Monday, March 01, 2004
The 2004 Bloggies: Like the Grammies, but with more credibility
It's time to hand out my yearly awards for the league. We've had an incredibly exciting regular season, and regardless of what happens in the tournament, all the coaches, players, and staff everywhere in the league deserve credit for their hard work thus far. Even Navy and Army, knowing they weren't going to do much this year, played their hearts out and they deserve credit for it. Now that the warm fuzzies are over, here's who gets what.
We start in the two big categories, player of the year and the all-league squad. These aren't easy selections to make, but I'm going to make the tough decisions a lot of folks in the league offices might not.
POY: Austen Rowland. I don't like this guy. I think he's a punk and he plays dirty. But Ric Flair won many a pro-rasslin match playing dirty, and Rowland is lived up to that standard. No one had this guy on their radar coming in, as he sat out the previous year because he transfered from Delaware. An impressive 16 pts/gm, with 18.7/gm in league play. He had a lousy week last week, but that doesn't take away from his quality season. Five assists a game means he can pass some as well, although he'd rather just shoot the ball and then talk trash if he hits it. His best game was dropping 35 at LC.
All League Team:
Austen Rowland, Sr. G, Lehigh - Your Player of the Year
Andres Rodriguez, Sr. G, American - The best point guard in AU history, top five nationwide in assists
Justin DeBerry, Sr. G, Lafayette - Barely makes the first team, he faded at end of league play- Bettencourt almost takes his spot
Jernavis Draughn, Sr. SF, American - Consistent scorer and ferocious rebounder.
Howard Blue, Sr. SF, Colgate - Hard to justify because of his missed games, but his return catapulted them to contender status again
2nd Team:
Jave Meade, Sr. G, HC - A great and classy point guard who deserves all the praise he gets. But is not a scorer, and didn't have anyone to pass to this year, so it was hard for him to do much of anything.
Charles Lee, So. G, Bucknell - Less noticed, but is the most important and consistent player on BU
Kevin Bettencourt, So. G, Bucknell - Inconsistency kept him from the first team, but he is probably going to be there the next two years. May be the best pure shooter in the league.
Winston Davis, Sr. G LC - Not the same explosiveness or quickness as DeBerry, but LC wouldn't have made it without him.
Mark Linebaugh, Sr. G CU - Can take over a game like no one else--but he seems to have had bad luck all four of his years, with every team underperforming.
Freshman of the Year: Andre Ingram. Olivero or McNaughton are runners up, but Ingram was the key to AU's scoring. AU lost two great guards last year in Miles and Stokes, but Ingram picked up the slack nicely. He cemented it with his 30 at Lafayette last weekend.
All-Freshman Team:
G - Andre Ingram, G, AU - his family gets an assist for attending all his game and being nice folks
G - Jose Olivero, G, Lehigh - great shooter, will be more dangerous if he gets better at putting the ball on the floor
F - Chris McNaughton, F, Bucknell - Shouldn't qualify because he's 24, but whatever.
F - Kendall Chones, F, Colgate - Howard Blue's successor, played well while Blue was gone. I'm not sure whether it was him or his brother that does the Clippers "in the zone" head knock thing, but it needs to stop before more people see it and laugh at them.
F - Jason Mbegroff, F, Lehigh - Someone get this beast to try out for the wrestling team.
Coach of the Year - Coach Flannery, Bucknell - Guided a group of freshmen and sophomores through a lousy preseason, only to have them find themselves as a team when it counts.
Best Hair - Justin DeBerry - Goes to the same barber as Steve Nash
Most Quotable Figure - Jim Crews "We just don't do anything well right now" - clearly learned how to deal with the media from Bobby Knight
Biggest surprise - Holy Cross' regular season missteps.
Fan of the year - Norbert T. Knapp from HC. Sent me a tape of last year's AU-HC game in Whoo-Stuh, and seems to be everywhere
Worst prediction - I had Lehigh coming in sixth in my preseason predictions. Damn you, Rowland!
Best PL win - Lafayette beats Princeton in NJ. Princeton looks like the eventual Ivy champs at this point.
Worst PL loss - HC loses to DIII Williams College. You had to know they were in trouble at that point.
Best Home site - Holy Cross continued to have the most motivated fanbase, drawing ~2500 to their home games. Compare that to Colgate, who drew around a sixth of that with 404 per game. Those are high school JV girls numbers.
Weirdest starting rotation - 14 of Army's 19 players started in a game.
Practice Team Award - AU's Brayden Billbe played in two minutes of action this year, with one (defensive) rebound to show for it. Jeff Jones has a very short bench, as there are five other guys that have similar lines.
Strangest stat line - Jarrod Kohl started 9 games for the Eagles, and had 7 shots all season long.
That's all folks. Those of you who won awards can look for them in the mail in 6-8 weeks.
