Well, Dave and I listened to and read about William Paterson taking teams out of their game last week in the regionals, then last night we saw it first-hand. There were nights where Kris Clarkson didn’t shoot well but still got his points, but last night the Widener center didn’t do either.

It seemed like Lincoln took itself out of its own game plan in the second half. We expected a team that would want to set the tempo, and a great way to do that is by pressing. But while the Lions pressed successfully in the first half, they went away from it in the second half. The result? A game in the low 70s, which is what Virginia Wesleyan wanted.

On the Marlins, one of the few things that the staff hoped Brandon Adair could improve on was his passing skills. While it doesn’t take Michael Crotty to find a wide-open TonTon Balenga on the perimeter, it certainly was an appropriate finish. Remember, David Macedo said on the postgame show that the final shot was improvised — the play was intended for Adair on the inside. When he was double-teamed, he made the extra pass. Game over.

Well, except for the clock screw-up and the puzzling decision by the officials to put the ball on the sideline, about 80 feet from the basket, and put 2.3 seconds on the clock. If there had been cameras and sideline video monitors like in Division I (hint, NCAA, perhaps what you did for the Stagg Bowl might be appropriate here?) then they would have seen there were 3.3 seconds left. There must be something there we don’t know.

I wonder if Hope would have shot so poorly (5-for-19) in the first half if they had been at home. And so now Transylvania reaches the Elite Eight. Perhaps we’ll see some of their fans on the site. Wittenberg still manages to win big games without points from its starting backcourt, though Gregg Hill had a nice game offensively off the bench with 13 points.

Amherst, Tufts — we better leave this to someone who saw the game, and I’m not just talking about the video clip linked on the front page. (Thanks, Steve Clay.) Sounds like another great game.

Oh yeah, and Lawrence lost. Or, Illinois Wesleyan rallied to win. Pat Cummings, Bob Quillman, folks on the scene, tell us more!

On the women’s side, comments from all sides last night about the officiating in the Bowdoin/Mary Washington game. I don’t know what to say except that I was told that both coaches referenced it in the postgame news conference. Perhaps it’s time the women’s tournament started using officials from outside the immediate area in this round. I was surprised to see so many ODAC officials last year at the Randolph-Macon sectional, when others could easily have been brought in from neighboring areas.

Listened to the last eight minutes and overtime of the Hardin-Simmons/Pacific Lutheran game (love that west coast!). It sounds like HSU did a great job maintaining its composure in a hostile environment.

More comments from our people at Scranton and Southern Maine and DePauw would be welcome!

About this time 10 years ago, I was sitting at work, listening on the phone to a broadcast on my alma mater’s campus radio station, a Selection Sunday special where the station’s sports director and a writer for the campus paper were waiting with the team for the NCAA’s announcement to start. My alma mater was hoping for an at-large bid and it made for great radio.

About this time five years ago, I was sitting in a radio studio in suburban Baltimore. That sports director was live on remote for Hoopsville with a bubble team waiting to find out if they were getting in or not. They got their answer, again, in an NCAA announcement made over the phone and broadcast to hundreds on the air.

About this time last year, I was in another studio, waiting for announcements. Thousands of people were listening as we were interviewing Texas-Dallas head coach Terry Butterfield, he of the Cinderella champ of the American Southwest Conference. And the Selection Sunday drama continued with the pairings.

Whether you’ve been huddled around a speaker phone or a radio, there’s nothing like this day, Selection Sunday. Until now. Now we’re waiting around for a news release … one which might come at 10, might come earlier, might not come at all. If you’re waiting online with us, congratulations and thanks. But it doesn’t feel the same.

Bring back the drama. This isn’t anywhere near as fun as it could be.

D3hoops.com bracketologists (yeah, we’ll accept this as a word, ESPN-types) huddled for a few hours and broke down Pool C for the men in advance of the tournament projections we’ll release tomorrow. Here’s where things stand at this hour, in the order we chose them:
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At the January convention, the intriguing proposal to designate any D-III games played on an institutional break of seven or more days (winter break basketball and spring break baseball/softball/lacrosse come to mind) count as regional games was tabled.

At the recent Division III championships committee meeting, it was killed. Says The NCAA News:

Two specific concerns — about how teams would notify opponents about designation of a game as an in-region contest and the probable difficulty of obtaining both teams’ consent for that designation — prompted the committee to abandon the proposal, which it first recommended to the Division III Management Council last year.

“When discussing the specifics of implementing the proposal, it became apparent there were some logistical hurdles that were going to be difficult to clear,” (Iowa Conference commissioner and championships committee chair John) Cochrane said.

They’re looking at something different, expanding the definition of a regional game to include teams in the NCAA’s overall defined regions. There are four of those, which means more schools would be in a particular region. That goes into the NCAA pipeline and requires more approval.

Finally, too, the opponents’ opponents winning percentage is headed back into play for selection criteria.

“A goal of the committee over the past year has been to develop and implement a true strength-of-schedule component in our criteria,” Cochrane told the News. “The component we have now, the ‘quality of wins index,’ is not a very accurate measure of an institution’s strength of schedule. (Emphasis added.)

“For years, we’ve talked about the importance of encouraging our institutions to play the best teams within their region that they possibly can, but our criteria haven’t rewarded institutions for doing so in near as strong a way as we would like. We’re hoping this gets us closer to that objective.”

Well hallelujah! It’s about time! They call it opponents’ opponents’ average winning percentage, so one would think that is pretty self-explanatory. If that gets through the pipeline, the strong teams will actually benefit and be measured more accurately.