Game Notes: Benedictine University @ North Central College (11/26/13)

Final Score
NCC 102, Benedictine 98

Game Summary
Assistant SID Drew Sauer stole my line about "a tale of two halves", but it was completely true in this game. The Cardinals (3-1) took a couple small leads early, but the Eagles (1-3) stormed back and went on a 9-0 run to go up 18-10. The Cardinals would battle back to tie and even take a couple more small leads before another Benedictine run of 12 straight points in about 90 seconds. The Eagles would lead by as many as 14 before settling into a 12 point gap at the break. Whatever Michelle Roof said in the Cardinal locker room clearly had an impact, as they made small pushes to climb back into the game, taking a 68-67 lead with 12:26 left. Benedictine didn't go quietly despite the Cardinal outburst, even leading by 6 with 5:46 to play before back to back threes tied the game. Later, tied at 91, the Cardinals pulled away with a couple well-timed triples and decent free throw shooting to pick up their third win of the year.

Key Stats

• Kim Wilson (NCC): 6-14 FG (5-13 3PT)- 17 pts, 1 ast, 2 stl. Kim all but kept the Cardinals in the game in the second half with a good shooting effort. Even without a rebound, she also played pretty good defense. In her second start of the season, she was probably the key figure in this win, though there were plenty of others.
• Marion Boeck (NCC): 2-5 FG (all 3PT), 2-4 FT- 8 pts, 5 reb, 3 ast, 2 stl. Marion missed the first few games due to injury, but looked pretty good in her first game back. She got some key rebounds, with a couple coming in the last two minutes when it was a one-possession game, while also picking up one of her threes after a rebound to double the Cardinals lead. Huge to see from the lone senior on this squad.
• NCC: 7* charges drawn. The asterisk is used because it's unofficial (though honestly, I wish every place was like Aurora Christian where the charge was kept as an official stat). This Cardinal team drew an astounding five (five!) in the first half alone, which frustrated the hell out of Benedictine's coach. The Cardinals picked up a couple more early in the second half, and it obviously affected the Eagles, who ended up having to settle for pull up 5-footers instead of layups.

North Central System Watch

• NCC 3PT: 18-63 (28.6%). I mentioned in the season preview that if North Central could improve its three point shooting even a couple points to 28%, it could mean the difference between a win and a loss. And it really showed in this game. What astounded me was at halftime, the Cardinals had shot 7-38 from deep. It was bad. A lot of it had to do with the Eagles buckling down in a 2-3 zone, keeping a close eye on Larynn Shumaker and daring everyone else to shoot. Other than Kim Wilson, no one else was really hitting. But for whatever reason, they caught fire in the second half. Marion Boeck's two threes came in the second stanza, Maryssa Cladis all three of her triples after halftime, and Anita Sterling hit a couple as well. As a team, the Cardinals shot 11-25 from deep in the second half. If they can shoot that well over the course of a whole game... oh man.
• Benedictine Turnovers: 30. This is a season low so far for NCC to force, but for the Eagles it was a season high (and probably will remain so, given NCC's system). A few of these probably came on those charges, but the Cardinals also managed 15 steals. AnnMarie Bachmann led the way with three thefts, while four other Cardinals notched two (including last year's leader Bobbi Johns).

Final Thoughts

Photo taken by the NCC Sports Information Department.

I can't help but feel like this is a game last year's Cardinals would have lost. I feel like it still could have been, with somewhat shaky free throw shooting late (I blame that stupid rim on the west end of the court). But this team showed poise and never gave up despite a pretty sizable defecit in the first half. Like the Ripon game, the Cardinals should carry memories of this contest as they go forward this season. This game is a reminder that they can get hot at any time and they're capable of beating just about anyone on any given night. A long road trip looms after Thanksgiving, so I won't have any more reports until we near the end of 2013. Hopefully we'll be talking about a team on a long win streak as we approach the new year and another trip through the Gauntlet.

2013 NCAA FBS Rankings: Week 14

For a lot of teams, this is the end of their regular slate. For others, there's still the first weekend in December, whether it's for Game 12 or the conference title game. By then, a lot of the playoff teams will be decided, but seedings will still be up in the air.

Yesterday's batch of seedings can be found here, but today I'm focusing on one of the last sets of changes for conference's rankings of their out of conference scheduling. I think we're done with cupcakes so the SEC can come out from under its rock now. You know what, hold that thought.

For last week's rankings, click here.

