MBB: Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association

[oldknight]

I haven't seen it mentioned yet, but John Mantel will be playing in the NABC All-Star game in Salem this weekend. Pretty cool honor for a great player.

It's official. Just click the link on the front page story listing the rosters. Mantel is on the West squad that includes Wash U's Sean Wallis and Ohio Northern's Kyle Meyer, two excellent players John played against in his four years at Calvin.  A nice capstone to John's career. Congrats.

[KnightSlappy]

I'm kicking off my official campaign to get bordering states included in the regional game criteria. I compiled a list (by state) of the number of teams that would be affected by this rule, and the number of additional* in-region teams they would get.

Teams	State	Additional States				Added
8	Connecticut	New York				62
2	DC	Virginia				13
8	Maryland	Virginia	West Virginia			14
38	Massachusetts	New York				62
13	New Jersey	New York	Pennsylvania			115
7	Vermont	New York				62
62	New York	Conn.	Massachusetts	New Jersey	Vermont	63
53	Pennsylvania	Ohio	West Virginia	New Jersey		34
2	Arkansas	Missouri				4
4	Indiana	Illinois				22
1	Kentucky	Illinois	Missouri			26
8	Michigan	Wisconsin	Illinois			46
4	Missouri	Arkansas	Kentucky	Tennessee		6
20	Ohio	Pennsylvania				53
3	Tenn.	Missouri				4
13	Virginia	DC	Maryland			10
1	WV	Maryland	Penn.			60
22	Illinois	Michigan	Indiana	Kentucky		13
24	Wisconsin	Michigan				8

*Additional teams is a maximum number, and does not take into account the 200 mile rule, and the fact that some states are spilt in different regions. Some schools will already be in-region with some of the "additional" schools.

ex: some Michigan schools are already within 200 miles of some Illinois schools, but this is not reflected in the numbers.

ex: some Pennsylvania schools are already in region with the Ohio schools, and some are in-region with NJ, so not every school would see an additional 34 in-region teams.

ex: only four Indiana schools are counted, because the others are already in-region with Illinois, and that was easy to determine.

I could probably do a more scientic study, but I just wanted to get a feeling for how much affect the rule would have.

[Pat Coleman]

D-II does something like this, I understand.

[ziggy]

D-II does something like this, I understand.

Sorry to go on a sidetrack here Pat, but do you have any idea why the DII and DIII tournaments are so different? I completely understand that DI is a different beast and is financial justifiable by itself.

I think the DIII set up is far better than DII's strict regional bracketing. I don't understand why DII and DIII would be run so differently. Perhaps the number of participating teams has something to do with it?

[Pat Coleman]

Not really -- I think it's just differing philosophies. Over a decade ago, D-III presidents and athletic administrators went on this brave path of extending an automatic bid to any conference with seven teams, even though some parts of the country have more of those than others, even though "power" conferences would be voting against their own at-large bids to do so. That's because the Division III philosophy talks about the emphasis on regional competition and championship access is an important part of what makes Division III what it is.

I suspect that if they could do that with a blanket system that gave each region eight bids, they might well have done so. But that's what we had before, and it didn't work. The Atlantic Region and West Region, with fewer than 40 teams each, got the same number of bids as the Northeast, which now has more than 80 in some sports, and the Midwest and West, which are over 50 teams apiece.

Realigning the Northeast isn't a particularly viable solution, at least not then, because conferences overlapped each other geographically all over the place. How could we take, for example, the CCC and the GNAC and put one in the East, the other in the Northeast? (This discussion predated the administrative regions and the 200-mile rule.)

So rather than do that, they elected to make the at-large decision a national one, and not have a preset number of teams per region.

If we still had the old system today, people would be complaining, rightly so, about how Cortland State got in the field at 16-11 and Brandeis couldn't get in at 19-6 (or any Northeast at-large, really).

I don't know how the regional alignment is in D-II, whether it's overly balanced or not, but in D-III it definitely isn't balanced in terms of numbers, before you even get to consider whether it's balanced in terms of competitiveness.

[ChicagoHopeNut]

Knight Slappy, what is your exact criteria?

For example, Michigan and Illinois don't actually border each other unless you could via Lake Michigan borders? (And if that is the case, very clever).

[KnightSlappy]

Knight Slappy, what is your exact criteria?

For example, Michigan and Illinois don't actually border each other unless you could via Lake Michigan borders? (And if that is the case, very clever).

The official state boarders touch in Lake Michigan. I don't see it much different than Ohio and Kentucky which meet in the middle of the Ohio River.

[Gregory Sager]

Knight Slappy, what is your exact criteria?

For example, Michigan and Illinois don't actually border each other unless you could via Lake Michigan borders? (And if that is the case, very clever).

The official state boarders touch in Lake Michigan. I don't see it much different than Ohio and Kentucky which meet in the middle of the Ohio River.

From one nitpicker to another, I doff my chapeau to you, O Dean of KnightSlappy U.

[Pat Coleman]

And I believe in the D-II scenario they count MI and IL.

[sac]

Michigan and Minnesota as well.

[KnightSlappy]

Michigan and Minnesota as well.

Ah, yes. In my haste I neglected the fact that MI and MN do share a border in Lake Superior! I shall update.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Michigan and Minnesota as well.

Ah, yes. In my haste I neglected the fact that MI and MN do share a border in Lake Superior! I shall update.

But all games must be played on Isle Royale!

[Good luck on those January games!]

[Pat Coleman]

The good news is you could drive there.

[KnightSlappy]

Is there another state that cannot count regional games against teams from 60% of it's bordering states?

[oldknight]

Knight Slappy, what is your exact criteria?

For example, Michigan and Illinois don't actually border each other unless you could via Lake Michigan borders? (And if that is the case, very clever).

I hate to bring this up (since more than one board poster may have a pick to nit ) but under the law the states along the Great Lakes do border one another. Title to the submerged bottom lands of the Great Lakes came to each state upon their admission to the Union. See Flanders Industries vs State of Michigan, 203 Mich App 15, 512 NW2d 328 (1993). While retaining jurisdiction over maritime and admiralty matters, the federal government has no specific authority over the lake beds. People vs Massey, 137 Mich App 480, 358 NW2d 615 (1984). Title and dominion over actual land covered by the waters of the Great Lakes belong to each state within which those submerged lands are located. Id at 485.