Men’s and women’s brackets set, time to pick ‘em

D3hoops.com is again doing their pick ‘em challenges for both the men’s and women’s basketball brackets. My results last year were mixed, as I finished with better than 50% on both the men’s and women’s bracket.

Anyone interested should definitely register on the website for the pick ‘em challenge. It’s free to register, and takes a few minutes to make your picks. Even if your not an expert on all of the Division III, just guess. It’s fun, and an entertaining precursor to Division I March Madness later in the month. I’ll post the screen shots of my picks as soon as I make them.

All-decade team features former first-round NBA pick

D3hoops.com released their selections for the all-decade teams (men’s and women’s) of Division III basketball players. The reason for looking back on the past 10 years? Well, I think they said it best:

Ten years ago this month, Division III Basketball Online moved from its temporary home on the Gallaudet and Catholic University servers to www.d3hoops.com, where we’ve been ever since.

Congratulations to everyone that’s been involved with this top-notch website over the years. As someone who has written for D3football.com (the sites are all under the D3sports.com brand), I can say from experience that Pat Coleman and the rest of those guys are great individuals and really take their coverage of Division III sports seriously.

But I was particularly interested in these all-decade teams. The men’s first team included Augsburg alum Devean George, who most NBA fans would probably recognize. George was a prolific scorer and ultimately was selected by the Los Angeles Lakers in the first round of the 1999 NBA draft. But in reading over the bios of the other first team selections, as well as the other four teams, I was amazed at some of the careers players have had at the Division III level.

D3hoops.com has even opened up a discussion board on their site for fans to voice their opinions on the choices. For me personally it was a fantastic history lesson. Because I have only been truly immersed in the world of Division III sports for the last four years, I don’t know much even about the early 2000s, let the 1990s and prior. So this was very educational for me as a fan.

Monday Morning Quarterback

So it rained this weekend - a lot. There was even an hour-long rain delay in the Ithaca-King’s football game. OK, so the game was technically delayed because of nearby lightning, but seriously, the weather was crazy.

But being stuck inside isn’t always a bad thing. Case in point: Saturday and Sunday were a sports fan’s dream. College football all day on Saturday and the return of NFL Sundays. I spent the majority of my Saturday watching the Ithaca-King’s game on TV, safely away from the rain.

Some thoughts from that game: Knowing that St. John Fisher pounded King’s 49-7 in the opening week, Ithaca should have beat the Monarchs by a lot more than 13 points. I know, I know - a win is a win is a win. But this doesn’t bode well for the Bombers. They welcome Fisher to Butterfield Stadium in two weeks, and if they hope to pull off the upset win, they’d better start taking care of business. They’ll get a good test this coming Saturday in Hartwick, which sports one of the nation’s top offenses, not to mention arguably the top all around player in the country in Lindy Crea.

Click to read my other thoughts and musings from the wild weekend that was: Read more

Recruiting proves to be a game in itself

It’s one of the most important aspects of collegiate sports on all levels: recruiting. Teams can have the best coaches, training staffs and playbooks, but let’s face it, you need (at least) decent talent to work with. Even Dean Smith would be hard pressed to win a game with the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers (they finished an NBA-record worst 9-73 that year). Thus, bringing in solid players year after year is a must, unless you don’t care about winning.

I’ll admit it, I follow recruiting for Division I men’s basketball (and to a lesser degree football) pretty religiously. A bad season can turn around in a second if you’re school lands a couple highly-ranked prospects. Suddenly, as a fan, there is reason for hope. Because I have an Insider account on ESPN.com, I can follow D-I recruiting on a daily basis in their recruiting section. ESPN ranks the top 150 prospects and gives detailed scouting reports on them, as well as following each D-I team’s individual progress.

