The Undefeated and the Winless

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Curse my huried pace.  Usually I check for unreported scores, but I was in a hurry this morning.  I'll fix it.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Northland beat Baptist Luthern as well, so I'm just going to repost.  I couldn't find the score of the ME-PI game.

Updated:

Undefeated ( 1 )

Lawrence (10-0)

Undefeated vs D3 only ( 2 )

Albion (13-1)
Occidental (11-1)

Winless vs D3 only ( 7 )

Ferrum (4-11)
Fontbonne (3-10)
Immaculata (1-12)
Maranatha Baptist (1-13)
Rutgers-Camden (1-13)
Thiel (2-12)
Maine-Presque Isle (1-12)*

Winless ( 6 )

Caltech (0-13)
Daniel Webster (0-10)
Goucher (0-13)
Oberlin (0-14)
Principia (0-11)
Green Mountain (0-11)*

*Denotes Provisional School

Just to add... this is one of the scariest things I have ever seen.

[John Gleich]

Were those mug shots...?

[hopefan]

good job Hoops  -  I assumed Northland vs Bethany Luth was automatic  -  not so

Also, the Maine Presque Isle page, which is new since I looked at it a month ago---- PRICELESS  ----  especially for what might be the worst team of close to 1000 NCAA teams.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

What's even better is that its still last year's team as far as I can tell.  The top of the page says 2004-2005 and the mugs don't match the group shot on the main men's basketball page.  Although we kid, we do love.  There's just not much you can do when you're a really small school nestled farther north than Quebec City and just rediculously far away from, well, everything.  Although, I'd bet money their Nordic Ski team is lights out.

I still can't find that score.  I wonder how Pat's been getting them?

Also, according to Massey, Principia is the worst team in DIII and by quite a bit.  Although that was only for games through the 8th, but I can't imagine too much has changed.  If you look at all colleges together, even Unity (the team Presque Isle beat up on by 54) is above like a dozen schools.

[hopefan]

Well, I'll see Principia in the next two weeks when they play Maryville....  in their defense, they had a good team last year, relatively speaking, so it's hard for me to imagine, even though we know that they took major hits to graduation, that they could be THAT bad, given a natural recruiting flow of kids from small Illinois schools (I picture the small town central Illinois kid shooting at a hoop on the barn)  ... they GOTTA be better than Presque Isle?

Dang, if we only had our 32 worst tourney at season's end, the one where it's one win and out....  it would be a classic.   Maybe someone with lots of imagination should do a fantasy tourney on these pages.....

[David Collinge]

It's approximately 3,350 driving miles from Presque Isle, ME to Pasadena, CA, if you take the shortcut through Canada.  I wonder if there are two D3 schools farther apart than Maine-Presque Isle and Caltech?  And yet, they seem to have so much in common! 

[Gregory Sager]

Just to add... this is one of the scariest things I have ever seen.

I started reading it, but my eyes glazed over when I got to the words "high-flying Canadian".  

Well, I'll see Principia in the next two weeks when they play Maryville....  in their defense, they had a good team last year, relatively speaking, so it's hard for me to imagine, even though we know that they took major hits to graduation, that they could be THAT bad, given a natural recruiting flow of kids from small Illinois schools (I picture the small town central Illinois kid shooting at a hoop on the barn)  ... they GOTTA be better than Presque Isle?

A lot of the teams that dwell in the two odious lists that this room compiles have built-in institutional peculiarities that make building a good basketball program a Sisyphean task. UMPI, for instance, is (as Hoops Fan said) a campus so remote from civilization that it takes a dogsled to get there in winter. Oberlin has a highly-pronounced and well-known "granola and Birkenstocks" campus culture that if anything is even further to the left than Cal-Berkeley's. It's quite possible that most prospects find that atmosphere to be off-putting, and although my contact with the school is limited I would imagine that it's equally possible that the Oberlin administration is not inclined to support athletics for similar reasons. Caltech has to climb what might be the ultimate Everest in terms of building a team in that the school is not only highly exclusive, it also doesn't have an admissions department -- a committee of tenured faculty evaluates all applications and decides who gets accepted into Caltech and who doesn't. Small wonder that Caltech coach Roy Dow only gets one or two players a year who had even tried out for their high school teams.

Principia is a Christian Science school, and I'm sure that the school's close affiliation with such a small and unusual sect plays a large role in their inability to recruit well.

