Amherst alum: D3 should stay with D1 on championship weekend

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Ben Kaplan played basketball at Amherst when the Lord Jeffs reached the 2008 national championship game in Salem. The next season he gave us an inside look at the Lord Jeffs’ 2009 NCAA tournament run. Four years later, Ben went to Atlanta to watch his alma mater play for the national championship. He describes how the Atlanta experience compared to Salem and gives his take on whether the Division III men’s title game should be regularly played at the Division I Final Four site.

Of all the possible confrontations at Saturday’s Final Four in Atlanta’s Georgia Dome, I couldn’t have anticipated the first and only one I would witness. A fifty-ish man in maize, who made the trip with his twenty-ish son from New York, stuck a stubby finger in the face of a sixty-year-old man in purple who sat with his purple-clad daughter one row behind him. A vein pulsed in the man in maize’s forehead and spit flew with each obscenity. Some surrounding fans stepped in and the man in purple quietly stood and summoned security. Hey, you know what they say about Michigan and Amherst fans, right?

For the first time in its history, the NCAA celebrated 75 years of March Madness by crowning the Division II and III champions on the same weekend and in the same city as the D1 Final Four. If public sentiment has any say, it’s a change that the NCAA will make permanent. The D1 and D3 worlds pretend to exist on parallel planes when in fact they collide more often than you might expect. Bringing them together in one event is a fitting and well-deserved honor for the little guys.

The three most recent tournament coaching darlings, Butler’s Brad Stevens, VCU’s Shaka Smart, and Andy Enfield, formerly of Florida Gulf Coast, all played their college ball at Division III schools. Enfield made 92% of his free throws at Johns Hopkins to become the all-time Division III free-throw percentage leader, Smart set Kenyon’s career, season, and single-game assist records, and Stevens contributed for four years at DePauw.

The trio fit the popular D3 mold – scrappers who overcome size and athleticism deficiencies with intelligence, hard work, and often one special skill. D1 fans who dropped by the title game between Amherst College and University of Mary Hardin-Baylor probably expected the crisp passing and sharp shooting Amherst rode to the title, but they probably didn’t expect Amherst wing and Final Four Most Outstanding Player Allen Williamson to grab an offensive rebound on the block, take one dribble to gather himself, and rise up over a defender’s outstretched hand for a thunderous dunk. They probably didn’t expect Mary Hardin-Baylor star Thomas Orr, a lanky lefty who used a variety of crossovers and stepback moves en route to a team-high 24 points, to take off for a slam after a top of the key isolation move in the half court. And they definitely didn’t expect lumbering Amherst center Pete Kaasila to meet him at the rim and send the dunk attempt back. (OK so they called it a foul, but I not-so-objectively thought it was clean. Regardless, it was the second most impressive mid-air meeting in Atlanta called for a foul this weekend.)

Division III normally crowns its champion in Salem, Virginia, a town that hosts the D3 basketball and football championships. This year, the Elite Eight and Final Four were played in Salem two weeks prior to last Sunday’s title game. As a player at Amherst, I attended the 2008 Final Four. It was the school’s third trip to Salem in a row, and the previous year the team won their first national championship.

To get to Salem, we flew a chartered plane instead of our usual bus. A camera crew greeted us when we landed, instructing us to “act naturally” while they filmed. As we waited almost an hour for our coaches to pick up the rental cars, they interviewed a few players about the upcoming weekend. Instead of the usual motel or Howard Johnson, we stayed in a hotel with leather furniture and a fancy restaurant in the lobby. We dealt with never-ending TV timeouts for the first time all year, attended a banquet, and the starters spoke at official press conferences after the game. Little girls play “house,” and that weekend we played “D1 basketball.”

In Atlanta, this year’s Amherst team had a bus waiting for them at an airport and a police escort on each and every trip they made. When I ran into Amherst’s iconic coach, David Hixon, in the hotel lobby, he immediately told me about how thrilled the players were with the lengthy autograph sessions, media interviews, and TV footage shoots. The schedule was wonky, with a pair of two-week layoffs during the tournament, and the weekend was a minefield of distractions, but the players and coaches wouldn’t have had it any other way. For one weekend, they truly got their time on the big stage.

