Snow coming down in suburban Washington, D.C. is rare enough, but to see it before Christmas is unusual indeed. It’s a nice backdrop here, with the children nestled snugly in their beds and all quiet. So from our house to yours, have a happy Thanksgiving.

To those of you traveling this weekend, whether to holiday gatherings or ballgames, drive safely.

Busy Tuesday night as we head into the holiday. By the way, first Team of the Week posted. That’s the longest-running feature on this site, by the way, since the 1997-98 season, when we took over Division III Basketball Online.

This is what the season is going to be like for Lincoln. Too much traveling to be consistent from night to night. A couple people raised comparisons to Savannah Art & Design (which left the NCAA a couple years back) and that seems to be a reasonable model.

Pretty good night for Wittenberg considering Dan Russ didn’t score through the first 25 minutes.

Kudos to D-III coaching alumnus Pat Flannery (was Lebanon Valley, where he won a national title, now at Bucknell) for his team’s upset of Syracuse. In other D-I news, Lafayette needed a 21-7 run to put away Alvernia, 86-80.

The Springfield men lost to Tufts 72-71. That means they’re 0-3, with the three losses by one, two and three points.

The Eastern Connecticut women bounced back nicely from their pasting at the hands of No. 3 Bowdoin, knocking off No. 13 Emmanuel 65-55.

Light schedule tomorrow: No. 22 DePauw at Fontbonne highlights the women’s schedule, and Carleton travels to No. 22 Aurora on the men’s side, with Carthage playing Concordia-Irvine, an NAIA power, in Hawaii. Plus La Sierra plays at Cal Baptist. If two teams play a game and nobody reports the score, does it make a sound?

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Lincoln is 3-0. Not necessarily a surprise, since this is a good team, but somewhat surprising based on tonight’s competition, a Division II Sweet 16 team. Good start for the Lions but believe it or not, we haven’t even carved the turkey and they already have just four home games left! They have two brutal road trips over the holidays.

Dominican is 3-0. Definitely a surprise. Not a surprise that they started 2-0, considering they opened at home against SLIAC teams, but the upset of Aurora was a shocker, especially on the road. I saw the two play last year and Aurora won by 24. Aurora led by six with three minutes remaining, but Dominican closed on an 11-1 run. All-American Larry Welton was held to 4-for-18 shooting. The Spartans had started 2-0 against teams that were strong last year (McMurry and Wheaton, Ill.) but who are expected to be down in 2005-06.

Other shadows of their former selves:

Elsewhere: Insert your own shooting joke here (Rhodes men 109, Messenger 22) … Immaculata nearly had a storybook finish in their first-ever men’s home game, won by Eastern 71-70 on a buzzer-beater. … Macalester men surprisingly competitive against UW-Stout (64-55) considering they are missing two of their top guards. … D-I Tennessee State beating Fisk (72-63) is news, since it doesn’t happen every year.

Today’s case of “basketball crush” is courtesy of double-entered scores, the bane of our existence during tournament weekends, but one that we’ll live with. Better to see a score twice than not at all. Anyway, as we wade through the muddle of numbers, here’s what jumped out at us…

I’m sure Gordon Mann will share his thoughts, but I’ll steal one that he mentioned to me on Saturday night. It was a good weekend to be a basketball player in Ohio. Seven Ohio Athletic Conference men’s teams went 2-0 this weekend, notably Baldwin-Wallace, which upset St. John Fisher and outscored Westminster, and Wilmington, which got a buzzer-beater to win Anderson’s tournament). Wooster and Wittenberg also scored nice wins this weekend, with the Scots upending “Super-Sleeper” UW-Stout, and the Tigers topping Tufts and 2005 finalist Rochester.

On the women’s side, the OAC scored two nice Top 25 upsets, with Ohio Northern shocking St. Benedict (the most surprising score of the weekend) and Otterbein topping Washington & Jefferson. Five OAC teams went 2-0 this weekend (as did 3 Buckeye state teams in the NCAC), and one that didn’t, Mount Union, got Suzy Venet her first win at her alma mater by beating 2005 NCAA participant Westminster after losing to fellow Ohio mates Case Western (also 2-0).

The folks in the WIAC like to point to their non-conference record in proclaiming themselves as the best Division III conference in the country, and justifiably so, but based on what we saw this weekend, the OAC’s not doing too shabby.

Elsewhere, a couple of quick-hitter thoughts…

* Trinity worked some New England magic to squeak out two tough wins at the Franklin & Marshall tourney (preseason All-American) Tyler Rhoten averaged 27 points over two games) Nearby neighbor Springfield couldn’t quite do the same in Virginia where it suffered narrow losses to Roanoke and Hampden-Sydney.

