The Ivy League announced today a two-year extension to its contract with NBC Sports Network (formerly known as Versus, etc.). Even though it is an extension, this deal is big news, because it includes the opportunity for NBC Sports Network to televise men’s basketball and lacrosse games as well. This isn’t just football anymore. The basketball brethren are about to get a little more exposure. That’s great, but where does the league go from here? I’ve got a few questions.
Category: Colonial Athletic Association
Thoughts about three key CAA issues
The CAA sure knows how to stay in the news. The conference is starting a new television deal, changing up its membership, strengthening its rules and staying on the front of minds of college basketball fans all over the country. Part of that has been the conference’s decision and some of it is beyond their control, but let’s look at a few key issues the league is currently dealing with.
NEC Recap and other interesting links
A few couple of interesting links to highlight. First you should check out the two–part NEC Recap that Ryan Peters wrote over at Pioneer Pride. There are capsules there for every team in the conference. It’s a great high-level recap about where the NEC is and where it is going. The other links you should check out are from CAA Hoops, which gives a break down of the current NCAA “shares” the conference’s members are receiving, and Ken Pomeroy, who attended the CIT championship (won by Mercer over Utah State) last night. Speaking of which, the Mid-Majority’s 800 Game Project is nearing its conclusion. I added a few recaps that had previously been posted on this site to the list. Oh yeah, the Final Four is this weekend! The final five players in NYC will be posted tomorrow morning and then it’s time to start looking towards the NBA Draft, with revamped player similarity scores, and dig into the play-by-play of the Iona Gaels and Columbia Lions a little more. Enjoy!
Is someone joining Butler in the A-10?
I don’t know what types of rumors are more fun, conference expansion, the coaching carousel, NBA Draft, or transfers, but we’ve got them all this offseason. The latest and greatest actually manages to combine two. After Gary Parrish posted an email from the Duquesne president outlining why the school fired Ron Everhart it has come to some people’s attention that there is an interesting line near the end.
Season At A Glance — Hofstra
This is the second of what will eventually be capsules for each of the NYC teams when I’m sure their season has concluded.
Team: Hofstra
Record: 10-22 (3-15 in the CAA); season ended by 85-50 loss to Georgia State in CAA First Round
Season High: There were actually two. A 63-53 win over Cleveland State in November and an 83-75 home win over Iona on Dec. 29.
Season Low: The final game, the worst loss in CAA Tournament history.
Really Good At: Offensive Rebounding — Hofstra was the third best offensive rebounding team in the CAA during conference play. Nathaniel Lester, Stephen Nwaukoni and Moussa Kone all showed an ability to get to glass.
Struggled With: Shooting — The Pride finished 11th in the CAA in effective field goal percentage. They shot poorly from three (29.8%) and two (42.3%). That led to an offense that finished 11th in the CAA in efficiency.
Key Losses:
- Mike Moore, Sr., G (20.0 PPG, 4.6 RPG, Second Team All-CAA)
- Nathaniel Lester, Sr., F (14.7 PPG, 6.7 RPG, athletic big man)
- Dwan McMillan, Sr., G (team-leading 4.9 APG)
Key Returnees:
- David Imes, Jr., F — Athletic rebounder that can help replace Lester
- Stephen Nwaukoni, So., F — Most efficient scorer on Hofstra this season
- Stevie Mejia, Jr., G — A full season of health will help the Pride
Outlook: Cloudy. Hofstra loses its two best players and one of two key playmakers from an offense that just wasn’t very good. If you took Moore out of the equation, the Pride’s offense this season could’ve been classified as miserable. Yes, Hofstra certainly got unlucky during a number of losses in conference play, but they went 4-15 in 2012. All of that leaves Mo Cassara with a lot of work to do in order to field a competitive team again in 2012-13. He continues to bring in big men with high upside. Moussa Kone should improve next season and will be joined in the front court by 6’7″ recruit Jimmy Hall. Still, without a returning player who averaged more than 7.0 points per game it’s tough to predict an improvement next season. There is one potential silver bullet though for Cassara. He’s got two key transfers who will be eligible next season – Jamal Coombs-McDaniel and Taran Buie. Both started their careers at BCS schools (Connecticut and Penn State respectively) and should immediately impact the offense. Coombs-McDaniel in particular was an efficient scorer off the bench on UConn’s National Championship team. He’ll add another key wing. At 6’2″ Buie wasn’t really a pure point guard at Penn State. He didn’t play much for the Nittany Lions in 2010-11, but he did shoot a ton when he was on the court. It should give Cassara another confident backcourt player to add the rotation alongside Mejia.
