<p>Who can catch Bucknell and Holy Cross?
By Andy Glockner
ESPN.com (Aug. 14, 2007)</p>
<p>The end of an era?
Can Bucknell’s Pat Flannery hold onto one of the top two spots in the Patriot League?</p>
<p>For the past three years, Patriot League basketball essentially has been Holy Cross versus Bucknell.</p>
<p>The two programs have finished 1-2 in the standings each season (each team won once outright and shared last season’s crown). They have met in the tournament title game each time (Bucknell won the first two; Holy Cross the last). Their combined record against the league’s other six programs during this run, counting the postseason, is 80-4.</p>
<p>Last season, despite significant graduation losses for both teams, the Bison and Crusaders combined to go 28-0 against the rest of the league. The third-place teams finished six games back.</p>
<p>The two programs’ success (especially Bucknell’s back-to-back NCAA Tournament upsets) has been responsible for the league’s improved perception. As with many trilogies, though, a potential fourth installment is not necessarily good news. One look at the Patriot’s kindred spirit, the Ivy League, shows how a long-running duopoly can hinder the advancement of a conference as a whole. It’s been 20 seasons since anyone other than Penn or Princeton won the Ivy’s NCAA berth, and while coming close numerous times, the Ivy champ hasn’t won an NCAA Tournament game since 1998.</p>
<p>Historically, the Patriot League has had a good mix of champions, and three seasons does not two decades make, but the question remains: Would the league be better off if someone else won a title soon?</p>
<p>“I think the rivalry was good – the fact that there were two teams that clearly were highly competitive with each other, but they were competitive outside the conference as well,” said Holy Cross head coach Ralph Willard, who has led the Crusaders to six Patriot title games in the last seven seasons. “I don’t think it’s good to sustain that over the long haul, though. I think it’s better if there’s more balance for the league.
Look, I want to win the league every year
but realistically, I think it’s better if the whole league gets stronger and there is an opportunity for one or two [other] teams to emerge.”</p>
<p>First, the good news for the other six: Both Holy Cross and Bucknell are firmly in reloading mode this season. The Crusaders must replace their backcourt, having lost league player of the year Keith Simmons and league defensive player of the year Torey Thomas. The Bison said goodbye to Chris McNaughton, Abe Badmus and Donald Brown, the three remaining cogs from the NCAA Tournament teams, and just had senior co-captain Darren Mastropaolo, the team’s lone returning experienced forward, tear an ACL in a pickup game. He’s already had surgery but there’s no timetable yet for his return, and Bucknell head coach Pat Flannery is preparing as if Mastropaolo will be out for the season, which is a big blow to the Bison.</p>
<p>“You don’t lose a kid like him in a program like ours and just fill in and move on,” Flannery said. “It gives some other guys some opportunities
but we’re going to miss his toughness and [him] defensively. You could play him against anyone in the country in the post and he could defend him, so now we’ll have to figure out ways to play defensive post.”</p>
<p>The bad news? There might not be a viable challenger. Most of the league’s other schools also suffered significant personnel losses, and Lehigh, a third-place team last season, also just lost head coach Billy Taylor to Ball State. Of the other six teams, the one touted most often by league coaches was Colgate, which essentially returns everyone but leading scorer Jon Simon (and gets back injured wing Kyle Roemer, who scored 11.4 ppg in 2005-06) from a team that pushed both the Bison and Crusaders to the limit in Hamilton, N.Y., last season.</p>
<p>Raiders head coach Emmett Davis thinks someone, maybe his club even after a 5-9 league finish last season, might be able to bridge the gap this year.</p>
<p>“You have to look at the competitiveness of the games [last season],” he said. “I think two years ago, Bucknell pretty much dominated the league. This year, both of those teams were in very close games. Both Holy Cross and Bucknell at our place went down to the last possession.
