WBB: Michigan Intercollegiate Athletics Association

[Ralph Turner]

I agree!

It was fun to see a great Hope team in Brownwood!

[golfniz1]

I was at the Tournament this weekend in Holland Michigan and I gotta tell you Hope fans that it was the one of the best times of my life.  The people of Holland were very kind and hospitable. Hope you put on a very good tournament be very proud for it was grrrrrrreat!  All of you are very correct Hope and HPU should have been playing for the title in Holland, but thanks to some suspect bracketing they did not.  Even if they would have played in the championship at Holland I still believe HPU would have come out on top, but we will never know.  It would have been an EPIC game. Once again thank you Holland Michigan and Hope College for a very unforgettable  weekend of Womens College Basketball and fun.

[twoblindrefs]

I agree, great weekend in Holland...even with the snow storm....Hope was a great host, the facility is one of the best D3 facilities I have ever seen.

Congrats to Howard Payne.

[Rick Akins]

hwbb:

I agree 100%.  The real championship was now obviously last Saturday night (3/15/08) in Brownwood, Texas.  Of course, I am thrilled that our HPU girls "finished it" in such an outstanding way in Holland.  Of course, selfishly I wanted us to be national champs--and we are!!--but I also want the best team to win with no flukes and no questions.  I don't think there were many, if any, questions in Holland about that.  See my post on the top 25 multi region board for my take on the sectional.  No doubt, that was the game of the year!

As far as Holland and Hope, my wife and I loved it!  Considering the incredible disappointment of the weekend before, I felt everyone was more than gracious to us overall.  I love your town, too.  Downtown was amazing and the snow was nice too. We got there Thursday for the banquet, which was very nicely done I might add, and  all the snow was fun for us.  Maybe not quite so neat for many of the locals we talked to who seemed about ready for spring!  Also not so great for our president emeritus and  6 other alums whose plane  was diverted to Green Bay and who then drove 500+ miles across the upper peninsula to get to Holland at midnight Friday and missed the first game.  They were all there for the finals though!

Thanks again.  DeVos was a stunning venue and Hope College, Holland, Michigan, and yes, even the NCAA, made  the Final Four as special as it should be.

[Sand Man]

Thank you Hope College and Holland.  You were outstanding hosts.  I met many folks, and enjoyed visiting with all of them.  You helped make a memorable weekend into an unforgetable one!

[Pat Coleman]

Final women's Top 25 posted.
http://www.d3hoops.com/top25/

[Scratch]

A big thank you to the folks at Hope.  The whole family had a great time at the championship games, outstanding apple turnovers, an offer to use cafeteria trays to go sledding, and liberal smiles all around.  Thanks a ton for a memorable weekend!

[WWWRHH]

Although the way the season ended still stings, I guess it is time to move on.

It will be hard to adjust to the loss of Jordan, Julie, Lindsay and Stacy.  They have contributed so much to the team's success over the last four years.  It will be an adjustment watching games without these outstanding young women representing the Dutch.

Losing four starters from a team that came within a couple of minutes and a couple of breaks of going to the final four would be devastating to most programs.  Fortunately, Hope is not most programs and will not have to go through a long rebuilding process.

I was finally able to overcome the pain and review the season ending stats.

The Dutch return:

3 of the top 5 scorers and 7 of the top 10,

The top two, and 3 of the top 4, rebounders,

4 of the top 5 shot blockers, and

The top two, and 3 of the top 5, free throws taken (and made).

Coach Morehouse can choose a starting five from Green, Snikkers, Knox, O'Hare, Kopke and Cowen and still have six players with real varsity playing time to draw on - including DeKuiper, Bruinsma and Geers.

With the development of some of the younger players and a couple of good recruits next year should be fun.

I am going out on a limb and predicting  a top 10 pre-season rank, another conference championship and a deep playoff run  .

[hope1]

yes they will miss the seniors they have couple of other good players coming up

[pointlem]

Here, for the record, is an article in Holland, Michigan's paper that winsomely expresses what many folks here were thinking (albeit mindful that the well-meaning NCAA selection committee volunteers are probably always destined to leave some folks unhappy).

NCAA needs to change way it determines tournament schedule

By JEFFREY JAPINGA

The powers that be in the NCAA got to experience this past weekend what we've known all along -- that the Division III women's basketball Final Four at DeVos Fieldhouse would be a first-class event.

And why wouldn't it be? Hope College, its host, and the college's athletic department, consistently do things well and do things the right way. That's in part why Hope basketball has developed such a strong and loyal following, and why this Final Four sold more advance tickets than any other in D-III women's basketball tournament in history.

But if people know a good thing when they see it -- and hats off to Hope and its volunteers for a job well done -- they also know when something isn't right. That's why all around DeVos last weekend, spectators of all stripes kept asking the same question: Who calls a foul on the people who created the tournament?
Much about the NCAA and its tournament is a mystery. But last weekend, this much was clear. All season long, three D-III women's basketball teams had cleared every single hurdle their schedule had set in front of them during the regular season. Two of those teams -- Hope College and Howard Payne University -- were the clear juggernauts, both undefeated, often winning by wide margins, the consensus top two teams in the nation. And yet, when the tournament draw was released, one of those teams got home court, the other didn't. And while other teams could skate toward the Final Four without any top-12 competition, the two best teams would be forced to play each other in a sectional round. How could this be?

