Author Archives: Pat Coleman

NCAA holding five schools back

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NCAA logoIt’s not easy to get into the NCAA or Division III. Compliance with Division III regulations is important. And with more than a dozen schools in the four-year provisional process, it seems inevitable that some might struggle.

The biggest sticking point usually is the number of sports a school offers. Division III regulations require a school to offer at least five sports in each gender, and every gender must have one sport offered in each season (fall, winter, spring). That’s where the following schools tripped up:

Maine-Presque Isle
Minnesota-Morris
Mitchell
Penn State-Berks/Lehigh Valley
Presentation

Morris is a bit of a surprise — in fact, on my recent visits to UMAC campuses, some asked me why it takes so long for a school that is already an NCAA member to move from Division II to Division III. Now it’s going to take them even longer.

Presentation, for example, appears not to have fielded an expected women’s golf or soccer team. Morris lists a women’s golf team but no 2004-05 results, while the men’s golf team similarly was silent. And I worry about some schools in the next incoming class.

The biggest losers in this? The UMAC, for sure. That’s two of their schools that will take an extra year to become eligible, setting back the conference’s timeline to get an automatic bid.

But the second-biggest loser has to be the NCAA. The random lottery to determine what order in which to allow schools in has not worked. The chair of the Division III membership committee, NYU athletic director Christopher Bledsoe, said in 2003: “We chose a lottery to select from eligible institutions because it was clear that there were more institutions interested in joining than could be accommodated at one time. This method provided for a fair way of determining which institutions were slotted in each class.”

A fair way? Hmm, perhaps, but not an efficient way. The first class featured Palm Beach Atlantic, which bailed on the Division III entry process so early they didn’t even bother to finish paperwork and were knocked back to the beginning of the process in D-II. Two others from that initial class were held back a year in this announcement. Meanwhile, Northwestern (Minn.) is clearly prepared to enter, as is St. Vincent, and they’re making them wait?

The powers that be have already realized their mistake and are considering letting a school that shows it is ready to skip a year of the four-year provisional process. But providing a more subjective entry process would have been better from the start.

UW-Stout’s tall tales

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Finally, someone has delved a little deeper into a story I’ve often wondered about — how two 7-footers from Montana ended up playing basketball at UW-Stout.

John and Jacob Nonemacher, from Kalispell, Mont., are entering their junior seasons at the WIAC school, and all because Stout head coach Eddie Andrist (who is erroneously referred to as Eddie Frist in the story) returned his e-mail.

It’s a tall tale and an interesting one, from The Daily Inter Lake.

New Eagles have landed

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The (Staunton, Va.) News Leader reports that two transfers have landed in the Bridgewater (Va.) Eagles men’s basketball program.

Josh Fox will come to Bridgewater from Division I Radford University. He was selected to the Big South’s All-Freshman team this past season.

The Eagles will also pick up a transfer from ODAC rival Virginia Wesleyan as Ryan Glover will change college addresses.

From the “All Things Bridgewater” Department, please see the D3football.com’s Daily Dose.

Centennial, schools blogging

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I just found out that Johns Hopkins has started publishing an athletics blog, and from there discovered links to McDaniel and Centennial Conference blogs as well. As relative veterans of blogging ourselves (I refuse to use the media-created term blogosphere), D3hoops.com and D3football.com would like to welcome them aboard. We’ll add them to the links on both Daily Dose blogs when we get the chance.

Greetings from the top of Division III

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It’s hard to get too much further north in Division III than Duluth, Minn., although Pacific Lutheran and Puget Sound are a few miles further north in Washington. While on a family vacation here I took the opportunity to stop in at St. Scholastica.

The school is a member of both the NAIA and NCAA which is declaring for the NCAA playoffs this season for the first time in a while. So, predictably, there were questions about how the NCAA did some things, etc.

I think St. Scholastica has the makings of a schedule that can get it into the tournament in men’s basketball. They’ve gone out of their way to schedule West Region games, inviting only in-region teams to their tipoff tournament and getting into another tournament that has solely West Region opponents. They play UW-Stout, UW-Superior and UW-Eau Claire and Hamline in terms of “nearby” non-conference opponents and should end up with 12 or 13 regional games. That could get them in in a 60- to 61-team tournament.

At least we can be relatively sure the committee won’t look past a first-time competitor. The men’s committee put dual member St. Joseph’s (Maine) into the field in its first year declaring for the NCAA postseason.

Occasionally I make campus visits when I’m out of town in places where we don’t have as many contributors. (Last summer I stopped by Keene State.) As I do, I’ll write about them here.