Next: Postseason predictions and PIG problems. @ 5:29 PM
It's time to hand out my yearly awards for the league. We've had an incredibly exciting regular season, and regardless of what happens in the tournament, all the coaches, players, and staff everywhere in the league deserve credit for their hard work thus far. Even Navy and Army, knowing they weren't going to do much this year, played their hearts out and they deserve credit for it. Now that the warm fuzzies are over, here's who gets what.
We start in the two big categories, player of the year and the all-league squad. These aren't easy selections to make, but I'm going to make the tough decisions a lot of folks in the league offices might not.
POY: Austen Rowland. I don't like this guy. I think he's a punk and he plays dirty. But Ric Flair won many a pro-rasslin match playing dirty, and Rowland is lived up to that standard. No one had this guy on their radar coming in, as he sat out the previous year because he transfered from Delaware. An impressive 16 pts/gm, with 18.7/gm in league play. He had a lousy week last week, but that doesn't take away from his quality season. Five assists a game means he can pass some as well, although he'd rather just shoot the ball and then talk trash if he hits it. His best game was dropping 35 at LC.
All League Team:
Austen Rowland, Sr. G, Lehigh - Your Player of the Year
Andres Rodriguez, Sr. G, American - The best point guard in AU history, top five nationwide in assists
Justin DeBerry, Sr. G, Lafayette - Barely makes the first team, he faded at end of league play- Bettencourt almost takes his spot
Jernavis Draughn, Sr. SF, American - Consistent scorer and ferocious rebounder.
Howard Blue, Sr. SF, Colgate - Hard to justify because of his missed games, but his return catapulted them to contender status again
2nd Team:
Jave Meade, Sr. G, HC - A great and classy point guard who deserves all the praise he gets. But is not a scorer, and didn't have anyone to pass to this year, so it was hard for him to do much of anything.
Charles Lee, So. G, Bucknell - Less noticed, but is the most important and consistent player on BU
Kevin Bettencourt, So. G, Bucknell - Inconsistency kept him from the first team, but he is probably going to be there the next two years. May be the best pure shooter in the league.
Winston Davis, Sr. G LC - Not the same explosiveness or quickness as DeBerry, but LC wouldn't have made it without him.
Mark Linebaugh, Sr. G CU - Can take over a game like no one else--but he seems to have had bad luck all four of his years, with every team underperforming.
Freshman of the Year: Andre Ingram. Olivero or McNaughton are runners up, but Ingram was the key to AU's scoring. AU lost two great guards last year in Miles and Stokes, but Ingram picked up the slack nicely. He cemented it with his 30 at Lafayette last weekend.
All-Freshman Team:
G - Andre Ingram, G, AU - his family gets an assist for attending all his game and being nice folks
G - Jose Olivero, G, Lehigh - great shooter, will be more dangerous if he gets better at putting the ball on the floor
F - Chris McNaughton, F, Bucknell - Shouldn't qualify because he's 24, but whatever.
F - Kendall Chones, F, Colgate - Howard Blue's successor, played well while Blue was gone. I'm not sure whether it was him or his brother that does the Clippers "in the zone" head knock thing, but it needs to stop before more people see it and laugh at them.
F - Jason Mbegroff, F, Lehigh - Someone get this beast to try out for the wrestling team.
Coach of the Year - Coach Flannery, Bucknell - Guided a group of freshmen and sophomores through a lousy preseason, only to have them find themselves as a team when it counts.
Best Hair - Justin DeBerry - Goes to the same barber as Steve Nash
Most Quotable Figure - Jim Crews "We just don't do anything well right now" - clearly learned how to deal with the media from Bobby Knight
Biggest surprise - Holy Cross' regular season missteps.
Fan of the year - Norbert T. Knapp from HC. Sent me a tape of last year's AU-HC game in Whoo-Stuh, and seems to be everywhere
Worst prediction - I had Lehigh coming in sixth in my preseason predictions. Damn you, Rowland!
Best PL win - Lafayette beats Princeton in NJ. Princeton looks like the eventual Ivy champs at this point.
Worst PL loss - HC loses to DIII Williams College. You had to know they were in trouble at that point.
Best Home site - Holy Cross continued to have the most motivated fanbase, drawing ~2500 to their home games. Compare that to Colgate, who drew around a sixth of that with 404 per game. Those are high school JV girls numbers.
Weirdest starting rotation - 14 of Army's 19 players started in a game.
Practice Team Award - AU's Brayden Billbe played in two minutes of action this year, with one (defensive) rebound to show for it. Jeff Jones has a very short bench, as there are five other guys that have similar lines.
Strangest stat line - Jarrod Kohl started 9 games for the Eagles, and had 7 shots all season long.
That's all folks. Those of you who won awards can look for them in the mail in 6-8 weeks.
Next: Postseason predictions and PIG problems. @ 5:29 PM
