Congratulations to University of Rochester Sports Information Director Dennis O’Donnell on his recent induction into the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) Hall of Fame.

O’Donnell’s professional resume includes CoSIDA’s Irv Marsh Award in 2003, a 25 Year Service Award in 2006 and frequent trips to the men’s and women’s final four weekends, whether with the Yellowjacket teams or as a volunteer. Now he can add this Hall of Fame distinction, which is enjoyed by only 26 other members at CoSIDA’s College Division (NCAA Divisions II and III, NAIA, Junior Colleges and Canadian Schools).

Dennis has also been a big contributor to our efforts in all the ways we could hope for – nominating All Region candidates, providing excellent pregame notes, posting game releases, and letting us know about interesting stories around the Rochester sports teams.

And like a lot of other Sports Information Directors at this level, Dennis works long hours behinds the scenes so University boosters, alums and parents can stay on top of UR sports. That requires a lot of patience on his part and we suspect a lot of support from his family.

Sports Information Directors are the silent partners of these websites in a lot of ways. They provide invaluable information and assistance for just about everything we do. So we’re very happy to add our congratulations to one of the best in the business.

Great news to get the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association’s academic rankings this week — I’m always glad to see the student portion of student-athlete get recognized.

Also, they used to come out in August, when it’s so far past the end of the school year that it’s dated to mention it.

Congrats to Hardin-Simmons and the other 23 Division III women’s basketball teams recognized. Hopefully someday the National Association of Basketball Coaches can do the same for men’s basketball.

Happy Fourth of July, to all you Americans out there! (And to you British, well, 231 years of gloating.)

What better place to spend Independence Day than in Taipei, right? That’s what UW-Stout men’s coach Eddie Andrist is doing. He’s coaching the Qatar national team again this summer, as he did the summer he was first hired by the Blue Devils.

Andrist has been blogging about the experience, as his team advanced to the finals of the Friendship Games before falling to Kazakhstan. Follow along and enjoy your Fourth.

For a long time, D3hoops.com, the proverbial granddaddy of the D3sports.com family, has been sitting here with its own unique design. We took on the new look on the front page in October 2000, based off a template sent to us, unsolicited, by a Calvin fan named Martin Wondergem.

We liked it — especially the magnanimity he displayed in designing it in Hope colors.

But … it’s been seven years. It’s time for a change. And we have a design that works well on D3football.com and D3baseball.com. Within the next couple of months, we will be implementing that design for D3hoops.com as well. And as we begin to celebrate our 10th anniversary, we’re ripe for a new look.

It’s about time we extended the brand a little bit. There are still people who seem surprised to hear that the D3football.com people and D3hoops.com people are essentially the same. Making the sites look the same will go a long way toward unifying the entire D3sports.com family just a little bit more.

So we’ve been busy working, not really blogging. Sorry. Just trying to get all our ducks in a row.