There are two ways to take care of that situation (see Hopefan post on 1/31/16):

1) Have a respected Eureka Administrator sit with the unacceptable fans and quickly and decisively deal with anyone who gets too enthusiastic. The only problem with that is the poor administrator is at every game and he/she does not want to dampen the enthusiasm of the fans.

2) Have the referees deal with it. They are the ones closest to the action, they can judge what the fan says or does and whether it crosses the line, and they will only be at the site a time or two a year. More than that and the Commissioner should be challenged.

I have been on all sides of this, HBC, AD, Conference Commissioner and it is not an easy issue to handle, but the visiting team and the officials should be treated with respect.

I knew Vern Mummert pretty well when he was the AD at Wabash; he was on the Central Region Tennis Committee of which I was the chair. In those days, he was a really good guy and very good administrator. It's hard to believe that he changed in the interim.

I go back to my last post; Blackburn had a fine athletic program when Joe Ramsay was the AD/HBC but he got into it with the Provost and was fired. Too bad because they would not be having these problems if he were still there. 

WUH, who is usually right on the mark with his Posts, painted a slightly inaccurate picture of who Washington University played back in the day. WU did play all of the rinky-dink teams that he listed due to WW2 but in the years between 1946 and 1959 under Blair Gullion they played a Who's Who of college basketball.

Actually Coach Gullion and Chancellor Arthur Holly Compton started the "no athletic scholarships" program that is now embraced by over 400 D3 schools plus the Ivy League. The only difference is that WU took a bunch of local kids and played Kentucky, Iowa, Louisville, San Francisco ('55 and '56 NCAA champions), Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Loyola of Chicago ('63 NCAA champions), Arizona, and Texas Western (now UTEP and '66 NCAA champion) etc. pretty even and occasionally defeated them. Prior to that WU was in the Missouri Valley Conference and regularly played Missouri, and the other teams in that conference. One of the best players was Des Lee, grandfather of NBA All-Star David Lee, and someone who has given hundreds of millions of dollars to WU, UMSL, and other local and regional schools. The book WUH referred to makes interesting reading and is available on WU's website.

Now they are a D3 juggernaut who will never go anywhere except where they are now. If they make any move, it will be to D1. They have smarter administrators than Maryville.

Here are some comments from 725 miles away, but from one still who cares about the SLIAC, about some recent posts:

1) JV teams are absolutely essential in developing players. The reason a lot of D1 schools do not have them now is because of the "one and done" rule, for financial reasons, and because today's spoiled high school players do not want to play "JV ball", even if they have full scholarships. Most D3 schools, like Washington University, have them and are successful from year to year. I played JV Ball as a sophomore and junior and started every game but two on a D1 team as a senior. It's also a good training ground for coaches who want to move up because they learn in a hurry that there is a difference between making a "suggestion" and making a "decision".

2) Blackburn had a terrific athletic program when Joe Ramsay was the AD/HBC. But he got sideways with the Provost over Football, the President had to choose between him and the Provost, and she chose the Provost. I pushed really hard from her to be on the NCAA President's Council but that was apparently a wasted effort as she did not learn what a good thing she had (Joe) at Blackburn.

3) I agree completely with Denny's post about his Dad. Like all of us, he had his faults, but he was a fine man and a fine coach.

Denny, I'm happy you are getting along OK. Continued speedy recovery to you, and give my best to your Mom.

John Jones and Henry Shannon were really good players at Maryville. We played them in the 1997-98 season when I was the head coach at UMSL and handled Maryville pretty easily, but Jones had 27 points and Shannon 17. Both of them could have played at the D2 level as starters on weak teams (UMSL that year), or important bench players on strong teams.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all; I don't post very often but read the page every week, more often than that during the hoops season, to keep with the SLIAC.

The Miller story illustrates one of the beauties of D2 and D3 basketball; the players don't have the 5 year rule to contend with. Often it takes a kid some time to grow up, or to find his place.

When I was coaching at UMSL we recruited a very good player in 1983, Clarence Ward, from Columbus, OH. He was just 17 and only played one year, but long enough to lose his airplane ticket on our trip to South Carolina and UNC-Charlotte. He bounced around after that, was a JUCO all-American, played at the University of Idaho, and had one semester of eligibility left when we re-recruited him from Columbus where he was working. He played great the second semester of that season (1990-91) coming off the bench averaging in double figures, and helped us to a 22-6 record. He graduated nine years after he started and has had a very successful career in the Hazelwood School System.

Miller appears to be headed in the same direction.

Two things are on my mind this afternoon relating to the NCAA Tournament.

1) I hope Webster goes anywhere but Washington University. I played there, coached there, and they have a terrific facility so I have a lot of good feelings for WU, but the Webster kids deserve a chance to have a real NCAA Tournament experience, not go down the street a few miles to play someone they have already played.

