Well, I thought the game I was at tonight was pretty good. Then I got text messages from my brother at the UW-Stout/Augustana game with score updates on a game that went down to the wire as Augustana dropped 10 three-pointers on the Blue Devils in the second half. Then I got a phone call from Gordon Mann as I was driving back from Randolph-Macon and he ran down the rest of the key scores.

Those were good games, too. Let me tell you about Fisk/Randolph-Macon, however. I’m accustomed to seeing Randolph-Macon’s backcourt cause trouble for its opponents with in-your-face defense and by stepping into passing lanes and picking the ball off. But tonight it was Fisk’s speed on defense that got the job done. Chris Adams had five steals to go with his 15 points as Randolph-Macon turned the ball over 23 times, including four consecutive possessions that allowed Fisk to battle back from a five-point deficit, its largest of the night.

“The last 10 minutes of the game we found our way,” Fisk coach Larry Glover said after the game. “In the second half I think we kind of forced the tempo defensively that turned the momentum in our favor. I don’t think they recovered.”

Glover also said one of his team’s goals after watching the video of the second Randolph-Macon/Lincoln game was to shut down either Adam Krovic or Justin Wansley. Wansley got his points (19, plus 11 rebounds) but Krovic was held to one shot, a missed three-pointer.

At any rate, I can see Fisk doing some damage, especially since they won tonight despite shooting 4-for-21 from three-point range. They came in shooting 40.6% from downtown, so they must have their moments. A heads-up to Mississippi College and Maryville, coming up in the next two weeks.

Good win for Baldwin-Wallace, obviously. The Randolph-Macon tournament and Wooster’s tournament were a couple of the ones I had in mind in writing a Daily Dose post in September regarding how to select pairings for your tournament. Both host schools took a chance and picked the second-best team as their first-round opponent, and I’ll be honest, I like the decision. Shows guts. In both cases, it means the hosts got a regional game they might not have gotten otherwise. And if you’re Wooster, you’re going to have to beat Baldwin-Wallace at some point to win the tournament, whether it was tonight or tomorrow.

Some good non-regional games tonight as well, between UW-Platteville and Mary Hardin-Baylor and between Manchester and Trinity (Texas). And don’t overlook Caltech/Rivier — Caltech lost 55-54, as close as it gets for them in attempting to beat a Division III foe for the first time in years. Illinois Wesleyan/Puget Sound comes out about as expected.

Millikin’s women still appear to be struggling, only beating Tufts by four. UW-La Crosse’s win against Chapman is important because even though Chapman is a little down, they are still usually a playoff contender. By the way, apparently we need to take a closer look at Oglethorpe, which appears to be 9-1 (no report on Wednesday night’s game with Chapman but looks like a win) with its only loss to Division I Davidson. This weekend’s games were its first road tests (other than Davidson, which can’t be considered a test if there’s no chance of passing).

Maybe someone can chime in on W&J’s women, who appeared to struggle this weekend with a pair of UMAC teams. Bad sign. They were up by 20 tonight at one point but yesterday had to rally from an eight-point halftime deficit to beat Minnesota-Morris.

Oh my.

What a day for the men’s side of Division III basketball with five battles between Top 25 teams and a couple more between tournament hopefuls. If you cannot get to any of them, here are the webcast links I was able to find.

Please feel free to post corrections or added links.

8:30 PM EST: No. 1 Illinois Wesleyan vs. No. 5 Puget Sound
Broadcast on WJBC (IWU)

7:30 PM: No. 2 Wooster vs. No. 17 Baldwin-Wallace
Broadcast on Quicktime (Wooster)

8 PM: No. 6 Albion vs. No. 16 Elmhurst
Broadcast on Albion Sports

8 PM: No. 7 Hope vs. John Carroll
Broadcast on Yahoo! Sports (Hope)

You’ll notice there is no webcast listed for No. 11 UW-Stout vs. No. 13 Augustana. UW-Stout is not listing a broadcast link for today’s game, though they usually do. Augustana student radio doesn’t list their basketball broadcast schedule. Maryville (Tenn.) also plays Transylvania, but I’m not sure the Scots’ station will travel to Tampa to cover it. So we may have to just get these the “old fashioned” way – waiting by the internet for someone to post the score. In any event there are plenty of other games to keep us busy.

