After one of the best seasons in program history, McMurry will be in search of its next head coach. Drew Long has accepted the head coaching role at Houston Christian, a D1 program in the Southland Conference. Congratulations to him on the opportunity!

https://hcuhuskies.com/news/2025/4/2/womens-basketball-wbb-hcu-hires-drew-long-as-head-womens-basketball-coach.aspx

A few names I've seen in the portal recently:

Matthew Puodziukaitis, Saint Vincent (3 years)
Carter Reese, Ohio Northern (2 years)
Antonio Redding Jr., Delaware Valley (1 year)

Very excited about the 8-team tournament we'll have at Trinity (TX) this coming season in December! Trinity's first year in the SAA will coincide with the expansion of the annual Leslie Robinson Classic in San Antonio on Dec. 20-21, featuring 4 teams that won in the 2025 NCAA Tournament, including 2 Sweet 16 teams. Definitely some traditional powers in attendance as well. Mark your calendars now!

Saint John's (MN)
UW-Stevens Point
Marietta
Mary Washington
Hardin-Simmons
St. Thomas (TX)
Schreiner
Trinity (TX)

Pretty impressive career for Haley at Del Val. Will leave as the program's third-leading scorer in career points, No. 2 in career field goals, and obviously the all-time leader in steals. 19-point, 16-rebound double-double on Senior Day as well!

Speaking from the perspective of a Top 25 voter, this week was interesting. Not a ton of losses through the ranked teams (and all 3 teams that lost likely won't drop much, if at all), but teams like Elizabethtown and Ohio Wesleyan will more than likely jump up a couple spots because of impressive wins. What stood out to me was how many teams in the RV category lost. Bates, La Crosse, and Mass Dartmouth especially. I'll definitely be looking to move Colorado College back into my ballot this week.

ASC Tournament might be down to 5 teams, but there's at least 3 truly capable of winning it in Marshall later this week. LeTourneau and Howard Payne meet in a quarterfinal on Tuesday, with the winner getting ETBU in a semifinal on Friday. UMHB and Hardin-Simmons will end up playing for the second time in 8 days (just like last year) in Friday's semifinal. Championship game will be on Saturday at 6 pm CT.

UMHB has an outside shot at an at-large, while HSU is essentially Pool A or bust at this point. ETBU is a tournament lock, and is in line to host the first weekend of the tournament, in part due to geography. So we'll see how it plays out. Most likely chance for the ASC to get 2 teams in is either HSU or UMHB wins the AQ and ETBU takes an at-large.

SCAC WBB Tournament Seeding is offical:

Gold Division

#1 McMurry
#2 Texas Lutheran
#3 Trinity

Blue Division

#1 Colorado College
#2 St. Thomas (TX)
#3 Ozarks

Ozarks/TLU and Trinity/St. Thomas are the two quarterfinals on Friday. Winner of Ozarks/TLU gets CC, and winner of UST/Trinity gets McMurry. Championship game is set for noon CT on Sunday from Dallas.

Quote from: Ralph Turner on February 20, 2025, 03:32:41 PMSo glad to see the return of Women's basketball at McMurry.
They are currently C13!

Yes, McMurry is rolling. Such an incredible turnaround and in such a short span of time. Emily Holland's freshman year, they went 3-20. They're 20-4 this year in her senior year, and essentially a lock for the NCAA Tournament, which I believe will be their first appearance since '08. 

I wouldn't call it being "content". If we're being honest, in this college sports landscape, ETBU's focus on baseball and softball makes sense. Not everybody can be good at everything. When you're playing in a league with the likes of HSU and UMHB, it's smart to not try to compete with football spending at those other institutions, and instead shift more of your funding towards the sports that aren't being funded as heavily at other institutions in the league.

Not saying "don't spend money on football", but if you have the choice to put more into football or upgrade baseball/softball facilities/non-conference budget, take the second option. Ultimately, that's how you build an athletic department that can be successful long-term and especially, if you move up to D2. Balancing the spending across several sports leads to longevity. The intentionality of ETBU to spend money on softball produced the national title and the opportunity to host the D3 Softball Championships each of the last two years. All this to say, I totally get wanting to be nationally known in football. But in D3, where every sport is non-revenue, I think Ryan Erwin is making a lot of smart moves to keep ETBU athletically relevant regardless of where ETBU ends up in the immediate future.

Big-time win for Mary Hardin-Baylor last night, who beat St. Thomas (TX), 78-53, in Belton. Maurice Pinnock came off the bench with 32 points, and was 7-of-7 from 3-point range. As a team, UMHB was 12-of-18 from behind the arc. That's impressive. Cru really pulled away in a 14-0 run late in the second half, but led for about 95% of the game.

UMHB, now 5-1, has Concordia (TX) Thursday and goes to McMurry on Saturday. We'll see if they can continue this momentum.

Quote from: SpartanHouse4 on November 20, 2024, 12:02:53 PM

Quote from: Crubill on November 17, 2024, 08:22:30 AMIf UMHB truly reached out to everyone to schedule a game and only 1 team accepted, nobody has room to complain. Any bubble team that thinks they have a better team than UMHB was given an invite to prove it on the field.

They backed out of an agreement with Aurora University and I know Aurora would embrace getting them back on the schedule.

Interesting. That would be huge if it happened. At what point did they back out of the previous agreement?

Quote from: tigerguy on November 16, 2024, 08:05:55 PM

Quote from: Pat Coleman on November 15, 2024, 10:09:31 AMLogan has the chances at 12.9%.

Curious what upsets happened that allowed UMHB to beat the odds.

The big ones were Marietta losing to John Carroll and UW-Oshkosh losing to UW-River Falls. Wabash losing to DePauw also played a factor. However, none of those three that lost were the favorites (according to Logan's projections) in their respective games, so not upsets. But those three were ahead of UMHB heading into today, and ended up outside the Top 12 with their losses, creating the opportunity for UMHB to move up. Without at least two of those happening, UMHB probably would've ended up on the outside looking in.

Yeah, really strong offensive day from IWU. If they can put up 86 on a solid D1 mid-major, they are capable of competing with and outscoring most teams on their schedule. Powers had 20, Huber and Bardic each had 19, and Palmer had 13. Only turned it over 9 times, compared to ISU's 19.

Exactly. And it may not seem like much, but if TLU can beat both Centenary and Southwestern, it would allow the Bulldogs to drop both wins against Lyon (the lowest ranked team they have played this season), thus improving their NPI by a small amount. When it comes down to the final spot or two for Pool C, that slight improvement could make a significant difference.

New D3football.com Top 25 is out. UMHB and HSU each move up one spot, with The Cru now No. 13 and HSU now No. 6. Without a doubt, the "Game of the Week" will be in Belton next Saturday.