The answer, it appears, is both simple and complicated. Most simply explained, the NCAA doesn't care about rankings, consensus or common sense. Instead, it uses its own system to evaluate the strength of teams, one that takes a team's overall record, then discounts that record if the other schools that team has played -- and the teams those teams have played -- haven't won enough games. In the NCAA's system, Hope was nowhere close to a top team; in fact, it was only the third-best in just our small region of the country, behind a team that had lost three times.

How can that be? Because, in the logic of the NCAA, if other schools in Hope's league, the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association, don't win enough non-league games, then Hope's wins must not mean as much either.

The NCAA says its system is the best way to compare teams in a division where teams don't -- and shouldn't -- play national schedules. Does it work? This year, that system produced a tournament in which nine of the top-12 rated teams (according to Massey, the nationally-respected computer poll) ended up in the same half of the tournament draw. Where two teams, Hope and Wisconsin-Whitewater, each had to play three top-12 teams for the chance to reach the Final Four, while the other three teams in the Final Four played only one top-12 team. Combined. A tournament where one of the consensus best two teams in the nation was guaranteed not to make the Final Four.

Worst of all, this system produces a tournament that, intentionally or not, plays favorites with certain schools, handing out preferential draws and home-court advantage based not on records or rankings, but on flawed information and favorable geography. Consider: The senior class at Hope, with a record of 110-10 over four years and a national championship, never played a home tournament game -- the ultimate reward for strong play -- in their four years of basketball. By comparison, DePauw University, with nearly an identical record and NCAA tournament profile to Hope, played seven.

The Final Four was a first-class event this year, and it will be again next year when it returns to Holland. The real question is whether the NCAA has the will to find a new way forward that will make the tournament itself as classy as the institutions hosting it and the teams playing in it.

By insisting on using only its own system to the exclusion of all other input, the NCAA ensures that, for all the excitement this tournament generates every year, it is not and cannot be the fair test of the basketball ability they have promised to its member schools and players. And when that happens, it's the players, the very student-athletes the NCAA pledges to support, who end up the real losers.

Click here to return to story:
http://hollandsentinel.com/stories/032608/sports_20080326075.shtml

[airball1]

Pointlem:

Although you made some interesting points in your essay, some of your facts need to be verified. Like the one that the final four teams only faced one Top Twelve team combined (and I am assuming you mean HPU/Hope). If you look at Oglethorpe's road to the final four, you will see NO home games and a victory over #3 Thomas More on their home court and a victory over #10 Kean (who I think was a #3 pre-season) on their home court. Throw in a victory over #20 Wm. Smith and it's obvious which team took the hardest road without complaints. Oglethorpe did not show well in the Final Four and there has been much ado about lacking an inside game but they also showed they could win without an "inside game". It just didn't happen on the Final Four weekend.
One Fact you did get right: Hope College and the People of Holland, Michigan did an outstanding job putting on the event. A BIG THX from Hotlanta for your gracious Southern style hospitality.

[pointlem]

Thank you, airball1 . . . though I deserve no credit for either the article (which I didn't write, though I sympathized with) or the hospitality.  (Like so many Hope/Holland area fans I was down in Salem.  Events conspired to pull many of us away!  Likely more of us will be around to help with the hospitality in March, 2009.)

[Hwbb]

Pointlem:

Although you made some interesting points in your essay, some of your facts need to be verified. Like the one that the final four teams only faced one Top Twelve team combined (and I am assuming you mean HPU/Hope). If you look at Oglethorpe's road to the final four, you will see NO home games and a victory over #3 Thomas More on their home court and a victory over #10 Kean (who I think was a #3 pre-season) on their home court. Throw in a victory over #20 Wm. Smith and it's obvious which team took the hardest road without complaints. Oglethorpe did not show well in the Final Four and there has been much ado about lacking an inside game but they also showed they could win without an "inside game". It just didn't happen on the Final Four weekend.
One Fact you did get right: Hope College and the People of Holland, Michigan did an outstanding job putting on the event. A BIG THX from Hotlanta for your gracious Southern style hospitality.

Indeed, Oglethorpe's road was a difficult one...anytime you play four away from home in the tourney, it is tough! Kudos for their resiliance and skill (and nickname!). A second look again at the  Massey ratings, however--like them or not, it was the yardstick of the writer of the posted piece used--neither Thomas More (inexplicably, perhaps) nor Kean appeared in the top-12 at the time Oglethorpe played them. One could maintain, especially on this board, that d3hoops has a better handle on the teams and a more accurate rating. Could be. Or not. It perhaps proves the point of the article...that no single system, whether Massey or d3hoops or the NCAA's, should be used to determine the brackets.

[Pat Coleman]

Well, that's a fairly ridiculous yardstick to use if you're only going to use one ...

[Hwbb]

Well, that's a fairly ridiculous yardstick to use if you're only going to use one ...

Because?