Among the things I’ll remember:

Lincoln fans showing up in force.

Devastated Lincoln players

Devastated Wittenberg players

York fans and administrators standing around our broadcast position courtside after their first-round win, listening to Pat Cummings and Jody May call Villa Julie’s first-round win at Baruch.

The vaguely surreal feeling of having ESPN cameras hovering over us while we’re trying to call the Widener/William Paterson game.

The even more surreal feeling of walking ESPN’s producer through some of the great stories in the other brackets before they settled on following whomever came out of the UW-Whitewater regional.

Dave and I having two “buzzer bummer” endings at York before Virginia Wesleyan made up for it later. We defined a buzzer bummer as a team having a final shot to win the game but missing badly (Catholic) or not getting a shot off (York).

Singing the anthem at the last basketball game in York’s Wolf Gym. Becoming a trivia answer wasn’t my goal, just avoiding having to listen to Whitney Houston for a second straight night!

Standing in the lobby while Marques Fitch was on Hoopsville, talking about the man he’d potentially be guarding the next night, Adam Dauksas, calling him “solid.” An Illinois Wesleyan person scoffed and predicted it would be used as bulletin board material. (This was a person in position to make it happen.) Doesn’t seem like it worked in retrospect.

Amherst coach Dave Hixon’s patience while he and I waited for play-by-play man Pat Cummings to remember that we were interviewing the coaches at halftime of the third-place game. Thanks to the Wittenberg fans who saw me trying to get Pat’s attention so we could get that question on the air.

… then having to glare at that same group of fans later, hoping to keep their incessant comments about the opponents and the officiating from continuing to be heard over our broadcast.

Once every time we broadcast together I throw a little Keith Jackson cadence into my call to see if Pat notices. Not sure if he did but I know Dave did.

And finally, Pat grabbing Dave Macedo for his postgame interview on our NCAAsports.com broadcast before CSTV could get him on air. (Relax, broadcast rights gurus, CSTV was in a commercial and we had the rights to do so.)

I think that two or three other NJAC teams would have gotten as far or farther than WPU did. NJCU and Ramapo definitly could have gotten at least as far and I believe that Stockton probably could have also. The NJAC is one of three or four of the top ten conferences in D-III that is not a two or at most three team show. Occasionally a team in the NJAC will step out and have an incredible season but most years there are three or four teams within one or two games of each other entering the last three or four conference games in regular season. The other conferences I see like that every year are the CCIW, WIAC and possibly the OAC.

The biggest problem facing the NJAC and the MAC dual entities is they are the only really strong conferences that each other can schedule for regional games due to proximity. There are Centennial and CAC schools that are accessable on the fringes and if the NCAA goes with the four region proposal it will improve greatly for these conferences but for now I am going by what is in place.

This is why the NJAC is going back to the two division format with the teams playing a double round robin in division and the other divisions teams once each for a total of 13 conference games as opposed to 18. They are playing the system some to allow the NJAC teams to schedule more out of conference teams to improve their chances of placing more teams in the NCAA tournament. This will help teams avoid having 7 regional losses and 5 or 6 are in conference losses and that is basically what cost NJCU, Ramapo and Stockton better pool C chances.

I’m sure that if IWU had won the title they would be acclaimed as the nation’s best as the last left standing.

Let’s see: Lawrence beat St. Thomas, who beat North Central, and IWU beat Lawrence at Lawrence.
Puget Sound beat Augustana and then IWU beat UPS on a neutral floor (which as we know, happened twice).

They may not have been the Pool A bid but they were the CCIW’s best team in the tournament.

I’ll agree that the CCIW was the best conference this year. And your point about the top of the CCIW being even is a fair one. Beating up on each other speaks to the conference’s parity. But I was surprised at the CCIW’s and Great Lakes’ inability to dominate the other good teams when it mattered most.

Gordon, remember, Illinois Wesleyan neither won the CCIW regular season nor the conference tournament. (IWU finished 2 games behind Augustana in the regular season and lost to North Central in CCIW tourney title.) And I think this gets at the simple point that people like myself have made this season — that the CCIW was probably the “best conference” in the nation this year. Augustana, North Central, Elmhurst, and Illinois Wesleyan (listed in order or conference tourney seeding) were just about dead even as all of the head-to-head scores show, and Illinois Wesleyan’s tournament run indicates just how tough that group of 4 was this year.