The weekend’s charms weren’t limited to the players. The Final Four hosts the National Association of Basketball Coaches clinics and conferences, which nearly every NCAA coach attends, so I had the pleasure of seeing and speaking to the Amherst graduate assistants from the past seven years who have now moved on to other schools. I sampled the Atlanta nightlife with alums who, myself included, probably wouldn’t have come had the game been in Salem. The D1 Final Four and accompanying activities, like the pop-a-shot games at Bracket Town or the free Ludacris concert at The Big Dance, provide more of an incentive for students and alums to make the trip to support their team. The academic toll of two long trips and a longer season may cause some educators to complain, but the two Amherst players I saw studying for an economics midterm next to the table of NCAA Merchandise in the hotel lobby seemed to manage the juggling act just fine. Half an hour of studying is a small price to pay for a weekend as a VIP at the Final Four.

The game itself took place at Phillips Arena instead of the Georgia Dome for the same reason that ping pong tournaments aren’t held on Centre Court at Wimbledon. National press stopped by to cover the game, and some wrote glowingly about the talent on the floor. They learned a well-kept secret, that the things like late growth spurts, injuries, and a desire for playing time that force bracket busters to attend mid-majors also contribute to low-D1 talents playing on the D3 level. One such talent, Amherst All-American Willy Workman, who had a hip injury in high school that kept him off the D1 radar, spoke at a reception honoring the players after their championship win. He said, “Playing at the D3 level, we don’t get a ton of support, so you guys are our everything. Thanks for being our parents, friends, fans, cooks, laundry-doers, and everything else we needed to get to this point.” Williamson, the Final Four MOP, talked to me about his desire to continue his playing career overseas, as more than a dozen alums in the past have done. “It’s getting a lot more competitive,” he told me, “so hopefully I’ll land somewhere.” To the media, a few Amherst players talked about how they always dreamed of playing in the NBA, and since that was out the window, winning a championship in an NBA arena was next-best thing.

Around 6,000 fans filed into the lower bowl of the Atlanta Hawks home while the upper bowl was curtained off, so the teams got the thrill of playing in a large arena without having it feel empty. At the Dome the previous night, screaming seas of maize, yellow, orange, and red dominated the stands, but at the D3 game the following afternoon, a few rowdy Amherst fans and a screaming Mary Hardin-Baylor student in a purple tutu holding an “Amherst Likes Nickelback” sign were the exception rather than the rule. Physicality and speed didn’t dominate the game as it did on the Division I level, but finesse, athleticism, and tremendous skill were still on display. On my road trip from Chicago to Atlanta, I marveled at the beauty of rolling green hills and the black structures and yellow lights of skylines. Both different, both majestic in their own way. I felt the same about the atmosphere and the on-court performances on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.

Which brings me back to the confrontation during the Michigan and Syracuse game. The Amherst fan expected his 200-level seats to the Division I Final Four to provide respite from the rowdy student sections. After all, he’s from Amherst, where basketball games are best enjoyed with quiet amusement and occasional polite clapping, preferably with a book on hand. The Michigan fans, who called the players by first name and referred to the team as “we”, wanted to celebrate each basket with a jump, a fist pump, and a high-five. Speaking from personal experience, post-graduation D3 fanhood is more a source of quiet pride than loud and boastful cheers. When “we” used to play on the team and actually know each player by first name, the wild rowdiness seems to us, for whatever reason, a bit over the top. Not that I look down on it. Quite the contrary. I envy it. I wish Amherst results put me in a wild frenzy. I wish I could go to a bar in Chicago on Saturdays and cheer with friends as Amherst beats Middlebury in football. I love when my school wins, and I hate when they lose, but the lack of fanfare and smaller stage puts the game in a different perspective for us.

In the end, both men overreacted. The Amherst alum shouldn’t have grabbed the younger Michigan fan and nudged him down to his seat when he stood up to celebrate a Mitch McGary layup. The older Michigan fan shouldn’t have responded by pushing and swearing at the Amherst alum.

