MBB: American Rivers Conference

[doolittledog]

Saying goodbye to the senior classes in the conference. 

This is how the senior classes did in conference play over their time...

School - record - titles - tourney titles
Buena Vista : 41-17  2-1
Dubuque : 40-18  0-2
Coe : 33-25  1-0
Luther : 33-25  1-0
Central : 32-26  1-1
Wartburg : 26-32  0-0
Loras  : 20-38  0-0
Simpson : 14-44  0-0

[5 Words or Less]

Fun NBA draft prank here

[doolittledog]

NCAA attendance stats are out.

http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/stats/m_basketball_RB/Reports/attend/2015.pdf

Dubuque was 10th at 1,070
Buena Vista was 15th at 952

The IIAC was 5th at a 603 average

Going back to the late 80's and early 90's you would often see sell outs around the conference for basketball.  Feels kind of strange to see attendance around 50% or more lower than 25 years ago. 

[Dutch Calvinist Reformer]

Nebraska Wesleyan Bombshell ... doesn't sound like they gave the GPAC any heads-up that they were looking to switch to the IIAC:

http://www.gpacsports.com/article/3374.php#.Va1RGPlViko

GPAC STATEMENT ON NEBRASKA WESLEYAN'S MEMBERSHIP ANNOUNCEMENT
GPAC - Mon, Jul. 20, 2015 at 2:10 PM
The Great Plains Athletic Conference (GPAC) was informed on Monday (July 20) of a 2pm press conference today where Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, Nebraska, announced that they have accepted membership in the Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (IIAC), an affiliated conference of NCAA Division III.  Their membership will begin in 2016-17.

"We were informed by the NWU administration of this decision to change conference affiliation to the Iowa Conference at 9:30am on Monday and prior to that time had no knowledge of their intentions to depart the GPAC," said GPAC Commissioner Corey Westra in a statement on Monday.

"The GPAC member institutions will move forward as leaders in the NAIA and will continue to work diligently, just as we have since our inception in 2000, to offer the best athletic and academic offerings to our more than 5,000 student-athletes," added Westra.  "We are a strong conference and have a great group of institutions that will work together as we continue to offer character driven intercollegiate athletics in the NAIA."

[Pat Coleman]

They should read Twitter.

[hopefan]

Hooray!!!!... I've always been impressed with Nebraska Wesleyan's performance in D3hoops... Even more so when I saw them in person when they played at Webster.... a great add... would love to see a couple of other NAIA midwest schools make the same move....whether they went to Iowa conf, MWC, or SLIAC...

[y_jack_lok]

Hooray!!!!... I've always been impressed with Nebraska Wesleyan's performance in D3hoops... Even more so when I saw them in person when they played at Webster.... a great add... would love to see a couple of other NAIA midwest schools make the same move....whether they went to Iowa conf, MWC, or SLIAC...

When the NWU women played at Webster in Nov 2013 I talked to an NWU parent who said the school was evaluating where it's athletic program would best fit in and one of the considerations was whether or not they felt they could continue to offer athletic scholarships if they stayed with the NAIA. Looks like they opted not to do the necessary work to raise the money to continue offering scholarships. I agree with hopefan that this is a good fit for D3 and hopefully for the IIAC.

[doolittledog]

Hooray!!!!... I've always been impressed with Nebraska Wesleyan's performance in D3hoops... Even more so when I saw them in person when they played at Webster.... a great add... would love to see a couple of other NAIA midwest schools make the same move....whether they went to Iowa conf, MWC, or SLIAC...

When the NWU women played at Webster in Nov 2013 I talked to an NWU parent who said the school was evaluating where it's athletic program would best fit in and one of the considerations was whether or not they felt they could continue to offer athletic scholarships if they stayed with the NAIA. Looks like they opted not to do the necessary work to raise the money to continue offering scholarships. I agree with hopefan that this is a good fit for D3 and hopefully for the IIAC.

No fair...when I lived in Webster from '68-'82 Webster "College" did not have sports 

[5 Words or Less]

NWU's NAIA affiliation:

• Football
• Baseball
• Softball
• Tennis

NWU's NCAA affiliation:

• Track & Field
• Volleyball
• Soccer
• Basketball
• Swimming
• Wrestling (begins 2016)

[Gregory Sager]

Hooray!!!!... I've always been impressed with Nebraska Wesleyan's performance in D3hoops...

It's been a while, though. NebWes hasn't appeared in an D3 tourney since 2001, and last season's 15-11 campaign was the best that the Prairie Wolves have posted since that 2000-01 season when they went 18-8.

