It’s time to begin a non-conference tradition – our “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” post for the NEC! The first edition is a little late this week, so a few teams already have a couple of games under their belt. Let’s highlight the biggest positives and negatives from the first four days of the 2013-14 season.

The Good

• New Blackbirds May Soar, But One Remains the Same – No Jamal Olasewere, C.J. Garner, Julian Boyd, Booker Hucks, and Kenny Onyechi? No problem! All the Blackbirds did was score 1.18 points per possession and drain 11 of their 24 three-point attempts in their season opening victory over St. Peter’s. The long distance onslaught was led by guard Gerrell Martin, who after only playing a quarter of LIU Brooklyn’s available minutes last season, scored a career high 24 points. As impressive as Martin and others like Gilbert Parga and Landon Atterberry were, though, Jason Brickman was the star of the show. His NEC Player of the Week effort yielded a sensational line of 13 points, 6 rebounds, and 14 assists. Currently, Brickman has 733 career assists. He would need to average approximately 9.5 dimes per game for the remainder of the season (28 games, plus any postseason games) to crack 1,000 career assists, which would make him only the fourth player ever to do so in NCAA history. Are you going to bet against him? Yeah, we didn’t think so.
• A Stunning Upset Down South – John already went over the Terriers remarkable takedown of Miami, but given the magnitude of the accomplishment, this story bares repeating. St. Francis Brooklyn’s season opening win was the first time the program has ever upended an ACC school. Previously, the NEC’s record against ACC schools since the turn of the century was 2-52, with both victories coming against hapless Boston College (Robert Morris in 2008, Bryant in 2012). Jim Larranaga may be in a deep rebuilding mode after losing point guard Shane Larkin and five seniors from a championship roster, but a win versus a power conference is impressive nonetheless. It puts the rest of the NEC on notice – St. Francis will be a contender, even if that wasn’t the consensus thought prior to November 8th. This team is far more athletic with Kevin Douglas, Amdy Fall, and rookie Wayne Martin logging big time minutes around Jalen Cannon, Ben Mockford, and others.
• New Faces, Same Result – Even though he likely won’t admit it, the 2013-14 season will be the biggest challenge of Andy Toole’s young career. Lots of production has graduated and/or moved on, yet it was business as usual in their home opener versus Savannah State. Last season the Tigers – a defensive stalwart ranked 30th nationally in defensive rating – stymied the Colonials’ offense, holding them to 0.78 points per possession on 29% shooting. This time around, Robert Morris got their revenge as 11 different players – five newcomers – scored in a decisive 20-point victory. Three players scored in double digits and Anthony Myers-Pate and Kavon Stewart combined for nine assists and two turnovers. Velton and Russell who?

The Bad

• A Massive Rebuild Ahead – We here at Big Apple Buckets don’t put much value in non-Division I wins, hence our stark refusal to acknowledge FDU’s Friday night victory over Caldwell. Rather, we’ll treat that as an exhibition and focus on the Knights’ inconsistent effort in Hofstra. It wasn’t much of a game from the start, with the Pride pulling away after a couple of early runs. Not surprisingly, the Knights struggled to score, posting 0.85 points per possession. A field goal percentage of 30.2% surely didn’t help, nor did an unsavory 9:13 assist to turnover ratio. Obviously, the rebuilding effort in Hackensack is going to take a while, so don’t expect the turnaround to occur in the next couple of months. With the exception of home games against St. Peter’s and Hofstra, every other non-conference showdown gives FDU a 6% chance or less to win, according to KenPom. It’s improbable, yet not wacky to envision Greg Herenda’s group with zero Division I victories heading into NEC play.

The Ugly

• A Sacred Shooting Slump – Anthony Latina summed it up best in his postgame comments after a disheartening defeat at the hands of Fairfield, “It’s almost impossible to win when you shoot 24%.” Extrapolate that to just three-pointers, and the Pioneers were a paltry 19% (on 26 attempts) from behind the arc. Yikes. Much of the poor shooting had to do with Fairfield’s newfound post presence, Malcolm Gilbert (11 rebounds, 8 blocks), but the Pioneers missed a lot of open looks from within 15 feet. Chalk it up to first game jitters, over aggression, whatever, yet it wasn’t a good start to the Anthony Latina era. With a whopping 25 Stag turnovers committed in the contest, Saturday evening was Sacred Heart’s best chance to beat Fairfield (now 0-5 all time) for the first time in its Division I history. Instead, the Pioneers must now regroup against an improved Holy Cross squad on Wednesday. To make matters worse, freshman De’von Barnett – who Latina believes can provide an instant impact off the bench – will likely miss his second straight game with a sprained ankle.
• 13 Minutes of Blue Devil Hell in Bridgeport – With 13 minutes remaining in the second half, CCSU was cruising against in-state rival Yale. Kyle Vinales was red-hot, Matthew Hunter was his usual stat stuffing self, and newcomers Juwan Newman and Faronte Drakeford were contributing. Everything was sunny at the Webster Bank Arena for the blue and white. And then Yale began their furious comeback. When the smoke cleared, James Jones’ crew delivered a stunning 33-point turnaround by the final horn. In order to pull it off, the Bulldogs scored 32 points on 15 consecutive possessions (yes, you read that correctly) to give them the lead for good. Moreover, the Blue Devils fell apart on the boards, as they were out rebounded 23 to 9 in those final 13 minutes. Of those 23 rebounds, seven were offensive rebounds that led to 10 second chance points.

Player of the Week: Jason Brickman for reasons stated above. With all due respect to Dyami Starks, I can’t get too excited about an individual performance when the team was routed by Gonzaga.
Rookie of the Week: Wayne Martin, of course. A well deserved honorable mention goes to St. Francis point guard Malik Harmon, who was sensational against Navy (20 points on 7 shots, 5 assists, 4 steals) on Monday. It isn’t premature to say that Rob Krimmel has his point guard of the future. This kid is legit.
Team of the Week: St. Francis Brooklyn. That was one heck of a Florida trip for Glenn Braica’s crew, knocking off both Miami and the Mike Jarvis coached (remember him?) Florida Atlantic within a three-day span on the road.

You can follow Ryan on Twitter @pioneer_pride