The Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference voted yesterday to split into two divisions following the addition of Colorado College and Birmingham-Southern.

In basketball, Birmingham-Southern, Centre, DePauw, Oglethorpe, Rhodes and Sewanee are in the East. Austin, Colorado College, Hendrix, Millsaps, Southwestern and Trinity (Texas) are in the West.

That’s for basketball and baseball. If you’re following volleyball and softball, Millsaps is in the East and Rhodes is in the West. (No idea why, sorry.)

For football, the nine football teams will play a full round-robin, with each team meeting the other eight. Believe it or not, this was not a given — there was some discussion about splitting into divisions or playing a partial round-robin like the NCAC does. But can you imagine a year in which DePauw and Trinity tied for first and did not play each other?

Wait, never mind, already happened last year. 🙂

This alignment takes effect in 2007-08.

After nearly 16 years in the Washington, D.C., metro area, I’m moving to Connecticut.

This move has been a long time coming. I’ve worked at USA Today for a dozen years now, mostly with Baseball Weekly/Sports Weekly, but starting later this month I’ll be taking a job at NBCSports.com.

Although I don’t fully yet know what days and nights of the week I’ll be working, you can assume that I’ll be showing up at games in and around the area.

What else does this mean for D3hoops.com? The site is not going away — shoot, D3hoops.com/D3football.com experience helped me get this job. But we’ll be relying on other people within the organization to do a little more on game nights, when I’m at work, in terms of doing the first updates on the front page, stuff like that. Our recently announced partnership with D3Scoreboard.com will help out as well, since it will improve our collection of scores as well as server performance.

The transition period might be a little rough, and there will be entire days where I am away from the computer, most likely. The job search also has contributed to the somewhat quiet nature of the blog this summer. We ask your patience. But yes, I do have a full-time job, and D3sports.com is not it. We have to pay the bills and feed the three kids, after all.

Roster inflation is a wonderful thing, seriously. I’ve seen some doozy heights in my time, to be sure.

Jeff Gibbs was one of the biggest recipients of inflated height that I’ve ever seen. The Otterbein center dominated Division III from the low post with his leaping ability and rebounding. But oddly enough, he had different heights on Otterbein’s football and basketball rosters, magically gaining two inches every fall and losing them every winter. (Perhaps the football team measured him in his cleats.)

You see, I know Gibbs was not his listed 6-3. I stood next to him at the Final Four in Salem and he is 6-1 at best. That’s because I’m 6-0 (though I would be listed at 6-2, no doubt).

But apparently Gibbs has grown since graduation. A local newspaper referred to his performance with the Columbus Cyclones and said he was 6-5. Yeah, 6-5. Then later in the piece, the writer says:

He went to some football team camps with the goal of latching on as a tight end in the NFL. But once again, he was told he was too small.

“I got the same thing I’ve heard my whole life,” said Gibbs, whose scored 15 points against Cuyahoga Falls on June 3 in his first game with the Cyclones. “I was told I was too short.”

Thankfully this guy isn’t an NFL scout, because a true 6-5 isn’t too short for an NFL tight end. But it’s too tall for Jeff Gibbs.

Then again, when it comes to Gibbs’ game, size doesn’t matter.

Lot of news posted in the past 24 hours. Since some of it is already off the front page, let’s recap the stories:

Widener coach Dave Duda hired at St. Joseph’s: Not only does Duda get a D-I assistant’s job out of it, but it opens up a relatively attractive coaching job. This could be John Dzik’s chance to get back to the Philly area — you remember, he was run out of Cabrini at the end of the 2004-05 season? Well, the administrator who pushed him out has since been pushed out as well. Too late for Cabrini but perhaps to Widener’s advantage. Corey Stitzel, recently hired at Neumann but with Widener connections, might be cursing the timing. Chris Carideo, an All-American at Widener and 1996 graduate, might also be considered a frontrunner. He’s been head coach at Kings Point since 2001-02 and since then the Mariners have gone 24-5, 21-9, 15-11, 16-11 and 10-16. Widener assistant Ian Simon, also an alumnus, will get consideration. Lower Merion HS coach Gregg Downer, Chestnut Hill coach Jesse Balcer and Gwynedd-Mercy coach John Baron could all be candidates as well. Have not heard if NBA journeyman coach and D-III washout Chris Ford is interested.

Fisk coach Larry Glover out: Took us a while to collect enough info to verify this, but we got that solid yesterday as well. It’s a blow for us because Glover was the only person at Fisk who communicated info to us. This may also lead to Fisk leaving the Great South Athletic Conference, which would drop them pretty much off the radar entirely.

Clark gets its coach back: And maybe its groove as well. Paul Phillips, who left the school two years ago despite two recent trips to the Elite Eight, is back. How long before the Cougars are contenders again? Good question. Clark was 13-12 in Phillips’ final season.

Skyline Conference adds SUNY-Purchase: They won’t be eligible for the NCAA playoffs for at least three more seasons but it does stem the tide for a conference that was losing members.

Medaille hires Canisius coach: Mike MacDonald was fired at Canisius but doesn’t even have to relocate to take the Medaille job. But it’s a long way down from Canisius to Medaille, ranked No. 378 in D-III in the Massey Ratings. Then again, Cansius was No. 247 in Massey’s D-I ranking, with an overall rating that was behind D-III schools.