MBB: Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference

[fishguy]

Adrian resigns from Edgewood College to go to Otterbein...

http://www.edgewoodcollegeeagles.com/news/2012/5/22/MBB_0522125816.aspx

Nice hire for Otterbein. It will be interesting to see how Edgewood handles it with UW-Oshkosh and UW-Superior both open right now. There are some good jobs open.

[Gregory Sager]

Maranatha will be leaving the conference after the 2012-2013. They will remain in Division III as an independent. The press release mentions finding a new conference but I don't know where. Is the UMAC, who just lost Presentation a possibility?

http://northernac.org/releases/20120517mbbcw

What will the NAthCon do now that men's basketball is down to eleven members. Do you play a five team division or go just an eleven team free for all?

Just saw that. I think it was a matter of time before it happened. I actually talked to someone who mentioned that Maranatha wanted to withdraw from the league a few years ago, but for whatever reason it didn't happen at that time.

I think that the NAC would like to keep an even number of teams for basketball, but I don't know from where they'd poach a team. Maybe the mention in the General DIII Issues board about IIT should bear interest.

Illinois Tech doesn't have football (Maranatha did - the NAC will only have seven teams after the 2012 season) and they would have to re-establish basketball, but geographically they make sense. I don't know if there are any other current DIII teams in other conferences that are looking to jump ship - someone out there I'm sure knows more about this than I - but this might create an opportunity.

Keep in mind that the NAthCon has a women's college, Alverno, in its membership. That means that either the men's side or the women's side of NAthCon basketball will always have an odd number ... unless a men's college joins the league, and I'll faint dead away if the league office gets a membership application from either Wabash or St. John's.

Illinois Tech is a likely candidate to join the league, should IIT emerge from the upcoming investigative year with a decision to go through the four-year probationary pipeline to NCAA (and D3) membership. It wouldn't be that big of a problem for IIT to re-institute basketball; Keating Gym is still there, after all. And, while the NAthCon isn't really an elite league in terms of academics, it does contain IIT's sister school to the north, MSOE, so there's some institutional affinity there.

Roosevelt might be the other long-term possibility for NAthCon membership. There's been speculation that Roosevelt wanted to re-institute athletics under the NAIA umbrella in a non-scholarship capacity as a prelude to moving on to the NCAA and D3 once the full spread of athletic programs are up and running.

From an institutional standpoint, either school -- or both -- would be an outstanding addition to the league.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

Hope you don't mind a break in the action, as it were, but I want to share a story the D3 community should know about. You actually may have seen the story on the front page of D3hoops.com, but just in case:

A Goucher basketball player has been paralyzed in a freak accident. He was wrestling around with a friend one morning in his dorm building when he landed on his neck. The entire story is here.

He was released from the hospital to the Kennedy Krieger Institute for rehab shortly after that article was posted last week. However, over the weekend he was sent back to the hospital when he apparently had trouble breathing. Now he awaits a return to the rehab facility, probably any day if he hasn't been released already.

Please keep Damone Brooks, his family, the Goucher basketball team(s), and Goucher community in your thoughts, hearts, and prayers. The family certainly needs help with medical bills as well, so if you feel inclined, please consider them as well.

To follow his progress online, click here.
And to consider a donation, click here.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Please feel free to contact me with any questions.

[Just Bill]

Mark Miller reports the finalists for the UWO job are..

https://twitter.com/WisBBYearbook/status/213662974437629952

Tim Gaubatz (assistant UW-Oshkosh)
Aaron Aanonsen (head coach Lakeland College)
Pat Juckem (head coach Coe College)
Richard Reed (head coach LaVerne University)

[Just Bill]

Two candidates for the Edgewood job announced...

http://www.edgewoodcollegeeagles.com/news/2012/6/20/MBB_0620122243.aspx

[sac]

stumbled across this while checking out some schedules.

MSOE Tournament Nov 17&18

Rose-Hulman vs RPI
Cal Tech vs MSOE


Lot of future engineers in the building that weekend.

[Pat Coleman]

Yep -- they have an engineering school tournament fairly regularly. Pretty cool.

[Just Bill]

Edgewood selects Justin Meyer for head coaching job...

http://www.edgewoodcollegeeagles.com/news/2012/7/6/MBB_0706125236.aspx

[jdubb104]

And so it begins today...any early preseason predictions on conference champions or standout players?

[NACfan215]

I think by the process of elimination that Lakeland would be the obvious favorite in the North, theory being they had 2 players on last years NAC 1st team All-Conference and neither of them were Seniors, whic means they both will be returning for a team that had a good season.  I am not as familiar with some of the returning players from the South Division, but based on last years All-Conference teams I didnt see anything glaring?

I would also have to say J. Schwarz of LC is the favorite for conference POY unless a major darkhorse has a big year.

Darkhorse team for this year, Marian, Two players on All-Conference Honorable mention team who will both be returning (J. Harris- SR. to be and C. Veleke- JR. to be) as well as the reigning NAC freshman of the year Mike Keller.  Not to mention this Marian team lost NO seniors from last.  Potential surprise team with their entire roster returning with another year of experience.

[BadgerFan42]

I'd have to go with Lakeland as the favorite to win the North Division.  On paper this should be the year they break through and make it to the NCAA Tournament.  I believe losing their PG (Regiel) from last season will be a huge loss, but they have returning fire power to make up for it.  Marian could be a surprise team this season and possibly upset Lakeland for the North crown.  There are, however, a lot of rumors about intelligibility issues and key players stepping away to focus on academics, but, they are just rumors. 

The south will yet again be a toss up.  BU has kind of become the favorite to be the team to beat every season.  I do expect Aurora to get back to the top and you never know what you're going to get from Concordia Chicago.   

With all that being said a lot of opinions will change once all of the rosters are officially released and the preseason polls come out.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

The Preseason Top 25 is out: http://www.d3hoops.com/top25/men/2012-13/preseason

[BadgerFan42]

NAC Preseason was just released.

Must say I'm a little surprised Edgewood is t-2nd in the North.  Tough to replace Wisniewski/Faurote and factor in a new head coach, I'd like to think that division is tougher than that.

[Just Bill]

I agree, although Edgewood, Marian and CUW have 48, 48 and 46 points respectively. So essentially, the 2-3-4 spots are a coin flip. That I would agree with.

[RFMichigan]

CUC roster is up. I knew they had a lot of seniors play a lot of minutes last year (Gorden, Avery, Johnson, Hineman - Kahlfeldt not on the roster ) so it's no surprise that they only return about 30% of their offense and minutes from last season - and a good chunk of those garbage time points/minutes as 14 of last year's underclassmen (out of a possible 17) returned. (CUC doesn't distinguish between varsity and JV rosters.)

It looks as though they have no one over 6-5 and a crowd of 6'3  - 6'4" guys who wil have to carry the rebounding load. (I think they've only had one player over 6'6" in about five years.)

There's an interesting mix of newcomers:
- a seldom-used transfer from North Central (Brandon Stinson)
- A California JC kid
- A pair of frosh from Detroit (one a 6'4 - 250 lbs. widebody), and a pair of frosh from Chicago. I think three out of four of these guys are going to see a fair amount of time, especially Tyler Oden from Marist HS.
- A high scoring guard from a small high school in Arizona.

They only return four players who averaged over 10 minutes a game, and only two of them could be considered returning starter: Khirey Floyd, who averaged 22 minutes (but missed the last 6 games because ??), and Marlin Vilius, who only played the second semester in 2012 and was a part-time starter. However Tyler Jones has had pretty good job of cobbling together a competitive group in his tenure at Concordia.

Curious to see what everybody else has.