Well, the simple answer to that question is “Yes.” Of course the Jaspers can beat the Gaels, even at the Hynes Athletic Center. If you’re playing the percentages Pomeroy gives Manhattan a 14% chance, Team Rankings says 5.8% and Accuscore says 13.8%. Let’s say it’s somewhere around 10%. That means that one out of every ten times Steve Masiello’s club pulls what some would consider a pretty big upset.
Category: Manhattan
Tempo-free MAAC: Does anyone want to challenge Iona?
There’s a very clear cut No. 1 team in the MAAC this season. Iona has taken all comers and delivered convincing win after convincing win. It’s good enough that the Gaels are currently projected as a 12 seed in ESPN’s latest bracketology (playing Vanderbilt!). The big question now is if any team is going to challenge the Gaels. We’ll find out this week as more of the top teams have games against each other starting on Thursday with Iona vs. Manhattan and Fairfield vs. Loyola (Md.). Let’s look at what the per possessions stats tell us about those four teams.
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Both sides of the luck coin
There were seven games played by New York City area teams on Thursday night. St. Francis (NY) beat Quinnipiac 73-72 as Stefan Perunicic hit the game-tying layup, and game-winning free throw. Perunicic also scored his 1,000th point in the victory. Manhattan lost a real tough one to swallow as Dylon Cormier hit a three in the left corner on Loyola’s final possession in the Greyhounds’ 61-60 victory.
Rider gets Manhattan in MAAC season restart
Rider’s record might’ve said 3-11 when its game against Manhattan started, but the only numbers that really mattered were 0-2, as in the Broncs’ record in the MAAC.
The turn of the calendar to 2012 means the return of conference play and having most of those losses left behind in 2011. Rider looked like an unburdened team as it rolled to a 17-point halftime lead and held on for an 88-77 victory over Manhattan at Draddy Gymnasium on Monday night.
“This is a level of basketball where non-conference means nothing,” said Manhattan head coach Steve Masiello. “What matters is what you do in the conference. We go around the whole non-conference and get beat up and get ready for conference play. They’re the epitome of that and they’re ready to play.”
Rider spent most of the past two months having people wonder where the team picked to challenge for the MAAC title had gone. The Broncs lost to Pittsburgh, Drexel, La Salle, Florida, Princeton, Stony Brook and others early in the season. But the win pushed the Broncs’ conference record to 1-2 and helped Rider avoid being swept, even after losing 71-55 to the Jaspers in Lawrenceville earlier this season.
“It’s a new season in the sense this is all league play we’re in,” said Novar Gadson, who led Rider with 21 points. “Manhattan and Marist beat us earlier in the season and we don’t get to swept. For us not to get swept we have to come out aggressive and play with confidence.”
Rider couldn’t miss during the first half, shooting 17-28 from the field during the first half and scoring 52 points, that tied Syracuse for the most points scored in an opening half against Manhattan (9-6, 2-1) this season.
Most of the open looks were handed to the Broncs by slow rotations after Rider broke the press. Playing Manhattan for the second time this season seemed to give players like Jonathan Thompson more conviction against the Jaspers’ traps. While Rider turned the ball over 22 times, it also had 23 assists, led by Thompson’s seven.
Daniel Stewart scored 15 and Brandon Penn scored 12 and grabbed 11 rebounds for the Broncs. Rider shot 12-22 from three as a team and also out scored Manhattan 32-20 in the paint.
“We lost the game at the three-point line,” Masiello said. “They shot 54 percent from three, we shot 48. You cannot let a team like that shoot that percentage from the three.”
The Jaspers struggled with foul trouble during a good part of the opening 20 minutes. George Beamon picked up his second foul with 12:28 remaining in the half and sat the rest of the way. He played 26 minutes overall and scored 13 points on 4-12 shooting. The Jaspers’ hot hand was Kidani Brutus. He shot 5-8 from three and scored 19 points.
After the difficult first half, Manhattan closed to within seven points at 84-77 with 1:30 remaining in the game on Liam McCabe-Moran’s three pointer, but with a chance to get the lead down to five Emmy Andujar couldn’t get his lay up to go down and Rider salted the game away at the free throw line. As a team Manhattan shot just 12-39 (30.8%) on twos.
Conference battles highlight busy Monday night
The New Year holiday is over and it’s time for conference play. America East opens in earnest tonight and the biggest game on the schedule is Stony Brook hosting Vermont. Also, Manhattan starts MAAC play up again by hosting Rider and Hofstra hosts VCU. Here’s what to look for in all of the big games.
