I just found out that Johns Hopkins has started publishing an athletics blog, and from there discovered links to McDaniel and Centennial Conference blogs as well. As relative veterans of blogging ourselves (I refuse to use the media-created term blogosphere), D3hoops.com and D3football.com would like to welcome them aboard. We’ll add them to the links on both Daily Dose blogs when we get the chance.
Greetings from the top of Division III
It’s hard to get too much further north in Division III than Duluth, Minn., although Pacific Lutheran and Puget Sound are a few miles further north in Washington. While on a family vacation here I took the opportunity to stop in at St. Scholastica.
The school is a member of both the NAIA and NCAA which is declaring for the NCAA playoffs this season for the first time in a while. So, predictably, there were questions about how the NCAA did some things, etc.
I think St. Scholastica has the makings of a schedule that can get it into the tournament in men’s basketball. They’ve gone out of their way to schedule West Region games, inviting only in-region teams to their tipoff tournament and getting into another tournament that has solely West Region opponents. They play UW-Stout, UW-Superior and UW-Eau Claire and Hamline in terms of “nearby” non-conference opponents and should end up with 12 or 13 regional games. That could get them in in a 60- to 61-team tournament.
At least we can be relatively sure the committee won’t look past a first-time competitor. The men’s committee put dual member St. Joseph’s (Maine) into the field in its first year declaring for the NCAA postseason.
Occasionally I make campus visits when I’m out of town in places where we don’t have as many contributors. (Last summer I stopped by Keene State.) As I do, I’ll write about them here.
NCAA Tournament changes coming
It looks like this is how the NCAA and the women’s basketball committee are planning to handle the expanded NCAA Tournament for 2005-06.
First of all, an NCAA News article refers to a field of 63, which is one team more than the maximum we’d been hearing over the past two years. The expansion, which takes effect this fall for all Division III team tournament sports, means there will be one spot for every 6.5 schools that sponsor the sport, rather than one for every 7.5. (If there are 63 women’s NCAA Tournament bids, one should expect around 60 men’s slots. There are more women’s schools than men’s schools.)
In addition, with a Wednesday opening round, there has been concern over missed class time. The women’s basketball committee proposed and the championships committee accepted the following setup (follow carefully):
There are 63 teams. Therefore, one team gets a first-round bye and does not play an opening-round game. That team will face the winner of the one Wednesday first-round game on Saturday night. All other first-round games will be played Friday night, with the winners meeting on Saturday.
Although the NCAA News does not specify, one would expect this means a return to the four-team regionals at one site, with home-court advantage thrown out the window for half of the field. The winners of those first/second-round regionals would advance to the sectionals, which would be set up similarly to previous years.
This is not a done deal. There is still another committee that must approve this before it goes into practice. It has the advantage of cutting down a day of missed class time, since teams could currently miss Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday classes if they travel for a first-round game and win to advance to the second round.
However, the unspoken caveat here is cost. Now the NCAA must pay to house three-quarters of the teams playing that first weekend instead of one-half. With four teams at one site, three must travel. It will increase travel costs and could lower gate revenue (which, granted, is small to begin with).
The championships committee also recommended the men’s basketball committee adopt this format. I, for one, hope it does not. Some of the most exciting games of the early part of the tournament are between schools evenly matched in front of a large crowd. Now, what are the chances that a 6, 7 or 8 seed would host one of these four-team regionals for the first and second round? The NCAA would be making the event less fan-friendly and more expensive to run.
Support Division III on ESPN poll
Division III basketball fans made their opinions known last year on an ESPN.com poll regarding basketball rivalries, making Hope/Calvin the best rivalry by an overwhelming margin.
Now we’re hoping you can help out Division III football fans. As part of ESPN’s current promotional vehicle, where they are visiting all 50 states in 50 days, they have posted a fan poll for each of the 50 states.
It’s the Indiana poll we’re concerned with. The fifth question on the survey asks what the state’s best rivalry is, and DePauw vs. Wabash football is the last choice on the list (typical lack of respect), but is holding onto first place in the survey. As of this writing, the rivalry has 32.6% of the 15,767 votes, slightly ahead of some schools called Purdue and Indiana, who apparently play basketball. The Monon Bell game between DePauw and Wabash is one of the top rivalries in Division III football.
Vote early. Vote often, or at least on any computer you can get to. Remind ESPN that there are other schools besides those in Division I.
UW-La Crosse might get “transfer” from football
La Crosse Tribune columnist Kirk Bey tells us today that UW-La Crosse standout receiver Scott Burnoski wants to play basketball for the Eagles this winter.
Could Burnoski, who had 72 catches for 931 yards and 14 touchdowns last year as a senior, help the 7-18 men’s basketball team? Perhaps. But he still has Arena Football possibilities to consider as well.
This isn’t a unique situation. In Division III you essentially have five years to play four, and occasionally student-athletes take the final year and play a different sport. The first name that came to mind was a local one for me, when Catholic U. point guard Sammy Briggs, a four-year starter, played football the next fall and helped the Cardinals reach the 1997 Division III playoffs as the No. 2 receiver.
Who else knows of players who have played four years of football and one year of basketball, or vice versa? Fill us in.