Congrats to Amherst who has been in the tournament for a month despite all of our best efforts to comment their way out of the dance!

In all seriousness, great for the league to get 5 teams in and Amherst being good again is good for everyone. NPI is pretty clearly a positive for the NESCAC

Wesleyan down 12 at the under 8 timeout. They are 4-17 from the field in the second half and it has gotten late early. It's looking like a 3 peat

Fascinating first half in Middletown. Wesleyan leads 31-30. Not sure who should be happier about this one. Wolinski has half of Wesleyan's points but they are losing the TO battle 7-1. Trinity is 1-10 from 3 but navigated Davis' foul trouble well and Cosgrove completely ditched the second unit basically and started mixing and matching mainly with Norris and Berete. No one really seems to be playing well but they are down just 1 because they do such a good job of taking care of the ball. Will be a fascinating 20 minutes

Henry Vetter with less than 5 seconds on the shot clock is just about a sure thing. Everyone knew that was going in

Pouye scoreless at half and yet Wesleyan leads just 24-23. Not the prettiest 20 minutes of basketball you've ever seen

I respect and appreciate that everyone here is rooting hard for Amherst to miss the tournament even though they have been essentially pencilled in for like four weeks.

I have Wesleyan over Trinity tomorrow. Think the crowds and the travel will make a difference in every game. Reilly just has his guys ready to play at all times and while Trinity is really good Wesleyan has the better backcourt and guards win you games like these.

It was smart of Cuevas to enter the portal as early as possible. A lot of that list is likely due to the fact that so few other D1 players are in there yet. Not that he couldn't play at those schools but if a high academic dude enters the portal on February 25th he's going to get a lot of calls.

I have no issue with Cuevas but the more time goes by the more strongly I feel about Vetter POY. We can pretend like that Trinity team is absolutely loaded with offensive talent but it really isn't. Ayles and Davis are nice role players but nothing more yet. We talk Lazarre up a lot and he's probably worthy of a 2nd team all league spot but that is more defense than offense. Neither he or Okorougo make anyone better offensively or really make the defense work. Vetter is the straw that stirs the drink offensively, sets their entire tone as a leader, etc, two year captain. Has the ball in his hands at the end of the game and is the most likely to come through (see: national championship winning 3 with 10 seconds remaining)

He is my POY and it really has nothing to do with Cuevas or anyone else. I just think he is the most deserving and the best player

The Friday/Sunday is still a disadvantage and the other team only has to play one game, but yes, I agree that it probably wasn't the reason they lost

Amherst is 18-7 with wins over Tufts, Wesleyan, and Bates. They have 3 bad losses - Springfield, Whittier, and Williams (who NPI did not hate FYI) but those 3 wins are doing a lot for them and they were always going to have a very strong resume when it came down to it

Quote from: lumbercat on February 21, 2026, 09:28:42 PM

Quote from: JEFFFAN on February 21, 2026, 08:07:45 PMJust when you think it is safe to be encouraged by Amherst they crap the bed badly in the NESCAC playoffs.

Amherst has a rich Basketball tradition- Why would you dis them like that. Why be a front runner. They lost today to a team that hasn't beat them forever in that Gym. Bates out worked them and grinded out a win. I wouldn't lose too much sleep worrying about the returning players on that roster. I'm sure the promise of matriculation at the most selective liberal arts college in the country will lure a couple of bigs in a heartbeat to Amherst in the near future.

What does a Williams degree have to do with Amherst's frontcourt?

I am still working on all league but man it is gonna be tough. There are a lot of second team guys that are worthy and balancing team success and stats is hard this year. Doesn't quite seem like you can justify having 3 guys from one team to me, maybe Lazarre for Trinity but I don't know if I can have a guy who averaged 9.2 points per game on the 3 seed make an all league team. He would have to be Michael Cooper defensively and I don't think he quite got there.

Amherst is another tricky one - they have all league talent but the offense is still pretty anemic so the numbers don't pop out. It reminds me of the Cosgrove years from like 2016-2022 ish. I don't know who I'm gonna pick but they need someone.

A lot of deserving players are going to get left out but I hope the coaches lean towards winning players and not stats on less successful teams. Pouye, Civello, that range of guy, probably second teamers with how strong the top 3 teams are. But who knows! The coaches are always good for a surprise or five 

I did not use the word talented, I said better. Jared Berry is more talented than Henry Vetter. Pohlman is far more "talented" than Pouye or Dan Civello. Those are different. All of the guys I mentioned are better at basketball than Pohlman

I don't know if this is the best metric or the worst metric to decide this but Cuevas, Vetter, Okorougo, are just better at basketball than Pohlman. I think we get way too bogged down by stats when doing these. If you asked 100 D3 basketball fans to watch these teams play without knowing who was who and then asked them who the best player was, Pohlman would get the 4th most votes. I don't know that people would think he is better than Wolinski either

I am not quite ready to give Sears a ton of credit for engineering a miraculous turnaround at...Amherst. Yes the adjustments have been impressive and the guard play is much improved but I don't know how much of it was an intentional philosophical shift and how much was being forced to adapt to losing Randall and Tam - which is impressive and should be lauded! But they also brought in a 6'10 center this same year so I don't know that there is a sign that this happened on purpose.

Next year will be a big test without Hammond and Martin, I will be curious to see what that group looks like before thinking Amherst is back where they belong