2013 Death to the BCS Playoffs: Week 13 Seedings

Saturday was my 24th birthday, and that morning I tweeted out a short list of things I wanted from the sports world for my birthday. Of those, a couple came true (including North Central's football team moving on) while others didn't (I'm kind of mourning D-Rose's latest knee injury). But the one I forgot to throw out there was for the BCS to undergo a little chaos, just to eff with people. Sure enough, it happened.

Of course, the drawback for this is that I need to reevaluate my playoff seedings, which takes a little bit of work. Granted, I've been updating my numbers weekly, so that part isn't new, but needing to shift teams around is also a responsibility I need to take. Every week I've had to do some shifting around, some weeks more than others. This might be one of the more chaotic weeks. And last week was pretty chaotic.

As a refresher, the 16 team field is made up of the ten conference champions, plus six teams selected "at large", then seeded in regular fashion. The official criteria to select at large teams and seed the field isn't concrete, but is based off of a mixture of Non-Conference Schedule Strength (NCSS, most recent data for conferences can be found here), Playoff Points (PP, basically the total number of wins of the teams you've beat), and computer rankings based on formulas created by Jeff Sagarin (SAG, found here, but I'm retweaking based on a closer reading of Sagarin's header and using the official "rating" column as his ranking, as it is a synthesis of his two other score-based rankings) and the late David Rothman (FACT, compiled by someone from UCLA, which can be found here). I also peer over schedules and try to decide as best I can how things should be seeded So without further ado, here's how I would seed a playoff if the season ended today.

COAS/SSLYAR Pigskin Pick 'Em Week 12

We're onto the last of the set of bye weeks in this NFL slate, so after this week, it's full-on 16 game sets. For Nathaniel, that might be a key difference in overcoming his defecit. It grew last week, as we both finished under .500, but I took two of the three games we differed on to push my lead back up to six games.

Obviously, as has happened so far this year, anything can actually happen on any given Sunday. And usually, it's gone against common wisdom (or at least, my and/or Nathaniel's wisdom) and has dragged us down to near .500 overall. So really, neither of us is any better at this than you would be flipping a coin to pick games, except our rationales behind them are usually way better than "This is what flipping a coin got me."

This week we disagree on a whopping seven different games, so my lead could be gone by Sunday night. I imagine not, but we're probably looking at a shift of a few games.

So without further ado, let's move on to this week's set of picks.

NCAA FBS Rankings: Week 13

It's been a busy past few days, with North Central basketball underway, and a lot of football this past weekend. I'm looking ahead now to the upcoming week of games, seeing as the action starts tonight with a couple MAC games. These are all factors that are important going forward to the last few weeks of the season for playoff purposes.

This week's rankings will have some big movement, if my spoiler from yesterday's playoff seedings post are any indication. If you want to see where we're at through the first 12 weeks of the season, you can view last week's schedule rankings here.

2013 Death to the BCS Playoffs: Week 12 Seedings

After a busy night on Saturday involving 7 hours of basketball and some personal chasing sandwiching it, I headed home and listened to the end of USC-Stanford. Oh man. Great finish, and it throws a major monkey wrench into the Death to the BCS Playoffs.

I think I've said it on here before, but I'll say it again: for all its flaws, big time college football does seem to have the best regular season. And I still think an expanded, 16 team playoff wouldn't diminish it in any way. After all, the other divisions (D-III, for example) all have playoffs, and that same idea of "Every game counts" holds true, more so than in the big time. The NCAA unveiled its D-III bracket yesterday, and like in this system I've been outlining here, basically all conference champions get an automatic bid (except for a couple that don't want to hand one out), and everyone else has to battle for 5 at large bids. It makes more games meaningful for everyone. Isn't this how it should be in the big time?

So with all the games from this past weekend done, here's how I would seed the 16-team playoff. All ten conference champions make it, plus six at-large teams. Selection criteria isn't set in stone, but involves Non-Conference Schedule Strength (up to date conference averages can be found here), Playoff Points (basically, you get points for however many wins the teams you beat have), and computer rankings that factor margin of victory done by Jeff Sagarin (I use the "BCS Predictor" set found here) and the late David Rothman (his formula is public domain, and someone who uses it compiles rankings here). There's no exact formula for combining these factors, just me as a one-man "selection committee". For last week's seedings, click here.

