Well, the future is here, as we mention in the front page story. But how much are you willing to pay to see a D-III game online?

From my national perspective, the game would have to be pretty good to make me shell out $5.95. I know the quality of Penn Atlantic streams is spectacular (so good, in fact, that I was unable to load them on our business-class DSL connection at our house in Virginia). The showcase broadcasts they did last year in the Midwest Conference, CCIW, UAA and NEWMAC were impressive indeed.

But the stream itself is just one part. There’s a difference between a professional broadcast with multiple cameras and professional announcers and a one-camera broadcast with students on the air.

When it’s free, I don’t care how bad the commentary is. If I’m paying for it, however … different story.

The good news is, there is really video all over the place, if you know where to look. And we encourage SIDs to post links on our site. Tens of thousands of people visit our Scoreboard page every night. Wouldn’t you like them to visit your streamed video, audio and live stats? (Use the Edit link next to the game in question.)

But what would you pay? I would pay $5.95 for a game of national importance. I might pay a couple bucks less for a game involving my alma mater, since I no longer live in the area. And if my children were old enough to be playing in these games, I might have a different standard.

Also, on a side note, congratulations to Frank Uible, Rhodes Scholar and Diehardfan, the newest members of our Posting Hall of Fame.

Around the Nation has a nice piece on St. John Fisher Women’s Head Coach Phil Kahler who is back on the Cardinals’ bench after missing time due to a heart attack. Kahler has 739 wins, the most of any coach at the Division III level.

Meanwhile one of the Hall of Fame message board posters (Sac) noted that two 500-win coaches meet tonight when Glenn Van Wieren and No. 11 Hope (574 wins) take on Mike Turner and Albion (500 wins). The natural, interesting follow up question is whether there are any other coaching match-ups with more wins on the line.

While I’m no Elias Sports Bureau, here are the top three men’s games I could find on the schedule this year (win totals should be through yesterday):

1102: No. 2 Amherst (Dave Hixon 532) vs. Colby (Dick Whitmore 570)
1074: Hope vs. Albion
1054: Franklin & Marshall (Glenn Robinson 715) vs. Johns Hopkins (Bill Nelson 339)

On the women’s side, I think the top match-up is Salem State (Tim Shea 586) versus Emmanuel (555) for a combined total of 1141.

And for those who are curious, it looks like the top match-up at any level this season is UConn (Jim Calhoun 745) versus Syracuse (Jim Boeheim 739) for 1,484.

NOTE: Initially I had posted that the top match-up was Texas Tech (Bobby Knight 882) versus Oklahoma State (Eddie Sutton 828) for a total of 1,710. It turns out Sutton’s son, Sean, now coaches the Cowboys. That’ll also show why D1hoops.com won’t be calling me anytime soon.

Thanks to ‘Just Bill’ for the correction.

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So much for home court advantage.

All four road teams lost tonight in the CCIW, though the higher ranked teams won in the games involving Top 25 opponents. No. 14 Elmhurst kept No. 18 Carthage at arms length throughout the second half in beating the Red Men 72-62. The Blue Jays have won 12 straight since losing the opener to Simpson. No. 15 Augustana shot 56.0 percent in both halves (14-25 twice) and got 22 points from Jordan Delp to put No. 21 Wheaton away 75-69. In the other two games Millikin and North Park showed that there will be no easy games in this conference – even when you are the favorite at home – beating IWU and North Central respectively. And that after the Titans and Cards beat ranked teams on Saturday night.

Though I’m admittedly observing from a distance, I offer a few thoughts to the CCIW pundits.

1 – This conference is a lot of fun to watch…and I do mean watch. Saturday’s IWU/Carthage videocast and tonight’s Augustana/Wheaton videocast seriously increased the capacity for me to spend even more time monitoring Division III basketball.

2 – Wheaton (Ill.) needs to go on a serious run if they are going to have any chance at a Pool C bid. The wins against Calvin is losing luster by the day with the Knights dropping another one to Adrian (4-8) tonight. And almost beating a Big 10 team is nice, but it won’t mean much come selection time.

