Just saw on Twitter here a bit ago that Carleton has released an official announcement that it has cancelled its 2023-24 season. Per the explanation given in the announcement, the decision was made due to the fact that the program had only ten players on the roster and due to injuries at the present time, it only leaves them with six medically-cleared players to operate with - obviously a number too low work with and could possibly compromise the health and safety of the remaining student athletes on the team. Here's the link for the official announcement: https://d3hoops.com/notables/2023/11/carleton-women-cancel-season
It's cruelly ironic that, given my own situation after having had surgery on my left foot right after Labor Day and being laid-up as long as I was and that I'm now on the last lap to full recovery that this type of situation would crop up - especially since I'm on vacation this week and was JUST in the process of putting humpty-dumpty together to make my MIAC predictions for the upcoming season - during USC week no less. First off, my heart aches for the student-athletes involved here on the Carleton team who won't get a chance this season to do what they love doing - through no fault of their own here. And especially for the designated seniors on this team - Jasmine Choi and Margie Clauss - who may not get a chance to make up for this lost opportunity and that just sucks for them. If you're AD Gerald Young, you're obviously caught between a rock and a hard place and he had to make the hard decision to pull the plug on the upcoming season knowing that there was simply no way around the situation. And if you're Head Coach Tammy Metcalf-Filzen who doesn't have to apologize to anyone given her success over the last 20+ years, it's incredibly tough as well because you're trying so hard to keep a delicate situation together as best you can and you've put so much time and work and planning into this season only to see it all crumble due to situations beyond your control. It's just disappointing and gut-wrenching. There's no other way to describe it.
With that all said, now you have to look at the big picture and get an understanding of what this does to everyone else in the conference. As of the moment, it effectively robs everybody else of two games - two games that, on paper anyway, likely would have been Ws. From having touched base with a few coaches and others "in the know", I am aware of one idea that's being bandied about is filling those gaps with a conference opponent as a non-conference game. I'm also aware that there's been some contacts with teams in the UMAC or other neighboring conferences about possible openings that might be able to be filled as well. Given where we're at time-wise with the beginning of the season, my best guess is that the latter-option might be a tough one to put together with date/time availabilities being extremely limited. From a discussion that I had with a former coach in the MIAC, the best possible solution might be that first option. However, to make something like that work effectively, what you'd probably have to do would be to have the top teams play one of the other top 2-3 teams and then pair the middle-of-the-pack teams against each other and then also have the lower-echelon teams do likewise. Now, again, how effective something like this might be, I don't know. However, I would be willing to say that doing something like this may prove to be the most beneficial for the upper-echelon teams when it comes to improving their SOS which is so critically important when you're thinking in terms of trying to get into the NCAA Tournament and, at the same time, knowing full and well that with only three non-conference games, your opportunities are limited at best. Consider, even in a normal situation, your SOS from just conference play alone is never going to be over .500. And only three non-conference games really doesn't do that much for your SOS - even if you win all of them or go like 2-1. So, in a back-handed way, this might be one opportunity to take advantage of something that may have not been there before.
Obviously, if I here any more developments on this situation, I'll definitely let you know. Feel free to fire away with thoughts.
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