Game Notes: Hope College @ North Central College (11/16/13)

Final Score
Hope 126, NCC 56

Game Summary
This game was a stark contrast to yesterday's affair. Lauren Hernandez hit a three on the opening possession to give the Cardinals (1-1) an early lead. It lasted for about a minute as the Flying Dutch (2-0) worked their way down the court quickly in transition a couple times and scored the next 15 points. Hope even stole North Central's line change strategy for subs a few times to keep fresh legs out there. Transition buckets kept adding up, and Hope led 71-30 at the break. The second half took a while for being a blowout, and Hope just kept adding to the lead. They topped the century mark about halfway through the frame, but there were a lot of fouls and free throws that stopped the clock and extended this game longer than it needed to be.

Key Stats

• NCC: 51 turnovers. Really, I should just leave this here and be done with it, but I think this told the tale. You can't be this careless with the ball and expect to win. Hope logged 32 steals in the win, a lot of them on really bad/telegraphed passes. Hope has a lot of size in the post, and they made it almost impossible to get entry passes, yet the Cardinals kept forcing it in there. Too bad.
• Rebekah Llorens (HOPE): 9-14 FG, 5-6 FT- 23 pts, 3 reb (2 ofr), 3 stl. The tournament's Most Outstanding Player, Llorens had plenty of open looks for layups all game long. A lot of it stemmed from fantastic ball movement by the Dutch to beat North Central's traps, but she made the most of her opportunities. I'm a little surprised she only had 3 boards, but they shot over 50% from the floor in the game, a given when you get so many easy layups.
• NCC: 17-21 FT (81%). In all the darkness of a 70 point loss, I did want to find something for this team to hang their hat on, and for me, it's how well they've done at the free throw line through 2 games. Tacking on last night, they're sitting at about 78% as a team. Freshman DeJa Moore was 10-11 from there to lead the way for the Cardinals. Considering as a team, they shot about 65% last year, I'm very happy with this. It bodes pretty well for the close games that CCIW play is bound to bring.

North Central System Watch

• NCC 3PT: 5-19 (26.3%). Hope played pretty good defense, so the Cardinals didn't get to jack up nearly as many threes as they normally do. And percentage-wise, it's an improvement to about what they shot last year. I think eventually, the shots will start to fall a little bit more as this team gets into the pace of the regular season.
• Hope Turnovers: 32. Hope came into the season ranked 9th in the country, and I had heard someone praise them as being very fundamentally sound. So at the end of the day, to force 32 turnovers is probably the best any team will do against them this season. The Cardinals logged 15 steals out of those 32 turnovers, paced by Sofia Svensson, who had 3, and three other Cardinals had 2, including last year's leader, Bobbi Johns.

Final Thoughts
Unfortunately, the prevailing thought pregame was that something like this was bound to happen, but it's sad to see it unfold this way. Even in a 70 point loss, we learn where this team is at going forward (spoiler: I'm not looking forward to the Wheaton or Wesleyan games), and you can tell there's a lot of youth on this team. I think they'll grow from this game and get a chance going forward to do a little damage over the rest of non-conference play. There are going to be games like this one. The question is, how do you bounce back from them? They're home on Wednesday against Lake Forest, so we'll find out then.

Game Notes: Ripon College @ North Central College (11/15/13)

Final Score

NCC 113, Ripon 111 (OT)

Game Summary

In an incredibly back and forth game, the Red Hawks (0-1) had control and most of the lead, but the Cardinals (1-0) never trailed by more than 5 and even took the lead here and there. Ripon had a 6 point lead with about 7 minutes to go in the first half when the Cardinals started to make a run. A few well-timed layups and threes got the Cardinals back into it and they led by 6 at the break. North Central came back out of the locker room pretty quickly, building the largest lead of the game at 10 points a couple times. Ripon worked their way back, finally tying the game about halfway through the frame. It was a war of attrition from there, with neither team able to pull away by more than 5 points, when Ripon did it with about 2 minutes to go, then again with about 35 seconds left after North Central tied it. Fortunately NCC got a three point play and a charge before a game-tying layup forced overtime (which was then nearly averted by a halfcourt heave that juuuuussst missed going in). In the extra frame, neither team led by more than 2, but a botched play turned out all right with less than 4 ticks left, and the Cardinals may have a legend in the making.

