Tufts gave up 21 offensive rebounds and turned the ball over 18 times. Kanner shot 4-of-12. Foley was in street clothes...

...and they won. Convincingly.

Outstanding team win for the Jumbos. The defense did a great job limiting Binkhorst to 4 points for the game and Brady to 5 points in the second half. Josie Lee stepped into Foley's spot in the starting lineup and played 35 impactful minutes - 12 points, 6 rebounds, 5 assists, and 3 steals. Emma Roberson played the best game of her career - 16 points on 7 shots. Congratulations to Tufts and Coach Berube. As a neutral observer, they've been fun to watch in recent years.

Interesting - Tom Palleschi and Coach Sheldon are both quoted at the end of this article from the Tufts student newspaper as saying Palleschi may try to come back for the Jumbos next season: http://www.tuftsdaily.com/sports/men-s-basketball-sabety-leads-jumbos-with-palleschi-s-mentorship-1.2859415

Quote from: MVP on March 05, 2014, 01:08:51 PM
Tufts gym is a tough place to play a game and a terrible place to watch a game. It may still not be regulation size. The lighting is awful and the acoustics are lousy. As you enter the gymnasium you must go down stairs ...then up some stairs ....then up and around and on and on. The visiting team's locker=room is up in the clouds somewhere... it takes them 10 minutes just to navigate the 71 steep steps to the locker-room.  Fans are constantly walking across the court to find seats and stopped by lunk-heads w/ attitudes who think they're security at a Giants game or something.  Get there early for a good seat w/out a hassle and bring your own popcorn.

My response is based on having gone to several dozens of games at Cousens over the last 10 years:

1.) The renovated Cousens IS regulation-sized because if it wasn't, Tufts wouldn't be allowed to host NCAA games.
2.) It really isn't that difficult to navigate the seating if you enter through the front entrance of Cousens, which is always open on game days and is easily accessible, as it's located literally across the street from the parking lot. In fact, you don't even need to navigate stairs at all if you don't want to, as there is seating (and has always been seating) located behind the baskets on the same level as the entrance. And if you want to sit in the bleachers, you have to go down 1 flight of stairs.
3.) Fans are absolutely under no circumstances "constantly walking across the court" to find seats. Like other NESCAC gyms that I've been to, you're allowed to walk along the sidelines opposite the team benches to get to a seat, as long as you're not disrupting play. You're also allowed to walk behind the team benches. Never once have I see fans "walking across the court" to get to a seat.
4.) It really isn't that hard to find a good seat at Cousens - certainly not more so than any other Division III sporting event I've been to. In my opinion, there are no shortage of great places to sit at Cousens to watch the game: the aforementioned seats behind the baskets, the balconies, and the bleacher seating that was installed as part of the renovations all offer great views, and it's not like there is so much competition for those seats that you need to "get there early for a good seat w/o a hassle."

Tufts made renovations to Cousens Gym ahead of the 2009-10 school year that rotated the basketball court and made it a regulation-sized facility. Since that time, they have been eligible to host NCAA Tournament games. Prior to that, they weren't allowed to do so. The Tufts women qualified for the tournament in 2010 but were shipped out of region to Kean for the first and second rounds. They were left out of the tournament in 2011, then qualified and hosted first- and second-round games in 2012 and 2013.

Quote from: amh63 on January 18, 2014, 11:09:35 AM
The MBB GAME COVERAGE was no better .  If Tufts wins the rights to host the conference tourny , they need to step up!

I'll reiterate that Tufts had a second feed (from the student group JumboCast) that was working perfectly fine. Tufts didn't link to the JumboCast feed on their athletics site, which was probably a mistake on their part, but there was a functioning webcast for both the men's and women's game.

Quote from: NE Jeffs Fan on January 17, 2014, 09:39:18 PM
I believe that was the first time that Tufts and Berube have beaten Amherst in the Gromacki era.  Plenty of close games along the way.

Correct. Gromacki won his first 10 games against Tufts, including one NESCAC semifinal, two NESCAC finals, and one NCAA Sweet 16. Margins of victory were 2, 6, 6, 3, 9, 38, 17, 26, 5, and 6.

Tufts had a student feed that was working fine: www.jumbocast.com. Now streaming the men's game.

Tufts has played with a shorter bench for the last few weeks due to injury.

Amherst got more points on three-pointers (15) and free throws (18) than they did on two-pointers (14) and still won. Not quite as painful as the Andrew Olson game from all those years ago, but still: another brutal loss for Tufts basketball in a Sweet 16 game at LeFrak.

Four teams (Bates, Tufts, Amherst, and Trinity) have swept the Bowdoin-Colby weekend this year. Don't foresee a team the caliber of Williams having problems with it, either.

Yes, perhaps not the prettiest win for Amherst, but I think it's a good sign that they were able to rally and win despite getting only 15 minutes from Megan Robertson (who, although only a sophomore, is still a leading NESCAC Player of the Year candidate, in my opinion). According to the stats, Robertson went to the bench with her fourth foul with 10:51 left and Amherst trailing by 6. Very tenuous situation for Amherst, but Savannah Holness came in for Robertson and contributed 10 points on 4-4 shooting over the final 8 minutes. Doesn't appear as though Robertson returned to the game, which tells you how well Holness played. Should be a confidence builder for Amherst to see someone outside the starting five step up as Holness did last night, albeit against a middling Hamilton team.