At the heart of that clash were two parents who didn’t want a once-in-a-lifetime experience with their kids at all compromised. The father and son decked out in maize, the father and daughter in Amherst sweaters, my father and me a few seats over, the two Michigan grad students who bought our tickets to Monday’s finals – we were all living out a weekend we would remember and laugh and talk about forever. Watching Amherst win was great, but sharing that experience with my old teammates, seeing the big hugs and bigger smiles on the court, and the tears of the new generation of team parents made it truly special.

That’s why this past weekend should be the beginning of a new tradition. Other Division II and III schools deserve this chance, and other alums should get to experience what I did. Between the overload of endorsements and allegations of athlete exploitation, the NCAA creates these unforgettable shared experiences between athletes and fans alike. Why not maximize them?

An open letter from D-III fans to Amherst, Williams

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Dear Biddy Martin, President, Amherst College; and
Adam Falk, President, Williams College:

The Williams broadcasters aren't bad but the technology seems straight out of 2003.

The Williams broadcasters aren’t bad but the technology seems straight out of 2003.

Congratulations on having athletic departments and basketball programs specifically that are at the pinnacle of NCAA Division III. Your institutions’ young men and women on the court (and on other playing venues) represent your institutions well. They have performed on the biggest stages in Division III basketball.

Unfortunately, the way most people are viewing your program of late is through your schools’ official athletics webcast, each of which puts your institution in a poor light, for varying reasons.

It’s great that over the years more and more schools have found ways to video stream their games even if it just one camera and no broadcasters. A consistent quality broadcast requires infrastructure, manpower, time and of course, some money, whether you are paying an outside company to host your stream or hosting it on campus.

However, Division III fans, and your institutions deserve better. Amherst and Williams have had plenty of home games this month and have men’s home games on Saturday. You have an opportunity to fix this and raise the bar for this final home game of the season.

It upsets me that not only are these learning experiences that are being thrown away, but also this is the time of year Division III basketball gets to showcase itself and these broadcasts are doing the exact opposite. In order to get the rights to broadcast these games, your institution deals with NCAA partner Turner Sports, which handles rights for all sorts of NCAA Tournament games.

There are requirements and guidelines schools are supposed to follow, including this one:

The Streaming Entity may not denigrate Turner, the NCAA, NCAA member institutions or teams, their players or officials, or any NCAA sport, and must comply in all respects with the NCAA bylaws, rules and regulations in effect, which may be amended from time to time by the NCAA in its sole discretion.

That is pretty important to note. These broadcasts have to have a neutrality to them even if it is a “homer” broadcast team calling the games.

Schools get waivers of the $1,000 per-game rights fees. With that waiver comes those requirements and others, as well as benefits. These broadcasts are linked from NCAA.com as part of the official NCAA bracket, meaning it is being given prominence well beyond your institution and its fanbase. What kind of face does it put on your institution and NCAA Division III in general when your broadcasters act unprofessionally, screaming into the microphones, not bothering to check pronunciations of names, and generally treating the broadcasts as if they were any other fans in the stands rather than spokespersons for your school? That’s how Amherst College portrays itself on its official athletics webcast. If athletics is indeed the front porch of the college, then Amherst’s broadcast makes it look like a frat house.

Now, on the other hand, Williams has a little more professionalism in the commentary. Saturday’s men’s game was quite well done in that aspect. (More on the women’s games in a bit.) But the broadcast itself looks like a first-generation online broadcast, something straight out of 2003. And that was when the video finally came online at halftime. If athletics is the front porch, then Williams’ broadcast makes it look like a dilapidated shack.

The two young ladies calling the Emory/Whitman women’s game at Williams College on Friday night seemed less like broadcasters and more like two people asked to talk about the game with microphones in front of them. I couldn’t figure out who the play-by-play person or color analyst was – they both talked over each other and didn’t particularly describe the game. The crew that called the games that featured Williams was a bit rough, too. The play-by-play lady kept trying to call the game like she was yukking it up with her friends and even tried several times to bait the color guy into slang comments that made no sense and didn’t have a place for a game many people are watching from around the country. That was especially true considering the participating teams were from Georgia and Washington state.

We know technical problems can plague any webcast, whether hosted on campus or by an outside company. What works once doesn’t necessarily work the next time – instead of broadcaster in my description or Broadcast Director in my D3sports title, it probably should read Broadcast Troubleshooter and Director.

