MBB: Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association

[SBell]

Some of the where are theys: Jeff Carlson is playing juco somehwere in-state, or did last year, forget where; the Lettinga twins are going to Bethel in Indiana.

Don't know where VanWoerkom went. I thought he was a top five center in the state at the end of the year. Figured it would come down to Calvin, where his dad went, or Hope, where his dad taught?

Re. Albion and Kazoo financial aid: David Bunn had like a 3.9 and Kazoo gives money to everyone, jock or not.

Peter Bunn might be a steal for a mid-major DI school, but could go higher if he gets as tall as his brothers. Plug alert: Peter's playing at our camp Saturday at Aim High, the gym where in July he put 30 points, not once, but twice, on the mighty Hurricanes.

[True Basketball Fan]

That is true sac dude, lack of defense will not get you far, especially when the teams you're trying to dethrone play excellent defense.  That's why Tri-State will always be in the cellar.

[devossed]

SB--
Yes, I heard he had that 3.9 and an obscenely high ACT score to boot. Which should be enough to get close to a "free ride" at most MIAA schools (which no doubt happened at Albion). But I was moreso commenting on the lackluster stamina of the Calvin/Hope financial aid departments: it costs more to attend and they offered *less* money! They won't get many academic all-americans that way in today's game of "show me the money."

[SBell]

Oh, OK now I gotcha.

Re. David Bunn's grades/test scores, his brother is making some DI coaches shake their heads when he starts asking about their biology departments!

[Gregory Sager]

I wonder if there's a D1 coach who can even find the biology classroom building on his campus.

[Warren Thompson]

Probably not, but he likely knows where the Recreation and Playground Management Department is located (it's right next door to the basket-weaving classroom).

[sac]

I thought  Albion cost more than Hope.

Could be wrong, but I always thought it went Kzoo, Calvin, Albion, Hope, Alma when it came to highest to lowest tuition costs.

All I know is my tuition was LESS than 1/2 what it is today, and that was onlly 13 years ago.

[devossed]

Estimated Costs of MIAA Schools 2005-2006
Total Cost also includes room, board, fees, but not books, personal, travel
Rank = 1-10 (with 1 highest cost and 10 lowest cost)

School         Tuition only      Rank      Total Cost      Rank
Adrian         18,530            8            24,800               8
Albion         24,296            3            31,224               3
Alma         20,934            5            28,833               5
Calvin         18,925            7            25,735               7
Hope         21,420            4            30,260               4
Kzoo         25,644            1            32,353               2
Olivet         16,464            10            21,944               10
St. Mary's      24,358            2            32,538               1
Tri-State      20,200            6            26,200               6
Wisc. Luth.      17,340            9            23,510               9

*Sac -- (with the exception of Calvin), you were pretty darn close! And my apologies, I stand corrected on the fact that it costs less at Albion.

[devossed]

Sager/WT--

Thank you for gracing us with your all-knowing and humorous hall-of-fame selves. I'm curious as to how CCIW schools compare on costs, but more importantly your insight as to how they face the same turf wars with recruits/more academic aid given to recruits by certain schools.

[Warren Thompson]

Sager is the "all-knowing and humorous" hall-of-famer. I merely ride his coattails and bask in his glory by remotion. Plus, he's far younger than I and light-years more spry and feisty .... 

[ziggy]

Hey everyone.  My close family friend Libby is a finalist to become the regular anthem singer for the Columbus Blue Jackets of the NHL.  Please follow the link and vote for her!
http://www.bluejackets.com/news/press/arts/2570.0.html

[Gregory Sager]

Notice Warren's style. He praises me to the skies and dons the mask of humility, while at the same time using a word (remotion) that's so obscure that I had to look it up to make sure I understood it. He's a sly one, that Warren ... the Gray Fox of Lebanon Valley.

Estimated Costs of CCIW Schools, 2005-06:
school          tuition  rk total    rk
Augustana      21672  3  27714  3
Carthage        22500  2  29000  2
Elmhurst         20090  5  26404  7
Ill. Wesleyan   27974  1  33900  1
Millikin           19900  7  26410  6
North Central  20160  4  26907  4
North Park      13900  8  20040  8
Wheaton        20000  6  26466  5

North Park is obviously anomalous with regard to the CCIW as a whole in terms of costs. There's a reason for that. North Park slashed tuition by about a third this year as part of an admissions strategy designed to eliminate the "sticker shock" involved with parents seeing the arm-and-a-leg cost of private school tuition for the first time. The catch, of course, is that financial aid is also drastically reduced, so the tuition cost is much more of a "what you see is what you get" sort of affair with this new strategy. NPU follows the lead of Muskingum and Eureka in employing this strategy. It's worked well for them, and it appears to be working well for NPU, too; both applications and enrollment are way up at the Park.

