Monthly Archives: February 2013

NCAA regional rankings, Week 1

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The first regional rankings might well be the latest ever, at least in the post-fax machine era. But after 9 p.m. on Wednesday night, they finally got them out.

The committee used to send them out in email form, and they would generally get posted right away by people who care about Division III. Now they send them exclusively to Turner Sports, which runs NCAA.com … and they get posted whenever someone gets around to it there.

Need to know more about the regional rankings process and what they mean? Need to know more about the NCAA Tournament? Check out our NCAA Tournament FAQ.

Through games of Sunday, Feb. 3.

The first record is in-region record, followed by overall.

  • NCAA Division III men’s basketball championships handbook

    Men’s rankings
    Atlantic Region
    1 Ramapo 18-1 20-2
    2 SUNY-Old Westbury 18-1 19-3
    3 Purchase 16-4 16-4
    4 Richard Stockton 16-5 16-5
    5 Rutgers-Newark 15-6 16-6

    East Region
    1 Rochester 18-1 19-1
    2 Cortland State 17-2 17-3
    3 Stevens 15-3 17-3
    4 New York University 13-7 13-7
    5 Hobart 12-6 13-6
    6 Geneseo State 14-6 14-7

    Great Lakes
    1 Wooster 17-3 17-3
    2 Ohio Wesleyan 16-3 16-4
    3 Thomas More 17-2 18-3
    4 Calvin 15-0 19-2
    5 St. Vincent 14-3 16-5
    6 Marietta 16-5 16-5

    Mid-Atlantic
    1 Catholic 16-2 19-2
    2 Albright 18-3 18-3
    3 St. Mary’s (Md.) 14-2 19-2
    4 Alvernia 16-4 16-4
    5 Wesley 14-2 17-5
    6 Scranton 15-6 15-6
    7 Arcadia 13-6 13-8
    8 Cabrini 14-4 16-5
    9 Franklin & Marshall 13-4 16-5

    Midwest
    1 Illinois Wesleyan 15-3 18-3
    2 Transylvania 15-4 16-5
    3 Wheaton (Ill.) 13-5 16-5
    4 Washington U. 15-4 16-4
    5 North Central (Ill.) 16-3 18-3
    6 Rose-Hulman 18-2 19-2
    7 Augustana 15-5 16-5
    8 St. Norbert 15-4 15-4

    Northeast
    1 WPI 21-0 21-0
    2 Amherst 20-2 20-2
    3 Williams 18-2 20-2
    4 Middlebury 16-1 19-1
    5 Rhode Island College 18-3 18-3
    6 Brandeis 15-5 15-5
    7 MIT 15-4 16-4
    8 Curry 15-6 15-6
    9 Westfield State 15-4 17-4
    10 Springfield 15-7 15-7
    11 Eastern Connecticut 14-4 14-7
    12 Albertus Magnus 20-2 20-3

    South
    1 Hampden-Sydney 15-2 19-2
    2 Mary Hardin-Baylor 18-3 18-3
    3 Christopher Newport 14-3 15-3
    4 Concordia (Texas) 14-4 16-5
    5 Emory 14-5 14-5
    6 Virginia Wesleyan 11-5 14-6
    7 Lynchburg 12-5 16-5
    8 Guilford 13-5 16-5

    West
    1 St. Thomas 20-1 20-1
    2 Whitworth 19-1 20-1
    3 UW-Stevens Point 18-4 18-4
    4 UW-Whitewater 16-4 17-4
    5 UW-Stout 16-4 17-4
    6 Buena Vista 15-5 16-5
    7 Augsburg 15-5 15-5
    8 Luther 14-4 15-6
    9 Concordia-Moorhead 15-6 15-7

    Regional score reporting forms (including SOS) below:
    Atlantic  |  East  |  Great Lakes  |  Middle Atlantic  |  Midwest  |  Northeast  |  South  |  West

    Women’s

    The first record is in-region record, followed by overall record.

