This was a move you could see coming. Tom Murphy, longtime head coach at Hamilton and a 600-game winner, was forced to retire from Hamilton at the end of the 2003-04 season.

Kevin Grimmer, athletic director and men’s basketball coach at SUNYIT, as well as a Hamilton alumnus, adds his former head coach to his staff for 2004-05. Grimmer’s son, Nick, is a senior and by all accounts, the Wildcats’ best player. (He goes on to earn honorable mention all-SUNYAC honors.)

So now Grimmer’s son has graduated, he has an athletic director post to worry about, and a 600-game winner next to him on the bench. What better time to step aside and hand over the reins to your mentor?

Or, as one Division III coach told us, “It’s great to see one of the true legends of Division III coaching get another shot at a head coaching job. Kudos to SUNYIT for righting Hamilton’s wrong.”

Willamette hired a new women’s coach this past week. But according to the Salem (Ore.) Statesman Journal, Bruce Henderson will not have last year’s leading scorer and the nation’s leading shooter around to ease the transition.

D3hoops.com second team All-America post player Vanessa Wyffels is not returning. “It’s a personal decision and has nothing to do with the coaches,” she told the newspaper. “I know everyone is excited and there is a positive feeling.”

Wyffels, who was featured in a midseason Around the Nation column (click here, scroll down), ended up leading the team with 19.1 points and 9.7 rebounds. At 5-10, she shot 74.2% from the floor and made more than twice as many baskets as any of her teammates. Her closest competition nationally, Webster’s Kim Sheets, shot 63.3%.

Willamette went 8-17 with Wyffels last season under Tom Steers, who resigned. Wyffels transferred to Willamette from Division I Wagner. She told the newspaper she intends to attend Portland State and no longer play basketball.

Let’s just get this out of the way: I love Minneapolis. Grew up in Minneapolis, went to DeLaSalle High School, would move back there if I could, the whole nine yards.

That doesn’t mean I don’t find Aaron Griess’ decision to go from Chaminade to Augsburg puzzling, to say the least. If Griess didn’t have a Division III background (Colorado College graduate, former Loras grad assistant) I would have to wonder if there were something going on at Chaminade we didn’t know about.

I’m even more confused by Pam Ruder’s move from UW-Oshkosh to Southwestern. Ruder is a WIAC lifer, graduated from Whitewater, was an assistant at Oshkosh and took over as head coach after the Titans’ national title team of 1996. Southwestern had a down year by its recent standards (16 wins in 2003, 15 wins in 2004, nine wins this past year) but has at least been competitive in its conference. That’s not the same as being competitive in the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, one of the top five Division III leagues for women’s basketball.

This is the opposite of the unusual coaching move announced the day before, in which Central, the 1993 national champions, hired Mount Ida head coach Natalie Nakic. She’ll be going from the 40th-best conference in women’s basketball (according to the Massey Ratings, out of 41 Division III conferences) to the 16th-best. She was 34-19 at Mount Ida in two seasons, but 40 of those 53 games were against North Atlantic Conference foes. This is a big leap.

As for Griess, well, I only hope the job comes with a wardrobe allowance. The whole family is going to need it!