It was another wild weekend in NESCAC basketball, with all of the action going down on Saturday afternoon/evening. The amount of chaos so far in the conference is unquantifiable, but comparing the current NESCAC standings to our preseason composite power ranks gives you a good idea. Things might still shake out and end up a little bit closer to what we imagined at the beginning of the season, but right now the only teams we appeared to be really close on are Conn. College and Wesleyan, whom we ranked sixth but is sitting in a tie for fifth at the moment.
This weekend might have been the craziest yet. We had underdogs pulling off big wins at home in Clinton and Lewiston (that’s if we’re buying into Tufts. Are we ready to do that?), a classic CBB game with Bowdoin and Colby, and Middlebury losing to an United States College Athletic Association school (did anyone even know that the USCAA was a thing?). What do we make of all the madness? As always, some players’ stock rose while others fell.
Stock Up
1. Bryan Hurley ’15 and Lucas Hausman ’16
The two Bowdoin backcourt mates combined for 47 points, nine boards, seven assists and three steals to help the Polar Bears edge Colby by three points on Saturday, 68-65. With the crushing news that Keegan Pieri ’15 has probably played his last basketball game for Bowdoin due to his second concussion of the year (see below), this was a major statement game for the Polar Bears.
Bowdoin senior forward Keegan Pieri sustained another concussion last night against UMPI. He had another concussion earlier in the year.
— Nothing But NESCAC (@CACSportsBlog) January 22, 2015
Boy, did Hurley and Hausman respond in a big way. We’ve talked quite a bit in this space about how Hurley hasn’t been quite the same player as he was pre-ACL injury, and Saturday was not a classic Hurley performance, but it was undoubtedly his best game of the season as he went 7-16 from the field, 4-9 from three and 5-6 from the line for 23 points. He’s now had four straight games shooting over 40 percent from the field and six straight with multiple made treys. Suffice to say he looks much more comfortable these days.
As for Hausman, he might have a case for Most Improved Player in the NESCAC this season, and he’s among the league leaders in scoring. With him and Hurley firing on all cylinders, Bowdoin might have the best offensive backcourt in the NESCAC. But it remains to be seen whether the duo can keep up this level of performance for the rest of the season.
2. Joseph Lin ’15
I guess it’s time to start believing in Lin, who’s averaging 19.6 PPG and 9.8 APG in conference games. Lin had his worst shooting night of the NESCAC season against Williams (4-12, 11 points), but he stilled handed out nine assists in 37 minutes. He is the key cog for Hamilton, and it must have been huge for the team’s confidence to knock off the Ephs for Hamilton’s first conference win of the season. Now I must acknowledge that the three minutes that Lin did not play just so happened to be the last three of the game on Saturday and he exited with Hamilton down by three, so others probably deserve more credit for the upset win in particular, but Lin has been spectacular overall in big games and I think we can expect that to continue for the senior.
3. Trinity Offense
Now let’s take this with a grain of salt. The Trinity offense is still no Middlebury or Williams, but maybe they’ve caught on to something – shoot more threes. The Bantams went 8-18 from deep in their victory over Amherst, and are shooting 37.7 percent from three in conference games but have taken the fewest number of attempts. Chucking up shots from long range doesn’t really fit with this team’s personality. They’d much rather be physical in all facets of the game, but maybe that’s what the Bantams need to do to get the offense rolling. Hart Gliedman ’15 is a perfect example of this. He is a defense-first guard, a tough defender who gets a lot of steals and only scores 4.3 points per game. But he is shooting 47.4 percent from deep on the season. He hasn’t been a great three-point shooter in the past so maybe that percentage is an aberration, but for all we know he spent his entire summer jacking up treys like Jimmer Fredette and this could be for real.
Stock Down
1. NCAA Dreams for Non-Champions
If any of the top half of the league can win out in the regular season, that team will have a very good shot at making the tournament with an at-large bid based on the wins they would have to earn from here on out. Bowdoin made it last year at 19-5 and 6-4 in conference. But with the parity in the NESCAC the chances of Bowdoin or Trinity ending up 9-1 or for Middlebury going 8-2 are slim. Williams just had a terrible loss against Hamilton and has two other bad losses against teams hovering around .500. With eight losses already, Tufts would be a long shot if they lost in the NESCAC tournament, and the same can be said for Colby with seven losses. Bates is 12-4 and all of those losses came against winning teams, but with the rumors swirling that Graham Safford ’15 is less than 100 percent right now the Bobcats will be hard-pressed to remain contenders. Safford hasn’t been shooting particularly well since 2015 began and was already rested for one game two weeks ago. What Bates does have in their favor though is that two of their losses came against out-of-region teams, so they won’t hurt the Bobcats as much when the selection committee convenes. The Middlebury loss to Maine-Fort Kent was not pretty, but Fort Kent isn’t a D-III school so the same logic applies. The Panthers should be rooting hard for Tufts to keep winning to boost their strength of schedule. Wesleyan still has an outside chance, but the loss to Curry will be crushing for them. Amherst has just five losses, but some of them came in dominating fashion, which leads one to believe that the Lord Jeffs have flaws that will prevent them from going on a run and remaining unbeaten from now until tournament time. The NESCAC might be a one-bid team this year, something that has been talked about quite a bit this season but is becoming ever more realistic.
2. Conn. College Camels
Not to kick a team while its down, but the blowout loss to Wesleyan probably ends the Camels’ chances of sneaking into the playoffs. There was a glimmer of hope after Conn. played Middlebury tough last weekend, but that glimmer has been extinguished. Conn. is a young team with a lot of work to do. They’ve let teams run away with games too often this season, losing by double figures five times this season. The Camels need to learn how to play a complete game and sustain runs from their opponents.
3. PG Tarik Smith ’17 (Tufts)
Smith has been featured in this section for three straight weeks now, but for the first time his stock has fallen. Since being removed from the starting lineup Smith had elevated his game in NESCAC play and turned into a leader for the Jumbos. But then he goes and has his worst game in over two weeks, 10 points on 3-9 shooting and six turnovers as Tufts fell for the first time in conference. I think what this says is that Tufts needs Smith to be a scorer off of the bench if they are going to beat the good teams in the NESCAC. Hopefully Smith can go back to the player he had been in the previous four games when he shot nearly 70 percent from the field and averaged 17 PPG and return to the Stock Up section next week.