Key Stats

• DeJa Moore (NCC): 5-9 FG (0-1 3PT), 4-6 FT- 14 pts, 5 reb (2 ofr), 7 ast, 2 stl. Your hero of the night. I heard encouragement from NCC's bench for DeJa to "Attack #12 [of Ripon], she can't guard you!" And sure enough, she attacked the basket well tonight, including when it mattered most. She found room for a layup at the end of regulation with the clock winding down to force the extra session, and in overtime took the ball out under the basket with 7.5 seconds left following a timeout. She tried to get an entry pass into Larynn Shumaker, saw it bobbled, but ended up with the ball under the basket, and somehow found a way to put it home.
• Larynn Shumaker (NCC): 6-12 FG, 13-15 FT- 25 pts, 3 reb (2 ofr), 1 ast. With the main weapon of the arsenal (see below) not working, the Cardinals turned it over to their star in the middle, and Larynn showed that she worked hard in the offseason. Just like last year, she can beat anyone in the post to get a good look, and 50% shooting from the floor is a good start. What really impressed me though was the amount of times she got to the line and converted. As a team, the Cardinals shot 37-48 from the line. The 11 misses scared me at times tonight, but 77% from the stripe as a squad isn't too shabby.
• Sofia Svensson (NCC): 5-13 FG (1-3 3PT), 0-2 FT- 11 pts, 12 reb (8 ofr), 3 stl. In basketball, you need someone to do the dirty work: grab a few rebounds, play tough defense, dive after loose balls, and the native of Sweden did just fine in her first collegiate game. We could maybe argue that she tried a little too much, resulting in a couple fouls that could have been avoided, but I was impressed by her heart and hustle. They couldn't have pulled this win off without her.

North Central System Watch

I did this part last year too, but I'm getting rid of the line changes. It's going to be about 40 a game, what with all the pressing and such. So instead, I'll focus on the two keys of the system on each end.

• NCC 3PT: 8-46 (17.4%). So much for the 30 percent prediction. A lot of these threes were open looks, but they just didn't fall. They seem to fall in some key situations though, when the Cardinals need a bucket to open up some space or get back in a game. I'm not expecting a 20-48 line every night, but if they can make maybe 12-15 a game, I think they'll be all right.
• Ripon Turnovers: 39. Granted, in women's basketball, turnovers seem to be a lot more prevalent, but holy crap. Of those, 24 came off of North Central steals (Bobbi Johns and Uzuri Williams each had 4 to lead the way). The Cardinals drew two or three charges tonight and forced one five-count as well. So far, the 10-second rule addition hasn't had an impact.

Final Thoughts

Hey look, my head! Oh, and a basketball game. That too.
(Photo by NCC Sports Information Department)

At some point this season (read: the heart of CCIW play), this team will come to a bump in the road. Looking back to a game like this will hopefully give them some confidence to turn it around. Objectively, this was a really good game: 24 ties, 13 lead changes, no lead bigger than 10. For the fans who came in starting at 7 for the men's game (they won, by the way), they got to see a thrilling end to what, in most circumstances, could be called an instant classic.

There was just one, teeny tiny, eensy weensy problem... the NCAA's stupid insistence on the hand check rule for this season. Granted, we had an overtime period, but over the course of those 45 minutes of play, a whopping 73 fouls were called, resulting in 93 free throws. It was terrible in the first half, which took just over an hour to complete. I understand the idea of wanting to clean up the game and that eventually players will adjust, but my goodness. A lot of these calls were legitimate fouls, but there were enough ticky-tack ones that made this game a bit of a headache. Let them play, refs.

Anyway, I'm back at it tomorrow. Ripon gets a shot at Bluffton University's women's team, who got beat 83-59 by #9 Hope College in the early contest, for third place at noon. 2:30 sees Valor Christian College try to right the ship from their loss to NCC by facing Trinity International University. Finally, the 5:00 women's title game pits the Cardinals against Hope. I'm hoping the Cardinals can build some momentum off a big win there and take home the tournament championship!

"Noboby Believes In Us!"- An NCC Basketball Preview

2012-2013 was, by most accounts, a successful year for North Central College in its athletic pursuits. They added a 30th national championship as the men's cross country team added another title to its illustrious history. They added six other conference titles, plus a conference tournament title, as well as making some noise in multiple championship tournaments and competitions. The basketball court saw plenty of success, as both the men's and women's teams improved from the prior year and made a lot of memories. They have a great chance to make more noise and more memories this coming season. Yet it seems like I'm the only one who isn't technically a member of any of the teams who thinks so.

NCAA FBS Rankings: Week 12

We're getting closer to the end of the regular season and the games are starting to get more dramatic and have more purpose. Granted, in reality it's only for a small handful of schools, but when approaching it with a playoff in mind, look at how many games have implications! Every game really does count!

