Life can be tough during the non-conference part of the season when you’re the NEC, and Saturday’s results showed why, as the league went 2-7 in the nine games it was involved in. While some losing efforts were better than others — St. Francis (BK) double-overtime 91-82 loss at Hartford and Central Connecticut’s 68-67 loss at Albany — other losses spoke to the talent and size disparities that squads from leagues like the NEC face when stepping up during the OOC part of the season.
Take Fairleigh Dickinson’s 80-54 rout at the hands of Mississippi State. Tom Green’s Knights are one of the most talented and skilled sides in the NEC, but that wasn’t enough to keep them from getting blitzed 14-0 in the opening minutes of Saturday’s game. I didn’t get a chance to see this game, but judging by Cameron Tyler’s 9-of-21 nightmare at the charity stripe, I’d be willing to wager that Mississippi State’s superior size and athleticism so rattled the Knights that even the simplest of plays — making a layup, inbounding the ball, knocking down a freebie — seemed to require Herculean efforts. How else to explain FDU making a ghastly 24.2% of it’s shots?
Even seemingly winnable games, like Long Island’s visit to Buffalo to square off with a mediocre Canisius side from the MAAC didn’t go the NEC’s way. A quicker and deeper Griffs squad hounded the Blackbirds top scorers — Kyle Johnson, Jaytornah Wisseh, and David Hicks — into a combined 7-of-23 shooting night from the floor (3-of-18 from behind the arc). Put simply, LIU, and most teams in the NEC (if not all of mid-majordom), are not deep enough to win when their big three fire blanks.
Yet, it wasn’t a complete whitewash for my adopted league. The Keystone State St. Francis squad got it’s transition game going in the second half, dropping 48 second half and overtime points on one-time Big Dance darlings Bucknell to beat the Bison 69-59 in OT. And Wagner won it’s second in a row, notching a 65-62 road dubbya at Stony Brook.
So where does that leave the NEC with the opening week-plus of the 2008-09 college hoops season history?
I’d by lying if I said it leaves us anywhere but with the realization that, well, OOC play hasn’t been too kind to the NEC.
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on Jan 22nd, 2009 at 9:55 pm
Let me quote the Northeast Conference Coordinator of Men’s Basketball Officials, Edgar Cartotto, (from an article where they blow smoke up his butt for two pages), and who is retiring at the end of the season: “we’ve developed some great officials over the years, giving them their first chance.”. Edgar were those brand new officials tonight in the game st francis vs fairleigh dickinson? 42 fouls to 15? This is how it rolls, night after night. Edgar, two words, “good riddens”. Brenda Weare, Northeast Conference Commissioner, look for someone with a spine that actually cares about an honest game.