Sad to say that there is not something like that for Division III athletics. The closest I could find is (not surprisingly) on d3hoops.com’s Daily Dose. I suppose it shouldn’t come as a total surprise that there isn’t coverage like D-I sports because there is one enormous difference: Division I gives has binding commitments and scholarships, while Division III is prohibited from having them. Still, the recruiting goes on just the same as it does at the higher levels. Maybe one day we will see a site dedicated to Division III recruiting. It would have a permanent place on my internet bookmarks.

A quick bracket update

I’m three for six collectively through Thursday night in the men’s and women’s tournaments. I correctly tabbed Keene State and John Carroll to win on the men’s side, and Chapman on the women’s side. I incorrectly pegged Loras, Augustana and King’s as winners in my men’s bracket. The one that really got me was the Augustana game. They were ranked seventh in the nation, but still lost to 16-8 Carroll. Props to the underdog Vikings for the victory. Props to me for having them lose to St. Thomas in the second round anway, therefore keeping my bracket somewhat intact.

My shot at bracket glory

Well, here they are. My brackets for the women’s and men’s Division III basketball tournaments. I posted thumbnails of my predictions, which I filled out on d3hoops.com. Just click them for the full-sized version. Let me know what you think.

Top half of men’s bracket

Click to see the rest of my predictions. Read more

Brackets set for men’s and women’s tournaments

The NCAA released the fields for the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments on Sunday evening. Monday morning they released the official brackets. Click here for the men’s bracket, and here for the women’s bracket.

Also, for those of you that enjoy filling out brackets when the Division I tournament rolls around, check out d3hoops.com. They have a free pick ‘em contest for both the men’s and women’s tourneys. I’m in the process of filling out my brackets as I write this, so if I’m able to post them here, I will do so. Otherwise I’ll just post my predictions for some notable games and any upsets I forsee.

As the dust finally settles

After a completely wild weekend of D-III college basketball, the fields are set for both the men’s and women’s championship tournaments. The NCAA announced all the teams for both sides, which were promptly posted by d3hoops.com. The matchups will be determined tomorrow when the NCAA releases the official brackets.

Monday also marks the day when other tourneys, such as the ECAC Upstate New York bracket, are announced. Be sure to check here tomorrow for information on that, as well as other championship tournaments around Division III.

Yup, it’s almost March.

It’s finally time to play ball

It’s that time of year again. Can’t you just smell it in the air? It’s almost time for baseball season to start. On the professional level, the first pitch of the first spring training game will be thrown in 10 days. Most college baseball teams begin their seasons in the first or second week of March, which, depending on where the school is located, can often result in a large amount of cancelations or postponements. This wasn’t so much of an issue for Marietta College last season, as they went on to win their fourth National Championship in school history. And while Marietta deserves coverage here (which they will get during their championship defense), I found something else that deserves recognition.

Virtually the only site devoted to covering everything about Division III sports is D3sports.com. It has two other sites that are devoted specifically to football (d3football.com) and basketball (d3hoops.com). Both sites have weekly rankings, analysis, features, commentaries, statistics - everything a fan could look for. As you’d probably imagine, I have spent way too much time on these sites. You can also understand why I was ecstatic to read that d3sports.com had added a new site: d3baseball.com.

The website, which is only a week or so old, is the upgraded version of a formerly self-maintained D-III baseball site. Jim Dixon, the website’s creator, approached d3sports.com about combining his site with theirs. The rest, as they say, is history.

This is a great step towards increasing national coverage of D-III sports. Now three of the four major sports have their own websites - awesome.

Play ball.

Enough with the snow

For the first time in about a full day, the snow is starting to slow down. Mother Nature thoroughly dominated the east coast in the past 24 hours. Syracuse got so much snow that they had to postpone the first day of competition in the women’s swimming and diving state meet. Swimming. Canceled because of snow. Go figure. With most of the snow expected to be cleared by tomorrow afternoon or evening, the meet will eventually start. But right now I have to go enjoy a hearty game of snow football.

A little item for your enjoyment: I found an interesting NCAA proposal on a d3sports.com message board. It certainly raises some serious points. Any thoughts?