Game Notes: Benedictine University @ North Central College (11/29/17)

Final Score
Benedictine 75, NCC 61

Game Summary
This one looked like it was going to be ugly early as the Eagles (3-1) jumped out to a 6-0 lead and led by ten just four minutes into the game. But the Cardinals (0-4) would rally back, closing the quarter on a 12-4 run to make it 19-17. North Central would take the lead right away on a Siarra O'Neill three, but the Eagles got the lead right back and imposed their will, opening up a nine point advantage, but a 7-0 Cardinal run closed the gap before the Eagles took a 38-34 lead into the break. The Cardinals came out of the intermission strong and tied the game at 42, but the Eagles went on an 11-2 run to regain control of the contest and held a 59-50 lead after three. Mayson Whipple hit a three to open the fourth, but that was as close as the Cardinals would get, with the Eagles leading by as many as 16 in the final frame to snap North Central's five game winning streak over them.

Key Stats

• Madisyn Fischer (BEN): 6-13 FG (4-7 3PT); 16 pts, 5 reb (2 off), 6 ast, 1 stl. The Eagles shot pretty well for the game, but I think Fischer had the best night of all of them. She was able to get a couple clean looks at the basket while doing a great job finding open teammates. She effectively ended the game in the fourth quarter last night when up seven, she launched a corner three and somehow banked it in. I think even she was in disbelief about it.
• Mayson Whipple (NCC): 7-15 FG (1-5 3PT); 15 pts, 4 reb (1 off), 2 ast. Mayson was a big reason why the Cardinals overcame their slow start. Early in the game, the Eagles couldn't guard her and she was able to get to the rim almost at will. For some reason I feel like North Central went away from that a little bit, but the Eagles also adjusted and better defended the dribble-drive. Still, Mayson has looked pretty good to start the year.
• Andrea Dickerson (NCC): 4-7 FG (3-6 3PT); 11 pts, 6 reb (1 off), 2 blks, 1 stl. Andrea started her collegiate career at Murray State, and I think was at NCC last year but was hurt all year. Getting some action now, she's looked good. She's an excellent shooter, one who I thought did a little more damage than just a trio of triples, but also played some pretty good defense. The best play I saw from her last night was midway through the third quarter with NCC down nine. After a turnover, she got back and played some solid help defense on Venita Parsons on the right wing, then somehow got over to the left wing where Parsons had passed to an open Fischer and blocked her attempted three.

North Central "System" Watch

• Benedictine Turnovers: 17. This number, on one hand, isn't good enough. I know North Central isn't going full "System" anymore, but when you put full court pressure on a fair amount of the time, you should get more than 17 takeaways. Six of them came on steals by six different Cardinals.
• NCC 3PT: 9-33 (27.3%). The Cardinals caught a little fire in the second quarter but went ice cold (0-6) in the final nine-plus minutes. This has always been a team that is live and die by the three, and with attempts down this year, this percentage needs to go up a little bit.
• NCC Charges Drawn: 1. Hannah Vitkus drew one in the first half, which prompted me to bring this feature back. Anita Sterling being gone means that we aren't going to see many of these anymore, but it's something I still intend to keep track of.
• NCC FT: 2-7 (28.6%). Ye gods. There weren't a ton of fouls in this game, so North Central's trips to the line were limited, but even when they got there they didn't take advantage. Not helping the team line is Natali Dimitrova, who went 1-3 at the line last night to take her season average to 31.3 percent. For the season, the Cardinals are now at an even 50 percent from the line. In fairness, Benedictine wasn't great at the line either (7-13), but this continues to be an alarming trend four games in.

Final Thoughts

I told my assistant SID this late in the game, but I'm getting flashbacks to the 2011-12 campaign. That was the last pre-System year, and that team wasn't very good. The difference is that I like the pieces on this year's team, but I definitely think they're still adjusting to a more traditional style of play. Relearning how to play basketball on the fly is going to lead to some growing pains. There was definite effort all game, as I don't think they really had a lapse like they had in the first three games, but this is a pretty good Eagle team.

Last night's game was the quickest NCC women's game I've worked in a long time. For the last few years I've gotten used to these games taking two hours to complete. This one was done in just over an hour and a half. I just wish we could have gotten a better result on the three year anniversary of this fun game.