[sac]

Is it true Maine-PI has a 6-10 Center?

Next tallest player is 6-3

Also does it just seem wrong that the Nordic Ski team season will last 2 weeks past Salem?

[Mr. Ypsi]

Also does it just seem wrong that the Nordic Ski team season will last 2 weeks past Salem?

In Presque Isle it lasts 2 weeks past the NBA finals!

[Gregory Sager]

The most charming thing about our Nordic Skiing friends in northeastern Maine is the verbal shorthand for the school. A friend of mine from my North Park student days now lives up by the Canadian border in even-more-remote New Sweden, Maine, and he tells me that the folks Down East refer to UMPI as "Umpy" (rhymes with "lumpy").

I think it's interesting how some schools that are known primarily by their acronyms have their names spelled out verbally -- UNLV is "you-en-el-vee", UIC is "you-eye-see" -- while others have them pronounced as whole words -- UMPI's one, and UTEP, which is in the news a lot at the moment because of the new movie Glory Road, is "you-tepp".

For some reason, when I was a North Park student the "in" thing for the Swedish students on campus was to acquire a UCLA shirt. I'm not completely certain why UCLA was so popular with Swedes, although I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that Los Angeles seems to be such a popular tourist destination for Europeans. Anyway, this was an endless source of amusement to us American-bred Parkers, because in their earnest ignorance the Swedes referred to UCLA as "ook-la" rather than "you-see-el-ay". To this day I can't look at the acronym for the home of the Bruins without hearing a voice with a Swedish accent in my head asking me where to find an "ook-la shirt".

I've always gotten a kick out of the fact that UWSP fans refer to their rivals in Oshkosh as "you-double-you-zero". 

[Mr. Ypsi]

What I find interesting about UCLA is that (uniquely, as far as I can come up with), while the school is you-see-el-ay, representatives of the school are nearly universally called you-clans!  (Or is that ewe-clans?! )

[Warren Thompson]

For some reason, when I was a North Park student the "in" thing for the Swedish students on campus was to acquire a UCLA shirt. I'm not completely certain why UCLA was so popular with Swedes ....

Greg: Perhaps it was that UCLA's colors approximate the Swedish national colors.

[Gregory Sager]

Greg: Perhaps it was that UCLA's colors approximate the Swedish national colors.

That thought occurred to me as well, but one of the peculiar things about most Swedes of my acquaintance is their anal-retentive attitude towards their national colors. UCLA's colors are sky blue and gold; Sweden's national colors (and NPU's colors, too, not coincidentally) are royal blue and gold.

I once heard a bunch of Swedes hector an Augustana student at a college retreat in Eau Claire, WI over the fact that Augustana, a school that like NPU was founded by Swedish immigrants, abandoned the proper colors of the motherland and instead adopted navy blue and gold as their school colors. No, I am not making this up, although it sounds too weird to be believed. I'm just glad that there weren't any Gustavus Adolphus students (black and gold) standing there at that moment.

(Although maybe it's not all that weird; perhaps there are plenty of Americans who would be bothered if they went overseas and saw the American national colors portrayed as red, white, and sky blue.)

I've developed some of that same attitude, as one of my (many) pet peeves about Wheaton is the fact that the North Park banner hanging in King Arena (CCIW schools all have the banners of the league's eight members hanging in their gyms) does not have the proper colors. Wheaton's NPU banner is navy blue and gold, like Augie's, rather than the proper royal blue and gold. I was just looking at it again on Saturday night, and it galled me enough to bring it to the attention of some of the North Park alumni with whom I was sitting.

Anal-retentiveness must be contagious. 

[David Collinge]

I think it's interesting how some schools that are known primarily by their acronyms have their names spelled out verbally -- UNLV is "you-en-el-vee", UIC is "you-eye-see" -- while others have them pronounced as whole words -- UMPI's one, and UTEP, which is in the news a lot at the moment because of the new movie Glory Road, is "you-tepp".

Some others are hybrids.  My niece introduced me to her friend yeserday, telling me that she went to a school that sounded like "See-sun."  Being a lawyer, I immediately thought she meant "Seizin," of course, and conjured up a right-wing California school dedicated to the study of absolute property rights.  But it turns out she meant "C-SUN," or California State University at Northridge.