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OG -- game on Friday is in Alumni Gym. I'm sure it will be a raucous crowd! The non-league game in a couple of weeks is in Waterville.

Not sure on the Waterville crowds. Students are still in Jan Plan, with a very high percentage of students traveling abroad or doing an internship, and hockey has always been the bigger draw. Always hard to tell on the webcast anyway, as most people sit on the side below the camera, where there aren't big poles that can block the view. I know a big crew of alumni will be going up to the Hamilton/Amherst game to celebrate the last year of Wadsworth Gymnasium, and I'm guessing the students will come out for those games too.
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Thanks for the correction! I'd love to get to that Bates-Colby game in Alumni Gym, if I could get a seat. The fire marshals will be out for that one. Middlebury has been drawing nice crowds for a number of years now, but not a lot of students (maybe 20% of attendees). Middlebury, and other NESCAC schools, are places of such great diversity of backgrounds and interests that students by and large do their own thing. That's okay.

Is it safe to say that the CCIW is probably a one bid league this season?

All nine CCIW teams are tied as "Teams Not Receiving Votes" in this week's D3hoops poll.

Amherst will certainly lose a lot of votes. But UW-Whitewater, Wartburg and Loras, all right beneath Amherst, also lost this week, and that will affect where they all land.

Rofrog, I've pulled this sentence out of one of my previous posts. It definitely impacts what happened with Amherst this week.

Ryan are you telling me a loss means nothing.Maybe in your poll but in Regionals it means alot!

I'm saying a loss doesn't mean any one thing.  Losses mean something, but what they mean is entirely dependent on circumstance.

To me, the best example is the Mt Union - Marrietta men's game that happened last week.  Marietta shot like 30% from the field and UMU shot 70% - it was a huge blowout in a conference game and it does affect how we view both teams, but not as much as the score would indicate.  If you play that game 100 times, there's not a single other time the outcome looks like it did - those are fluky numbers both ways.

I'd say the two unusual Amherst losses are properly reflected in their current #8 ranking.  It's a team with #1 talent and a couple head-scratching performances.  No one is going to fault them much for an OT loss to Tufts, because Tufts is Tufts.  That loss certainly means something different than the other two - even you have to agree with that!