has a couple of games where she gets to the line more than 2 or 3 times to give her the numbers necessary to make the NCAA Statistical Leaders List. 

7express

Not making excuses for the Jeffs loss to the Jumbos a couple weeks back but with the way the 'CAC changed up the schedule where the men & women no longer played at the same place, Amherst really got the short end of the stick having to go to Tufts 2 straight years.

Vandy74

Quote from: magicman on January 19, 2015, 07:07:02 PM
Worth mentioning on this board is the free throw shooting percentage of Marle Curle, sophomore guard for Bowdoin. The NCAA leader in free throw shooting, Kiley Shoemaker, from Wheaton (MA) has made 39 out of 41 attempts for a percentage of 95.1%. Marle has made 40 out of 41 attempts for a percentage of 97.6%, clearly the best in the country. She isn't listed on the NCAA stat sheet because you have to have a minimum of 2.5 free throws made per game. Marle is 3 made free throws short of qualifying. Her 97.6% is also better than any of the D3 Men as well. Hope she has a couple of games where she gets to the line more than 2 or 3 times to give her the numbers necessary to make the NCAA Statistical Leaders List.

Marle Curle is it?  Curle.....Curle....now where have I heard that name before..........And you say she plays basketball?...... :D :D ;)

d3wbbfan

My observations from the 1/21/15, non-NESCAC, Amherst (16-1, 3-1) (65) at Williams (51) Little Three battle:

-SR Megan Robertson started her first game this season, scored 14 pts, and played 32 minutes. She is clearly the team's vocal leader out on the floor, and with just 7 games left in the regular season, I wouldn't be surprised if she went to Coach Gromacki and said she now felt ready to reclaim her starter/full-time minutes status. Tonight Giddens basically returned to the 6th-man role she performed so well before Robertson's ACL tear, around this time last season. Marley will again prove to be a great weapon coming off the bench.

-Of note to me was how few minutes Ali Doswell played tonight. 14. Including just the first 3 minutes of the second half, never to return. Zero points. Of all their young guns, to me Ali has been the LJ's best and most consistent one, both last year and this. Assuming it to be a "healthy scratch", a move like that is what separates Gromacki from the pack. In season, he employs this tactic somewhat regularly. Experiment. Tinker. I'm convinced tonight's minutes allocation was 100% temporary, as GP already knows exactly what Ali will give him every night - great basketball. So he instead used Ali's minutes tonight to allow Renner play the full 40, while also playing JR Cheyenne Pritchard a season-high 26 minutes. (Before tonight, there was more of an either-or lineup dynamic between those two.) Playing both together does make them a quicker team, and looking ahead, a better matchup vs. Tufts. Having Renner out there is essential. Not because she's the PG (because Cheyenne can handle that job just as well as Jaimie does), but because Renner's marvelous slashing/driving ability provides a solid, necessary, late-in-the-shot-clock scoring option, to contrast with Robertson's classic 5-player post game and all the 3's GP wants his team to hoist up each night. I expect Gromacki to further "customize" his rotation this way, from here on in, to reflect the key matchups/strengths/weaknesses of that day's opponent.

-I wanted to see which player Gromacki put on Ellen Cook tonight. For the most part, it was Hannah Peterson. Cook went 2-11, 0-5 from 3, and who scored 6 of her 10 tonight at the line. And I give Hannah some credit for that (although she still plays *way* too minutes for my taste, personally. I'd much prefer seeing the FY Hackley, who to me has a much more diverse, high-level skillset than Peterson's "one-trick-pony, 3-ptr-or-bust" mentality. GP disagrees with me on that. That's OK. He's allowed to be wrong this once.  :)) But Williams' struggles as a team on O so frequently, it's sometimes hard to know if it's their opponent's doing, or if it's the Ephs' shooting themselves in the foot again. Oge Uwanaka seems to have five really good games each season, and tonight was one of them. Otherwise, the Ephs' best moments on O were one-on-one moves by Caveney, Fernandez or Cook. And while that tactic worked well for Tufts vs. Amherst, Williams is a far better matchup for the LJ's, personnel-wise. Besides, Coach Manning's team doesn't work nearly as well together as an offensive unit, or execute their stuff on O anywhere near as well as Coach Berube's does. But, in their defense, I thought Williams did a fantastic job pressing Amherst for about a 3-minute stretch late in the second half, as even with both LJ PGs in the game, the Ephs caused several Amherst turnovers and TO's to be burned. Very impressive full-court pressure. But in the end, it wasn't nearly enough.