Even more so when I saw them in person when they played at Webster.... a great add... would love to see a couple of other NAIA midwest schools make the same move....whether they went to Iowa conf, MWC, or SLIAC...

The big difference -- and it can't be overstated -- is that NWU is already an NCAA D3 member. As a dual NCAA/NAIA affiliate, NebWes won't have to go through the D3 application process and the four-year provisional pipeline. As long as there are no scholarship players on the rosters in question, the Prairie Wolves are immediately eligible for D3 tournament play in every sport; all the athletic department has to do is declare for D3 tournament eligibility at the beginning of the season (and then either achieve the qualification standards in terms of scheduling D3 opponents during the regular season or else apply for a waiver from the NCAA). All of the other NAIA schools, of course, would have to go through the application rigmarole and the four-year provisional period in order to do what NebWes can do with the snap of a finger.

What I'm not clear on, however, because it hasn't been spelled out by either the press releases or the media, is the status of the sports in which NWU has previously declared for NAIA vis-a-vis scholarship athletes. One of the purposes of a provisional period in terms of new member institutions transitioning to D3 is to flush scholarship athletes out of the system while allowing the school to honor already-promised scholarship commitments. But NWU is not a new member institution; it's been affiliated with D3 in good standing ever since the division was created by the NCAA in 1973. Since Nebraska Wesleyan is sui generis with regard to being a dual NCAA/NAIA affiliate that is moving its NAIA sports in which it offers scholies to NCAA D3 and dropping those scholies, what sort of rules cover the presence of former scholarship Prairie Wolves athletes who give up those scholies and stick with the program after the move? Are there any rules that cover that?

NWU's NAIA affiliation:

• Football
• Baseball
• Softball
• Tennis

NWU's NCAA affiliation:

• Track & Field
• Volleyball
• Soccer
• Basketball
• Swimming
• Wrestling (begins 2016)

Technically speaking, those are declarations, rather than affiliations, since an affiliation is an institutional function rather than a sport-by-sport function, and Nebraska Wesleyan is a dual-affiliation school (and will remain one until next July, when it jettisons its NAIA affiliation). It may sound like hairsplitting, but it's a distinction with a difference. As I said to hopefan, the fact that NWU is already affiliated with NCAA D3 affects NWU's ability to transition to D3 quickly in the sports in which it currently competes in NAIA.

[hopefan]

Hooray!!!!... I've always been impressed with Nebraska Wesleyan's performance in D3hoops...

It's been a while, though. NebWes hasn't appeared in an D3 tourney since 2001, and last season's 15-11 campaign was the best that the Prairie Wolves have posted since that 2000-01 season when they went 18-8.

Ahhh.... BUT.... Nebraska Wesleyan is 60-38 vs D3 in that time span, albeit against more weak teams than strong.... still, I perceive that they would be very competitive in the mid to low level midwest conferences (MWC, SLIAC, IIAC, UMAC, Nathcon)... maybe not so vs MIAC or CCIW or WIAC

[Pat Coleman]

Schools that were dual members of the NAIA and Division III always have had to follow the more restrictive rule set. In the case of scholarships, that was obviously our rules, so NWU should not have any scholarship athletes.

[sac]

Greg I think Nebraska Wesleyan was a non-scholarship offering NAIA member, otherwise they couldn't hold dual D3 membership.

In fact their scholarship page says so......https://www.nebrwesleyan.edu/scholarships-and-financial-aid/scholarships

Athletic Scholarships at NWU
Nebraska Wesleyan is affiliated with both the NAIA and the NCAA Division III, the only school in the nation with dual affiliation. Since there are no NCAA Division III schools within three hours of Lincoln (and only a handful within six hours), NAIA membership helps us manage our travel budget and missed class time. However, we follow the NCAA Division III philosophy of not awarding athletic scholarships, consistent with the idea that student-athletes are not treated differently from the other members of the student body.


Pat beat me by like 1 minute.

[Pat Coleman]

Sorry!

[Gregory Sager]

Schools that were dual members of the NAIA and Division III always have had to follow the more restrictive rule set. In the case of scholarships, that was obviously our rules, so NWU should not have any scholarship athletes.

Greg I think Nebraska Wesleyan was a non-scholarship offering NAIA member, otherwise they couldn't hold dual D3 membership.