Other somewhat random thoughts…

Parity will make the OAC and NJAC fun to follow as well this year. Capital followed up Saturday’s big win over No. 5 ONU by losing to Mount Union. The Purple Raiders are in seventh place (though only two games out of first) and weren’t picked to finish much higher in the preseason. But I saw them in person and was impressed by some of Lee Hood’s young talent. If that’s the seventh best squad in the OAC, the teams better buckle up for a rough-and-tumble regular season.

In the NJAC the favorite is William Paterson. Oh, they lost to NJCU? Then the favorite is Rutgers-Newark who is undefeat – oh, make that Ramapo who hasn’t lost…unless you count that game against Kean.

Meanwhile conference play has been good to Widener. The Pioneers have loses to F&M (5-8) and Philadelphia Bible (5-6) but are 3-0 in conference.

The poll voters continue to recognize that there is an elite group of ten teams leading the field this season, even if they can’t quite decide in what order those ten teams should be ranked. The top 10 teams garnered 98.2% of their available votes this week (slightly down from last week’s towering 98.9%, but still more than decisive), and the gap between #10 (Brandeis) and #11 (Calvin) now stands at 78 points, or three full positions on the average ballot. At the top, defending champion #2 Hope stole one first-place vote from #1 Bowdoin, narrowing the gap between them to a mere five points. #3 Rochester held on to two first-place votes and gained 18 points on the strength of their victory over Brandeis, which fell three spots to #10. Of the seven total losses sustained this season by the top 10 teams, four were at the hands of other top 10 teams, and a fifth was to a D2 team (Mansfield, which beat #7 Messiah in November.)

The bottom three-fifths of the poll also looks quite similar to last week’s version, with only UW-Stevens Point slipping off the bottom, replaced by #25 Puget Sound. Only two teams dropped completely off the ballot this week (Carroll and Maryville [TN]), and only two teams joined the voting list (York [PA] and Oglethorpe, vanquishers of #9 DePauw.) All in all, another week of status quo.

This could be a challenging week for the elite teams, however. #1 Bowdoin plays four times, with all four opponents at .500 or better, including a date with 11-2 Williams. #2 Hope squares off with archrival #11 Calvin this weekend. #3 Rochester plays in the tough Chase Tournament. #6 Baldwin-Wallace travels to Wilmington on Saturday to face the 12th ranked Quakers. And #10 Brandeis squares off with #21 NYU in UAA competition this weekend.

Streakers:
> #5 Southern Maine is in the top 10 for the 30th straight week, and #4 Scranton is a top 10 team for the 20th week in a row.
> #10 Brandeis is ranked this week, as it has been for the past 40 consecutive weeks.
> Although Wheaton (IL) slipped to just 5 points, it still marked the 30th straight week that the Thunder received votes. #6 Baldwin-Wallace has received votes in 25 straight polls.

High-Water Marks:
#8 Howard Payne and #13 Chicago each achieved new all-time highest rankings this week. This is the fifth consecutive week the Maroons have met or exceeded their highest-ever ranking; for the Yellow Jackets, it is the sixth straight record tying or breaking week. Maybe I should start a new category: “High-Water Mark Streakers!”

Milestones:
> #2 Hope is a member of the top 10 for the 50th time.
> #25 Puget Sound‘s re-entry into the top 25 marks their 20th appearance in that group.
> #11 Calvin appears on the list of vote-getters for the 50th time.
> #1 Bowdoin received votes for the 90th time; Wheaton (IL) for the 80th time; Millikin for the 70th time; George Fox for the 60th time; and #20 Muhlenburg for the 40th time.
> Tease: there are two top 10 teams that have each appeared in the voting for 99 weeks. Tune in next week to help celebrate what are sure to be their centenary visits to the voting rolls!

Movers and Shakers:
In a week that had very little movement overall, the biggest jump was made by #13 Chicago, which gained 101 points and four slots in the poll. #9 DePauw shed 125 points and fell four places, and #17 Simpson also dropped four notches after losing 112 vote-points.