-Williams (14-4, 2-2) has six games left - all NESCAC. They host Hamilton and Bates, and play at Wesleyan; those 3 should be wins. But they better mind their Ps and Qs against a young Middlebury squad up in VT, however, and then games at Conn College and vs Tufts in Williamstown on 2/7 are gonna both be a challenge, to say the least. They struggled to end last season, are surely hope to avoid a repeat.

amh63

#2693
d3wbbfan....thanks for the post wrt to the Amherst Ladies.  Because of the schedule that has Amherst teams playing at different sites...and at Tufts two years in a row....have not been able to catch the WBB games as much as I like.  plus K.
Your analysis of the Tufts game was most interesting wrt to team speed.  Agreed that the Tufts coach may have out coached Coach G.  Interest picked up when you carried over the speed at the guards point in the breakdown of the Williams game.  Anyway...Keep it up.
Full disclosure here wrt to the HBC of Williams...I am not a fan and it is probably due to her comments after games and her on the floor coaching.  In the Williams game...which was delayed a bit from the mens game,,,,her efforts to extend the game with fouls was a little overboard, imo.  In the Williams writeup of the game, P. Manning commented that there was a great deal of fouls called in the game...as if it supported the outcome of the game.  Really do not understand her thought process.   In an earlier game..a win....when E. Cook scored 30 points to reach the 1000 point club, Manning commented that she was unaware of the record and if she knew, she would have left Cook in the game. 
When Meg Robertson joined the 1000 point club in a game....scored 16 points...Coach G took her out of the game with her teammates cheering..all aware of the basket that gave Meg the "ticket".

d3wbbfan

#2694
I'm happy to assist you on the detailed LJ/NESCAC WBB updates, amh63. Your point about splitting the venues up this season for NESCAC M/WBB doubleheaders is an excellent one, from your "diehard fan of both teams" standpoint. I can think back to many seasons where watching M/WBB DH's were as good as Christmas morning, for those of us who closely follow/enjoy both squads, and such a split would've saddened me deeply, as I also hit the road many a time for such DH's. So were I the commish, I personally would've kept it the old way. But I can also see the reasons why they may have changed it, from the AD's/school's administrative level viewpoint. 

In the past decade, I've sadly noticed more of a separation of the M/WBB fan bases. Students included. And while you and I don't get it, the reality is that relatively few fans come to the gym with the intention of watching all of both games. And I know college BB coaches, be it M or W, hate it whenever the first game runs long, or goes to OT, delaying their game's start time - they are all creatures of habit. And remember, DIII teams play fewer total games than DI or DII schools do. I think 25 is the regular season max, with the NESCAC teams usually at only 24. I also believe the NESCAC is the only DIII league that plays each conference team just once each season (excepting "Little Three"/Maine schools/occasional other rematches, that don't count in the NESCAC standings.) Don't underestimate this unique fact. As it is now set up, every team gets every one of its NESCAC opponents hoop teams at home/on the road every year; 5 men's/5 women's. This change also means more total "event game days" on each campus. 10 NESCAC game dates are now guaranteed, as opposed to just 5 league DH's the old way. That increase in the # of events matters to certain folks at universities (not us), who always want as many "fun things to do around campus" going on as possible. Plus any earlier, pre-conference home M/WBB games. (I know many of those were already single games, but not all. Were any of those early games DHs in '14-15, or did the NESCAC do away all of with those, too?)

I also appreciate that you, amh63, and 7express, both noticed that Amherst WBB clearly pulled "the short end of the straw", and had to play their lone regular-season encounter AT Tufts two years in a row, due to the above-mentioned M/W DH change. Especially when it occurred during, arguably, the two strongest Tufts WBB teams in its history, and during the two youngest Amherst teams of Gromacki's tenure. (On the other hand, this same fluky situation has also likely helped preserve the LJ's record-breaking home court win streak, as Tufts' graduation losses this May will render them not nearly as formidable a squad next year, in effect depriving Coach Berube of both of her best chances to beat GP at LeFrak. The latter fact of which I don't suspect Carla's losing any sleep over!   :))

MENESCACFAN

Just read the Tufts v Bates report on what seems a brutal beating.  I attended the Bates Men's game today and heard star player Molly Brown has suffered a career ending injury.  That is a bitter blow for a struggling team.

