It’s great to feel some pressure while being at the free-throw line by myself. It’s great to hit a few shots in a row. It’s great to have total confidence that the next shot is going in. It’s great to call a play in a huddle and have it executed just like I picture it in my head and have A.T. (Aaron Thompson) drain a three. It’s great being in the locker room with my teammates making fun of each other’s girlfriends or pulling pranks.

This past weekend was a fun one for the Washington U. basketball family. Tyler Nading and Tom Blount are both from Colorado and we had our opening tournament in Colorado Springs at Colorado College. It gave them the opportunity to show off our team and play in front of a lot of their friends, family, high school coaches and teammates that have never gotten the chance to see them play in college. It’s awesome that Coach Edwards is able to schedule tournaments like this, our tournament over Thanksgiving at Anderson University (close to Cam Smith’s home) and over winter break at Elmhurst College (we have a handful of people from the Chicago area) to allow friends and family the opportunity to see us play.

We won the tournament championship this past weekend after victories against North Park and Colorado College. When you walk in the gym at CC there is a big painting on the wall saying “Altitude 6,212 feet… Breathe Deeply!” and man they weren’t kidding. After the first game I was ready for the oxygen tank. My good buddy and conference rival in high school, Nick Williams plays for North Park and he even needed IV after the game—I’m not sure if it was just the altitude but it was definitely noticed by quite a few of our players too. Our exhibition game against Division II Missouri-St. Louis prepared us really well for the North Park game because of NPU’s athleticism and the different defenses they threw at us. I know they were shorthanded for a number of reasons but I’m sure they’ll turn some heads and knock off a few teams in the CCIW this year.

The next day we took on an emotionally charged CC team. CC was winless last year and they were coming off their first win in quite some time before taking us on in the championship game. I can promise this—that team is going to win more than one game this year if they play with that energy and intensity. That program is definitely going in the right direction and they have a nice group of guys. We got off to a good start but we were never really able to put them away. They hung around and hung around until tournament MVP AT buried a few threes at the end of the game to seal the deal.

I couldn’t be much more excited for our game this Saturday! Augustana is now 2-0 and we’re 2-0 and it should be a pretty fun battle between #1 and #2. Obviously it isn’t do or die at this point (like it was last March) but it will be a great measuring stick early in the season for both teams.

Until next time,
Sean

P.S. I want to thank Pat for giving me the opportunity to exercise my player-option on the second year of my blogging deal. I needed a gig in these tough economic times!

As I enter the first month or so of practice and think about the upcoming season, I’m thinking to myself, I can’t believe I’m a senior and this is going to be my last year playing basketball here at Edgewood College.  I remember coming in my freshmen year being so nervous and didn’t talk much at all; oh, how times have changed for me!  Now I’m the only senior on the team and have lots of freshmen and newbies coming in the same way I was, nervous and scared to talk.  But I tell myself I can’t think of this as being my last year; I say to myself, let this be the best year. 

In my eyes as the team practices; we get better each day, we get to know one another, we see what everyone brings to the table, but most of all we work hard.  All of those things right there are what make me believe that this will be the best year.  We are a young team having one senior, two juniors, six sophomores, and four freshmen, but look to use what everyone has to offer and come together as a team and be a powerful team in the NAC. 

Our conference is very competitive and you never know who’s going to win each night someone plays… this is something I love and makes it fun to compete in.  We are a very team oriented program and live up to that.  We play team defense, win or lose as a team, but most important we stay together through the ups and downs of the season.  We start off our season this weekend up in Adrian, Michigan and we participate in a two day tournament.  We can’t wait to start play and are very excited for the season to get underway. 

Sean Wallis, who blogged for us last season as his Washington-St. Louis team made their run to the national championship, is healthy and ready to go on the floor for the Bears, and on the Net as well from what we hear.

Also, we’ll have our first Around the Nation column of the season coming out tonight, all in preparation for Saturday’s tipoff of the 2008-09 season!

The nine members who are fully in the fold are:

• Bethany Lutheran (UMAC)
• Crown (Minn.) (UMAC)
• Maine-Presque Isle (Independent)
• Minnesota-Morris (UMAC)
• Mount Aloysius (AMCC)
• Northwestern (Minn.) (UMAC)
• Penn State-Berks (NEAC)
• SUNY-Purchase (Skyline)
• Salem (Independent)

Four of these schools are in the Upper Midwest Athletic Conference (UMAC) along with St. Scholastica, Martin Luther and Northland. That leaves Presentation as the only UMAC team that isn’t a full member yet.

This also brings the active Division III membership to 429 schools, a net increase of seven from 2007 – 2008 since Maryville (Mo.) and non-D3hoopsters Cal State-East Bay are headed to Division II.

Assuming the NCAA keeps the same policy as last year, schools in the third or fourth year of the four-year process to become active members are not eligible for the post-season. But games against them count in the primary tournament selection criteria. That means games against the following teams are regional contests:

Fourth Year

• Mitchell (NECC)
• Mount Mary (Independent)
• Presentation (UMAC)
• Morrisville State (SUNYAC)

Third Year

• Lancaster Bible (Independent)
• La Sierra (Independent)
• Lyndon State (NAC)
• North Central (Minn.) (Independent)
• St. Vincent (PrAC)

There are four teams in the second year of their provisional status. Games against these teams don’t count as regional contests, but we will track them on our site.

• Franciscan of Steubenville, Ohio (AMCC)
• Geneva of Beaver Falls, PA (PrAC)
• Penn State-Harrisburg (NEAC)
• St. Joseph’s of Brooklyn, NY (Independent)

Three schools are in their first year of provisional status – Cincinnati-Clermont, Spalding (Ky.) and Cobleskill (NY) State. There are also seven schools in the exploratory phase, most of which are in the Nebraska or Georgia. We’ll wait to track these guys, but you can see the list here.

