D3hoops.com Daily Dose

The Mid-Atlantic Shuffle continues this offseason, as the NEAC shores up its automatic bid by admitting Gallaudet for the 2010-11 season.

Now, neither Division III school in the nation’s capital will be a member of the Capital Athletic Conference. Catholic left for the Landmark Conference early in the shuffle.

When we last left the NEAC, they were dipping into Texas in hopes of maintaining their tenuous automatic bid. With no details, we were left to wonder whether they were going to incorporate the University of Dallas into their round-robin schedule or base their entire automatic bid on a three-game conference tournament.

They chose the latter.

With two members who are still in the provisional membership stage of joining Division III, the league needed a D-III member to tide them over. Gallaudet will fill that hole and allow the league to cut ties with Dallas if it chooses.

Although Gallaudet was on probation with the Capital Athletic Conference, they were not booted from the conference, rather, they left of their own accord. And in the NEAC, they will spend a lot more money on travel, but they should be somewhat competitive in some sports.

Even I am beginning to get lost with the shuffling. D’Youville is out of the NEAC for next year, shuffling to the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference. The AMCC seems like it will lose Frostburg State, which was just offered membership in the Capital Athletic Conference for 2010-11. With Stevenson’s football program all but a done deal, perhaps for 2011, that would give the CAC four football programs: Frostburg State, Salisbury, Stevenson and Wesley.

The NEAC 2009-10 lineup looks like this: Cazenovia, Keuka, Penn State-Abington (provisional D-III), Penn State-Berks, Penn State-Harrisburg (provisional D-III), St. Elizabeth (no men’s basketball), SUNY-Cobleskill (provisional D-III), SUNY-Morrisville (provisional D-III), SUNYIT, University of Dallas, Wells (no women’s basketball) and Wilson (no men’s basketball).

With the CAC in a position to potentially sponsor football in 2011, more pieces will fall. Stay tuned.