Let’s start with Williams: The video feeds looks like it is from the 1990s. The audio broadcast is even harder to deal with since it sounds like the broadcasters are talking through an old telephone line with absolutely no background noise. It sounds like a game being played in the 1980s.

However, to be honest, I would rather listen to those games than the ones at Amherst.

Those guys clearly have no interest in calling the game with any iota of professionalism. They sounded like they happened to have some microphones and thought it would be cool to call the games for their frat brothers while sitting in the stands. Constant complaining about officials’ calls when they aren’t in favor of the Lord Jeffs; snide comments about the opposing team even one comment, “he celebrated like it was an NBA game, I am not sure what that was all about” which had no context especially since the video feed wasn’t working; overall disdain for anything not in purple; lack of preparation, “I think that is how you say his name, but I need to look that up;” and overall a lack of caring. I even heard the “color analyst” acting like a coach yelling out to an Amherst player to watch out for a defender who was coming in for a double-team at mid-court.

I am shocked that a school like Amherst which has name recognition and often hosts games would allow these two to broadcast. Furthermore, I wonder if the NCAA and Turner Sports are watching these broadcasts since they actually own the content.

Let’s get back to two key points: educational experience and the spotlight on these institutions who are streaming games and for Division III as a whole.

How does a reputable school like Amherst allow a broadcast that is so below amateur to represent it? And how can a very reputable liberal arts college think these broadcasters are getting an educational experience? The players on the court are held at a very high standard when it comes how they conduct themselves. Shouldn’t the same high standards be held to the broadcasters on the official webstream for the college?

This applies to all schools in this situation. I have worked with quite a few where they know this experience is something that can better these students so the mission is to make it part of their college education. I know schools with less name notoriety or attention this time of year who would have pulled the plug on the Amherst broadcasters before the first half even ended!

As for the spotlight, we as a Division III family should be embarrassed and ask for something to be done. This is the division we love and cherish and wish would get more attention from national and even local media. These are teams we know will show the basketball world in Atlanta that the Division III brand of basketball is pretty high-caliber. We are proud of these student-athletes and we are proud of those who support these athletes from their coaches to administrators to even broadcasters. But when you turn on showcased games and broadcasters aren’t respecting the magnitude of the game or the viewers, something needs to be done. These broadcasts may be popular among your alumni, especially your young alumni, because they are energetic, but they sound more like a video game than a college basketball contest.

Next weekend the D3hoops.com crew will be Holland, Mich., for the culmination of the women’s basketball season. And perhaps you will be too, since your teams have advanced. I am half-tempted to cancel my trip if I could travel to Amherst or Williams and show them how a broadcast in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Division III Men’s Basketball Championship tournament should be done. In fact, I would be willing to travel to St. Mary’s (Md.) who doesn’t have a broadcast so that people can compare how bad those other entities are doing it at schools with plenty more national attention because of their institution’s names than most in Division III. Amherst even had a crew of ours in LeFrak Gymnasium earlier in early February for its doubleheader with Tufts University (men’s game tips off at 52-minute mark of that video). That was a crew made up entirely of former student broadcasters, ones who took the role seriously in their time at Division III schools. All of us at D3hoops.com had microphones in front of our faces as students, and we weren’t perfect, but we took the game seriously and worked hard to make ourselves better, even if we weren’t being mentored by anyone.

Plenty of Division III schools have fantastic student broadcasters, and continue to produce quality broadcasts year after year, even though students graduate and move on. If you are in Holland this weekend, stop and listen to what the students from DePauw University sound like. WGRE has been producing quality broadcasts for years, ones that the entire institution can be proud of and put a fine face on Division III. Other schools do so year after year as well, schools such as Ithaca College, North Central College, Wheaton College (Ill.) and others who take it seriously and would never tolerate the type of broadcasts put out recently by Amherst and Williams.

Division III fans shouldn’t stand for this; you and your institutions shouldn’t stand for this; and those broadcasters should realize they are doing far more than embarrassing themselves. They are embarrassing the student-athletes, the athletic departments, their institutions and Division III as a whole.