2) The many acronyms, that even Hopefan doesn't fully understand, are used because the selection committees don't have the guts to look at teams' resumes and decide which ones are the best. I understand that the Committee doesn't want to spend hours on the telephone to justify its choices but these Committees are made up of people who presumably know basketball. This is coming from basically a 19th Century guy, but one who was on the NCAA Division III Tennis National Committee for four years and we never used anything except our own feelings about which teams, and players, were the best.

Denny - NO!

The simple solution, which you and others have pointed out, is to put another three game week on the schedule and leave the Tuesday of Tournament Week open for a playoff between the two teams tied for fourth, if indeed there are. The playoff would not be held if one team had swept both games but otherwise it would, on a neutral site.

The SLIAC is already playing a couple of three game weeks and it would be easy to add another. The "good old days" of Wednesday-Saturday games is gone forever due to travel, religious, and calendar concerns. 

Washington University, and I suppose everyone in the UAA, plays the Men's game second on Friday and first on Sunday. The SLIAC tried that for a year or two but there was a howl from most of the Women's coaches about that because they played to pretty empty gyms if they were playing the second game, and it was embarrassing.

As someone has already pointed out, the 1:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m start times are so that the teams that play on Friday (Men one year, Women one year) have a little more rest time between games. The 1:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m start times are also so that if the Tournament is held at two sites, and one school has both teams playing, its fans could attend both games. It's the same philosophy and system that has been in place since the Post Season Tournaments were brought back. This year's weather made it prudent to change the start times but I have no idea why the 1:00 p.m and 7:00 p.m. times weren't publicized early on. They should have been.

There are at least five good reasons why the SLIAC does not let everybody in the Post Season Tournament:

1) It makes the regular season relevant and as a veteran of the fight to get the Post Season Tournament reinstated, I can tell you that this is really important.

2) It means fewer missed classes.

3) It is a financial loser, although playing the Tournament at Spalding or Iowa Wesleyan are probably also financial losers.

4) In the current format the games should be competitive, not the one versus eight or two versus seven slaughters you generally have if everyone gets in.

5) Sometimes a team, like Fontbonne, gets hot at the end of the season but why should they get rewarded for playing poorly most of the year and then getting hot at the end.

Doug Faulkner is one of the nicest guys in D3 athletics but he could be tough when the situation called for toughness. He built a solid program at Greenville, has, or had, the best office in the SLIAC, and made a legion of friends everywhere.

Ron Zetcher was a terrific pitcher at Washington University. In those days WU and SLU would play once a year, at the old Sportsmans Park on North Grand where the Cardinals played for decades, and Zetch threw a nine inning no-hitter at SLU in 1960. He was also a very good basketball referee who worked a bunch of D1 NCAA Tournament games and was a fine Supervisor of Basketball Officials in both the SLIAC and D2 MIAA.

Congratulations to Hopefan.

As he'll find out, being retired is a pretty good way of life, especially if you play golf.

I wonder if Mrs. Hopefan is going to retire too. She is a pretty special lady and Hopefan definitely overachieved.

Hopefan is absolutely right; at the D3 level you build a program with mostly four year players with maybe an occasional JC player or transfer mixed in. If that means taking your lumps while the freshmen grow up, so be it.

And he didn't even mention the Lobdells. Why are we surprised that Eureka failed this season when they would take a chance on two players with their checkered pasts. It's one thing to give someone a second chance, but a third or fourth seems like a little too much.

Eureka is a neat town and the school has a terrific little gym. The Women's team is going great. I hope that the Men get it right next year.

I've been hesitant about commenting on games since I have only seen 6 in 7 seasons, but from 750 miles away, the Westminster-Fontbonne stats stick out like a sore thumb. The Westminster reserves were 12 for 17, including 3 for 6 from behind the line, while the Fontbonne reserves were 7 for 21, and 1 for 13 behind the arc.

Which leads me to a thought that I have had for fifteen years, which includes seeing more than 100 SLIAC games in person from 2001-2007. Too many D3 coaches, who are very good by the way, use too many players. Obviously Coach Mitchell last night is an exception to that, but for the most part that is my opinion.

I know the game has changed a lot since John Wooden used 6 or 7 players, when it counted, while winning 10 NCAA Division I Championships in 12 years in the mid '60s to mid '70s, but it seems to me that D3 coaches, and maybe through all three divisions, are trying to use too many.

You could probably make a case that D3 players are paying their own way and therefore it is important to have them happy, but I would guess that most would rather play 5 minutes on an 18-6 team that 15 on a 14-10 team.     

Denny is absolutely right. You have to earn the right to yell at another player and Doehauer has not, especially in a voice loud enough to be heard in the stands.

This comment comes from someone who was a D2 head coach for nearly 900 games. He would have had a seat right next to me after saying that.

Maybe that sort of thing is one of Fontbonne's problems.