On the recruiting trail

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It’s been a while since we’ve done a roundup of where kids are going. But before we dive in, I should remind people of the following about Division III recruiting:

1) There is no letter of intent. There is nothing binding a kid to actually attend the school, or even to play basketball once they’re there.
2) See No. 1.

You have to take this information with a grain of salt. Will any of these kids be any good? We make no guarantees.

We start off with an odd transfer, where the son of NAIA Carroll (Mont.) coach Gary Turcott has elected to transfer from Carroll to Pacific. “Ryan was an important member of our team,” Gary Turcott told the Billings Gazette. “He made significant contributions in many areas.”

Turcott was a redshirt freshman this past season after missing his first year recovering from knee surgeries. He played 23 games and scored 26 points. shooting 5-for-13 from three-point range.

Nicole Lobach is transferring from Division I Binghamton (a D-III alumnus) to Messiah. “I think I’ll be better off at Messiah,” she told the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin. “I think it will just be a better fit for me.”

Lobach played in all 28 games, making nine starts. She averaged 4.9 points, 2.7 rebounds and 1.5 assists. She is a Hanover, Pa., native.

2005 national champion Millikin recently announced five recruits: Mahomet-Seymour’s Laura Engstrom, Lexington’s Samantha Hayes, Jody Johnson of Nokomis, Ricki Dorsett of Sterling Newman and Brittany Patete of Lombard. Engstrom, a 5-10 guard/forward, earned first-team all-area honors from The Pantagraph of Bloomington, Ill.

The rest of the list:
Men’s recruits
Hanover (Va.) HS guard Max Stone is headed to Averett. He averaged 13 points, 5.5 rebounds and 3.8 assists.

John Ward, of Hampton (Pa.), will play at Denison. A 6-2 guard, Ward averaged 15.5 points.

Jarmel Arrington, Northern Nash (N.C.) HS, to North Carolina Wesleyan. James Jones of Havelock (N.C.) HS signed one of those so-called letters of intent with North Carolina Wesleyan.

Pinckney (Mich.) HS guard Brandon Rogowski will play for Albion. Forward Rob Majors has chosen Defiance. Jon Teuber will attend Olivet.

John Grotberg, who last played at Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook-Kingswood, will attend Grinnell. According to the Ann Arbor News, Grotberg led the Detroit area in 3-point shooting as a junior but sat out his senior season with an injury.

Ryan FitzPatrick, a 6-3, 180-pound guard from Conestoga High School (Berwyn, Pa.), will attend Scranton. FitzPatrick averaged 15.3 points, 4.2 assists, 4.3 rebounds and 2.1 steals per game for the 23-8 Pioneers. “Ryan is regarded as one of the top 3-point shooters in the Philadelphia area,” says Danzig. “We are very excited to have him in our program. He’s athletic, has tremendous skills and is a player who will make an impact on our program.”

Bill Moakley, a 6-8 center from Wayne Valley, will play for Montclair State.

Adam DeMatteo, Hempfield Area Senior High School, to W&J.

Glen Burnie (Md.) HS forward Chris Schrader has committed to play at Hood.

Arundel’s (Md.) Tyler Brown has committed to Shenandoah.

Hollis/Brookline (Mass.) senior Zach Etten will play at Division III Babson. He reportedly turned down a track scholarship from U. Conn.

5-10 guard Nick Olivero to Catholic U. from W.T. Woodson HS (Fairfax, Va.).
Olivero’s teammate, 6-3 guard Tim Kohlrus, has decided to attend Washington College.

Morgan VanBuren is headed to St. John Fisher, from Creston HS (Mich.).

UW-La Crosse’s recruiting class includes Blair-Taylor HS guard T.J. Nereng and David Chivington, a 6-8 forward from Oshkosh (Wis.) West HS. More on this pair from the La Crosse Tribune.

Mercer County’s Kameron McRay will play for Centre.

