Starting from now on, each day I'll post the LEC schedule with games and predictions, NEC conference predictions (when it resumes) and 1 or 2 games to keep an eye out on in division 3:
For today, we have two games each on the men's and women's side of the LEC. On the men's side we have Massachusetts-Dartmouth playing Northwood, and Plymouth state @ Bowdoin. On the women's side it's Massachusetts-Boston @ Rutgers-Newark and Southern Maine @ Husson.
Dartmouth 66 vs. Northwood (FL) 78 (at Warner college).
This is the first of 2 games for the Corsairs down in Florida, they play Warner Wednesday afternoon. Both Northwood and Warner are NAIA-1 schools and both resides in The Sun conference. Division 3 teams have been awful against NAIA teams this year I believe (D3 teams are 78-108 against NAIA teams this year but only 8-32 against NAIA-1 teams like Northwood and Warner are), and I doubt this is any different. Ex-Villanova coach Rollie Massimino is in his 6th year at the West Palm Beach school, and has a 148-34 record, including 11-1 so far this year.
Plymouth state 66 @ Bowdoin 81.
Bowdoin was going into the end of January last year in 4th place in the NESCAC, collapsed down the stretch, and snuck in the NESCAC playoffs on the final day of the year. With a young team they had expectations for this season, and so far they've lived up to it: a 7-2 record, and the 2 games they lost were by a combined 3 points, so they could very easily be 9-0 going into the new year. Plymouth state was at the opposite end of the sprectrum. They graduated all 5 starters from last year, are on their 3rd coach in the last 3 years, and frankly, at least in my opinion wasn't expected to do anything, but here they are on January 2 with a respectible 4-5 record including a victory over another NESCAC team expected to do big things in Tufts. Each team is 1-1 against each other's conference; Plymouth state got crushed by Amherst 90-63, and as a said earlier beat Tufts 79-73. Bowdoin lost a tough 1 point decision to Southern Maine 80-79 and beat Dartmouth 66-51. This is the final OOC game for each team before conference play starts; Plymouth resumes Little East conference play at home against Eastern on Saturday, while Bowdoin travels to newest NESCAC member Hamilton on Friday evening. That will be Hamilton's first ever NESCAC conference game.
women's games:
Boston 48 @ Newark 65
Newark is 8-3 and 1-1 in the NJAC. Lost by 11 to Rutgers-Camden, 2 to Mount St. Mary and by 23 to Williams. They only have 2 wins against teams with winning records; 49-42 against King's (who's 8-3) and 73-72 against Montclair state, who's 8-4. Boston's 2 wins are against Berkelely college, a USCAA school, and Wheelock, a team that's 0-8, has scored less than 20 points twice this year and has lost by an average of 38 points this year. Newark will kill them.
Southern Maine 79 @ Husson 54.
Husson is bad this year, but they did make the NCAA tournament last season. USM is only 4-3 in true road games this year, including an awful loss to St. Joseph's of Maine back in November, and a loss here would be equally as bad. In 5 losses this year Husson hasn't been closer than 22 points, of their last 4 losses (since that 22 point L was the first game of the year), the "closet" was a 32 point loss which happen twice; other losses were by 35 & 36. They've given up at least 74 in all 5 losses and have given up 95+ twice. USM is coming off a win over nationally ranked Babson, where they erased a 15 point 2nd half deficit to win by 3.
For the D-3 game to watch tonight, that game is George Fox (ranked #3) at Lewis and Clark (ranked #11). George Fox has been a consistant threat in D-3 hoops, a consistant entrance in the NCAA tournament and a few final 4 appearances. Last season, L&C snapped George Fox's 37 game winning streak against conference opponents, but GF took the next 2 matchups that season. Last season L&C finished 24-7 which was only their 3rd winning season in the last 17 years. L&C only has to win 2 of their final 13 games to finish with 3 straight winning seasons, first time that would have happened to them since 93/94.
Prediction: Goege Fox 67 Lewis and Clark 65
No comments:
Post a Comment