CAA Tournament Predictions
The CAA tourney is a showcase for the league. Fans from throughout the eastern seaboard are going to be heading to Richmond, VA with the hopes that their team can make a run through the tourney, which starts with a first round on Friday and claim the league’s automatic berth. At least two teams, VCU and Drexel, are hoping that a run to even the finals of the tournament could mean an at-large berth into the NCAA tournament.
Beat the Machine contest
Starting next week I’m going to be running 10,000 sims for each of the conference tournaments. As the brackets are decided I’ll be running simulations for the six conferences that this blog covers that have tournaments (oh Ivy League). This is fun because it requires me to program a whole bunch of options into my tournament simulator. You’ve got everything from straight neutral site events (MAAC), to all on home court (NEC), to single host (Great West), to a mix of both (America East). Plus there need to be slight home adjustments for the CAA schools playing their tournament in Richmond, VA. That’s a lot of variables and it’ll certainly make things interesting, but I know what’s up.
But doing all this work with no reward isn’t any fun. Thus I’d like to propose a contest. Let’s play “Beat the Machine”. Here are the rules:
- For each simulated conference tournament the computer will get a decimal of the winner. For instance, if Iona wins 67% of the simulated MAAC tournaments and wins the real life tournament the computer gets 0.67 points.
- I’ll also simulate a team’s chances of getting to the final. The computer will get the decimal value for those teams as well. Iona was 89% to make the final the computer adds 0.89 points. Manhattan was a 30% chance. The computer gets 0.30.
- Humans either get 1 point (predicting the winner / finalists) or 0 points (miss). Thus you can earn up to 3 points per conference.
Thus the maximum number of points for either side would be 18. My guess is that a number of humans will be able to guess the finalists, but it should still make things exciting for the short term. What do you think? Too easy? Want to play? Contact me via the form or leave a comment on this post. You want prizes? Let’s see how many people sign up and then maybe I’ll think of something fun.
The CAA’s one-bid existence
It’s a sad reality in college basketball that what you do in November and December can come back to haunt you in March. Such is this case this season in the CAA. The league which last season sent VCU to the Final Four is now looking at one-bid status and a crazy few days in Richmond to determine its NCAA tournament representative. In the mock NCAA bracketing session that was conducted by the NCAA for the media Old Dominion won the conference tourney. (Ha!) They ended up at 55 on the s-curve.
It’s sad that it has come to this for the league. It’s weird that the big opponents on Bracket Busters weekend for the league are Cleveland State, Missouri State and Northern Iowa. (You thought I was going to say Lamar?)
But it comes back to those fateful first few months. Drexel lost to Norfolk State on November 18. George Mason lost to both Florida Atlantic and Florida International in overtime. (Not to mention Duquesne.) VCU fell to Georgia Tech. (VCU’s second worse loss according to Pomeroy is the one-point one to GMU. Fathom that.) The Dragons and Patriots both whiffed at a chance to take down Virginia and the Rams fell to Alabama and Seton Hall. There is no top tier win for the conference to hang its hat on. Instead there are three very good teams fighting for just a single bid.
What happens in November and December though reverberates further into the season. The bottom of the CAA is also non-existent. The conference has five teams ranked below 200 in the Pomeroy rankings, with a sixth, Northeastern, itching to join them. That’s half the conference offering up the opportunity for a bad loss. (How weird is it that Hofstra, with wins over Iona and Cleveland State, has two of the league’s best wins?)
But those three title contenders have basically taken care of business. Last season before the NCAA tournament VCU was ranked right around the 49th spot it currently holds in Pomeroy. Then for five magical games in March the threes kept falling and the wins kept coming. (I was lucky enough to see two of them.) It took the Rams all the way to Final Four. Honestly, it could happen again. VCU is younger, but they’re tough and battle tested. I’m sure Bradford Burgess wants another shot.
And even if lightning were to strike twice it wouldn’t change anything. Another Final Four for VCU wouldn’t justify the CAA as a two-bid league. It’d just prove that sometimes what happens in November and December can be forgotten thanks to a few great days in March.
Checking up on winless Binghamton and Towson
The number of undefeated teams is down to just one thanks to Syracuse’s loss to Notre Dame on Saturday, but the number of winless teams is still holding steady at two. Binghamton and Towson can’t find a way to get a conference win in America East or the CAA respectively and it’s starting to become time to worry. Ken Pomeroy now gives the Tigers a greater than 50% chance of going winless during the regular season. Let’s dive a little deeper into both of these teams.
Continue reading “Checking up on winless Binghamton and Towson”
NIT Bracketology: The paper tiger
By mid-January the college basketball analyst comes out to hunt for Bubble Teams. It’s an exercise dependent on looking through RPI table, the “eye test” and other glorious means of trying to determine which teams will make the NCAA tournament. In particular, the analysts – some of who are very well respected – are trying to separate out the paper tigers.
NYC Buckets Archive 