MBB: Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association

[calvinite]

I'm sick of those UW teams winning the mens' bracket. Haven't they won like a 1/3 of the last 20 national championships? They are also power houses in other sports like cross country. The UW schools are my new NY Yankees/Miami Heat of DIII basketball. In fact, I think I'm starting to dislike them so much that I'll modify my most recent comment about not cheering for Hope in the National championship: Revised: I couldn't bring myself to root for Hope in the national championship unless they are playing one of the UW schools.

Well then you can start next season off by rooting for Hope, since the Dutchmen open the season next year at home versus the champions from UWW (11/19) and then play UWSP a couple days later (11/22).

Deal. In fact, I don't think it will be that hard to root for them. A couple Hope victories against those teams HAS to be good for the MIAA, regional rankings, prestige, and all the rest.

[Gregory Sager]

I'm sick of those UW teams winning the mens' bracket. Haven't they won like a 1/3 of the last 20 national championships? They are also power houses in other sports like cross country.

... not to mention the fact that, as of December 20, UWW has now won five of the last seven national championships in a certain rather violent fall sport with which most Calvin folks are unfamiliar on institutional terms. And, no, I'm not referring to Black Friday shopping.

[calvin_grad]

According to UWW's webpage, their undergrad enrollment is 10,757.  Where does that put them on the list for D3 institutions?  I've got to believe if not in the top 10, then very close.  I'd be curious if there was a list anywhere.  A quick Google search didn't get me what I was looking for.

[knights2000]

According to UWW's webpage, their undergrad enrollment is 10,757.  Where does that put them on the list for D3 institutions?  I've got to believe if not in the top 10, then very close.  I'd be curious if there was a list anywhere.  A quick Google search didn't get me what I was looking for.

The other big thing with these Wisconsin schools is that they are state schools, so you aren't recruiting kids to a school where they're going to pay $30,000+ a year to be there. For an in-state resident, it's going to cost under $7,000 per semester for a kid to be at UWW. That's a big recruiting advantage IMO.

[pointlem]

According to UWW's webpage, their undergrad enrollment is 10,757.  Where does that put them on the list for D3 institutions?  I've got to believe if not in the top 10, then very close.  I'd be curious if there was a list anywhere.  A quick Google search didn't get me what I was looking for.

The other big thing with these Wisconsin schools is that they are state schools, so you aren't recruiting kids to a school where they're going to pay $30,000+ a year to be there. For an in-state resident, it's going to cost under $7,000 per semester for a kid to be at UWW. That's a big recruiting advantage IMO.

Also, because the GVSU-like state schools are DIII, there's less competition in Wisconsin from DII scholarship scholarship schools.  Of course, that also means that the WI liberal arts colleges, such as Carthage, also should face less in-state DII competition.

[Gregory Sager]

According to UWW's webpage, their undergrad enrollment is 10,757.  Where does that put them on the list for D3 institutions?  I've got to believe if not in the top 10, then very close.  I'd be curious if there was a list anywhere.  A quick Google search didn't get me what I was looking for.

While it's one of the bigger schools in D3 in terms of enrollment, it's not the biggest. If wikipedia is to be believed -- insert your own pithy comment here -- UW-Whitewater is superseded in terms of undergraduate enrollment by NYU, Buffalo State, Kean, UT-Dallas, Montclair State, Rowan, UC-Santa Cruz, William Paterson, UMass-Boston, and Bridgewater State.

Of course, the comparatively huge (by D3 standards) UWW student body makes little or no difference as far as the prowess of Warhawks teams in various sports are concerned. You don't win national championships by drawing upon the student body at large for your athletes. You recruit them.

The other big thing with these Wisconsin schools is that they are state schools, so you aren't recruiting kids to a school where they're going to pay $30,000+ a year to be there. For an in-state resident, it's going to cost under $7,000 per semester for a kid to be at UWW. That's a big recruiting advantage IMO.

