For basketball there isn't much comparison, while the MIAA's NCAA basketball success largely lies in Holland and Grand Rapids the PAC has no such programs. Bethany has been to the dance the most in recent years, but usually the PAC's rep is bounced in the first round and usually by double-digits. I can't recall the last PAC school to win an NCAA game. Unfortunately the PAC archives are woefully out of date, like by 7 years.
Bonus trivia: Eastern Michigan (or what would become EMU) and Wayne State were once members of the President's Athletic Conference. This makes EMU the only school that can claim they were once in the MIAA and PAC. Feel free to break that out at cocktail parties.
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Review and Preview
Against its neighbors
vs NCAC 5-7
vs OAC 6-9
vs MIAA 1-0
The league finished just under .500 overall. But, its worth pointing out no one in the PAC played a schedule that ranked in the top half of D3 according to Massey Ratings.
PAC schools obviously play a lot of games against the NCAC and OAC, as they should they are of course much closer and many current OAC/NCAC members were once members of the PAC. The AMCC is also a popular set of opponents along with a good chunk of the PSU branch system.
This year Bethany traveled to Olivet for a game in December, to my knowledge this is the first venture into Michigan by a PAC school since Grove City came to Hope in the 90's for one of the holiday tournaments. In fact over the last 5 seasons there have been only 3 MIAA vs PAC meetings, the other two both involved Geneva against Kalamazoo and Calvin at tournaments. That's roughly 3 meetings out of a potential 400. The likely hood of a MIAA/PAC match-up is always going to be near zero each season....except in 2013 when Olivet makes the return trip to Wheeling to play Bethany.
PAC schools did play some high profile D3 programs last season such as Wooster, Illinois Wesleyan, Carthage, Williams, Transylvania. All together 6 games, where they went 0-6.
In the NCAA:
Bethany drew a first round pairing at St. Mary's, Md and lost 69-57.
Here's a look at the teams bottom to top from last season's standings and my brief and probably wrong take on their 2013 outlook:
(since the MIAA and PAC get together so infrequently this will be a very brief look at next year only or less of a review and more of a preview)
9. Waynesburg 5-22, 1-15
Waynesburg graduates 4 Seniors who saw significant playing time last season, 2 of those starters. The good news is Mark Christner played a lot of players and returns a good chunk of his team including 3 promising Freshmen. I see a chance for improvement but not much.
8. Westminster 6-20, 4-12
The Titans graduate only 1 Senior and return what looks like their entire starting 5. They'll have 5 Seniors in 2013, I would think Westminster would be a better team next season.
7. Washington and Jefferson 9-18, 4-12
W&J graduate 2 Sr. starters, they'll be young next year but then they were young in 2012 as the Presidents had 11 Freshmen on the roster. Returning all-PAC Zach Bellhy was the leagues leading scorer in 2012 and will be a leading candidate for POY in 2013.
6. Geneva 6-20, 5-11
Geneva graduates 4 of their leading 5 scorers and about half of the teams minutes, after these guys most of the scoring returning is all in the low single digits. 6-6 Sr. to be Matt Lorello will carry this team in 2013, the all-PAC honorable mention led the team in scoring last season. Look out below.
bonus: December 31, 2012 Geneva at D1 Youngstown State, and happy new year's eve.
5. Grove City 11-14, 7-9
GC graduates its 2 leading scorers and 2 of their tallest players from last season but return a handful of freshmen that contributed significantly to their 2012 season. Not a lot of height here and may start two guards at 5-7 and 5-8. Cracking the top 4 might be difficult.
4. Saint Vincent 19-8, 11-5
St. Vincent loses its two leading scorers and all-PAC Sr's to graduation. The Bearcats shouldn't fall too far in the pecking order if at all as they'll return a solid core group of players with significant scoring and minutes returning. St. V has been one of the better defensive programs in the region since they joined D3.
3. Thiel 16-8, 13-3
Thiel graduates just one player, all-PAC Devon Adams. Next season the Tomcats will be a Sr. laden outfit with 8 Seniors, of those probably 6 will be in their top minutes played. It sure looks like 2013 is make or break for Thiel when comes to winning the PAC, they almost did it last year and with so much returning they should be considered one of, if not, the favorites.
2. Thomas More 20-8, 13-3
TM loses two all-PAC performers in Daniel Whelen and Colt Stafford, the latter being 6-7 and the tallest player on the roster. Overall the Saints return quite a bit, including leading scorer and first team all-PAC player Phil Feinberg. The problem for the Saints will be height where they return only two players at 6-5 and nothing more, fortunately for them the PAC is not a tall league. With the competitiveness among the teams at the top of this league I don't think Thomas will stray too far from here, they should be in the mix for the title.
