Quote from: mwunder on April 27, 2025, 04:55:39 PMnebulous bordering on trivial, trite, and trifling.

Quote from: petemcb on April 27, 2025, 08:51:21 PMSounds like someone needs a Snickers.

The term used by Kankakee High boys basketball's X account -- not simply a mere "source" but the actual social media account of the Kays boys hoops program, and therefore presumably controlled by the coach -- is that Stipp was "recruited by" those nine schools. Make of that what you will. I'm comfortable with using the description that they were "after" Stipp. I don't see the need to delve into semantics regarding these schools' pursuit of the kid. This is, after all, D3, where such matters are nebulous.

According to his coach, Trine, Wabash, Benedictine, Illinois Tech, and Eureka were also after Stipp.

Quote from: petemcb on April 21, 2025, 05:31:23 PM

Quote from: ChickenHoops on April 19, 2025, 03:21:18 PM

Quote from: Pat Coleman on April 11, 2025, 12:06:54 PMNot every WIAC school has reciprocity with Minnesota -- just the ones closer to the border.

Not true. It's a UW System/MN thing.  Lady Dawgs of UWSP are recruiting in MN with earnest.

Earnest? Is that one of their Assistant Coaches? 😉

"Hey, Vern! You don't want your girl to go to school in Minnesody, knowwhatimean? Send her to Stevens Point! We'll coach 'er up real good there!"

Keshaun Vaval, a 6'1 combo guard from Evergreen Park HS, has committed to North Park. He was one of the top scorers in Chicagoland this past season (25.5 ppg) and is an IBCA All-State selection. From what I've heard and read about him, he seems like a hard-working, solid Christian young man who'll be a great fit for NPU both on and off the court. Looks like the Vikings are getting a good one.

Quote from: Kuiper on April 13, 2025, 05:59:30 PMNorth Park

Lots of familiar teams, but replaces Wisconsin Eau Claire with Wisconsin Platteville

It's not entirely same-old, same-old for North Park in 2025. Trine is on the schedule; while NPU has played Trine in plenty of other sports before, this will be the first time ever that the Vikings and the "other" Thunder meet on the soccer pitch. MSOE is also back on the North Park docket after a dozen-year absence; the Vikings used to play the Raiders practically every season for awhile in the millennium's first decade when John Born, now North Park's AD, was the head coach of the Vikings; MSOE had been his previous stop as a head coach.

Quote from: Kuiper on April 13, 2025, 07:14:49 PMAlma

Not sure I understand why they agreed to play Calvin twice, adding them as a non-conference game before also playing them in conference, but maybe it's tough for them to get a mid-week game.

It's not as conspicuous an island school as are UMPI, Colorado College, UCSC, or the two West Coast conferences' teams, but Alma really does fall within the "you can't get there from here" category. Trust me on this, as I've been on the team bus to call road games against the Scots for both the NPU football and the NPU men's basketball teams, and the trips were mind-numbingly long. Alma, MI is located a third of the way up the index finger on its inside edge, if you're using the traditional "point at your outstretched left hand" method Michiganders use to identify locations on the Lower Peninsula. The only non-MIAA schools that are less than four hours away from Alma are Heidelberg and Bluffton, and they're both 3 1/2 hours distant. Alma coaches in a lot of sports have difficulty with midweek non-conference scheduling.

Quote from: Kuiper on April 13, 2025, 07:14:49 PMAlfred State

First season for Vince Correa after moving over from an AC position at SUNY Brockport. I, for one, am happy that they open the season hosting Alfred University so that no matter what happens, Alfred wins.

There's no good reason for these two schools to not play each other in every sport possible. This could naturally evolve into the one of the best D3 rivalries there is, alongside Calvin/Hope, Williams/Amherst, DePauw/Wabash, Carleton/St. Olaf, and Ithaca/Cortland.

Quote from: Kuiper on April 13, 2025, 07:14:49 PMSUNY Potsdam

Traveling to St. Lawrence on 9/17 for Saints fans.  Host SUNY ESF and the Baruch/Nazareth in the Potsdam College Cup

I'm happy to see that the Stumpies are still playing sports. When I was a kid I used to read the paragraph-sized recaps of ESF men's basketball games in the Syracuse newspapers. I can remember wondering how the heck the ESF coach was able to recruit basketball players to come to a school set up to train forest rangers and logging managers. Of course, since then I've learned that the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry produces graduates who cover a much more diverse spectrum of occupations than just forest ranger and logging manager, but it's worth noting that all ESF students are still called "Stumpies," regardless.

Quote from: Kuiper on April 15, 2025, 01:02:33 AMDominican

They replace Fontbonne (RIP) and Nebraska Wesleyan with Elmhurst and North Central

It's an upgrade in terms of competitive level, but I suspect that the reason that the Stars are doing this is to cut travel costs.

