Author Archives: Pat Coleman

Putting on the pressure

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Are last-second free throws the most pressure packed action in sports?

While some would argue for kicking a field goal with three seconds left down by two or standing with the tying and winning runs on base with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, it’s hard to argue against the last-second free throw, because once the referee hands you the ball, it’s just you and the basket, 15 feet away.

The NCAA’s Double-A Zone focuses on how this simple act can be suddenly less than simple and uses a fairly topical reference in the process. Say, a pair of free throws from Sunday’s games. Lot of Division III fans over there.

What we’re reading

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We at D3hoops.com know we are not the only ones writing interesting stories about Division III men’s and women’s basketball, and even if we had a full-time staff of writers we couldn’t corner the market on everything interesting.

I and Gordon Mann especially come across many stories we could never hope to write or do justice, since we all have “real” jobs and such. But we haven’t had an easy way to bring all of those stories to you. Aside from the occasional blog post about a story, which takes more time than we usually have to devote, most just get filed away in the cobwebs of our brains.

However, we’ve changed all that, thanks to a new Web site for journalists called Publish2. One of the features of the site is a tool we’ve used to create a feed of stories tagged as being of interest. You can always find it on the right-hand rail on the front page.

The feed is labeled “What we’re reading” and contains stories we’ve tagged that are of interest to us, along with a quick summary of why they might be of interest to you. You can see what else is in there beyond the five most recent by clicking on the link at the bottom of the box.

You can also suggest stories by emailing links to me at info@d3sports.com, or post them on the message board. It’s great to see what you’re reading, and we would love to read them ourselves and share them with everyone else.

Enjoy!

D-III vs. D-II

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ST. PAUL, Minn. — I went to the St. Thomas men’s game at Concordia-St. Paul tonight and I didn’t see anything that immediately stood out as one team being on a higher level than the other.

Concordia was a little more athletic, but not huge. They did shoot better from three but they got killed on the boards. Their gym was nice but not spectacular. They certainly didn’t take better care of the ball.

The Golden Bears fell to a deceiving 6-5 tonight — I use the adjective because two of their losses are to Bowling Green and Georgia State. Obviously it’s far too early to know where they might end up, and with three games against ranked D-II teams to go, Concordia-St. Paul could end up anywhere.

My exposure to Division II is limited. In fact, I intentionally avoid games against D-II and NAIA schools because I would rather see two teams I cover rather than just one. So this was my first time seeing a D-III team playing a D-II team on the road.

And I wasn’t blown away.

Dallas and the NEAC

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In an era where the price of a barrel of oil has gone through the roof, where air travel has become slower, more expensive and less convenient and where conferences as big as the WAC have talked about making changes to their schedules to save money, the North Eastern Athletic Conference has expanded into that bastion of the Northeast: Dallas, Texas.

I almost don’t have to say anything more, do I?

This is what pursuit of the automatic bid can do to you. We don’t know how the conference will schedule itself this season or how it will actually determine who gets the AQ (remember, that’s the conference’s decision, not the NCAA’s), but at some point, someone will be getting on a plane from New York or Pennsylvania to Dallas and seemingly vice versa.

I’m not sure this is what Division III is all about. I can’t imagine what the Division IV crowd would think of such a thing. I also can’t imagine what these schools are thinking: It’s not like these are the University of Chicagos, NYUs and Case Western Reserves of the world, large research institutions with endowments to match. The NEAC is made up of athletic departments so small that one coach told me a couple years ago their program could only schedule 22 games because that was all they could afford, not the Division III standard 25.

I feel for the University of Dallas, which has lived the lonely life of an independent ever since leaving the American Southwest Conference early this decade in hopes of gaining admission to the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference. And I feel for the NEAC, which has seen its membership change faster than the Law & Order cast,  but I can’t see spending all this money in pursuit of an automatic bid. And if the conference doesn’t play a full round-robin in order to save money, then why bother? You’d only be crowing an illegitimate champ.

Championship access is all well and good, but at what cost?

Goodbye to a D3 lifer

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Earlier in the offseason Pat posited an interesting theory that there are two kinds of successful Division III coaches – lifers who spend a long career at a particular college and those who pursue jobs at other levels after gaining success here.

By that theory, today we say good bye to a Division III lifer in Southern Maine Coach Gary Fifield. He spent his entire college coaching career in Gorham, Maine after coaching high school ball in Vermont. Over that 21-year run, he won an astounding 541 games, took his team to five Final Fours and became the face of a highly successful program.

I only interacted with Coach Fifield a couple times during the Huskies’ recent playoff runs. My impression is that he was very loyal to his players and inspired the same loyalty in return. One of his players told me that the thought of winning a national championship for him gave her goose bumps.

He never engaged me in small talk – it’s fitting that there isn’t a standard quote from Fifield in the University’s release – but his answers to my substantive questions were thoughtful. And I felt that his program was focused on his players, and not him. He was calm and composed on the sidelines in intense situations, whether it was a jubilant win or a heart-breaking loss.

Loyal, thoughtful, calm and focused on his players. In retrospect, it’s easy to see why he inspired loyalty and enjoyed such a successful run.