At the lower levels this is an important week too. D-III is on its last week of the regular season, but a good chunk of the field is set in stone (including my North Central Cardinals!) and a lot of teams are fighting for those precious few at large spots. A lot of the big conferences aren't decided yet either with a few weeks to go, and most remaining games are in conference, but there are some interconference battles this week.

So if you want to see where the playoffs stand coming into this week, here's yesterday's post with the seedings. You can view last week's NCSS rankings here.

2013 Death to the BCS Playoffs: Week 11 Seedings

Eleven weeks are in the books, and another unbeaten has fallen.

Granted, that unbeaten falling is somewhat old news, as Oregon lost to Stanford Thursday night, but it's still kind of a big deal. At this point, we are down to only six undefeated schools at the highest level. Glancing at standings before I even start to crunch playoff point numbers, there will definitely be a shakeup again this week. And to think, some idiots believe a playoff would damage the regular season.

As a reminder, this playoff is set up based on the playoff outlined in Death to the BCS by Dan Wetzel, Josh Peter and Jeff Passan. 16 teams get in: the ten conference champions and six at-large bids are awarded to the remaining pool. Criteria aren't set in stone, but I use a combination of metrics outlined in last week's post about seedings. In the meantime, if you want to see how I've ranked conferences based on their overall scheduling to date, you can view the most recent rankings here. Below are the new Death to the BCS Playoff seedings with all games through November 9th taken into account.

COAS/SSLYAR Pigskin Pick 'Em Week 10

We're officially past the halfway point of the NFL season, or as former Bears coach Lovie Smith would say, "We're in the third quarter of our season... we like our team... Luke is our quarterback... we have a lot of football left to play." Did I mention I miss Lovie?

Anyway, Nathaniel and I are back at the NFL picks against the spread this week. There are 14 more games on this week's slate, and recently we've displayed a decent amount of groupthink. Of course, last week I won both the games we disagreed on to expand my lead a tad, but still. This week, we disagree on half of the matchups, so Nathaniel can narrow my lead quite a bit by the time Veterans Day rolls around. Even with that though, there's a fair amount of groupthink though, since our rationales on a lot of the games we agree on do overlap. Anyway, onto the picks.

2013 NCAA FBS Rankings: Week 11

We're into November, and with it, approaching the end of the college football regular season. There are only four weeks left for teams to prove themselves one last time for an insane system that doesn't fairly decide a championship. But that was a rant for yesterday's post on the latest Death to the BCS Playoff seedings.

For the most part, all play is staying within conference, but there are some non-conference battles still going on, either with independent schools or pansies padding their schedule with late cupcakes.

There's not a lot of baking this week, and a few non conference battles. You can view those below, as well as up to date rankings. You can view last week's batch here.

2013 Death to the BCS Playoffs: Week 10 Seedings

You'd think before writing last week's seedings I'd look closer at upcoming matchups.

I mentioned the ACC title game being between Miami and Florida State, not bothering to notice that they were playing each other on Saturday. This does in fact bring us down to seven unbeatens left in big time college football. Odds are at least one of these will fall, if not more, but I'm kind of hoping they all win out just to cause a mess at the top.

So in the meantime, we've played 10 weeks of the college season, and we just have the month of November left to get through. Looking a bit at schedules, I can see why BCS proponents make the regular season argument, because there are some really compelling matchups left on the docket, though I still think those matchups would be enhanced with Wetzel, Peter, and Passan's playoff system.

I remain a one-man selection committee, but like the first two weeks of seedings, I'm not going in totally blind. To aid my selections, I've been crunching numbers and pulling other numbers from other sources. Next to each team I have their seed from the previous week and a few metrics. "NCSS" stands for "Non-Conference Schedule Strength", and tries to objectively capture how well a team schedules its non-conference slate. A higher score correlates to (but isn't perfectly indicative of) a tougher schedule. "PP" stands for playoff points, and is basically the win total of all the teams a school beat. (Note: a school's win total includes wins over FCS teams, but you don't get any playoff points for actually beating them). "SAG" and "FACT" are computer rankings done by people who either currently or used to do them for the BCS and either were kicked out for using margin of victory (for FACT, created by the late David Rothman) or still use margin of victory in another formula, but have a "politically correct" version they send to the BCS (for SAG, created by Jeff Sagarin; the Death to the BCS Playoffs use the "PREDICTOR" rankings after using other, less accurate Sagarin rankings the first couple weeks). As a reference as well, current conference "champions" are based on conference record if the season ended today, with the tie being broken by overall record.

If you want to see how last week's seeds fell, you can see those here. Below are this week's updated seedings.