NESCAC love

Great idea for a thread. The NESCAC plays very high quality soccer and the players are true student athletes. Who looks good up there this year?

 

Its hard to go against the conventional wisdom, given Williams' record and their excellent coaching, but they did graduate 9 of 11 starters from last years team. I'm guessing they start slow, don't win the league, but make the NCAA's anyway.

The NESCAC is hard to handicap since there is some real parity at the top.

I just don't see Wesleyan being quite as strong as last year. They graduated two incredible players - their center mid and center defender - who were the core of the team. They have a quick striker up top but he didn't seem to do as well sophomore year as he did freshman year...maybe the other teams have figured him out ?

The NESCAC put 4 teams into the NCAA's last year, based in a large part on their incredible non-league record. The NESCAC v non-NESCAC record last year was something like 30-2-2. Even the NESCAC doormats had winning records outside the league. It will be hard to repeat this feat in 2007. Probably only 2-3 teams will get in.

Personally I am rooting for Amherst and Tufts to tie for first

 

There's no doubt that the NESCAC is a good, strong conference. It has good depth of quality and therefore good competitiveness among the top schools. It's one of a small handful of conferences that have quality about 4 deep on a nearly consistent basis, some years even 5 deep.

But having said that, I think the strength of the NESCAC gets overstated a bit at times. I mean, it's to be expected that the NESCAC schools have high out-of-conference records because the NESCAC is the only strong conference in the region. New England has lots of D-III schools, but a great many are soccer minnows and there's only a few other consistently top-notch programs in the region. And with the NESCAC playing a shorter season with fewer games and less travel, they don't play as many games against quality out-of-region opponents as is typical of most quality programs. So you expect good non-conference records and for them to grab their share of at-large berths as a result.

Now if the NESCAC is actually as good as its fans think it is, I have to imagine its fans must be a bit disappointed with the underperformance of it's schools in the NCAA tournament recently. The conference is in a 8 year drought of making an appearance in the Final Four during which time 16 other conferences have been represented. Williams was a semifinalist in 1998 and Amherst in 1997 making it just two Final Four appearances in the past 10 years. A number of conferences have had two schools reach Final Fours in the past ten years: NJAC (Rich. Stockton twice, Rowan twice, TCNJ) SUNYAC (Plattsburgh, Genoseo), NWC (Whitworth, Linfield), and CAC (Salisbury, Mary Washington). The Elite 8 in the past ten years has included Williams five times and Amherst once for a NESCAC total of 2 schools, 6 times. Other conferences: NJAC (3 schools, 7 times), CAC (3 schools, 5 times), Liberty (2 schools, 5 times), MIAC (2 schools, 5 times). Looking at the Sweet 16 in the past 10 years, the NESCAC is represented 11 times by 3 schools. A dozen conferences can boast at least 3 different schools in that time period, five of them with 4 or more schools. The Liberty can match the NESCAC's 11 appearances while the NJAC tops all with 13 appearances by 6 schools. From an NCAA tournament perspective, if it weren't for Amherst's Final Four run in 1997, the NESCAC wouldn't look any different from a bunch of other conferences with one dominate, elite program.

Now one might justifiable argue that NCAA results don't tell the whole story, but that works both ways: both for the NESCAC and for many other quality conferences throughout the country about whom NESCAC fans know little or nothing apart from their NCAA results. One might also argue that NESCAC teams usually were bracketed together and knocked each other out (which often happened), but the same thing holds for other conferences. Looking at just NCAA matches against other schools, the NESCAC is 21-14-6 over the past 10 years. That's a good record (.585) and probably places them among the better conferences, but I doubt it stands alone.

Now I don't mean to bash the NESCAC, but just to try to give a balanced, unbiased assessment. As I said to open, the NESCAC is a very good conference and among the better conferences in nation. Their quality goes 4 schools deep many years, sometimes deeper, and that puts them among a minority of conferences. Whether their NCAA results indicate that they are overrated or that they are simply underperforming in the tournament, I don't know, but I suspect it's a bit of both.

Some other conferences that often get mentioned for being among the best and deepest are the UAA and NJAC. The UAA has done precious little in the NCAA tournament over the years, so while I still thinks it's a good, deep conference, I think it's also a bit overrated by its fans. The NJAC is a conference that for many years had the NCAA results to back up the talk that they were one of the best conferences in the nation. For six years from 1996 to 2001, three NJAC schools combined to make the Final Four all six years (two years each), reaching the title match 4 times and winning twice. Now in the past 5 years that has changed some as they moved from a quality depth of 3 or 4 schools to 6 or 7 schools: more parity and competitiveness top to bottom, seemingly at the expense of the top level of play. But that 1996-2001 run was an incredible demonstration of conference strength. No conference, including the NESCAC, has ever come anywhere close to something like that.