Also, because the GVSU-like state schools are DIII, there's less competition in Wisconsin from DII scholarship scholarship schools.  Of course, that also means that the WI liberal arts colleges, such as Carthage, also should face less in-state DII competition.

The relative inexpensiveness of a University of Wisconsin education (at any branch campus or the main campus in Madison) is certainly an advantage, as is the relative lack of in-state small-school scholarship competition; Wisconsin not only has just one D2 school (UW-Parkside), it only has two NAIA schools as well (Viterbo and Cardinal Stritch).

There are a lot of private colleges in Wisconsin that are D3: Five MWC schools, seven NACC schools, and one CCIW school. They have to compete with WIAC schools for athletes, and it's obvious that the WIAC schools tend to get the pick of the litter in America's Dairyland. Carthage is different in that it has drawn a very large percentage of both its' student body at large and its' student-athletes in particular from south of the border. Carthage has made it a point in the past to match the in-state aid that an Illinois student would get from the state if he or she stayed south of the Halas-Lombardi Line for college. That has allowed Carthage to draw upon the much larger population of metro Chicago for students; metro Chicago has half again as many people as does the entire state of Wisconsin. And it keeps Carthage from being forced to compete with the much cheaper WIAC schools for all of its' student-athletes (or with crosstown UW-Parkside or nearby UW-Whitewater for students in general).

Population size is an important factor in this discussion. Both Chicagoland and Michigan's Lower Peninsula have populations that are much, much larger than Wisconsin's.

[SKOT]

Population size is an important factor in this discussion. Both Chicagoland and Michigan's Lower Peninsula have populations that are much, much larger than Wisconsin's.

If you are talking WIAC, you also have to factor in the MN-WI instate tuition reciprocity agreement.  Minnesota residents can attend Wisconsin state schools for instate tuition rates and vice versa.  That brings the WIAC's "instate" recruiting base to a similar number to Illinois and Michigan. 

[HOPEful]

According to UWW's webpage, their undergrad enrollment is 10,757.  Where does that put them on the list for D3 institutions?  I've got to believe if not in the top 10, then very close.  I'd be curious if there was a list anywhere.  A quick Google search didn't get me what I was looking for.

The other big thing with these Wisconsin schools is that they are state schools, so you aren't recruiting kids to a school where they're going to pay $30,000+ a year to be there. For an in-state resident, it's going to cost under $7,000 per semester for a kid to be at UWW. That's a big recruiting advantage IMO.

Having been to both Stevens Point and Whitewater, I don't think it's really comparable. Yes they are much bigger. Yes they are state schools, and therefore, much cheaper. But they are also really well run programs that use their advantages efficiantly. We don't talk about Eau Clare, Stout, Superior or River Falls in nearly the same way we talk about SP, WW, La Crosse, and Osh Kosh (are the 1990s far enough back to remove Platteville from this list?) Why when Hope gets D1 transfers from Canisius and Central Michigan is it good recruiting but the WIAC's dominance is due to an unfair advantage? What about Amherst and Washington? 

[calvin_grad]

According to UWW's webpage, their undergrad enrollment is 10,757.  Where does that put them on the list for D3 institutions?  I've got to believe if not in the top 10, then very close.  I'd be curious if there was a list anywhere.  A quick Google search didn't get me what I was looking for.

While it's one of the bigger schools in D3 in terms of enrollment, it's not the biggest. If wikipedia is to be believed -- insert your own pithy comment here -- UW-Whitewater is superseded in terms of undergraduate enrollment by NYU, Buffalo State, Kean, UT-Dallas, Montclair State, Rowan, UC-Santa Cruz, William Paterson, UMass-Boston, and Bridgewater State.

Of course, the comparatively huge (by D3 standards) UWW student body makes little or no difference as far as the prowess of Warhawks teams in various sports are concerned. You don't win national championships by drawing upon the student body at large for your athletes. You recruit them.

Thanks, Greg.  I wasn't attempting to make the "They're bigger, they should be better" argument.  I really know nothing about the UW D3 schools so I was merely asking out of curiosity.  That led to my curiosity as far as how that size compares nationally.