We’re not that far away. I don’t think Lehigh is that far away. American, I don’t know a lot about their team because they brought in a lot of junior college transfers. Army and Navy are improving. Lafayette is improving.”</p>
<p>Davis noted, though, that new faces for the Crusaders and Bison doesn’t necessarily mean the teams will be vulnerable. Successful programs at this level often get strong contributions from former bench players who didn’t get court time earlier because of established upperclassmen ahead of them.</p>
<p>“I think their younger players, although they didn’t play much, they might end up being better than the guys who were playing,” Davis said. “Who knows?”</p>
<p>The most likely endgame? This year’s Patriot champ won’t match the levels of the past three seasons, but its name likely will start with an H or a B.</p>
<p>“I don’t think there’s any question that Bucknell and us are coming back a little bit,” Willard said, even prior to Mastropaolo’s injury. “How much? I’m not willing to concede yet, and I’m sure Pat Flannery is not willing to concede it either. We’ve been in the final game six of the last seven years, so we’ve had consistency. We’ve lost some very good players during in that stretch, and we’ve been fortunate enough to be able to discover other really good players and good team players too.”</p>
<p>Drills
Feeling to(u)rn
For a man whose team has won four of the last seven Patriot League tournaments, Holy Cross coach Ralph Willard seems more affected by the one that got away.</p>
<p>In 2005, his Crusaders had a long winning streak snapped in the tournament final when visiting Bucknell ambushed them early and held off a frantic rally to win 61-57. Holy Cross had finished three games ahead of the Bison – the same Bucknell team that then shocked Kansas in the first round of the NCAA Tournament – on its way to the Patriot’s regular-season crown.</p>
<p>Even though his team got some vindication last season, tying with Bucknell for the regular-season title but getting the 1-seed on an RPI tiebreaker, Willard is pretty open about his disdain for the March lottery that is Championship Week.</p>
<p>“I’m against conference tournaments at all levels. I think they’re a joke. They are. They’re a joke,” he said. "The only reason conference tournaments started in the first place was to generate revenue for the big-conference schools. The Ivy League has it right. You don’t play three months and then decide a champion in three games.</p>
<p>“We lay an egg in the first half at home against Bucknell, but rally and have a chance to tie it. My point being is, what do we have to prove? We won 16 straight games down the stretch. We won the regular-season conference title. The pressure on the kids, that’s the thing that’s kind of ridiculous. I’d rather have a so-so year, or a good year, heading into the conference tournament. We had had a great year going into the conference finals [and ended up in the NIT].”</p>
<p>It doesn’t appear that Willard will get his wish, so the question becomes what the best setup is for a one-bid league like the Patriot. The league in 2005 moved away from having a neutral site play host to the first two rounds. That season and 2005-06 featured duel tournament hosts (the first- and second-place teams each hosted a side of the bracket). Last season, the event was held strictly on campus sites, with the higher seed playing host.</p>
<p>Allowing the higher seeds to play host gives credence to the regular-season standings, but going strictly to home-court venues makes the tournament into a series of stand-alone games, just like the regular season. Reaction to the current setup is mixed – and some proponents for each side might surprise you.</p>
<p>“I think, personally, and as loud as I can get, we should be at a neutral site for the whole tournament,” said Bucknell’s Flannery, whose Bison played host to the 2006 championship game and have played seven home tournament games in the last three seasons. “When we’re going to make that [next] step as a league, that’s what we have to do. We have to be at a big site
and the league just hasn’t seen to do that yet, and I don’t understand why, or why we don’t. It’s a league decision.”</p>
<p>Colgate’s Davis, whose Raiders were KO’d on the road in last season’s quarterfinals, favors the current arrangement.</p>
<p>“It really rewards the regular-season
not as much as the Ivy League, which doesn’t have the tournament, but it says if you finish in the top two, you get at least two games at home,” he said. “I think our league has to have the conference tournament championship at the court of the highest seed because of the enthusiasm and the crowd and the environment. I’ve seen some of these at neutral sites [and the atmosphere is lacking].”</p>
<p>It’s safe to say that Davis and the league’s other coaches will enjoy whatever setup is in place when their club is the one that survives it.</p>
<p>Offensive Production
Both Holy Cross and Bucknell are well known for their defensive prowess, but in Patriot play, is it good defense or just terrible offense from their opponents?</p>
<p>Last season, all six of the other teams were ranked in the 200s or worse in raw offensive efficiency and four of the six (Army, Navy, Lafayette and Colgate) were in the bottom 40 in the nation. Given many Patriot teams also play at some of the slowest tempos in the land, it’s no wonder that the two league heavyweights combined to hold Patriot opponents to 55 points or fewer 21 times last season.</p>
<p>2006-07 Standings/Stats
Standings
Team Overall record League record
Holy Cross* 25-9 13-1
Bucknell 22-9 13-1
American 16-14 7-7
Lehigh 12-19 7-7
Colgate 10-19 5-9
Army 15-16 4-10
Navy 14-16 4-10
Lafayette 9-21 3-11
<p>Top returning scorers
Player 2006-07 PPG
Greg Sprink, Sr., Navy 16.9
Jarell Brown, Sr., Army 16.9
Tim Clifford, Sr., Holy Cross 11.7
Marquis Hall, Soph., Lehigh 10.9
Matt Betley, Sr., Lafayette 10.9</p>
<p>Top returning rebounders
Player 2006-07 RPG
Bryan White, Sr., Lehigh 6.3
Alex Vander Baan, Jr., Holy Cross 5.3
Matt Betley, Sr., Lafayette 4.8
Greg Sprink, Sr., Navy 4.8
Tim Clifford, Sr., Holy Cross 4.6</p>