Williams continues to look very impressive. They have four of the top 20 scorers in the conference, only two (very close) losses, and wide margins of victory in almost all their other games - including last night against Wesleyan. Hard to believe they're not in the top 25.

Agree with Maine1 that Williams, Amherst, and Tufts are the top 3, but I don't think Tufts is necessarily the clear-cut favorite. Williams played a great second half against Tufts and nearly rallied twice from double-digit deficits before coming up short. That game could have had a much different outcome if Williams had not dug itself a hole over the first 25 minutes or so. Meanwhile, Tufts hasn't beaten Amherst in at least five years and has to go to LeFrak on the second half of a back-to-back NESCAC to try to end that spell. Would not at all be surprised if Tufts wound up being the best in the league this year, but I feel that Williams and Amherst are right there with them.

Quote from: Maine1 on January 06, 2013, 07:24:06 AM
It maybe that we are going to see a new number one team out of the NESCAC in 2013

At the very least, I think there's much more competition for the top spot than in season's past, when Amherst had a stranglehold on the NESCAC and was the undisputed top team in the league. The combination of Amherst graduating four starters from last year's Final Four team, Tufts gaining an infusion of young talent (including three sophomores who are starting for them this year), and Williams bringing back a very strong class of current seniors has made the top a lot more muddled than in recent years.

I, too, am hesitant to make too big a deal out of one or two results from this weekend, as Amherst's body of work is very strong and back-to-back NESCAC games on the road are always difficult. That being said, Amherst's lack of bench production this weekend against two of the lesser opponents in the league is a red flag, at the very least.

Having followed NESCAC basketball for the last few years, I feel this is definitely a down year for the league. Two factors:
1.) There aren't as many quality teams as years past. The NESCAC sent five teams to the 2010 NCAA Tourney, four to the 2011 Tourney, and three to the 2012 Tourney (though remember that Colby probably should have made it). This year, it seems like it will be tough to make an at-large case for anyone outside of Amherst, Williams, and Tufts - every other team in the league already has between 4 and 8 losses.
2.) The top of the conference, starting with Amherst, isn't as dominant. That's not intended as a knock against Amherst - but more just the reality of what happens when you graduate five all-NESCAC players in two years. Still a very dangerous and very well-coached team, but not nearly as deep as they've been recently. The fact that they only played 7 players and got only 4 bench points against a perennial bottom-half-of-the-league team like Conn. College shows how reliant they are on their starting five - very different from the Amherst teams of recent years that had a lot of experience (Lem Atanga McCormick, Jackie Renner, Marcia Voigt, etc.) coming off the bench. Still wouldn't bet against a G.P. Gromacki-coached team, but just doesn't strike me as that totally dominant, very balanced Amherst team of the last few seasons.

As for the weekend, Tufts probably could/should have won by bigger margins against Williams and Middlebury - but it shouldn't be discounted that those were their third and fourth games of the week. I also don't think a win by "only" four against Williams is somehow a poor reflection of Tufts. Williams has received top-25 votes the entire season, and they entered Friday with just one loss (by one point to a Bridgewater St. team that's performed very well against several NESCAC opponents this year). So I don't think Tufts' close win against Williams was all that comparable to Amherst's close win against Wesleyan.

Quote from: amh63 on February 03, 2012, 12:15:31 PM
Critical games ahead this weekend.
During my scanning the U-tube section on the Amherst website, there appeared a video produced by the Tufts Daily paper dealing with the BIG game on Saturday..the WBB game on campus.  It was a pro Jumbo production with comments by several players and the coach.  What bother me a little is that both the coach and one player stated that several games between Amherst and Tufts the last couple of years were close and couldn't have been over 10 points combined.  Really.  I can understand the player's impression...but the wise UCONN great player who is the Tufts WBB coach?  Three years ago at Amherst it was 6 points difference.  Two years ago at Tufts it was 6 points difference.  Last year at Amherst it was 30 points difference.  Expect a tight game in Melford...but the reporter should check the facts.

Went back to find the video you're referring to, and just FYI - it was made in 2010. And up to that point - as the coach, players, and reporter correctly alluded - all four Tufts-Amherst games of the Gromacki era had been close:
07-08: Amherst by a buzzer beater in the regular season + Amherst by 6 in the NESCAC title game
08-09: Amherst by 6 in the regular season + Amherst by 3 in the NESCAC semifinals

So that's four Amherst victories by 17 points total. Not sure which "facts need to be checked." Also, don't really see how the video was a "pro-Jumbo production." It simply stated the implications of the game from a NESCAC and national perspective and talked about what the rivalry had meant to the Tufts players - an extremely relevant topic for the Tufts student newspaper to cover.

Not that any of this has anything to do with this season. Just felt the need to stand up for the student journalists who do good and thankless work promoting the NESCAC/Div. III athletics.