Monthly Archives: May 2005

New coach in, All-American out at Willamette

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Vanessa WyffelsWillamette hired a new women’s coach this past week. But according to the Salem (Ore.) Statesman Journal, Bruce Henderson will not have last year’s leading scorer and the nation’s leading shooter around to ease the transition.

D3hoops.com second team All-America post player Vanessa Wyffels is not returning. “It’s a personal decision and has nothing to do with the coaches,” she told the newspaper. “I know everyone is excited and there is a positive feeling.”

Wyffels, who was featured in a midseason Around the Nation column (click here, scroll down), ended up leading the team with 19.1 points and 9.7 rebounds. At 5-10, she shot 74.2% from the floor and made more than twice as many baskets as any of her teammates. Her closest competition nationally, Webster’s Kim Sheets, shot 63.3%.

Willamette went 8-17 with Wyffels last season under Tom Steers, who resigned. Wyffels transferred to Willamette from Division I Wagner. She told the newspaper she intends to attend Portland State and no longer play basketball.

How old are you? Jenkins’ rookie year winds down

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Horace Jenkins, with William PatersonHis college career ended in the 2001 national championship game at the Salem Civic Center, when the William Paterson guard kissed the floor on the way out of a 76-62 loss to Catholic. But his journey to the NBA was just beginning. Snubbed on draft day, Horace Jenkins took his skills to Europe, where he honed them into a package that the Detroit Pistons were willing to guarantee money to.

Even though Jenkins only played in 15 games for the Pistons and averaged just 2.8 points, the year’s oldest rookie, at age 30, still has been the subject of many a news piece. Here’s the latest from the Associated Press, via Mlive.com.

Strike 2 for the deeper 3-point line

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For the second year in a row, attempts to redraw the three-point line and the lane in basketball have been defeated.

The NCAA Men’s and Women’s Basketball Rules Committees have pushed for a deeper three-point line. Division III has objected. In fact, a search of NCAA News and NCAA releases on the topic reveals many times this topic has been raised and rejected.

This point in the process seems key: “Because the basketball rules committees’ proposals involve financial impact (institutions would have to budget for new court lines), the divisions may consider the recommended changes separately and, on a division-specific basis, ask the Executive Committee not to apply the change.”

And here we are, still at 19-foot-9. That’s because this is not free. A member of the rules committee told Sports Illustrated’s Seth Davis in a recent column that stripping and repainting three-point lines would run about $15,000 per school.

While that seems high to some, throw in a trapezoidal lane and you’re still running into a lot of money — money which Division III schools can’t afford.

Let’s just say it is $15,000 to strip and repaint each three-point line and lane. In a spot-check of Division III basketball budgets, that could run anywhere from 17% to 60% of a school’s combined men’s and women’s basketball budget, according to our analysis of numbers provided to the U.S. Department of Education for the 2003-04 school year.

I pulled 20 Division III schools at random and checked what their institutional budget was for men’s and women’s basketball, then their overall athletics budget. Four of the schools were state schools, in keeping with the nature of the Division III membership. On average, the $15,000 would take up 27% of the schools’ basketball budgets, or 5% of the overall budget. (It’s higher at schools that don’t have football.) And if you don’t think that 5% is a big deal, consider that next time you’re asked to go without an annual raise.

I’m not personally against moving the three-point line to 20-foot-6, which is the most recently used number. But I’m against unfunded mandates, and unless the NCAA would like to filter down some money to the Division III schools as a grant to repaint their floors, I’m against the effort.

And you should be too.

Coaching confusion

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Let’s just get this out of the way: I love Minneapolis. Grew up in Minneapolis, went to DeLaSalle High School, would move back there if I could, the whole nine yards.

That doesn’t mean I don’t find Aaron Griess’ decision to go from Chaminade to Augsburg puzzling, to say the least. If Griess didn’t have a Division III background (Colorado College graduate, former Loras grad assistant) I would have to wonder if there were something going on at Chaminade we didn’t know about.

I’m even more confused by Pam Ruder’s move from UW-Oshkosh to Southwestern. Ruder is a WIAC lifer, graduated from Whitewater, was an assistant at Oshkosh and took over as head coach after the Titans’ national title team of 1996. Southwestern had a down year by its recent standards (16 wins in 2003, 15 wins in 2004, nine wins this past year) but has at least been competitive in its conference. That’s not the same as being competitive in the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, one of the top five Division III leagues for women’s basketball.

This is the opposite of the unusual coaching move announced the day before, in which Central, the 1993 national champions, hired Mount Ida head coach Natalie Nakic. She’ll be going from the 40th-best conference in women’s basketball (according to the Massey Ratings, out of 41 Division III conferences) to the 16th-best. She was 34-19 at Mount Ida in two seasons, but 40 of those 53 games were against North Atlantic Conference foes. This is a big leap.

As for Griess, well, I only hope the job comes with a wardrobe allowance. The whole family is going to need it!