1. Bethany 25-4, 14-2
By minutes played Bethany was the thinnest roster in the PAC with only 6 guys seeing the majority of the minutes. The lone significant graduate is 6-6 F British Alexander. The Bison will be starting 4 Seniors next year led by Nick Wilcox and Reece Maybery and return their top 4 scorers. Bethany won't be the deepest team out there again next year but they probably have enough to win the PAC again, at the very least they should be right in the mix. Solid program, just looking for a breakthrough NCAA win.
Conclusion and unnecessary analysis:
The likelihood of me ever getting a good handle on the PAC is pretty low. They're WAY over there and we, meaning the MIAA, very rarely play them and they really aren't much of a factor in the NCAA tournament. Going through these teams I was struck by how young (and how short) they appear to be with just a bunch of Freshmen on nearly everyone's varsity rosters. Perhaps some better days are ahead for this league.
The PAC is going to be a one bid league until it starts winning some of its more marquee games against the OAC and NCAC. Bethany beating Baldwin-Wallace was a good start and a nice surprise. Beating the likes of PSU's-Beaver, Altoona, New Kensington, Behrend, DuBois, and Greater Allegheny (for real) is just not going to ever impress the people who make the bids decision. Not to mention the absolute terrible things those teams do to things like strength of schedule calculations.
For now at least it looks like there are 3 or 4 programs at the top of this league that look to be on solid footing, then a pretty good gap down from there. The key to the future success of this conference might lie in programs like Waynesburg and Westminster two programs with actually pretty good histories of success that have just been way down lately. IF those programs can restore themselves to some level of competitiveness this might be a pretty good league.
(massively) Flimsy 2013 prediction:
1. Thiel
2. Bethany
3. Thomas More
4. St. Vincent
5. Westminster
6. Grove City
7. Washington & Jefferson
8. Waynesburg
9. Geneva
Bethany with the auto-bid to the NCAA tournament with Thiel left at the table on selection day.
Special Guests
We have a few orphans in the Great Lakes Region, its here where I'll take a look at their prospects for next season. I won't be making any conference predictions for them since I won't really look at their entire conferences other than maybe a mention.
UAA
Carnegie-Mellon 9-16, 4-10
Carnegie graduates 3 including their leading scorer but for the most part return a large portion of last years points and minutes. There's lots of Fr/So's on the roster, 13 in all. Carnegie might be a year away from really challenging some of the better teams in the UAA. For next season I don't think they'll be much more than a .500 team but might be able to pull a couple upsets here or there. They were actually pretty competitive in the UAA.
Case Western Reserve 10-15, 2-12
Case graduates just one Senior. Last year the Spartans carried 9 Freshmen on the roster with some playing significant minutes. Outside the UAA they did really well, registering an 8-3 record although not against the toughest competition. Inside the UAA though Case really took their lumps and most nights weren't within 10 points of their opponents. Probably more of the same in 2013, maybe a win or two more in the UAA.
bonus: Case will play 3 MIAA teams next season: at Kalamazoo, and will host and play Alma and Albion at their tournament in late December.
AMCC
Franciscan 0-24, 0-18
Franciscan was quite simply a very bad team last year, possibly the worst in D3. There's bad and then there's bad against a bad schedule and Franciscan played a bad schedule. Also played in a bad conference and did bad, that's a bad combination. All 9 players from last can return next year, but without a full roster its just going to be hard for the Baron's to compete at this level. Anything that resembles a win in 2013 would be an improvement.
Pitt-Greensburg 9-16, 7-11
Good gravy another team with only 9 players. They'll lose one of those to graduation, which leaves 8 plus Freshmen. I'm all for optimism and at least one player believes they can win the AMCC next season on the teams blog. That blog also has an Urban Meyer quote so Pitt-Greensburg automatically gets two demerits from me. Urban says punt so I'm punting on these guys.
PSU-Behrend 16-12, 13-5
Behrend has been a respectable program for the last few seasons, even gaining an at-large NCAA bid in 2011. They'll lose only 2 Sr's from last years team and only 1 starter. Behrend lost a number of close games and really turned it on late in the year, rallied to win their final 5 games and made it to the AMCC Championship game. I suspect they'll be challenging for the AMCC Championship next year, which means we'll have to keep tabs on them for Great Lakes rankings.
That wraps up the Great Lakes Region, if you were keeping score I have Capital, Wooster and Bethany gaining the NCAA automatic bids with Ohio Wesleyan an at-large. This also reminds me I never picked the MIAA tournament reps. I don't know how but somehow both Hope and Calvin will make next years cut. I guess if I had to do a preliminary Great Lakes ranking I might do something like this.
1. Wooster
2. Capital
3. Calvin
4. Ohio Wesleyan
5. Baldwin-Wallace
6. Hope
7. Thiel
...something like that anyway.
I still would like to do the HCAC and CCIW since the MIAA plays so many of those schools. This summer seems to be uncooperative in the rainy day department which is a positive except it doesn't give me much motivation to stay inside and do this blog thing.
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