MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[mr_b]

An updated North Park Athletics website has been launched.  Its format is more closely aligned to that of the revamped university website.

[petemcb]

.......and it is a big upgrade.  Congrats, NPU.

[markerickson]

I did not know the association in which Trinity competed.  They are NAIA-D1.  TIU sponsors four sports for men, and they had a total of 170 male student athletes last year - 28 on the bball team.  TIU allocated 1.65 million dollars to male student athletes last year.   http://ope.ed.gov/athletics

I'll attend the 12/3 contest to try to identify players who get paid to play ball at TIU. 

BTW:  TIU's female student athletes are the Lady Trojans, which is not as odious as the women at Western Illinois who are the Leathernecks.

[petemcb]

Mark, my understanding was that TIU was NAIA D-2, which, I believe, means they have the equivalent of 5 1/2 full scholarships to offer, as opposed to NAIA D-1, which I think allows 11 full time scholarships.  I'm not sure on the numbers, but I know there's a difference between D-1 and D-2.

Also, in my experience with NAIA, they take any money a kid would earn (academic scholarships, alumni scholarships, leadership awards, etc.) and combine that with some athletic money they offer you.  It then gets awarded as an athletic scholarship for the entire amount.  In other words, a kid might qualify for $5,000 academically, $500 as the child of an alum, $1,000 for "leadership, and then get a "basketball scholarship" or "soccer scholarship" for $10,000 that effectively amounts to a $3,500 athletic scholarship after you subtract the money the kid was going to be awarded for reasons other than athletic.  Still nice, but a little deceiving. 

Any other experiences with this out there?

[markerickson]

Trinity's website indicates it is a D1 school.

Why would a school combine academic, leadership, and sport scholarships and declare the combined package an athletic scholarship?  How does the school benefit?  Wouldn't you want to dangle academic scholarships to top-notch students and award athletic scholarships to students with athletic talent?

[John Gleich]

TIU is definitely NAIA-II.

The CCAC that they compete in has two divisions... they're in the D-II division:

http://www.ccacsports.com/sport/7/8.php


TIU also has recently (2007) played in the NAIA national tournament: Story

Don't let that decieve you, though... TIU got hot and won the auto-bid by winning their tournament... this isn't a historic program (6-26 last year, 8-22 the year before).  There recently was a coaching change before last season (Marc Davidson, former All-American who brought TIU some success in the 90's when he transferred to TIU after 2 years under Lou Henson at U of I, was the coach but resigned to spend more time with his family)... Davidson was replaced by Andy Euler, former Wheaton Academy coach, coaching former Thunder players Jon Nielson and Jim Fortosis (among others).

[petemcb]

Trinity's website indicates it is a D1 school.

Why would a school combine academic, leadership, and sport scholarships and declare the combined package an athletic scholarship?  How does the school benefit?  Wouldn't you want to dangle academic scholarships to top-notch students and award athletic scholarships to students with athletic talent?

Not sure why they do it that way, but I have that from admissions reps and coaches from two different NAIA schools.  They were offering money for both academics and leadership along with athletic money and then were going to call the sum total an "athletic scholarship".  I wasn't overly concerned what they called it.  Dollars were dollars.

[Gregory Sager]

That's very close to it, Pete, but it should be fully noted as to what constitutes part of an athletic scholarship under NAIA rules and what doesn't. According to a college administrator I know who has firsthand knowledge of how the NAIA works, all aid which the institution controls is counted against the school's athletic aid limits. That means that if a kid gets a $5,000 academic scholarship, $5,000 worth of need-based aid (not including a Pell Grant or a work-study job) and a $3,000 "athletic scholarship", that would amount to $13,000 counted against the school's 5.5 scholarship limit. This structure has been in place in the NAIA for about a decade now, more or less.

See also #4 in this list of "five most important things to know when you try to lock down your NAIA scholarships":

http://www.captainu.com/buzz/276-naia-scholarships-5-things-you-should-know

As this administrator told me (and as I would've guessed, given those numbers), it's worked against the NAIA schools that actually try to comply with the rule. It really limits what NAIA coaches can do; they can no longer "stack" scholarships. It's still buying players, just like NCAA's D1 and D2, but it's not a very advantageous way to buy them.

At least scholarship/aid compliance is no longer done under the honor system, aka the "let's put the fox in charge of the henhouse" method, in the NAIA.