  • NCAA Division III women’s basketball championships handbook

    Atlantic
    1 Montclair State 22-0 22-0
    2 Catholic 17-1 20-1
    3 Baruch 19-1 20-1
    4 Marymount 16-4 18-4
    5 William Paterson 15-6 16-6
    6 Mary Washington 13-6 15-6
    7 York (Pa.) 13-5 17-5
    8 TCNJ 14-7 15-7

    Central
    1 Cornell 18-1 18-1
    2 Washington U. 16-2 17-3
    3 Carthage 16-3 18-3
    4 UW-Superior 17-3 18-4
    5 Monmouth (Ill.) 16-3 17-3
    6 UW-Whitewater 14-4 16-5
    7 UW-Stevens Point 17-4 18-4
    8 Wisconsin Lutheran 18-0 19-2

    East
    1 New Paltz State 18-2 18-2
    2 Ithaca 17-2 18-2
    3 Rochester 15-5 15-5
    4 Oswego State 14-5 14-6
    5 Geneseo State 14-5 15-5
    6 St. Lawrence 14-5 15-5
    7 Vassar 14-4 16-4
    8 Hartwick 13-3 16-4

    Great Lakes
    1 DePauw 16-0 22-0
    2 Ohio Northern 19-0 20-1
    3 Calvin 14-0 18-1
    4 Thomas More 20-1 20-1
    5 Hope 18-1 20-1
    6 La Roche 17-2 18-2
    7 Mount Union 16-4 17-4
    8 Otterbein 15-5 16-5

    Mid-Atlantic
    1 Messiah 17-1 19-2
    2 FDU-Florham 18-2 19-2
    3 Moravian 18-3 19-3
    4 Swarthmore 15-3 16-4
    5 Gettysburg 15-5 15-6
    6 Juniata 15-6 15-6
    7 Scranton 14-5 15-6
    8 Lebanon Valley 18-3 18-3

    Northeast
    1 Amherst 21-0 22-0
    2 Tufts 21-1 22-1
    3 Southern Maine 18-1 20-1
    4 Bridgewater State 17-3 17-3
    5 Babson 18-1 19-2
    6 Emmanuel 16-3 16-5
    7 Smith 19-2 19-2
    8 Williams 17-4 18-4
    9 Western Connecticut 16-5 16-5
    10 University of New England 17-4 17-4

    South
    1 Ferrum 18-2 18-2
    2 Maryville (Tenn.) 18-2 18-2
    3 Louisiana College 18-1 19-1
    4 Christopher Newport 17-2 18-2
    5 Emory 18-2 18-2
    6 Howard Payne 18-3 18-3
    7 Eastern Mennonite 13-3 15-5
    8 Guilford 17-2 18-3

    West
    1 Simpson 16-0 20-1
    2 Lewis and Clark 15-2 19-2
    3 George Fox 13-4 16-4
    4 Cal Lutheran 16-3 19-3
    5 Minnesota-Morris 12-0 13-7
    6 Concordia-Moorhead 17-3 17-4
    7 Chapman 13-4 15-5
    8 St. Thomas (Minn.) 15-4 15-5

    Regional score reporting forms (including SOS) below:
    Atlantic | Central | East | Great Lakes | Mid-Atlantic | Northeast | South | West

    • Road Show: One night in Brooklyn

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    John Jay/Medgar Evers tipoffWhy did I end up at Medgar Evers? I got that question a few times on Monday night. Never doubted the choice, though.

    I’ve mentioned a couple times that I have a list of programs I’ve seen play and gyms I’ve seen games in. There were a couple of CUNYAC teams on the list that I’ve seen, but I’d never been in a CUNYAC gym, and this was an opportunity to change that.

    Medgar Evers College itself consists of four buildings in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn — in fact, my friend Ray Martel drove me past the Ebbets Field apartments on the way out after the game. Everyone complains about their budget, but Medgar Evers spends significantly less on athletics than anyone else in the conference. Chris Pursoo, the men’s basketball coach, also has his younger brother and his dad on his staff, which is good because the school has zero full-time coaches and family tends to work for the right price. We’ll talk more with him on a future Hoopsville.

    And it shows. The gym is one of the smallest in Division III, and shared with a high school. The fire marshal posts a maximum capacity of 272. The gym is comparable to the one that Hood had before it went co-ed, and according to your responses on Twitter, it is comparable to small gyms at Rosemont, Manhattanville, Emerson and Suffolk.

    If not for a recently redone floor, it would truly be a dump. Instead, at least it’s bright and clean, and it was packed for the men’s game as well.

    Now, the reason I chose this game is two-fold. First of all, I wasn’t going to go to a school that doesn’t post scores in the PrestoSports system. But more importantly, I wanted to see what the Medgar Evers women’s basketball team was all about. Earlier in the year, they were losing games 85-7, 74-5 and 82-6. Lately, they’ve gotten a little bit better, but they are still getting their doors blown off. But, they still have a positive attitude and they still play hard. I talked with Eric James, the Medgar Evers women’s basketball coach, about that after the game.