[sac]

As most D3 enrollment goes, I think Hope and Calvin would fall on the larger side of the ledger.  Average is probably much more like the 1200-1400 at Kzoo and Albion.

[sac]

This years Champions of Character college all-star games will be held at Davenport University on March 26.
http://www.cugoldeneagles.com/article/1962.php#.UzBdFoXLLwI


Nate VanArendonk, Grant Neil and Caleb Byers from Hope and Isiah Law from Alma will participate.

(the high school game is scheduled for June 26 at Cornerstone University)

[13xchamp]

Gregory already touched on many of the advantages of the WIAC- lack of D2 and NAIA institutions. Wisconsin does send a fair amount of players to the GLIAC and NSIC schools, so when these players get home sick they almost always land in the WIAC. Point this year has Hass (Augustana SD), Heuer (UWGB) and Tillema- who had many D2 options but wanted to play with his older brother Dan who coincidently started his career at MN-Duluth. Whitewater in particular seems to be a landing spot for many of Milwaukee's wayward souls, in fact last year they had Darnell Harris- a sure fire D1 recruit out of HS who somehow decided to spend a year at UWW before heading back to a JC this year and is committed to a D1 school again, the name escapes me. This is actually the first UWW team I can remember being mostly kids recruited by them out of HS.
Wisconsin, for a smaller state not only has some very good HS basketball programs and players but also some great coaching. Many players who played for Bo Ryan at Platteville, Dick Bennett at Point/UWGB, Ken Anderson at EauClaire, and VanderMeulen at UWW are on the sidelines at many WI high schools.

[SBell]

I really like what there is to be had in Connor VanderBrug. With his coming Brad Visser might spend yet another year coming off the bench, even though he was hailed as a D1 recruit. My belief is that if he would have, like VanderBrug, would have committed earlier, and connected more with the team, he may have seen more minutes. VanderBrug, in my opinion, will start along with Dykstra, Stout, Brink and Daley.

Visser wasn't a "D1 recruit." He was a walk-on who was deemed academically ineligible to play D1.

Academically ineligible?  How were his grades at Calvin?

It wasn't the grades he got that was the problem. As I understand it, there was a core requirement he didn't have on his high school transcript that CMU requires. For whatever reason that fact wasn't known until after he graduated.

Correct, Calvin Christian did not do due diligence on his behalf.

[Pat Coleman]

Among the 415 schools we track that have men's basketball, the average is 2,521 full-time undergrads. The median is 1,799 (half above this number, half below).

I fully admit the individual school numbers vary annually and we don't always keep up with every change every year, but in aggregate this ought to be pretty close. We use the official numbers schools supply to the federal government, not the rounded numbers schools promote.

For the 244 schools that we track that have football, the average is 2,487 and the median is 1,885.

[realist]

I really like what there is to be had in Connor VanderBrug. With his coming Brad Visser might spend yet another year coming off the bench, even though he was hailed as a D1 recruit. My belief is that if he would have, like VanderBrug, would have committed earlier, and connected more with the team, he may have seen more minutes. VanderBrug, in my opinion, will start along with Dykstra, Stout, Brink and Daley.

Visser wasn't a "D1 recruit." He was a walk-on who was deemed academically ineligible to play D1.

Academically ineligible?  How were his grades at Calvin?

It wasn't the grades he got that was the problem. As I understand it, there was a core requirement he didn't have on his high school transcript that CMU requires. For whatever reason that fact wasn't known until after he graduated.

Correct, Calvin Christian did not do due diligence on his behalf.

Why and how is it Calvin Christian's responsibility to make it's graduates eligible to attend CMU?  It seems to me if a h.s. jr/sr is interested in a college/university they should care enough to make sure they meet that schools entry requirement.

Calvin Christian fulfilled it's responsibilities in having the young man ready to graduate from their school. 
Due diligence is the responsibility of the buyer (Mr. Visser) since he was the one wanting to go to CMU.