#THREEEEEEEEE years ago this afternoon, UW-Eau Claire’s women’s basketball team blew a 19 point lead to @NCCWBB. It’s the greatest comeback I’ve ever seen. Hoping on this anniversary we pull out a win against Benedictine! #WeAreNC pic.twitter.com/MxDXQE7cby

— Lucas Mitzel (@northsider89) November 29, 2017

NCC have a couple days to go over the film and get ready for CCIW play. I mentioned in my preview that I could have seen the Cardinals going into the North Park game at 4-0. Instead, it's the exact opposite and the Vikings haven't been too bad to start the year. Hopefully the kinks continue to get worked out and they're ready for The Gauntlet.

2017 COAS Pigskin Pick 'Em: Week 13

The coalition returns to action again this week, and I get the feeling everyone is eager to get back to it, after the week we all had.

Maybe having 11 weeks of data to work with really helped us all. Even though I swept the three picks Adam and I disputed, he and the rest of the group all finished with a winning record. It's created a little log jam in the standings.

Now that said, after giving Adam grief a couple times, I screwed up and made a wrong pick on ESPN, taking the Jaguars on there after taking the Cardinals on here. Since precedent is that COAS picks get priority, I have one more win than ESPN says I do. You can see those adjusted and correct standings, as well as a breakdown of our picks in relation to each other, here.

So with the gap having narrowed, these last 80 games are critical to see who will win. This week, Adam and I disagree on a whopping nine games out of 16. Watch out; we may have a change in the leaderboard this week!

2017 Death to the BCS Playoffs: Automatic Bid Games

I started this feature last year, because in Week 14 it's almost all conference championship games, and as such NCSS really won't make any changes. There are a few games where changes will be made, with that said, and you can check my spreadsheet for those updates. A quick survey of my schedule shows that there are all of two games this week that fit that criteria, though I will throw the Army-Navy game in as a feature for this week even though it's a week and a half out. It does count for those metrics.

Speaking of that Army-Navy game, that game won't have any bearing on the playoffs; neither team is in contention for an at-large bid (Navy has five losses, and Army has three without the requisite metrics to overcome them). As such, it thus comes down to a total of twelve games to fill the ten automatic bids. Nine of those are conference title games; I'll go into those games below. The other three are Sun Belt contests, and as the only conference without a championship game, the tiebreakers are once again messy.

2017 Death to the BCS Playoffs: Week 13 Mock Bracket

The playoffs are well underway in every division of college football except the FCS. And now that North Central got bounced badly, I can turn my full attention to basketball and the Death to the BCS Playoffs.

The regular season is over for all but one conference, plus some assorted other games including the Army-Navy game that's not going to have any playoff impact. So with the conference title games taking place this coming weekend, I need to do one final mock bracket.

This is for the playoff system created by Dan Wetzel, Josh Peter, and Jeff Passan in the pictured book where there's a 16 team field: 10 automatic bids to every conference champion, plus six at larges to fill the field. They are seeded 1-16, with home field advantage going to the higher seed for the first three rounds before the title game is held in college football's mecca: Pasadena.

So how do we fill the field, and how is it seeded? Ideally, this would be done by committee, but since we don't have a committee for this, I take that responsibility on, though I don't just do it based on the eye test. I use a number of metrics to help me make the right decision. I glance at Non-Conference Schedule Strength (NCSS) to get a measurement of whether teams are trying to challenge themselves out of their conference schedule (and it also gives me an excuse to call Nick Saban a coward). More importantly, I care about results. That's where First Degree (PP1), Second Degree (PP2), and Adjusted Playoff Points (aPP) come in. Those factor in who you beat, and also a little bit of who they beat as well as the Adjusted points factoring in losses. This helps differentiate between 10-2 teams or 11-1 teams. Finally, to help factor in margin of victory and create a lack of bias, I also look at computer rankings devised by Jeff Sagarin (SAG), the late David Rothman as compiled by a UCLA staff member (ROTH), and from the website All My Sports Teams Suck (AMSTS). These factors, along with factors like head to head victories and wins over other playoff teams combine organically to build the bracket.

And so, with that explanation out of the way, let's look at our final mock bracket for this season.

2017 NCAA Playoff Points: Week 13

Rivalry Week is concluded, and now for all intents and purposes, the regular season is done, with one exception.

The Sun Belt is still playing out its string, and I'll touch on their automatic bid scenarios tomorrow. Today, though, we need to go through the results from this past week, because a lot of major things happened that need our attention.