Thy have a basement battle with Wesleyan next week, and the loser of that could be looking at 0-10.  Tough times in Lewiston for Women's Hoops.

Maine 1

Sad to see Bates at the bottom of the NESCAC.  They had such strong teams for a long time. 
This was a big weekend in terms of setting things up for the stretch run.  Conn College had a big win over Wesleyan, to keep them in the middle of the pack, and Williams held off a good Hamilton team.  I watched the Bowdoin-Colby game.  Colby made the game close, and if they would take some time to work on something other than a 3 point offense, they might be able to win some of these close games against good teams.  The difference in the game was down the stretch, Bowdoin was able to get easy baskets off their offense, while Colby tried to bomb threes.  I did not thing Bowdoin looked that strong in the game, and I would expect that Amherst and Tufts may beat them.  Amherst has to make a tough Bowdoin/Colby trip next week.  I haven't seen Amherst yet this season, but will try to catch one of those two games.  At this point, I see Tufts, Amherst, Bowdoin and Williams as the top four teams in the league, with Conn College having the advantage for the fifth spot by virtue of a victory over Colby, but a lot can happen over the next three weeks. Tufts looks like the top team in the league, coming off their big victory over Amherst last week.

MENESCACFAN

Agreed Maine1.  Coach Murphy is a legend there.  Still holds several Football records, coached multiple nationally ranked Basketball teams and won the NESCAC as a soccer coach.  You have to wonder how this miserable run is impacting him and if a change is on the way.  Personally, I hope not.

polbear73

I completely agree with your assessment, Maine1. Heading into this upcoming weekend, the women's side appears to be more defined and less chaotic than the men's. Still a lot of basketball to be played.

magicman

Quote from: magicman on January 19, 2015, 07:07:02 PM
Worth mentioning on this board is the free throw shooting percentage of Marle Curle, sophomore guard for Bowdoin. The NCAA leader in free throw shooting, Kiley Shoemaker, from Wheaton (MA) has made 39 out of 41 attempts for a percentage of 95.1%. Marle has made 40 out of 41 attempts for a percentage of 97.6%, clearly the best in the country. She isn't listed on the NCAA stat sheet because you have to have a minimum of 2.5 free throws made per game. Marle is 3 made free throws short of qualifying. Her 97.6% is also better than any of the D3 Men as well. Hope she has a couple of games where she gets to the line more than 2 or 3 times to give her the numbers necessary to make the NCAA Statistical Leaders List.

This was my post from the other day lamenting the fact that Marle Curle was a few made free throws from being ranked #1 in the country in free throw percentage. I was hoping that in her next game she would get to the line and make 5 or 6 free throws to qualify for the rankings. Well, in her next game out on Tuesday January 20th, she didn't get to the line at all, making her chances of qualifying more difficult since her number of games has increased. She would now need a bigger number of made free throws in her next game than she has had all year. The basketball Gods must have been smiling down on her though, because last night against Colby, Marle got to the charity stripe 8 times and she didn't disappoint, as she canned every one of those 8 attempts. She has now made 48 out of 49 free throws and her percentage is 97.959 which the NCAA will round up to 98.0%. She has now met the qualifying standard of 2.5 made free throws per game, so in the next day or so when the NCAA updates their statistics, Ms. Curle will take her place at the top of the page as the Number One free throw shooter in Division III in the country, man or woman. Congratulations Marle, that's an incredible feat. 8-) She needs to keep getting to the line at least 2.5 times per game, to maintain her ranking (and of course keep making them when she does) so the only advice  I can give to her that might come in handy is....drive Marle... drive to the hoop...every chance you can.

Also worth noting is that the #8 free throw shooter in the country according to the current NCAA ranking with 54 made free throws in 60 attempts is also a member of the Bowdoin Women's team. That would be senior guard, Sara Binkhorst, who is knocking down her foul shots at a 90.0% rate.

Opposing coaches will be hard pressed to keep the Polar Bears from adding to their score late in the game, if the need to foul is part of their strategy. Putting either one of these players on the line is about as automatic as it gets. Nice weapons to have.