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New York Mid-Major Non-Conference Teams
Nobody is in action today as we get ready for conference play, so it’s time to look back once more and name the All-New York Mid-Major Non-Conference teams. There are a lot of talented players to pick from in the New York City area. If I left your favorite player off one of the teams below let me know in the comments. I don’t like expanding beyond two teams, even though it’s possible, because at some point you just start including everyone and I wanted to avoid that situation.
The end of 2011
The end of a year is often a time for reflection. Ironically, in college hoops it is actually just the middle. There’s still at least half the season left to play in 2012 and it’s setting up to be mighty exciting.
I had no idea what would happen when I started this site in April of 2011. I knew that I loved college basketball and the conferences back near my childhood home in New Jersey. I knew I was excited to come back and experience something new and different in New York City.
I didn’t know that it was going to be quite like this. After over 26,000 page views (most in the past two months as things really got going), mentions on sites like CBS’ Eye on College Basketball, SI’s Power Rankings, Beyond the Arc, Ballin’ Is A Habit, and ESPN’s College Basketball Nation, I’m happy to call this my home on the Internet. I’ve gotten the chance to try out some new things — like the Assist Tracker, conference sims and similarity scores — and there are more on the way.
I’m also continuing some old things. NIT Bracketology will continue to be a staple for the site moving forward. The New York Power Poll will post every other week – and thanks to all the voters! There will be recaps of games throughout the area. I got to 25 games during the first two months of the season and I plan on attending many more as it continues.
To all the fans in the MAAC, CAA, NEC, A-10, Ivy League and beyond that have embraced me, sent their message boards to the site and looked to Big Apple Buckets for analysis and game coverage – thank you.
Let me know what you want to see more of as the season progresses. As New York City basketball experiences a renewal that hopefully continues into 2012 with teams like Iona, Manhattan, Long Island, Wagner and Stony Brook all with legitimate chances to play in the postseason let’s make this journey a special one.
Here’s to a happy New Year and a great 2012.
Assist Tracker: Dec. 30
Roderick Pearson Jr. (G, Oral Roberts) — Pearson had 12 assists as the Golden Eagles continued to roll through the Summit League with a 79-67 win over South Dakota. Dominique Morrison scored 27 points for ORU and Pearson assisted on six of Morrison’s 10 baskets. Five of Pearson’s assists were on jump shots.
Jordan Theodore (G, Seton Hall) — Theodore gave out a nice even distribution of assists in Seton Hall’s 67-48 win over West Virginia on Friday. He had 18 points and eight assists for the Pirates in the win. Four of Theodore’s eight assists went to Fuquan Edwin, who led the team with 19 points. There were three layups, three threes, a jump shot and a dunk in Theodore’s eight pack.
Brian Barbour (G, Columbia) — Three of Barbour’s seven assists in Columbia’s 77-67 win over Lafayette went to Meiko Lyles. There were three threes, three layups and one jumper in the seven. Blaise Staab got two assists from Barbour and scored seven points for the Lions.
Phil (Flip) Pressey (G, Missouri) — When you have a scorer like Marcus Denmon on your team you can get a lot of assists by feeding him. That’s what Pressey did last night in a tough 75-68 win at Old Dominion. Four of Pressey’s seven assists went to Denmon, who scored 19 points in the win. In fact, all but one of Denmon’s makes from the field came on passes from Pressey. The seven assists went for four threes and three layups.
Emmy Andujar (F, Manhattan) — Well, Andujar did have seven assists in the Jaspers’ blowout victory over Binghamton, but unfortunately there’s no play-by-play on ESPN.
Friday round up: 5 wins
It was a banner day for New York City’s mid-majors last night as they rung in the New Year with style. All five schools in action pulled out victories. It was an impressive display of how far some of these young teams have developed.
MAAC Projection: Iona hasn’t won yet
Much like I did for the Big East, I ran 10,000 simulations for the MAAC (and a bunch of other conferences coming up in this series this week). The MAAC is a slightly different animal because it played conference games already this season. Four teams: Iona, Fairfield, Loyola (Md.) and Manhattan are ahead of schedule at 2-0. Four teams: Siena, Rider, Niagara and Canisius are behind at 0-2. (Marist and St. Peter’s are stuck in the middle, we’ll see why that’s important in a second.) All of this means that the simulations have to take this into account. It’d be really tough for one of those four bottom teams to take the league title away from one of the top four teams, but as you’ll see, it happened twice.
NYC Buckets Archive 