Quote from: markerickson on April 10, 2025, 09:49:19 PMSociety too often stigmatizes the decision to attend a community college.  Given the cost of D3 schools*, I'd like to see more student athletes use two years of cc/juco eligibility, earn undergrad credits, save the family money, and then transfer instead of the portal route more than once.

Yes. This doesn't get said often enough on d3boards. Thanks, Mark.

The longer you're involved with a school that serves a large working-class and immigrant constituency, the more you're aware of just how important that two-years-of-juco, two-years-of-a-four-year-school path is for a lot of people who otherwise can't afford either the tuition or the long-term burden of all of those student loans.

Quote from: GusD on April 10, 2025, 03:23:17 PMHmmm. The above post seems quite a prodigious exercise in loquaciousness for a subject the author declared to be "nothing interesting at all," prior to launching his extended narrative.   
Perhaps just because something is not interesting to one person doesn't mean it can't be interesting to others??? 

"Prodigious exercises in loquciousness" are my stock-in-trade on this board, as you very well know.

I simply wanted to get my point across with no room for ambiguity or misunderstanding. I even put in a "TL;DNR" Cliff's Note for anyone whose eyes glaze over when they see one of my longer posts.

That's something interesting, and I don't recall ever seeing this sort of we'll-take-all-of-your-athletes accommodation by a school in the wake of a neighboring school dropping sports. Out of curiosity I'm going to try to track how this goes. Bryn Athyn currently lists:

* 5 non-senior MBB players (3 juniors and 2 sophs)
* 4 non-senior M X-Country runners (1 junior, 2 sophs, 1 frosh)
* 11 non-senior MLAX players (5 juniors and 6 frosh)
* 16 non-senior MSOC players (3 juniors, 4 sophs, and 9 frosh)
* 12 non-senior MVB players (1 junior, 3 sophs, and 8 frosh)
* 7 non-senior WBB players (3 juniors, 2 sophs, and 2 frosh)
* 4 non-senior W X-Country runners (2 sophs and 2 frosh)
* 10 non-senior WLAX players (5 juniors, 4 sophs, and 1 frosh)
* 14 non-senior WSOC players (6 juniors, 4 sophs, and 4 frosh)
* 5 non-senior WTEN players (2 juniors and 3 frosh)
* 11 non-senior WVB players (3 juniors, 5 sophs, and 3 frosh)

There's a fair amount of overlap, as Bryn Athyn has several two-sport student-athletes (particularly on the women's side), so it's conceivable that if they choose to transfer to another school (whether Albright or elsewhere) they may drop one of those sports. Also, I'd estimate that 20% or so of Bryn Athyn's student-athletes are graduates of the school's affiliated high school in that town, Academy of the New Church, so I suspect that a large proportion of them will remain at Bryn Athyn out of institutional and/or denominational loyalty despite the discontinuing of Bryn Athyn sports.

One nice thing about transferring from Bryn Athyn to Albright to play sports is that you won't have to get used to a new primary school color (both red) or a new nickname (both Lions).

Albright doesn't have a men's hockey program, so any Bryn Athyn hockey refugees will have to lace up their skates for somebody else.

Quote from: GusD on April 08, 2025, 04:46:38 PMOn the second point referred to above, namely North Park's (very) heavy reliance on the reliance on the Transfer Portal, I find this a very interesting situation. Most teams nowadays are going to have some transfers on the roster. Get a couple of JUCO transfers, or even possibly a D2 or two, and there's a good chance you can instantly significantly boost the skill level of your roster. Still, I would think the majority of D3 rosters are composed of kids coming directly from high school. However, if you peruse this season's NPU roster, of the 17 players listed (with jersey numbers) on the varsity roster, it appears only 5 of the 17——- DJ Strong, DJ Wallace, Lance Nelson, Mike Vuckovic, and Jahki Gray, matriculated to NPU directly from high school. Three players attended 2 schools before NPU, and one player made stops at 3 other institutions before finding his way to North Park. So, as markerickson advised, a heavy reliance on the Transfer Portal indeed.

There's nothing "interesting" about this at all, as the explanation is so obvious that any number of non-NPU fans to whom I've spoken over the past three years have figured it out independently and basically just sought me out in order to confirm it.

