There's a Lids warehouse store here in Indianapolis. It's got a lot of stuff like shirts, polos, shorts, team warumups, coaching gear, etc that was printed for specific schools and teams that was returned for one reason or another.

I've picked up some really cool D3 stuff there the last few times I've been.  It's mostly schools within a few states like Carthage, Heidelberg, Hope, Alma, Ill Wesleyan, Wash U, Coe, and Wittenberg.  But, I've seen stuff from D3 schools all over.  Managed to pick up Southern Maine volleyball and Occidental baseball yesterday.  I'm now a D3 shirt hoarder.   

I'm following closely today, as well.  I've made several calls, but have heard nothing concrete yet.  Standing by for news.

It does make sense that they have good pull, but it's also basically a commuter school for a lot of those kids.  It's on West 38th Street.  10 minutes from Cathedral.  20 minutes from Chatard or Roncalli.  Cardinal Ritter is right there, too.  Ritter is starting to become a 2A power in this state.  Marian's HC, Ted Karras, is a really good coach and an even better recruiter.  He's sold a lot of these local kids on it and it's working.  I wonder how many kids think of NAIA the same way some of us think of NAIA.  I bet they don't.  And now, a title is a title, regardless of what level they play at.  It's problem for the Indiana D3s. 

DePauw used to get several of those kids from the Indy private religious schools.  Now they hardly have any.  Only 8 this past year, 3 from Brebeuf Jesuit, 2 from Cathedral, 2 from Heritage Christian, and 1 from Cardinal Ritter.  That's good football and it produces good football players.  There's a reason 4 of the 5 Indiana HS state champions were private schools, and have been for some time.  It's not quite this simple, but I believe the more of those players you get, the better you're going to be.  Marian is a pretty good example of that.

Christmas morning is here, you guys.

Since I love conspiracy theories I will throw this out. Is the projection of Wittenberg based on the ncaa putting pressure on the ncac to pick the Tigers based on the 500 mile rule and the fact the ncaa has to pick of the travel tab if the distance for a team is over that distance? Without clarification from the ncac anything is possible.

I think that's unlikely.  I don't think one more flight is worth all that fuss from the NCAA.  And truthfully, it's not like the we're talking about the difference between Linfield and Redlands here, either.  That's sometimes a negative in this region.  Everybody is so close that often those things don't matter in the pairings. 

Didn't we do that last week?  I thought we did. 

We did.  And we would have done it again.  And another 100 times on top of that.

I guess the question I'd ask, GrizzliesGrad, is why you did what you did with Heidelberg.  They are a one loss team in a good conference with the only loss being to Mount. Heidi played them better than anybody else has all year.

Witt feels high, but I guess I can understand that.  That's a big drop for NCC, who did beat Elmhurst soundly.  I'm still higher than you on Franklin.  They've done everything that could be reasonably be asked of them.  They weren't going to beat Mount and they weren't going to beat Butler.  The schedule is the schedule, but they've done what a lot of other teams in this poll couldn't.  They beat who they were supposed to beat.