Halloween is a pretty good day for the Pioneers as Transylvania has been voted as the men’s basketball frontrunner in the 2005-06 Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference, released Oct. 31. The Pioneers, defending HCAC co-champions, received six first-place votes in the coaches’ preseason poll. They garnered 62 points overall in the poll outdistancing fellow defending co-champion Hanover.

Hanover received the remaining two first-place votes and 52 total points. Franklin was picked third with 43 points in the poll. Bluffton (41 points), Mount St. Joseph (29), Manchester (26), Anderson (21) and Defiance (14) round out the poll.

Transylvania captured its first HCAC championship last season by tying for first place in the standings with Hanover. The Pioneers finished with a 20-6 overall record and 11-3 mark in the HCAC.
Returning are a pair of first-team all-HCAC selections. Junior forward Joey Searle led Transy in scoring last year with a 14.5 average and added 5.4 rebounds per game. Senior forward Matt Finke returns after posting 12.6 points and 6.5 boards per contest.

Transylvania, led by last season’s HCAC Coach of the Year Brian Lane, returns four starters and lost just two players to graduation.

Hanover, ranked ninth in the D3hoops.com preseason Top 25, will look to return to the NCAA Division III Sweet 16 again this season. The Panthers advanced deep into last season’s tournament and will return three starters from that squad. They completed the 2004-05 season with an 11-3 conference record and 25-6 overall mark.

This time of year is full of speculation. How many starters does Team X have back? Is the transfer for Team Y any good? What does Team Z need to do to replace its backcourt scoring?

We can only guess. And that’s what a preseason Top 25 is, a guess. Some guesses are more informed than others — for example, the annual magazines make their guess with limited information about Division III. They might hit on some of the good teams, but shoot, they don’t even know who to ask.

In October we ask about 60 schools to provide detailed information about their basketball programs and who is returning. We find out how much of their scoring, rebounding, ball-handling (assists) has graduated and how much is returning. And then we still have to guess. When I was filling out my men’s ballot, I had two teams I knew I wanted No. 1 and No. 2, the two Titans of the midwest (lower-case, not NCAA Midwest Region). The rest was like pulling teeth. When you’re presented with as many as 85 data points on more than 50 teams, it’s information overload.

In the end, here’s what concerns me about the first poll:
As attrition hits teams higher up in the poll (it seems unlikely Illinois Wesleyan or UW-Oshkosh can run the table in such tough conferences), teams such as Puget Sound and St. John Fisher will likely do a slow float to the top. We might see one of them at No. 1 by January.

To a lesser extent, the same goes for Mississippi College, though they are lower in the poll. We simply won’t know how good this team is until the NCAA Tournament comes, since they play one D-III non-conference opponent.

For a team we received no information on, UW-Whitewater is quite high at No. 13. Taking a chance here.

I have to wonder how good Worcester Polytech really is. And Catholic is going to have to be much improved to live up to its No. 25 ranking.

Here’s what I like:
I think the voters made the right call on UW-Stevens Point. There’s always a few voters who give the defending champion the benefit of the doubt until they lose their first game, but it makes sense not to in this case. Too much lost.

In the end, Gustavus Adolphus will end up living up to this ranking, I believe, though they might stumble early in the season as in previous seasons.

I like not giving the Final Four a bye into the Top 10 for the previous year. Only York had anything significant back, and there’s reason to worry about the Spartans as well, considering who they beat and didn’t beat to get to the Final Four last March.

Lesley University and Immaculata University each were formerly all-women’s schools that have started accepting male undergrads in recent years and are starting men’s basketball teams this season.

Zach Rocha of The Standard Times takes us through the Lesley program as it gets underway.

Just an update as to where we stand on the 2005-06 basketball schedules. We’ve got about three-quarters of them input so far, still plowing away.

Programs of note that have gotten in recently on the men’s side include Hanover, John Carroll, King’s, Lewis and Clark.

On the women’s side: George Fox, Wesleyan, St. Benedict and others.

The primary sticking point remains lack of tournament pairings. SIDs, if you know the pairings, put them on your Web site. And if you’re hosting a tournament, I think you have an obligation to list all four games of the tournament on your schedule, not just the games your team is playing in.

To see what we have on schedules, pick a region from the list of Sites by Region on the front page, then select the team in question.

At the end of last summer, I was invited to attend the American Southwest Conference basketball coaches’ annual meeting in Dallas. Aside from the Texas Rangers/Cleveland Indians game and the fried alligator (it actually does taste like chicken), the main topic of discussion was how to increase exposure for the conference, and help it get an at-large team into the NCAA Tournament.

The 16-team conference is relatively isolated, with few non-conference Division III opponents to choose from. But the teams also play 22 conference games (everyone in the division twice, everyone else once), so there is precious little opportunity to showcase a program outside the league. I recommended, among other things that schools concentrate on playing D-III opponents rather than local NAIA schools, including teaming up with their conference travel partner and sponsoring a holiday classic to attract schools from other parts of the country.

It’s been a year. Some have changed their ways, some not so much. East Texas Baptist’s men and women each do not play one single Division III team out of conference. Jarvis Christian, LSU-Shreveport and Wiley College won’t get any respect or at-large consideration for the Tigers, nor will they help any other ASC team. Louisiana College’s men play three Division I schools, so congrats for the payday, but remember that you’re a Division III school and you should consider playing some Division III schools.

Grading each men’s team’s schedule

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