Other than the schools who became eligible for post-season play, the real winners are the teams in the West region who have a few more places they can get regional games.

Obscure stuff? Yep. But hopefully it comes in handy come regional ranking time.

Remember that commercial featuring Larry Bird and Michael Jordan making trick shots for the right to eat MJ’s Big Mac? Ever wonder what it would be like to really play an NBA star in H-O-R-S-E?

David Kalb, a graduate of Capital University, found out earlier this month. He entered a contest sponsored by a lawn mower company in which the winner had a chance to play NBA superstar Lebron James in a game of H-O-R-S-E. As Marcia Smith of the Orange County (Calif.) Register explains, Kalb has had an interesting journey from the small town of Bucyrus, Ohio to his Southern California showdown with James.

If you haven’t seen the video yet, you can see Kalb versus “King” James here.

I almost don’t have to say anything more, do I?

This is what pursuit of the automatic bid can do to you. We don’t know how the conference will schedule itself this season or how it will actually determine who gets the AQ (remember, that’s the conference’s decision, not the NCAA’s), but at some point, someone will be getting on a plane from New York or Pennsylvania to Dallas and seemingly vice versa.

I’m not sure this is what Division III is all about. I can’t imagine what the Division IV crowd would think of such a thing. I also can’t imagine what these schools are thinking: It’s not like these are the University of Chicagos, NYUs and Case Western Reserves of the world, large research institutions with endowments to match. The NEAC is made up of athletic departments so small that one coach told me a couple years ago their program could only schedule 22 games because that was all they could afford, not the Division III standard 25.

I feel for the University of Dallas, which has lived the lonely life of an independent ever since leaving the American Southwest Conference early this decade in hopes of gaining admission to the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference. And I feel for the NEAC, which has seen its membership change faster than the Law & Order cast,  but I can’t see spending all this money in pursuit of an automatic bid. And if the conference doesn’t play a full round-robin in order to save money, then why bother? You’d only be crowing an illegitimate champ.

Championship access is all well and good, but at what cost?

By that theory, today we say good bye to a Division III lifer in Southern Maine Coach Gary Fifield. He spent his entire college coaching career in Gorham, Maine after coaching high school ball in Vermont. Over that 21-year run, he won an astounding 541 games, took his team to five Final Fours and became the face of a highly successful program.

I only interacted with Coach Fifield a couple times during the Huskies’ recent playoff runs. My impression is that he was very loyal to his players and inspired the same loyalty in return. One of his players told me that the thought of winning a national championship for him gave her goose bumps.

He never engaged me in small talk – it’s fitting that there isn’t a standard quote from Fifield in the University’s release – but his answers to my substantive questions were thoughtful. And I felt that his program was focused on his players, and not him. He was calm and composed on the sidelines in intense situations, whether it was a jubilant win or a heart-breaking loss.

Loyal, thoughtful, calm and focused on his players. In retrospect, it’s easy to see why he inspired loyalty and enjoyed such a successful run.

Adair has started blogging again and so far it’s an eye-opening look at the life in Germany, playing and practicing, even some thoughts about personnel moves. Worth keeping an eye on.

And Brandon, best of luck.

Students pack the stadiums

1. University of Florida
14. Wabash College

Best athletic facilities

1. University of Maryland
3. Wabash College
20. St. Lawrence University

Intercollegiate sports unpopular or nonexistent

1. Eugene Lang College (NY)
14. University of Chicago
15. NYU
16. SUNY-Purchase
17. Harvey Mudd College (part of Claremont-Mudd-Scripps athletics)
20. Emerson College

Note: Originally I had shown St. John’s (MN) on this list. The website says St. John’s (NM). I’m not sure if I read it wrong or the site had the letters of the state transposed and fixed it. I assume its the former and I apologize for my mistake. I still question the credence of this list given the inclusion of NYU.

Jock Schools

1. Clemson University
3. Wabash College

Incidentally Wabash was also ranked #3 in best career/job placement services behind Northeastern (MA) and Claremont McKenna (CA). You can look at the all the rankings, including those not related to sports here.

And other than going home for the summer between that and my sophomore year at Catholic University, I’ve been out here ever since.

It’s been a long 18 years; it’s time to go home. We’re doing our own version of the Mid-Atlantic Shuffle, leaving Northern Virginia in August and moving to Minneapolis.

I’ll miss the vast number of Division III schools there are here on the East Coast, where I can basically stumble over a D-III school every 20 minutes on the highway. I’ve seen 222 Division III football teams play, as near as I can tell, and been in 67 teams’ stadiums. Now I’m looking forward to seeing a whole new group. I’ve been to Hamline’s gym and Macalester’s now-defunct gym, seen St. Ben’s and UW-River Falls, UW-Eau Claire, UW-Stevens Point and UW-Platteville. How many Iowa gyms will I get into this year?

There will be a lot of new things to experience.

Like flying to the Final Four.
So I apologize that it’s been a bit of a quiet offseason around here, other than the silly season with all the coaching changes. We’ve spent a lot of time repairing, painting and packing. I’ll keep the same day job, as sports editor of the Verizon Central Newsroom, and simply work from there instead of Virginia.

Thanks to everyone who has been so hospitable over my years here on the East Coast. Hundreds of SIDs and coaches have made time to help us cover Division III in the past decade. Now I’ll get a different perspective, meet new people and spend a lot more time on I-94 and I-35 rather than I-95 and I-66.