The Week 5 Top 25 recorded a composite record of 36-15 this week, with eleven ranked teams suffering losses. With so much carnage, a complete reevaluation of each voter’s ballot was called for. One result was the beginning of a separation between a leading group of nine teams and the rest of the pack. The top 9 teams received 4,654 votes out of a possible 4,725 (98.5%), and the gap between #9 (Mississippi College) and #10 (UW-Oshkosh) grew to 92 points, or nearly four positions on the average voter’s ballot. Last week’s #2, Ohio Northern, suffered its second double-digit homecourt loss of the season, a defeat which had ramifications throughout the top third of the poll. ONU’s seven first-place votes were in play, and six of them ended up in the hands of #1 UW-Stevens Point, allowing the Pointers to break free of a three-team logjam and establish themselves as the clear #1 team. ONU has already recorded wins over two other top 10 teams (#5 Wooster and #8 Wittenberg), giving the voters a dilemma over how to handle ONU’s loss. Some voters clearly thought it was important to keep ONU slotted ahead of Wooster, resulting in a 28-point drop in the Scots’ support (despite blasting their only opponent of the week,) while others evidently reconsidered the relative ranking of these two Ohio schools, as the gap between them, which had been 64 points, was reduced to a single point. The primary beneficiary of this conundrum seems to have been #3 St. Thomas, which gained 39 points and two poll positions despite struggling to a 2-point win and a double overtime win this week. #6 Whitworth also moved up strongly (+38), with the result being that the teams ranked #3 through #6 are essentially tied, with just ten points separating the #3 Tommies and the #6 Pirates.

Looking down the list, perhaps the most notable development is that the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin (CCIW) now has four teams ranked and two others receiving votes. The CCIW and its northern neighbor, the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WIAC), are the only D3 conferences to achieve the distinction of having 4 teams ranked in the same week, and the CCIW is the smaller of the two conferences (8 teams vs. the WIAC’s 9). Alongside the CCIW, the eight-team University Athletic Association (UAA) had six teams receiving votes this week. The UAA and CCIW join the ten-team New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC), which had six teams in the voting in week 9 of the 1999-2000 season, and the WIAC, which has had 6 teams in the voting seven times (including the first two polls this season) and seven teams receive votes on four separate occasions, as the only conferences with six teams in the voting in a given week.

Debutantes:
Fresh off its upset victory over then-#9 William Paterson, Manhattanville received votes for the first time this week. Congratulations to the Valiants!

Streakers:
> #5 Wooster is a top ten team for the 45th consecutive week, extending their record streak.
> #2 Amherst is a top 25 team for the 70th straight week, also a record.
> #9 Mississippi College and #23 Worcester Polytech each received votes for the 30th consecutive week; #4 Ohio Northern is a vote-getter for the 20th straight time.
> Lawrence dropped out of the top 25 for the first time since last season’s preseason poll, snapping a ranking string at 20 straight weeks.

Milestones:
> #7 Virginia Wesleyan is a top 10 team for the tenth time, and a top 25 team for the 25th time.
> #2 Amherst is ranked for the 75th week.
> #16 Washington U. is in the top 25 for the 50th time, and received votes for the 70th time.
> #6 Whitworth appears on the voting list for the 50th time. For #19 Johns Hopkins, this is the 30th appearance, and #12 Bates has now drawn voting support ten times.

High-Water Marks:
#3 St. Thomas, #12 Bates, and #20 UW-La Crosse each set new marks for highest-ever ranking this week. #6 Whitworth equalled its highest point, first achieved last week.

Movers and Shakers:
> The biggest gainers of the week were #14 Elmhurst, gaining 178 points and vaulting into the top 25; #10 UW-Oshkosh, leaping eight spots and 173 points; and #16 Washington U., up 142 points and 8 placements.
> Averett dropped three straight games and plummeted out of the poll from the #11 spot, shedding 328 points in the process.