Advise your students to take themselves seriously, do their homework and respect their opponents. It’s important not only to know how to pronounce the names of starters but also head coaches and assistant coaches, and whether the opponent’s school goes by College or University. You should listen to their tapes, but more importantly, so should they. That is how you get better as a broadcaster. They should learn not to talk over each other, because usually when two people talk, then neither one can be understood.

But most importantly, what they should learn is that a big game tends to bring a big audience, and they need to elevate their game in response. Just as they wouldn’t expect the players on the floor to revert to a playground game when there is a title on the line, they shouldn’t use those two hours as a time to joke around with their buddies.

Dave McHugh
D3sports.com

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Centaur Seasons: Revisiting Allentown basketball, 40 years later

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Forty years ago we played on a half-good, half-bad basketball team for a brand-new college. Forty years later a lot has changed.

Centaur SeasonsBy Steve McKee

The problem is remembering what to call them. When I played we were the Allentown College of St. Francis de Sales Centaurs. These days they’re the DeSales University Bulldogs.

Centaur-Centdog-Bultaur-Bulldogs. And the mascot and name aren’t the only things that changed a dozen years ago.

When I showed up at the school in Center Valley, Pennsylvania, in the fall of 1970, the college had graduated two classes. There were five buildings, lots of cornfields, maybe 450 students. The barest of bones; a handful of majors. The entire place making itself up as it went along.

“It was the frontier days of the university,” says Jim Naccarato, a guard on the team two years ahead of me and an Oblate of St. Francis de Sales seminarian. “Everyone was taking a gamble. There was real risk. It was an adventure.”

The bet paid off. Today, DeSales University boasts dozens buildings, perhaps 1,700 undergrads, a full complement of majors, all the bells and whistles of a competitive college in the digital world.

As for the basketball teams. Well …

When I arrived the Centaurs’ two-year record was 8-28, with losses of 20, 21, 22 (twice), 26, 27, 37, 41, 42, 61 and … 70. “Nobody was doing anything but trying to win, play the best they could,” says Tom Junod, an under-sized center on those first two teams. “There was a lot of spirit among the people who were there. Everyone wanted the school to succeed. I don’t think any of us felt like we were wasting our time, and I don’t think any of us did. We wanted to win.”

In my four years the Centaur went another 29-44. If you’re scoring at home, for the first six years of the Centaur’s existence, that’s a combined 37-72.

“Wins meant so much to us,” says Dave Glielmi, my roommate junior year. “We used to count them like they were jelly beans when you were a kid.”

Meanwhile, this year’s DeSales Bulldogs are right now 21-6. Saturday they lost to Delaware Valley in the MAC Freedom Conference championship game. On Wednesday they open against Moravian  as the No. 2 seed in the ECAC South Region tournament.  Coach Scott Coval’s teams have won 20 or more games in nine of the last 11 seasons. There have been three appearances in the NCAA D-III postseason. These guys are good.

And here’s the bonus: The better the Bulldogs are now, the better we Centaurs can believe we were then. Don’t think we don’t.

This past September I began posting at “Centaur Seasons.” A “memory blog,” it’s about those early days of Allentown College of St. Francis de Sales and the certain something that I believe came with attending a brand-new school that was right then as much a concept as it was a college. Included in Centaur Seasons are the entries from an actual diary I wrote during the 1972-73 season, my junior year, posted 40 years later in “real” time. But mainly Centaur Seasons is about the striving. The trying to win but too-often losing. The playing in front of a handful of fans. The being there at the beginning. The not knowing what our efforts might bring, but knowing whatever it was we’d be long gone by the time it happened.

“We knew we weren’t going to be the centerfold story in Sports Illustrated,” says Chris Cashman. “We had no real expectations.”

Cash, a year ahead of me, was the classic “last man cut” from his high school team. At Allentown as a 6-3 center-forward he played in every game his first three seasons. Then, senior year, on the first day of practice he ripped up his ankle — and with it the games-played streak.

“We were a Catholic start-up college fielding a start-up team,” he says. “It was what it was. But what was magical about it was that A) we loved to play basketball, B) we grew to kind of love each other, and C) we took ourselves seriously enough not to run out there and knowingly take the chance that we were going to embarrass ourselves – even though, sometimes, we did embarrass ourselves.”

