Mark Tupper of the Decatur (Ill.) Herald & Review wrote a nice piece on how winning the 2005 Women’s Basketball National Championship has changed Millikin Head Coach Lori Kerans’ expectations for future success.
Author Archives: Pat Coleman
This week’s recruiting update
Blue Ridge High School (Ill.) center Brent Ruch has committed to attend Elmhurst and play basketball for the Bluejays.
“Brent has an unbelievable combination of size and basketball skill that you just don’t see everywhere,” Elmhurst coach Mark Scherer told the Bloomington (Ill.) Pantagraph. “Because of the injuries he has sustained, I believe his best basketball is still ahead of him.”
Hustisford (Wis.) HS guard Tony Thrasher, the Southern Trailways Conference boys’ basketball player of the year as a senior, will play at Hamline. Thrasher, 6-3, also played quarterback for Hustisford.
Derek King, Southside (Ind.), heads to DePauw. King averaged 16.8 points a game for Southside and had a GPA of 3.47 on a 4.0 scale.
“(Immediate playing time) was the biggest thing,” King told the (Muncie, Ind.) Star Press. “Wherever I went, I wanted to play right away. I went down and spent the night and played with the guys. We really clicked. Everything just really clicked. It was just a blessing to find a school like that.”
Fitch (Conn.) HS guard Todd Doyle will go to Wentworth Tech.
Manning (Iowa) HS post Brian Fogleman heads to Buena Vista.
Women’s recruits
St. Benedict’s incoming freshman class, according to the St. Cloud Times: Edina forward Ariel Tauer, Minneota guard Brittany Buysse, Edina point guard Nikki Carter, North St. Paul post Nicole Hjelmgren, Centennial post Alyssa Mohr and Rocori post Kari Schroeder.
Jackie Distler and Kelsey McCarty, from Sacred Heart HS in Louisville, will attend and play basketball at Transylvania. “Jackie and Kelsey have been an important part of a tremendously successful high school program,” coach Mark Turner said in a release. “Both will fit in well to our program and we’re excited they are coming to school at Transylvania.”
Fennimore girls basketball player Whitney Lenz, a 5-10 guard, will play at Clarke.
Nikita Eddy, Provincetown (Mass.) HS, to Mitchell.
Riverview High (Sarasota, Fla.) forward Stephanie Zarse to Illinois College.
Cor Jesu Academy (St. Louis) guard Jill Brandt and Punahou (Honolulu) School’s Shanna-Lei Dacanay to attend and play basketball at Washington U.
And Maddie Sikes signed one of those non-existent letters of intent at Wesleyan (Ga.). She went to Christian Heritage School (Ga.).
Tournament to feature Maryland’s best…
… or all of Maryland, actually. We learned at the end of the season that the nine Maryland Division III men’s basketball programs have agreed to create an annual tipoff tournament. Each year eight of the nine teams in the state will participate: Frostburg State, Goucher, Hood, Johns Hopkins, McDaniel, Salisbury, St. Mary’s, Villa Julie and Washington College.
The tournament was inspired by the Chase Tournament, which features seven Division III teams and an NAIA team.
That makes us think — there are a few more theme tournaments we could put together at the Division III level.
Consider …
Baby coming?
I might be away from the sites for a while. My wife is in labor. Meanwhile, take a close look at the Letter of Intent piece and the responses it generated on D3football.com — might be worth discussing here too.
Letter of bad intentions
If you read “coverage” of Division III sports this time of year, you probably see this phrase, or one like it, pretty frequently.
So-and-so “signed a letter of intent to play basketball at Division III” Such-and-such College.
This is a lie. Or if it’s true, then it’s an NCAA violation. There is no such thing as a letter of intent in Division III.
From the Division III manual, bylaw 13.10.1:
An institution shall not utilize any form of a letter of intent or similar form of commitment in the recruitment of a prospect. However, it shall be permissible for the institution to utilize in the recruitment of a prospect its pre-enrollment forms executed by prospective students in general at that institution. Violations of this bylaw shall be considered institutional violations per Constitution 2.8.1; however, such violations shall not affect the prospective student-athlete’s eligibility.
I’m not going to name names here — shoot, you can do some Google searches and see the references for yourself. We just don’t know if the schools are misleading the papers or the papers just don’t know what they’re writing about.
Fact is, nothing binds a student-athlete to attend a particular school in Division III, or to play basketball once there. They can abandon their application fee and enrollment deposit and re-enroll anywhere.
This is why ranking recruiting classes in Division III is a fruitless exercise.
Hey, I can see where the schools are coming from. It’s hard to get people unfamiliar with Division III to truly understand how things work here. But we need to educate the rest of the media, educate the public, that Division III is different, and better. Student-athletes aren’t treated any differently, aren’t given any special treatment, and they enter the school the same way everyone else does.
Ignorance is no excuse. Intentionally misleading people is worse.