Conference shuffle drifts south

The announcement today of Shenandoah joining the Old Dominion Athletic Conference has the potential to restart the rearrangement of conference affiliations that started with the departure of football schools from the MAC, the creation of the Landmark Conference for all sports and has reached as far north as the Empire 8 and Liberty League.

Shenandoah’s departure, which takes effect with the 2012-13 season, leaves the USA South in a big hole. All of their men’s sports, other than football, face the potential of losing their automatic bid. Just six full-time members of the conference have men’s sports: Averett, Christopher Newport, Ferrum, Greensboro, Methodist and North Carolina Wesleyan. In football, Maryville is an associate member of the USA South, leaving the conference with the minimum seven members required for an automatic bid.

After a two-year grace period, the automatic bid could be lost in 2014-15.

Could this revive the dormant, some would say dead, USAC-Great South merger talks? Absolutely. The USA South’s Maryville is already an associate member of the league in football and could join for all sports, as could Piedmont and LaGrange. Piedmont is the closest school of the southern portion of the GSAC to the USAC footprint.

If the southern flank of the USA South opens up, might Christopher Newport be the next to leave? The Captains would be the next geographic outlier in this group and, in my opinion, are a good fit for the Capital Athletic Conference. They would also bring a football program that could put the CAC on the verge of being a football conference. Stevenson adds football in 2012, while Salisbury, Frostburg and Wesley already have the sport. Five football programs isn’t seven, but it’s in the ballpark and who knows, Pool B might not be so bad a place to be for a while in football.

Plus, remember the women’s programs in the USA South and the Great South vastly outnumber the men’s. They could well spin off and form their own conference which would be eligible for an automatic bid as well. That group could draw from the following schools: Agnes Scott, Mary Baldwin, Meredith, Peace, Salem, Spelman, Wesleyan (Ga.). They might find that type of affiliation more to their liking.

The MAC had to be considered a strong contender to land Shenandoah. The conference already is home to a handful of Shenandoah’s sports: field hockey and men’s and women’s indoor track and track and field. The conference added Stevenson as an affiliate member for football and Shenandoah would have made it 10 in that sport. But the MAC missed out.

Owenby’s perfect night

Maryville (Tenn.) Daily Times writer Marcus Fitzsimmons should be a familiar name to hard-core Division III fans. Here’s a feature he wrote from Wednesday’s Maryville-Greensboro game:

Owenby’s perfect night goes for naught

By Marcus Fitzsimmons
marcusf@thedailytimes.com

Ever hit the trash can with a coke can when you knew you should have missed?

Lewis Owenby had that kind of feeling for a full game.

The junior for Greensboro College went 12-for-12 from the floor Wednesday night against Maryville in a 93-78 loss to the Scots in Boydson Baird Gymnasium.

“The first one I put up just bounced in off the glass and I was like, ‘woah’,” said Owenby.

Battling Maryville’s Greg Hernandez the Black Mountain, N.C., product found himself nearer the foul line than the basket early but scrapped that strategy with his second kiss-off-the-glass jumper.

“We didn’t do a good job defending him at all,” said Maryville head coach Randy Lambert. “But to his credit he knocked down some of those shots from outside the paint.”

Adding to his range was something Owenby admits working on over the summer, but he never imagined a night like Wednesday.

“I was just playing within our game,” said Owenby. “I didn’t really think about it until after the game.”

The junior left the floor after picking up his fifth personal with 2:53 remaining and not even the coaches were aware of the performance until a miscredited miss at the 1:58 mark was corrected on the box score.

“That kind of night on that many shots in this game, its just unheard of to have a perfect night,” said Greensboro coach Bryan Galuski. “It was obviously a great shooting night for him.”

Owenby had been averaging 8.8 points per game and had a season high 17 on 7-for-9 shooting against LaGrange before his 27-point performance Wednesday. His only weak spot was the foul line, where he was a merely human 3-for-5.

Greensboro opens USA South play at Averett on Saturday.

Marcus Fitzsimmons is a sports writer for The (Maryville) Daily Times covering Maryville College, the GSAC and USA South.

D-III newbies look peachy

Three schools were approved for provisional membership in Division III this upcoming season, according to a news release from one of the schools. (The NCAA doesn’t appear to have said anything on the subject yet.)

Covenant College, in Lookout Mountain, Ga., and Berry College, in Mount Berry, Ga., join Division III, chipping into the NAIA’s dominance of the Southeast, as does Penn State-Abington.

Covenant's Crosson Reed “Both academically and athletically, NCAA Division III is a good fit for Berry,” said Steve Briggs, Berry’s president. “We have always placed a high priority on academic achievement and the overall quality of the educational experience for our student-athletes, and affiliation with Division III allows us to be true to these fundamental values while also growing our athletic program in new and exciting ways.”

Berry’s release mentions something else that doesn’t get a lot of discussion around here: the shorter seasons in Division III. NAIA starts basketball competition, for example, weeks before Division III schools do, resulting in increased class time missed. Covenant references Division III’s lower dues, reduced travel time and expenses, and costs of postseason play which are picked up.

Berry is adding men’s and women’s swimming and diving and softball for the upcoming school year, as well as women’s lacrosse in the spring of 2011, as Division III requires sponsorship of more sports than the NAIA does.

Covenant has 13 sports already, while Abington has 12. Neither will need to add sports to make the Division III minimum.

Obviously the entire future of the Great South Athletic Conference is up in the air, with talks continuing that they may end up merging with the USA South. But if the GSAC remains an independent unit, Covenant and Berry would be an ideal geographic fit.