[deepthroat]

I liked NP's Sean McNamee though he didn't seem to suit up on a consistent basis.

Elmhurst has 13 recruits on the list!?   

doubt sean will be playing this year.

[petemcb]

That's very close to it, Pete, but it should be fully noted as to what constitutes part of an athletic scholarship under NAIA rules and what doesn't. According to a college administrator I know who has firsthand knowledge of how the NAIA works, all aid which the institution controls is counted against the school's athletic aid limits. That means that if a kid gets a $5,000 academic scholarship, $5,000 worth of need-based aid (not including a Pell Grant or a work-study job) and a $3,000 "athletic scholarship", that would amount to $13,000 counted against the school's 5.5 scholarship limit.

That is my understanding as well.  That's why I didn't include examples like scholarships from the Daughters of the American Revolution, church scholarships, Axa scholarships, etc.  

[Gregory Sager]

I have some very sad news to report. Former North Park guard Rick Alspach, a two-time All-CCIW selection who scored over a thousand points as a Viking, died on Saturday. The cause of death is unknown; he was at his sister-in-law's house in Indiana when he suddenly collapsed in her backyard, and all attempts to revive him failed. "Shooter" was only 31 years old, and he had just been married in May.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nwitimes/obituary.aspx?n=rick-anthony-alspach&pid=132127027

He was a wonderful guy, extroverted and flamboyant, full of life and full of fun, and his trademark was his million-watt omnipresent smile. He was also a loyal Viking who always came back to watch a game or two every season and who was a fixture at NPU alumni games. It won't be the same not seeing Shooter around the crackerbox anymore, always trying to convince me in his doggedly optimistic way that this would be the year that the Cubs won the World Series or good-naturedly suffering the ribbing he always took from Berki and I about his last game against Elmhurst (Rick had gotten all geeked up about going head-to-head against Ryan Knuppel one last time, but he ended up shooting 0-13). Rick was one of those special people who brightened up every room into which he walked. He will definitely be missed.

[markerickson]

How tragic!!!  I can't comprehend the news.



I believe Rick is still the CCIW's most prolific trey shooter.

[robberki]

Was waiting for this to make the board. Just an unbelieveably tragic loss, this has been a very sad last couple of days. Rick was my teammate and friend and while we didn't get to see each other all the time anymore, I always loved spending time with him. My heart goes out to his family, friends, and particularly his new wife Amber. The world is a little less fun today.

[Titan Q]

Wow, that's awful.  Very sorry to hear.

[Gotberg]

I can name a couple of NPU's incoming freshmen. One is Zach Dungee, a 6'6, 225 kid from Wheaton North. I think that he got a lot more attention from football recruiters than from basketball recruiters, since football was his better sport in high school, but he's bound and determined to put his energies into hoops in college rather than the gridiron. He's considered to be raw but promising. Unlike his predecessor, Emmanuel Crosby, he'll have the benefit of JV seasoning as a Viking and won't get thrown into the deep end of the pool right away.

Another is David Williams, a 5'10 point guard from a Tinley Park program that really took off last year. He's supposed to be a defensive specialist -- after last season's atrocities at the defensive end of the floor, it's good to see defense be a focus of NPU recruiting -- cut in the Chris Brown mold. There's also three more recruits whose names elude me at the moment; one's a Minnehaha grad (for the uninitiated, Minnehaha Academy is the Covenant high school in Minneapolis that usually sends a lot of its new alumni on to North Park, CCIW Chat regular Mark Erickson being an example of a Minnehaha/North Park double alumnus), another is a product of the Gene Pingatore machine at St. Joe's, and the third is a 6'3, 200 football/basketball dual athlete from the suburbs who'll be spending the fall playing wide receiver for the Vikings.

The big fish, the one on whom I can't report, has been accepted at NPU but is still sorting out his financial arrangements. He's been at the top of the recruiting clipboard for the Park, and if Brenegan lands him he might be an immediate contributor as a freshman, in spite of the fact that there'll be a lot of experienced returnees this upcoming season.

All in all, I suspect that there'll end up being the usual six to eight freshmen present when fall practice starts. Sorry for the incomplete report vis-a-vis names, but I wasn't taking notes when I met with the coaches.

Greg - did the big fish end up going to NP?