Women’s recruits
Northland’s incoming class:
Lindsay BeBeau, 5’6″ Guard, Ashland, Wis.
Lisa Brilla, 5’11” Wing, Ashland, Wis.
Amanda Brundige, 5’10” Post, Green Island, N.Y.
Carrie Canfield, 5’10” Post, Florence, Wis.
Jessica Graham, 5’7″ Guard, Bessemer, Mich.
Erica Hoffman, 5’9″ Guard, Lennon, Mich.
Anna Lembcke, 6’1″ Post, Norwood Young America, Minn.
Kayla Ryynanen, 6’0″ Post, Chassell, Mich.
Jessica Strandlund, 5’2″ Guard, Froid, Mont.

Lakisha Miller of Cowley College, a two-year school in Arkansas, is transferring to Aurora.

Hannah Scherger, Sidney Lehman Catholic High School, to Wittenberg.

Mercer County’s Jillian Horn will play for Thomas More.

REMEMBER: If you have a name of a recruit that you want to post here, first, make sure he or she has not already been mentioned in our Division III recruiting roundups, and secondly, you must provide a link to the information in a newspaper or on a school’s Web site. Posts that do not follow this criteria will be removed.

Enhancing the championships

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Slogging through reams and reams of Division III NCAA committee actions and recommendations and such gets pretty mind-numbing, but every once in a while there’s something worth getting riled up about.

Adjust the 2005-06 championships program budget through base budget adjustments from the Division III reserve to provide $110,000 for student-athlete championship enhancements ($5,000 for each of 22 championship final sites).

I’m all for the student-athlete having a better experience at the finals — I know the kids who come to Salem have a good experience because the Salem folks bend over backwards to make sure of it. But how about we concentrate on having a better experience in the earlier rounds by coming up with more balanced brackets? Sheesh.

Division III’s stealth new member

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As you may know, there is a waiting list to get into Division III.

Since Division III is the largest subclassification in all of college athletics, with more than 420 members, we can’t simply take everyone who wants to join right away. Each of the past two years, six new schools have gotten the opportunity to enter Division III from the NAIA or other non-NCAA affiliations. (Last year we got Crown, Keystone, Mitchell, Mount Aloysius, Presentation and Tri-State. They just finished the first year of a four-year transition process, at the end of which they will be eligible for the playoffs, if successful.)

The NCAA has not released an updated list of schools on the waiting list in a while. However, the waiting list is known to be full through the 2006-07 school year. Those schools would not be eligible for the playoffs until the fall of 2010!

There’s an easier way in, however, and Green Mountain has taken advantage of it, whether planned or not. Green Mountain applied for Division II membership from the NAIA, and after one year, decided to join Division III instead. This upcoming fall they’ll be in the third year of the four-year transition period.

Never heard of Green Mountain? It’s a school in Poultney, Vt., with a grand total of 639 undergraduates. (Not clear how many are full-time.) The school offers 15 intercollegiate sports if you count skiing, which puts it safely above the minimum 10 Division III members require. So welcome aboard — I hope we get scores from you!

The school is a natural fit for the North Atlantic Conference, although the Great Northeast Athletic Conference is possible as well.

And for those insanely curious, the other six schools slated to start their D-III transition this year? Bethany Lutheran (Minn.), La Sierra (Calif.), North Central University (Minn.), Northwestern (Minn.), SUNY-Purchase (N.Y.) and Salem (N.C.). This means the entire UMAC will be either D-III members or in the pipeline, and we will track UMAC basketball standings.

Yeah, thrilling, I know!

Pemper talked to Maine

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When the Maine women’s head coaching job opened up earlier this offseason, we at D3hoops.com figured we had at least two good finalists in the state’s Division III ranks already: Stefanie Pemper at Bowdoin and Gary Fifield at Southern Maine.

When Pemper didn’t get the job, we had to figure it was because she didn’t want it.

That’s true, according to Kevin Thomas’ column in today’s Portland Press Herald.

One telling quote: “Sure, there is a kick to (coaching Division I-type athletes). But that is not the be-all and end-all, to work with a higher caliber of athlete. As long as I can recruit athletes here who are going to buy in and be passionate about basketball and about what we’re doing . . .”

She gets it. Anyone who can’t understand why a successful coach would want to stay in Division III doesn’t.