In fact their scholarship page says so......https://www.nebrwesleyan.edu/scholarships-and-financial-aid/scholarships

Athletic Scholarships at NWU
Nebraska Wesleyan is affiliated with both the NAIA and the NCAA Division III, the only school in the nation with dual affiliation. Since there are no NCAA Division III schools within three hours of Lincoln (and only a handful within six hours), NAIA membership helps us manage our travel budget and missed class time. However, we follow the NCAA Division III philosophy of not awarding athletic scholarships, consistent with the idea that student-athletes are not treated differently from the other members of the student body.


Pat beat me by like 1 minute.

Thanks for that link, sac, and it does make sense. What Pat said about dual members having to abide by D3's more restrictive rules is in keeping with what I know about Carroll and Illinois Wesleyan when they were dual affiliates that chose to compete in NAIA in the late '70s (and, in IWU's case, into the early '80s).

The reason why I asked the question is because of this post:

When the NWU women played at Webster in Nov 2013 I talked to an NWU parent who said the school was evaluating where it's athletic program would best fit in and one of the considerations was whether or not they felt they could continue to offer athletic scholarships if they stayed with the NAIA. Looks like they opted not to do the necessary work to raise the money to continue offering scholarships. I agree with hopefan that this is a good fit for D3 and hopefully for the IIAC.

This made me think that the old strictures that kept dual members from offering scholarships back during the '70s and early '80s might no longer be in place, as long as any specific program that declared for D3 maintained D3's non-scholarship rules. Now, it's certainly possible that the NWU parent to whom y_jack spoke may not have known what he or she was talking about with regard to NWU offering scholies for certain sports. For one thing, I've had any number of conversations with parents in the stands over the years who are not clued in as to how their kid's school operates. For another, although NWU women's basketball didn't offer scholarships, it's certainly plausible that the parent of a NWU women's basketball player could be under the misapprehension that Prairie Wolves athletes in other sports got scholarship money.

Nevertheless, since it's been 30 years since this was relevant to a CCIW fan -- and because it's a really obscure issue to begin with -- I figured that it was entirely possible that the rules had changed, and that y_jack's conversation partner might not have been full of hooey. But, since it's right there in black and white on the NWU website, which means that said NWU women's basketball parent is full of hooey, I'll go back to my original point that it's a completely different matter to talk about Nebraska Wesleyan joining the IIAC (or the SLIAC, or the UMAC, etc.) than it is to talk about Hastings or Doane or Briar Cliff or Dordt joining the IIAC.

Hooray!!!!... I've always been impressed with Nebraska Wesleyan's performance in D3hoops...

It's been a while, though. NebWes hasn't appeared in an D3 tourney since 2001, and last season's 15-11 campaign was the best that the Prairie Wolves have posted since that 2000-01 season when they went 18-8.

Ahhh.... BUT.... Nebraska Wesleyan is 60-38 vs D3 in that time span, albeit against more weak teams than strong....

Boy, is that putting it mildly. The vast majority of those wins were piled up against the likes of Dallas, Austin, UC-Santa Cruz, Colorado College, etc. Over the course of the 14 seasons in question, there wasn't a single NWU win over a team that finished the season in question with a winning record that also happened to be a member of a mid-level or upper-level D3 league. The closest the Prairie Wolves came was a win in 2007-08 over a Concordia-Moorhead team that finished 13-13. (I'm actually much more impressed by a three-point overtime loss by NWU to Whitworth two seasons before that.)

Then again, the Prairie Wolves didn't play many teams that fit any reasonable D3 criteria for being judged average-to-good. As we all know, Nebraska Wesleyan is a legitimate geographical orphan by D3 standards (in fact, I'm surprised that more IIAC types aren't already griping about the distances that their teams and fans are going to have to travel to get to Lincoln and back). Add to that the fact that the Prairie Wolves play in a very large league (the GPAC) that thus requires a lot of conference games, and it's no wonder that NWU has always had to take potluck when it comes to scheduling D3 opponents.

But ... yeah. That 60-38 record does not impress me much at all.

still, I perceive that they would be very competitive in the mid to low level midwest conferences (MWC, SLIAC, IIAC, UMAC, Nathcon)... maybe not so vs MIAC or CCIW or WIAC

Probably true, although the IIAC is really the only league that matters as far as NWU's competitiveness is concerned. And the interesting thing about that is that the Prairie Wolves are going to be a completely unknown quantity as far as the IIAC is concerned, because I've gotta believe that there is little or no recruiting overlap. The student-athletes that NWU doesn't get from Nebraska it gets from Colorado, whereas the current IIAC schools focus upon Iowa kids (naturally) and, to a lesser degree, Illinois kids.