MBB: St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

[hopefan]

Disturbing news spotted in the Missouri Valley Conference Tourney Preview writeup in STL Post Dispatch

"First year coach Walter McCarty recently dismissed grad transfer Shea Feehan from the team.  He was averaging 9.8 points and had 54 3 pointers."

Wonder what went wrong.....  Evansville is 4-12, 10-20 10th seed entering the tourney....

Per Evansville newspaper, failure to meet academic standards.... per coach's statement, he was given ample opportunity...

[Greek Tragedy]

That's too bad...

[hopefan]

That's too bad...

Yes it is. He played all but the final regular season game.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Disturbing news spotted in the Missouri Valley Conference Tourney Preview writeup in STL Post Dispatch

"First year coach Walter McCarty recently dismissed grad transfer Shea Feehan from the team.  He was averaging 9.8 points and had 54 3 pointers."

Wonder what went wrong.....  Evansville is 4-12, 10-20 10th seed entering the tourney....

Per Evansville newspaper, failure to meet academic standards.... per coach's statement, he was given ample opportunity...

You have to wonder if he really wanted that grad degree or if he just wanted to play basketball.

[WUPHF]

Or if he was burned out after starting at his third school and non-stop basketball.

[GU1999]

Congratulations to Micah Paulson on D3Hoops All Region 3rd team honors. 

https://www.d3hoops.com/awards/all-region/2018-19/central-men

[UWPSUPERFAN77]

Update needed: What is the reaction at WU for the past season of basketball? UWO had a great season with the interim coach! You guys had a relatively OK season with the former UWO coach!  Thank You! Enjoyed watching UWP play in your tournament on the computer! WU does a great job on their broadcasts!

[Greek Tragedy]

Update needed: What is the reaction at WU for the past season of basketball? UWO had a great season with the interim coach! You guys had a relatively OK season with the former UWO coach!  Thank You! Enjoyed watching UWP play in your tournament on the computer! WU does a great job on their broadcasts!

Wrong board. Wash U plays in the UAA.

[WUPHF]

Update needed: What is the reaction at WU for the past season of basketball? UWO had a great season with the interim coach! You guys had a relatively OK season with the former UWO coach!  Thank You! Enjoyed watching UWP play in your tournament on the computer! WU does a great job on their broadcasts!

Coach Juckem left a team that returned everybody but one player to join a team that returned only one player and had graduated one of the best classes in program history.  He clearly had talent to work with, but this was going to be a rebuilding season.  The team finished 17-8 and tied for second in the league.  Talented freshmen with more on the way next year.  No worries in St. Louis...

[Gregory Sager]

It's all just idle speculation at this point, but in the not-too-distant future we could be looking at a new member of D3 joining the SLIAC. In 2019-20 Lindenwood-Belleville will go through an exploratory school year in which both the school and D3 investigate the possibility of having LUB move from NAIA to NCAA D3.

LUB offers a lot of sports, and the SLIAC, which only sponsors seven men's and seven women's sports, can't meet all of LUB's needs in terms of providing a home for each Lynx program. But there are options for LUB to find an alternative home in a lot of those non-SLIAC sports; football, to cite the obvious example, could be a case in which LUB might follow the other SLIAC schools that have football (Greenville, Iowa Wesleyan, MacMurray, and Westminster) into the UMAC, giving the UMAC an even ten teams in that sport.

Of course, the main complaint (I suspect) would be that it would create an odd number for the SLIAC in that LUB would be the eleventh member. But it's a good insurance policy, in case a school folds (as Iowa Wesleyan very nearly did over the past couple of school years) or chooses to go elsewhere (Spalding, for example, might find a better geographic situation in another league at some point). If nothing else, having LUB in the league would cut down on a lot of travel for SLIAC teams, because it's so centrally located as far as the other members are concerned.

As I said, though, it's all idle speculation right now. Lindenwood-Belleville might choose not to pursue NCAA and D3 membership at the end of the exploratory year. That's happened in the past with some schools. D3 is not for everybody; for some schools, the NAIA is the right fit. But if LUB does choose to pursue membership in the NCAA and in D3, the SLIAC would be the school's logical conference destination.

[y_jack_lok]

^^^ Eureka has football, too.

The main Lindenwood campus in St. Charles, MO was NAIA until a few years ago and is now NCAA D2, so maybe LUB is following suit. But with all those sports it seems like the SLIAC might not be the best fit if they wind up in D3.

[Gregory Sager]

^^^ Eureka has football, too.

Yes, but Eureka opted for a different league, the NACC. The NACC has an even number of football programs (eight) and it is geographically compact, as all eight schools are within an hour and a half's drive from the Illinois-Wisconsin border. It lacks any far downstate members. The UMAC, which has nine members (and could thus use a tenth to avoid byes, which are a much more serious problem in football than they are in basketball), is already geographically disparate, and -- most importantly -- it already has two far downstate members in Greenville and MacMurray.

The main Lindenwood campus in St. Charles, MO was NAIA until a few years ago and is now NCAA D2, so maybe LUB is following suit. But with all those sports it seems like the SLIAC might not be the best fit if they wind up in D3.

There's no such thing as a "best fit" for LUB if it's looking to accommodate all 30 Lynx sports under one conference umbrella. Heck, D3 doesn't even offer championships in some of the sports in which LUB has varsity teams (men's and women's cheerleading, men's rugby, and women's stunt -- whatever that is). Other sports don't fit into the parameters of the multi-sports leagues that we're used to as basketball fans. Ice hockey, for example, exists within its own conference framework entirely for both men and women. Of the nine men's ice hockey circuits in D3, six are under the aegis of a league that exists in other sports (e.g., the MIAC, the WIAC, and the NESCAC), but three of the biggest and strongest D3 leagues in that sport only exist for men's ice hockey. This is even more pronounced in women's ice hockey, in which an even higher percentage of teams are members of leagues that are women's-ice-hockey-only organizations.

In other words, no matter where LUB ends up it's going to have to find homes for its teams on a sport-by-sport basis. This is true for LUB even now as an NAIA member; the Lynx are affiliated with several leagues for their various sports. But the SLIAC would be a logical fit for half of them, should LUB move to D3, for several reasons. Geography, and thus travel expenses, is the foremost. But for all of its vast athletics menu, it's not a school that is particularly strong in terms of actual performance (i.e., wins and losses), which means that the modest performance horizons of SLIAC athletics might be suitable in that regard as well. And the school has a size and an endowment that's fairly typical for SLIAC schools.

[WUPHF]

From everything I know about Lindenwood, this is interesting, but not surprising.  They are very entrepreneurial and the Belleville campus was conceived in part as a way to expand the Lindenwood athletics brand.

I had never heard of stunt before either, but it looks like the have an exciting Spring schedule competing against Concordia Michigan and then four competitions against Maryville.

By the way, I had no idea Pratt had athletics.  The website lists membership in the USCAA and lists practice times for various teams, but no more...

[WUPHF]

By the way, Fontbonne has new logos all around including a new, rather bold athletics logo.

[WUPHF]

Also, there is a midwest bowling conference starting according to the release.  I would not be surprised if that gets the attention of Fontbonne.  I believe they were considering bowling.