* We had a “super-sleeper squeaker” (try saying that fast) with afforementioned UW-Stout edging St. Thomas by a point in its season opener. I feel pretty good about both of those choices, based on the conversations I’ve had with the folks out west.

* On the women’s side, we had a fair share of upsets. I saw Randolph-Macon and Springfield twice each last season and I must say that Springfield’s win was surprising to me. I didn’t think the Pride would have an answer for RMC’s height or for Megan Silva, but apparently they did. If they weren’t already, the Pride should be HEAVY favorites to win the NEWMAC this season, with an unbeaten league mark not out of the question. RMC should remember that Scranton lost its opener to a New England team last season (Williams) then didn’t lose again until reaching the national semis.

* The Bowdoin women’s team dropped the hammer on another opponent, crushing Eastern Connecticut by 30 points in the second half of its second win of the season on Sunday. They suckered another broadcaster in the process, as while on play-by-play, I IM’d site publisher Pat Coleman at halftime that ECSU had a realistic shot at an upset. That was before Bowdoin came out with its pressure defense. It’s amazing the impact that has on opponents, not only in forcing turnovers, but even how just the threat of pressure can cause a team to rush its possessions and shots (I think we’ll be writing about this at some point), as the young host Warriors did.

A half dozen non Top-25 scores of note:
Men’s
Grinnell 136, Cornell 112 (Perhaps ESPN should come back to Darby),
Lincoln 68, Richard Stockton 63 (Best comeback of weekend, rallied from 19 down with 9 min left. Lincoln is 2-0 for first time since 1994)
Mary Washington 64, Southwestern 50 (good matchup of teams on the top 25 bubble)
Mcneese State 68, Mary Hardin-Baylor 63 (MHB got a few “super-sleeper” votes for good reason)
Women’s
Wesleyan 59, King’s 52 (A Monarch rarity: an 0-2 start for their new coach before a win Sunday)
Carroll 71, UW-Oshkosh 58 (Tough welcomes for new coaches is a theme this weekend, as you’ll see in our next note)

* Lastly, those final scores aren’t typos, particurly CCNY’s 118-6 loss to Endicott on Sunday. A rough welcome to the head coaching ranks to Jamees Wright of CCNYwould be putting it mildly as the Lady Beavers found themselves on the wrong end of a “basketball crush.”

I’ll give Wright credit for going through the handshake line of Endicott players, setting a good example for a team of eight freshmen and two sophomores. One neutral onlooker sitting near us felt that the Gulls went overboard in the manner in which they scored and defended. Based on what I saw in the second half (prior to Bowdoin-ECSU), I’d agree some, but at the same time, I’ll say this in the interest of presenting both sides of the issue: Endicott played its starters for only one-third of the game (as Eastern Connecticut did when it beat CCNY by 91 the night before) and while I’m FULLY against the idea of “running up the score,” I also don’t like the idea of telling a college team not to try to score, to allow the game to be “respectable.”

Perhaps I’m wimping out on this one, but while I felt bad for the CCNY players and coaches, I’m not going to be as critical of their opposition as I’m guessing some of our readers are likely to be.

I’m not sure what the circumstances were that led to CCNY being in such a mismatched position by playing in this tournament, but hopefully whoever scheduled the games on their end will look for a better match for its opening weekend next year.

Welcome to our tenth birthday, unofficially. Although we’ve (mostly I’ve) only been running this site for eight years, the site was founded for the 1995-96 season by the Centennial Conference and Steve Ulrich. It was groundbreaking for its time as one of the few Web sites of any kind, let alone one covering Division III sports.

As the 1997-98 basketball season neared, I noticed the site was getting a little dusty. I was back in the sports information business at the time, moonlighting a few days a week as SID at Gallaudet when they were between people (Brett Marhanka and Steve Feit, for the insanely curious). I had spent two years running a basketball page covering the Capital Athletic Conference and was interested in doing more, so I asked Ulrich if he was interested in having someone take over.

Well, within a couple hours I had e-mail with attachments right and left, and a few days after that (before we were ready, actually), they threw a link over to us. The site has morphed several times since then into what you see now.

And although we don’t have a picture of it to show you, how many people remember the spinning basketball graphic that was on the original front page. Show of hands?

So here we are now, recording every result, running our own poll, broadcasting games. We have a good number of like-minded people who volunteer on the site, collecting info and the like. We went out and found some interns to help on the site this year, another step for us. We just passed the 12 million mark on the front page.

And all that on a site I thought would take a few hours a night, two or three nights a week. Silly me. I had no idea there were so many Division III fans out there. But we have all seen the strength in numbers.

Keep up the good work, fans.