Writing the Centaur Seasons blogs these past few month, I’ve had pleasant occasion to talk to many of my former teammates. It’s been great to reconnect, to hear the old stories. But I’ve also asked them to help me try to get my hands around the certain something that I believe made going to Allentown College when we did a particular, unique experience. If only I can find it.

Tony Mazzeo offered this about the college, immediately. A three-sport letterman, Maz won all the MVPs (soccer, hoops and baseball) and was named the Varsity Athlete of 1971-72 my sophomore year.  “If there had been an Allentown College in the 1930s, would we have cared about it the way we did?” he asked me when we talked. And then he answered: “No.” It’s the fact that there was no Allentown College until we got there, until we made it so, Maz says, that makes our being there so special.  “I am absolutely convinced of this,” he says.

Joe Thomson, meanwhile, suggested this about Centaur Basketball. “In a crazy way, in the purest sense of the word, it was just playing the game for the love of the game,” he says. “There weren’t a lot of externals. We weren’t getting money, we weren’t on scholarship. We didn’t have to worry about who was getting all-conference. We just played. We didn’t like the losing, but when we did we just got ready for the next game. To me it was pure sport. We were just a bunch of guys playing ball.”

Joe was a pass-first junior point guard when I was a senior. I looked to him to get me the ball, which he did, consistently. As a result I, me, Steve McKee, and my 6-foot-8-inches and 165 pounds of pipecleaner body that had not played basketball in high school, became the hoops star I had long wanted to be. Even if just for one year. Even if just at brand-new Allentown College of St. So-On and So-Forth.

Joe told me about a visit to Center Valley a couple of years ago. “I went back and saw how beautiful the campus is,” he said. “There’s a soccer field right in the middle of the place now! I got choked up. We had not even a quarter of all this. I looked around – the beautiful facilities, the townhouses up on the hill, everyghing going on — and thought, Man, this is a real college now. But you know, what? We had a real college too.”

Which is why I think this is telling: Not one of my teammates I’ve talked to has said they wished they were going to DeSales U now, playing for the Bulldogs at a packed Billera Hall, taking a run at conference titles, postseason play, league honors, all that.  No, thanks, we’re fine.

“If we go back to a game now,” says Dave Gleilmi, a 6-2 forward and arguably the best player of the Centaur Season era, “the place is called DeSales University and we’re watching a team called the Bulldogs – that is obviously A LOT better than we used to be. But then we get together after and we have a few drinks and now we’re the Centaurs again, we’re Allentown College. And nobody’s saying, ‘Geez, I wish we were DeSales University.’ That wouldn’t be right. We were who we should have been, and we always will be.”

The Centaur-Centdog-Bultaur-Bulldogs? They are who they should always be. As Jerry Wilkinson —  with Tony Mazzeo the co-captain of a half-good 8-8 Centaur team their senior year — wrote me in an email after some of us got together for a Bulldog game: “I do hope these kids today feel anywhere near the joy that we do that we played way back when.”

Joy. Yes, that’s the right word. Feel it forever, Bulldogs, forever.

This essay is drawn from the CENTAUR SEASONS posts Steve McKee has written since September. Most of the links here are to specific CENTAUR SEASONS  entries.  Steve worked for 14 years at The Wall Street Journal, where he was the first writer of the popular online sports blog, “The Daily Fix.” He is the author of three books, including “COACH,” an oral history of the sideline profession.

Who’s in the men’s tournament?

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Here are the 42 conferences with automatic bids to the 2013 NCAA Division III men’s basketball tournament and winners, when clinched. Each team’s seed in the conference tournament is noted in parentheses. Congratulations to Concordia-Texas, Fitchburg State, St. Vincent and Spalding on earning their first ever trip to the NCAA Division III men’s basketball tournament.

For teams not in one of these 42 conferences, there is one bid set aside (Pool B). There are 19 at-large bids (Pool C) that make up the rest of the field.

Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference: Penn State-Behrend (3)
American Southwest Conference: Concordia, Tex. (West-2)
Capital Athletic Conference: St. Mary’s, Md. (1)
Centennial Conference: Dickinson (2)
City University of New York Athletic Conference: Staten Island (1)
College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin: North Central, Ill. (2)
Colonial States Athletic Conference: Cabrini (1)
Commonwealth Coast Conference: Curry (1)
Empire 8: Ithaca (2)
Great Northeast Athletic Conference: Albertus Magnus (2)
Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference: Rose-Hulman (1)
Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference: Dubuque (3)
Landmark Conference: Catholic (1)
Liberty League: Hobart (1)
Little East Conference: Rhode Island College (1)
Massachusetts State College Athletic Conference: Fitchburg State (5)
Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association: Calvin (1)
Middle Atlantic Commonwealth: Alvernia (1)
Middle Atlantic Freedom: Delaware Valley (2)
Midwest Conference: St. Norbert (1)
Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference: St. Thomas (1)
New England Collegiate Conference: Elms (1)
New England Small College Athletic Conference: Amherst (1)
New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference: WPI (1)
New Jersey Athletic Conference: Ramapo (1)
North Atlantic Conference: Husson (2)
North Coast Athletic Conference: Ohio Wesleyan (2)
North Eastern Athletic Conference: Morrisville State (1)
Northern Athletics Conference: Aurora (2)
Northwest Conference: Whitworth (1)
Ohio Athletic Conference: Marietta (2)
Old Dominion Athletic Conference: Randolph-Macon (3)
Presidents Athletic Conference: St. Vincent (1)
St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference: Spalding (1)
Skyline Conference: SUNY-Purchase (2)
Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference: Redlands (1)
Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference: Trinity, Tex. (1)
State University of New York Athletic Conference: Cortland State (1)
University Athletic Association: Washington U. (no tournament)
Upper Midwest Athletic Conference: Northwestern, Minn. (1)
USA South Athletic Conference: Christopher Newport (1)
Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference: UW-Whitewater (2)

Who’s in the women’s tournament?

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Here are the 43 teams with automatic bids to the 2013 NCAA Division III women’s basketball tournament. Each team’s seed in the conference tournament is noted in parentheses. Congratulations to Cornell, FDU-Florham, Huntingdon, Lancaster Bible, New Paltz State, St. Scholastica and Texas-Dallas on earning their first ever trip to the NCAA Division III women’s basketball tournament.

Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference: La Roche (1)
American Southwest Conference: Texas-Dallas (East-2)
Capital Athletic Conference: Marymount (1)
Centennial Conference: Gettysburg (1)
City University of New York Athletic Conference: Baruch (1)
College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin: Carthage (1)
Colonial States Athletic Conference: Cabrini (1)
Commonwealth Coast Conference: University of New England (1)
Empire 8: Ithaca (1)
Great Northeast Athletic Conference: Emmanuel (1)
Great South Athletic Conference: Huntingdon (1)
Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference: Hanover (3)
Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference: Simpson (1)
Landmark Conference: Catholic (1)
Liberty League: St. Lawrence (2)
Little East Conference: Southern Maine (1)
Massachusetts State College Athletic Conference: Bridgewater State (1)
Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association: Hope (1)
Middle Atlantic Commonwealth: Lebanon Valley (3)
Middle Atlantic Freedom: FDU-Florham (1)
Midwest Conference: Cornell (1)
Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference: St. Thomas (2)
New England Collegiate Conference: Regis (Mass.) (1)
New England Small College Athletic Conference: Amherst (2)
New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference: Babson (1)
New Jersey Athletic Conference: Montclair State (1)
North Atlantic Conference: Colby-Sawyer (2)
North Coast Athletic Conference: DePauw (1)
North Eastern Athletic Conference: Lancaster Bible (1)
Northern Athletics Conference: Wisconsin Lutheran (1)
Northwest Conference: Whitworth (2)
Ohio Athletic Conference: Ohio Northern (1)
Old Dominion Athletic Conference: Guilford (2)
Presidents Athletic Conference: Thomas More (1)
St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference: Westminster, Mo. (1)
Skyline Conference: Farmingdale State (4)
Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference: Cal Lutheran (1)
Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference: Trinity, Tex. (1)
State University of New York Athletic Conference: New Paltz State (1)
University Athletic Association: Emory (no tournament)
Upper Midwest Athletic Conference: St. Scholastica (4)
USA South Athletic Conference: Christopher Newport (2)
Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference: UW-Stevens Point (3)