Although this is a topic that we beat to death several years ago on the message board, perhaps it’s time to bring it up again. Chuck E.T. blogs about memorable sports team nicknames and we have several of our own in Division III, some of which he mentions.

So, in the spirit of the Adrian Yos, the Wheaton Chaff, the Neumann Hellos, the Linfield Fly, etc., give us your best re-nicknaming of a current Division III team. And I can think of some new ones that have presented themselves since we last did this exercise, but I’ll give you folks a fair shot at putting them out there first.

All I ask is that you try to limit yourselves to a handful so the first people out of the gate don’t take all the good ones from the latecomers. 🙂

Just a heads-up, D3hoops.com and D3football.com will be moving to a new server tonight. The plan is to get started around 9 p.m. ET. If successful, the sites would be down for about a half-hour. After the move, some items might not function correctly, but we will do our best to track those things down and fix them.

If you see anything out of the ordinary, e-mail info@d3hoops.com.

The message board will not be affected.

Earlier this season Coach C sparked a spirited discussion with a well written entry about whether it’s worthwhile for Division III schools to play Division I schools. Given tonight’s top story, I thought it was worth reviving the discussion.

I always wonder how “our guys” stack up against the big guys? Not Duke or Villanova, but if our top teams played their bottom teams, would they win? Tonight’s game between No. 5 Puget Sound and Division I UC Riverside (0-8) was a good case study.

Puget Sound is ranked highly, though some may argue perhaps too highly. We’ll see whether that’s the case when they play top-ranked IWU next week. UPS also plays an unusual, frenetic style of play. I’m not sure whether that makes them more or less likely to succeed against DI. But UPS is certainly a capable standard bearer for D3.

Meanwhile the UCR Highlanders (“who wants…to live…for-ever!”) are near, if not at, the bottom of Division I. For those who like such indices, the Wolfe rankings have UC-Riverside No. 693 overall, behind more than 50 Division III schools including UPS (No. 676). UCR also drubbed Redlands 162-123 in an exhibition back in November.

In the first half it was Puget Sound that was behind, trailing by as many as 18 points and 13 at the break. But the Loggers rolled (get it?) out of the locker room and cut the lead quickly. UPS and UCR battled back and forth over the final 10 minutes before the Loggers put the game away on Josh Walker’s defensive rebound at 113-111.

This isn’t the first time a D3 team has beaten a DI. Defending national champion Williams beat defending Patriot League champion Holy Cross 78-71 in 2003. And D3 tallied two victories over D1 teams last year (HSC over Longwood, Gettysburg over Navy). But more often than not, the results aren’t pretty. See West Virginia 83 W&J 33.

A recent article in the Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call offers one explanation on why these match-ups are more frequent right before Christmas. It also underlines the good and bad of these match-ups.

On the bright side, wins like the UPS victory are special moment. When Swarthmore beat Lafayette, Coach O’Hanlon says the Garnet “celebrated like they had just won the NCAA.” That sounds good.

But the idea that DI teams are trolling for easy wins because their students are busy with exams is patronizing. Plus it’s not like our players don’t have academic concerns of their own. By the way, Lafayette beat Dickinson by 20.

So where do I fall on these match-ups? I still think one size doesn’t fit all. Division III teams should make these decisions for themselves based on the likelihood of being competitive, financial considerations and whatever else factors into it. It’d be tough to tell the kids at Puget Sound that they shouldn’t have played what was a memorable game for them.

But in my inglorious athletic career, the only thing that ticked me off more than getting my butt kicked was getting it kicked by someone who wasn’t even trying their hardest.

So, considering the UPS victory, where do you stand?