It's also interesting to note the current endowments at each school. DV, you should list them for MIAA schools as well, for comparison's sake:

Augustana - $87.4m
Carthage - $36.5m
Elmhurst - $59.9m
Ill. Wesleyan - $151.4m
Millikin - $52.8m
North Central - $57m
North Park - $36.4m
Wheaton - $271.1m

[Gregory Sager]

As for turf wars over recruiting and academic aid, I'm not sure that there's much that I can tell you. I'm not privy to the machinations of the various financial aid offices of the eight CCIW schools -- other than North Park's, where as I said financial aid has been drastically pared back as part of the new admissions strategy -- so I don't know if I could give you a good insider scoop as to how CCIW schools bid for the services of the various players they're recruiting.

Like the MIAA, there's a lot of overlap in terms of recruiting areas among the eight CCIW schools. With the exception of Wheaton, all of the CCIW schools draw heavily from Chicagoland. It's not unusual for a mid-level Chicagoland prospect to get recruited by three or four CCIW schools simultaneously. That only makes sense, as Chicagoland is both a high-density area in terms of population and a hotbed of high school hoops. Illinois Wesleyan and Millikin also recruit downstate, especially Millikin. You'll always find a few farmboys in uniform for the Big Blue every year. Augustana draws most of its Chicagoland recruits from the western suburbs, augmenting them with a few players from western Illinois and eastern Iowa. Carthage used to be about 50/50 in terms of Chicagoland and Wisconsin players. That was a losing formula, and when Chicago native Bosko Djurickovic showed up on campus the basketball team became an almost all-Chicagoland affair. Now he's starting to bring in a trickle of cheeseheads again. (Carthage matches Illinois' state aid, and the school's very close to the border, so a large percentage of the Carthage student population has always consisted of Illinoisians.)

Elmhurst and North Central are heavily Chicagoland-based in terms of basketball rosters, and like Augie their recruiting accent is on the western suburbs. North Park draws the bulk of its roster from Chicagoland, although it's more heavily city-oriented in terms of player origin than are the other CCIW schools. But NPU also draws heavily from out of state, owing to the national scope of its student body; only Wheaton has more non-Illinoisians on its roster every year than does the Park. Wheaton recruits from coast to coast; for them, recruiting a locally-based player is often more a matter of coincidence than anything else.

[Warren Thompson]

Well, Gregory, at least you got the "gray" part right .... if my beard and head were any grayer, I'd be a geezer. 

[devossed]

Greg Sager, Warren Thompson, Pat Coleman, Sac, et.al...
Sorry about the time lag, but here is the data I could dig up (all from US News & World Report rankings)

School         Endowment   
Adrian         37,755,795
Albion         15,271,824
Alma         93,460,407
Calvin         69,002,113
Hope         120,896,754
Kalamazoo      135,451,239
Olivet         12,248,384
St. Mary's      90,582,261
Tri-State         16,762,417
Wisc. Luth.      13,623,885

*And for comparison, here is what they had for CCIW schools:

Augustana      88,547,535
Carthage      36,054,026
Elmhurst      66,297,075
Ill. Wesleyan      143,510,902
Millikin         59,339,448
North Central      n/a
North Park      35,295,824
Wheaton      271,110,617


*For even further digging, here are some of what I consider the premier academic institutions in Division III (but by no means is it an exhaustive list)

School      Tuition/Fees      Total Cost   Endowment
Amherst      33,035         41,620      993,417,613
Denison      28,920         37,040      444,490,374
Grinnell      27,504         34,814      1,291,781,000
Gust Adol   24,630         30,685      78,770,330
Hanover      21,650         28,150      135,439,696
Kenyon      33,930         39,500      143,822,663
Oberlin      32,724         40,904      651,013,999
U of Chicago   31,629         41,733      3,462,473,615
Wabash      23,388         30,116      326,297,259
Washington U   32,042         42,106      4,083,958,000
Williams   31,760         40,310      1,229,516,089   
Wittenberg   27,542         34,596      102,464,318
Wooster      28,230         35,290      205,215,160


*And just for grins, to see how the endowments of Chicago/Washington compare to a few "BIG" schools in the area:

School                     Endowment
DePaul                     230,461,358
U of Illinois                  772,983,514
Northwestern                  1,816,234,000
Michigan State                  745,911,025
U of Michigan                  4,282,895,000

*Still one more FYI, taken from the GLCA consortium of liberal arts schools data:

Endowment-Per-Student
GLCA Institution (June '03)
Wabash College .......................................................................$346,818.60
Earlham College......................................................................$262,108.79
Oberlin College .......................................................................$188,083.95
Denison University.................................................................$187,563.70
DePauw University ................................................................$160,765.28
The College of Wooster ............................................................$97,228.90
Kalamazoo College...................................................................$91,228.91
Kenyon College .........................................................................$77,396.67
Albion College...........................................................................$74,312.54
Ohio Wesleyan University.......................................................$61,445.03
Antioch College.........................................................................$42,344.83
Hope College ............................................................................$34,079.68