I think if you matched-up the NESCAC against other conferences in a top seed versus top seed, #2 seed versus #2 seed, and on down through all their schools, of course you'd have a lot of conferences that would be over-matched from top to bottom, often embarrassingly so. Then they'd be a small group of conferences with one elite program and maybe another good school to match-up well at seeds one and/or two, but would be lacking from 4 to 5 or 6, if not the whole way down the line. Then there would be a group of conferences with similar quality, depth, and parity but lacking an elite program who would match-up well from top to bottom except at #1. And maybe herein lies what makes the NESCAC a rare breed: they have quality depth and parity but also that elite program (Williams) to be the standard bearer for the conference in the NCAA's. Most conference have one half or the other of that combination.

Well, one thing I know is that when it comes to talk of best conferences, I can't talk about that of my school: the MAC Commonwealth is a middle of the pack conference. But as a Messiah alumnus I know a thing or two about top level soccer. I've been out of the country for a couple years, so I missed the Messiah-Williams sectional match last year. But a number of Messiah fans at the game put that William's squad as one of the best teams they remember seeing, up their with the 1999 Saint Lawrence squad and Wheaton (Ill.) circa. 1997-99. That was a tough draw for whichever team ended up losing, and to have it decided on PK's showed just how unfortunate it was that two teams that good had to meet so early in the tournament.

Well, I'm not sure how to take all this and whether you are even being serious, so I won't hazard a direct reply. I hope it's all meant in good fun and ribbing. If you are serious, it wouldn't be the first time, not will be the last, that a NESCAC proponent took a better-than-thou attitude towards much of the rest of D-III.

Well, we'll have to see about that. I'm so gald the new season is underway again. Looking forward to the progression towards playoffs and the NCAA's and seeing who emerges as the favorites this year.

 

So my alma mater Wesleyan has started out s-l-o-w-l-y (0-3), losing on Saturday to Trinity. As much fun and as competitive as the Little Three competition is, one thing we NEVER wanted to do was lose to Trinity.

So is their season toast, unless they survive the post-season tournament to make the NCAAs?

I saw Middlebury has a new turf field complex this year. It will be interesting to see how they progress with a new home field.

 

Interesting....I have a son at a prep school that sends a lot of kids to the colleges you listed; many end up playing soccer at these schools as well. Middlebury was actually recommended to us by the coach (son is still a freshman, so I'm not looking too hard, yet). Just two stupid questions....what does "NESCAC" stand for and is Hobart in this conference?

 

1) New England Small College Athletic Conference

2) No

Here's a good link that should tell you what you're looking for:

http://www.athletesadvisor.com/nescac.htm

 

i was a bit chuffed to see the trinity-wesleyan result (girlfriend and her family are all trinity alums). it is probably the one game on your schedule you really really don't want to lose...
I don't see wesleyan really challenging. trinity certainly won't challenge.
for all the shouting about the NESCAC, there are really only three quality teams in with a chance of winning it: williams, amherst, middlebury.
Hamilton & Bowdoin will throw in a competitive team occasionally, but never really challenge the big 3.
as for the out of conference record, there are a large # of minnows in New England that, due to geographic limitations, keep appearing on the schedules (see southern maine).

 

Amherst has one as well.

I just saw Middlebury play Tufts. I wasn't as impressed with Midd as in the past. Their two forwards are good but their strategy is "traditional English football"....bypass the midfield, and hoof it into the opponents box. A good possession team will run them ragged.

 

Here is the NESCAC soccer web site:

www.nescac.com/sports/Soccer(M)/home.htm

 

Taking nothing away from other conferences, NESCAC is the finest Division III conference top to bottom in the country. Not only does it attract some of the finest student-athletes in the United States, it has also had some of the best coaches *anywhere* in people like Peter Gooding and Mike Russo. I would remind folks that it wasn't *that* long ago (OK, maybe it was, I'm finding more gray hair these days) that NESCAC teams were not allowed to go to NCAA post-season competition. As an Amherst guy, it pains me to say it, but some of the best Williams teams (and others from NESCAC) never saw post-season play beyond the ECAC. A team with Dan Calichman at the back and Mike Masters (first American ever to score in Wembley, I believe) up front was never allowed out of a regional post-season competition.

On overall strength, I'm a firm believer that college rankings of any/all kind are suspect, but the recent NCAA power ratings combining academic and athletic strength (little help with the citation?) of all programs DI-III had Amherst and Williams in the top four and ahead of all kinds of other impressive places.

 

Do you mean the Sears Cup?

 

No, but that's a good point, too. This was something that accounted for academic strenght in addition to athletic results.

 

Speaking of which, the Gooding Field at Amherst is being dedicated this Saturday at 3:30 pm. Amherst plays Bowdoin - should be a great match-up.

 

Still have my shirt from Gooding's first "retirement." His face on the back with the words, "I'm not your friend, I'm your coach." Brilliant.