Several upsets happened, which will mean some upheaval in the Death to the BCS Playoffs, but I'll get to that later today. For now, like last week, I'm going to update everyone's Playoff Points and update the conference rankings below.

2017 COAS Pigskin Pick 'Em Week 12

I'm running these a little early because of the holiday. And with plans both later tonight and for Thanksgiving, I wanted to keep up the tradition and get these up a little early. Especially given how early we're playing games tomorrow, I felt that this was important.

Adam I'm sure wants to get right back into this, after he took five of seven disputed games last week to not only extend his lead over me, but to overtake first place in the coalition. And yet he's still complaining about the Browns costing him an extra one (the lesson, as always: don't bet on Cleveland.) You can also see correct standings with a breakdown of our picks in relation to each othere here.

With the byes complete, we have 96 games left over the next six weeks. On this holiday weekend, Adam and I disagree on just three games out of 16.

From all of us here at Confessions of a Sportscaster, Happy Thanksgiving!

Game Notes: Benedictine University @ North Central College (11/21/17)

Final Score
NCC 82, Benedictine 79

Game Summary
This one didn't look great early as the Eagles (0-3) were red hot coming out of the gate, overcoming a couple early one possession deficits with long range precision, jumping out to a 12-4 lead. The Cardinals (1-1) called a couple timeouts to stop the bleeding, but the threes just kept falling for the Eagles, who led 38-23 with 3:11 to play in the half. Then the Cardinals decided they'd had enough and closed the half on a 15-2 run to go into the break only down two. They carried that momentum into the second half, tying the game immediately and then turning the game into a battle. The lead would change hands seven times over the next few minutes before the Cardinals seemed to take command, going up ten with 6:43 to play, and after back to back threes with under five minutes to play led 74-60. The Eagles had a run in them though and chipped away at the lead with threes and free throws. Up two with 20 seconds left, the Cardinals made a critical turnover, and the Eagles tied the game at the line with 16.7 seconds to go. The Cardinals played for the last shot, and Mike Pollack buried a contested three with 1.1 seconds to go to give the Cardinals the win in the Battle of Chicago/Maple Avenue.

Key Stats

• Mike Pollack (NCC): 8-11 FG (6-9 3PT), 3-4 FT; 25 pts, 1 reb, 1 ast, 1 stl. I completely glossed over Pollack in the season preview, but I'm okay with being proven unaware of how good he truly was. Pollack hit three triples in the first half, including two during that key 15-2 run, but he saved his best for the second half. He hit the aforementioned back to back threes that gave the Cardinals their 14 point advantage, then on the final play caught an Alex Sorenson pass on the left wing, took two dribbles to his right, and launched a contested three that I wasn't crazy about at first, but went nuts when he hit it.
• Erwin Henry (NCC): 6-11 FG (2-3 3PT), 6-7 FT; 20 pts, 4 reb (1 off), 8 ast. On a night where Alex Sorenson (2 pts, 2 reb in 13 minutes) was limited by foul trouble, the Cardinals needed another one of their seniors to step up, and Erwin absolutely did. He attacked the basket in the second half to help build that 14 point lead for the Cardinals, and hit some key free throws late to maintain the lead. The fact that he quietly had eight assists as well was even better.
• Brayden Olson (BEN): 10-15 FG (5-9 3PT), 7-9 FT; 32 pts, 2 reb (1 off), 4 ast, 2 stl. Olson went bonkers from beyond the arc in the first half, hitting all five of his threes to help open up that huge Benedictine lead. He turned his focus inside in the second half, attacking the basket and hitting some key free throws to help Benedictine erase that 14 point Cardinal lead. On a team that has seen most of its key personnel from the team that made the national title game two seasons ago, Olson is the key offensive weapon, and really showed it last night.

Final Thoughts

It's not a Battle of Chicago/Maple Avenue without the game being dramatic, and this one certainly lived up to the billing of the last two matchups (NCC won last year on a huge defensive stand on the final possession, and two years ago Benedictine got the end of game heroics. But this was a big win for the Cardinals coming off a double overtime loss over the weekend, and one that lifted my spirits after whatever you want to call the ending of the women's game that preceded it. And somehow, I'm able to talk today after worrying I'd destroyed my vocal cords calling Pollack's game winner.

The Cardinals head to Hawaii for a tournament this weekend, playing Whitworth and Lewis and Clark on Friday and Saturday, respectively. They then get a week off to prepare for the CCIW opener at North Park on December 2nd.