    Road Show: A Sunday in the UAA

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    Thank goodness for the University Athletic Association, where there are always great games to pay attention to on a Sunday afternoon. But usually, the atmosphere on a Sunday in the UAA isn’t nearly as raucous as it was inside Red Auerbach Arena this afternoon for the men’s game between top-ranked Rochester and No. 25 Brandeis.

    The Judges had a significant number of fans there for their home game, but Rochester had a sizable Boston-area alumni gathering at the game as well. And Rochester pulled out to a 14-point lead early in the second half before Brandeis rallied to cut it to one, twice. You’ll see how John DiBartolomeo and the Yellowjackets responded in the video piece below.

    In the second game, the first-place and last-place teams in the UAA looked like they did a role reversal, where last-place Brandeis took it to Rochester in a 62-49 win. I talked with Carol Simon after the game as well.

    I also ran into MIT men’s coach Larry Anderson, who introduced me to women’s coach Sonia Raman. Lots of coaches seeing games this weeekend

    Road Show: Packed LeFrak

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    Part of the reason I devote so much time to Division III sports in general is for the adventure of it all. I could have chosen to stay around Boston and see WPI throttle Coast Guard but not if there were a Top Five matchup a couple of hours away.

    So I hopped in the car and drove a hundred or so miles west to Amherst. These games didn’t get me anywhere on my master list — I had seen all four teams play before and I had been in LeFrak Gymnasium as well — but it was a great experience.

    I like to take the less obvious routes when possible. It helps me understand the geography of a state if I drive through more of it, so I took Mass. Rte. 2 instead of the Mass Pike. And on the way back, I dropped off my rental car and took the T to my hotel instead of a cab.

    In between, we saw two great games. Paul Carr, a broadcaster at Wheaton (Ill.) about a decade ago, called the first game with former Lord Jeff Spencer Noon, then he and I called the women’s game together.

    The men’s game was a fantastic back-and-forth affair if you like offense, and the women’s game was a fantastic game if you like defense. You can watch the archived broadcast as well, with the women’s game starting at about the 3-hour mark of the archive.

    After the game I spoke with Bridget Crowley and Bre Dufault, who played on opposite sides but have been best friends since third grade. That interview is below, but I also asked Crowley off camera about a little girl she was talking to after the game. She said coach G.P. Gromacki had passed along a letter from a 7-year-old girl that had been addressed to Bridget Crowley, LeFrak Gymnasium:

    “I really loved your game. I look up to you, you’re the best player. It was just a total confidence booster and it made my day. She drew a picture on it, she put a bunch of stickers on it. I was thinking, ‘I have to get back to this girl and make sure this mail gets to her quickly,’ and she lives right down the road. So I went to the store and got all these arts and crafts — glitter and stickers.

    “We change practice jerseys every year, so I gave her my purple practice jersey and put it in with a note as well and stuffed it in her mailbox. She told me she’d be at this game and I was hoping she’d wear the jersey so she’d be easy to pick out. And she was very easy to pick out. It was so cute.”

    Crowley spent some time with her pen pal, also named Bridget, after the game, on a day in which Crowley got pushed around quite a bit by stronger Tufts defenders. She talks more about it, with her best friend, below:

    Road show: A Bowdoin-Middlebury split

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    BRUNSWICK, Maine — One closely contested game turned into a blowout and the other was put away nice and neatly at the end as the No. 6 Middlebury men pulled away from Bowdoin and the Bowdoin women went on a huge second-half run to the return the favor to the Panthers.

    For the Middlebury men, it took a little bit of time to get adjusted when Bowdoin went to a zone defense, while for the Bowdoin women, sorely in need of a NESCAC win, it might have been a key second-half rebound that sparked it.

    This is as far into Maine as I’ll get on this trip. I stopped at University of New England on the way up, bypassed Southern Maine (sorry!) and Colby and Bates are further up the coast, but I knew I was pretty far East when the sun went down before 5 p.m. in February. A friend reminds me that, of course, the sun rises awful early, but I won’t be around for that.

    I could say more, but instead, I’ll let Middlebury senior guard Nolan Thompson and Bowdoin women’s coach Adrienne Shibles talk instead. They’re my interview subjects from tonight.