The North Park MBB program was in very bad shape when Sean Smith took over as head coach three years ago, and that was largely because the previous coaching staff had been unable to sustain the successful recruitment of CCIW-quality freshmen after that remarkable two-year burst in the middle of the last decade that brought in Juwan Henry and T.J. Cobbs in the fall of 2013 and then Jordan Robinson and Colin Lake the following year. In fact, the influx of good freshman recruits went from strong to practically non-existent over the course of a single year's recruiting cycle. From Lake's senior season (2017-18), when he made the All-CCIW team as part of a dramatically depleted Vikings team that fell off of the cliff after that 2017 CCIW co-championship, to the hiring of Sean Smith four years later, there was almost nobody brought in as an 18-year-old by the staff who was capable of evolving into a really good CCIW-level starter. The lone exception was Toby Marek, who was All-CCIW second team in 2019-20, although I'll add that Matt Szuba, Veggie Tangen, and (before he transferred out) Michael Osborne were at least league-average players.

Thus, when Sean and Ed arrived in the spring of 2022 they inherited the Boyd brothers (one of whom, Jalen, had been All-CCIW in 2021-22), who had transferred in from Loras the previous year, a pair of unproven but promising home-grown underclassmen bigs in Karl Polk, Jr. and Adam Bulwa (the latter of whom hadn't even been a starter at New Trier, but was a physically gifted young man with a strong desire to improve and a considerable work ethic) who would eventually round into decent role players off of the bench for NPU, and pretty much nothing else in the way of players who could contribute at the high level this league requires.

Realizing that the recruiting pipeline to local high schools was broken, and with no time remaining in the recruiting cycle to locate and successfully woo graduating HS seniors, anyway, Sean and Ed adopted a fast-paced pressing style of play, combed through the transfer portal to find guys who were dissatisfied at the end of the benches of their respective scholarship teams and who were willing to do the off-season work to prep themselves for the rigors of a style of play designed for 94 feet of defense for forty minutes a game (and a run-and-gun offense to go with it), and filled up the roster with a bevy of new transfers. The result, of course, was a CCIW tourney championship and a run to the Sweet Sixteen in the D3 dance.

But you can't create a brand off of one successful run. You need to sustain it in order to make your mark with area HS head coaches. Sean and now Ed have tried to do that by continuing to draw water from the transfer-portal well in order to repeat the success of that 2022-23 season, and it obviously hasn't worked. But I think the trick is to get the formula right in terms of balancing the recruitment and development of four-year players with the influx of transfers (after all, transfers have been an important part of North Park men's basketball since the late 1960s), and it appears to me that Ed McGhee and Aaron Jacobs are well aware of that and are trying to find that proper balance in terms of who they're bringing in to re-stock the roster for 2025-26.

TL; DR -- You can't rebuild a busted high-school recruitment pipeline overnight as a new head coach, and at the same time you have to have some success in the program in order to fuel the inducement of high-school seniors (and the approval of the coaches who in a lot of cases gatekeep for them) -- and the obvious manner to gain that success quickly is via transfers.

(Also, Mike Vuckovic is a transfer from Harper College out in Palatine.)

Quote from: mailsy on March 31, 2025, 05:35:30 PM

Quote from: Pat Coleman on March 31, 2025, 01:21:36 PMRosemont to cease intercollegiate athletics after the 2025-26 academic year after being merged into Villanova.

https://d3sports.com/notables/2025/03/rosemont-merging-with-villanova

Next question. Who will "merge" with Villanova next?

Umm ... UW-Stout?

Lance Nelson is graduating from North Park in May. NPU is moving to the all-online format for a lot of its graduate programs, which means that the opportunity to finish one's athletic career as a graduate student will be significantly reduced going forward at NPU. Thus, Lance will be moving on to seek out a place to play his final season of eligibility as a grad student.

Quote from: nescac1 on March 31, 2025, 09:40:16 AMJamisen Young, UW-Parkside (three years)

UW-Parkside is a D2 school, not a D3 school.

Great list, though. Thanks for doing this!

Beat me to it, Mark. That's what I get for not checking my Twitter feed at midnight.

Given that his high-school program hasn't drawn much attention in recent years (although Lake View won the CPL White North this past season and thus gets promoted to the prestigious Red North for 2025-26), Daniel Loza is a nice under-the-radar find for North Park. He's a true two-way player, the kind that Ed McGhee needs in NPU's high-pressure mode of play. He was in the top three in Illinois this past season in three-point shots made, and also finished in the top ten in the state in charges drawn. He finished his career as the second-leading scorer in the history of the oldest high school in Illinois, trailing only former North Park great Octavius Parker (All-CCIW in 1993-94 and 1995-96) on Lake View's all-time scoring leaderboard.

Looking forward to seeing DLo in Vikings livery next fall!

The CCIW's collective ERA right now is 6.35. That's not an indication of the strength of opposing non-conference hitters, either, because after one weekend of CCIW play the league's collective ERA through nine games is 6.29.

The league's overall ERA is up around eight-tenths of a run over last season, and the CCIW-only ERA is up about a run and a half.

Either the recruitment of position players has improved, or it's getting harder and harder to find good pitching for this league.