Trine University Softball is your 2025 National Champions!!!

Powered way thru winners bracket and just wrapped up best 2 out of 3 today in the championship series with a sweep of Virginia Wesleyan.  Great pitching by Alexis Michon and offense powered by huge home runs all thru the world series.

Second title in 3 years.  Great job girls, laser focused all season!   

Trine commit:

Nick Ryan 6'3 G/F JFKennedy HS, Warren OH. 

Schools all time leading scorer, over 1900 pts in career. Avg 26.5 points, 11.8 boards senior season.  Sounds like a VanderWal guy that was being recruited for Marietta perhaps?

Saw Pete Smith at the Trine Super Regional Softball game yesterday.  He was sporting Trine gear, fairly certain he is leaving/has left Marietta to join Coach VanderWal's staff as assistant coach at Trine.  It looks like some of the assistant coaches from Coach Miller's staff are being retained by VanderWal; John Wysong, Ed Bentley, and Isaac Anderson.  Cortez Garland was also at the game, not sure of his status on the MBB staff, hoping he'll be retained.

Also congratulations to the Trine SB team on winning the Super Regional yesterday.  They will be 1 of 8 teams in the College World Series at Illinois Wesleyan.  Wishing them good luck as they try to win a second national championship.

Trine commitment:

Adam McBride, 6-1 G, Norwell HS, Ossian IN.  First team academic all-state, will study mechanical engineering at Trine.

Quote from: Flying Dutch Fan on April 30, 2025, 12:52:29 PMA great "get" for Trine and the MIAA, and I'm also impressed with how quickly it was done!  14 days after the announcement of Brooks leaving they are announcing the new hire.  It seems more common that it takes 14 days just to start the process and form a selection committee...

Quote from Trine Athletic Director Matt Land from the athletics web site:

"Coach VanderWal is the perfect choice to continue and build on the men's basketball success we have had at Trine University," said Matt Land, assistant vice president for athletics. "The outpouring of interest for the position was amazing and I want to thank everyone who reached out. Jon has shown that  he knows how to develop a culture of success, and how to win at the highest level. He was the first person we spoke with and we are ecstatic that he has decided to help Trine University remain one of the nation's elite NCAA Division III programs."

How often do you hire your 'first choice' for a coaching vacancy position?  Being a DIII fan I knew about Coach VanderWal's program at Marietta, now I'm scouring the internet to find more information about Coach VanderWal.  From what I'm reading he's a well respected coach and person.  As much as I hated to see Brooks Miller leave, the hire seems to be a home run for Trine University.

Quote from: KnightSlappy on April 29, 2025, 05:48:13 PMPer Ryan Whitnable, Jon VanderWal will leave Marietta to take the Trine job.

VanderWal is a West Michigan native and played his college ball at Albion.

https://x.com/OACBBallShow/status/1917333656126816709?s=19

That's a really good coach that Trine is getting.  I know he's had tons of success at Marietta, getting into the NCAA tournament 9 of his 16 seasons with the Pioneers, including a final 4 berth in 2022.  Curious as to why he would be leaving a great program like Marietta, other than to get back closer to home and compete in the MIAA.

Interesting fun fact, Trine and Marietta will be playing against each other in the Great Lakes Invitational this coming November.

So does anyone have the 'scoop' on Trine's new coach?  I can't find any annoucements.  If someone has a name but not confirmed, I'll take a private message if you don't want to post here.

Trine commitment:

Landon Lybarger, 6-1 G, Heritage HS, Monroeville IN

Quote from: Flying Dutch Fan on April 17, 2025, 12:02:44 PMReally interesting timing on this one (which was shared on X around 5pm yesterday): 

Paxton Crane 6-7 F Ft Wayne Carroll (IN) will attend Trine

I was pretty certain that Paxton was committing to Trine since this past winter (I have a nephew that teaches at Carroll), but he never made it public until yesterday.  Honestly I'm kinda shocked he made his announcement before a new coach was in place, and figured with Brooks leaving he'd open up his recruitment, so some good news for the Thunder.  He was MVP in the competitive Summit Athletic Conference in Ft Wayne, which has a few D1 commits.  Averaged 17 pts, 10 reb, shot almost 70% from the floor, honorable-mention all state.  He should help right away. 

It will be interesting to see if Trine promotes one of it's assistant coaches to the HC position or whether they do a national search.  I'm predicting they'll bring in a new coach from outside the ranks.  Current assistants are John Wysong, Ed Bentley, Isaac Anderson and Garrett Duffin.  Wysong and Bentley probably won't be candidates as they are getting close to retirement and more than likely won't be interested.  Anderson and Duffin are both young, in their late 20's, but with not much experience, both have coached the Trine JV, Anderson last year and Duffin this year.  Will one of them be interested in the position, maybe..., but I think the Trine program is in a spot where they can easily attract a coaching candidate with a lot more experience.

Trine University has a lot of 'pros' to this position.  It's a growing campus with great academics and the facilites are top notch, there is always new or remodeled construction on campus or on their satellite campusus every year,  But the biggest con is recruiting, northeastern Indiana is a tough sell to recuits coming out of high school to come to Trine.  The NAIA is king here, Coach Miller was consistently losing battles to programs like Saint Francis, Huntington, Goshen, Grace, Taylor, Indiana Tech, Bethel, Indiana Wesleyan, etc, on kids who would be a good fit to his program.  That is why you saw an increase in transfers coming to the program over the last 8-10 years or so, to help fill out the varsity rosters.  Trine had better luck recruiting Ohio and Michigan kids, Miller's rosters were almost evenly divided between Indiana, Ohio and Michigan players.  Starting from scratch isn't going to be easy for the new staff.  Most of this year's high school seniors have already made their college choices, so getting someone hired fairly quickly is paramount.     

I am not shocked by this announcement.  Very happy for Coach Miller, he'll do well in his new position at CMU, he's in his prime coaching age, lots of HC experience, so now was the best time to move on when the right opportunity presented itself.  He put Trine MBB on the national map, culminating  with winning it all in 2024.  Now there is some clarity in the Nate Tucker portal news.  It's possible there will be more portal announcements.  Trine is in the same boat as Indiana...will be a whole new roster for the most part...albeit without all that NIL money.

With Nate Tucker now entering the portal, here is an update for Trine (yikes!):
   
Team     Minutes    Points    Rebounds      Assists    Steals    
Trine     0.21   0.179   0.197    0.158   0.185   


Trine MBB in 2025-26 will basically be starting from scratch.  The only player with any significant playing time returning is Jayce Cusack.  3 others saw some time with the second string on occasion: Logan McKenzie, Logan Gard and Cade Brenner.  Last year's squad was mostly all upperclassmen.  So it stands to reason this next season was going to have a lot of new faces.  The Tucker portal announcement was awful news, but maybe he saw the writing on the wall and wanted to go to a stronger program or maybe up a level.  Who knows.  We'll just play with what we got.  I do know we've had strong JV squads the last 2 years so this may be a chance for some to earn time on the Varsity.  I'm hoping Coach Miller can pull in a few upperclass transfers.  If not we will easily be the most inexperienced team in the MIAA next year.

Trine commit:

Montell Johnson, 6'3 G, Indianapolis Park Tudor HS

Trine Senior Drew Moore has entered the portal with one more year of eligibilty left.  I wouldn't be surprised he plays up a level or two.

Congratulations to Trine's Sidney Wagner for being selected to play in the WBCA All-Star game preceding the NCAA DIII Women's National Championship game.  I believe Sidney is the second Trine WBB athlete to be selected, alum Brandi Dawson was also selected following her stellar career at Trine.  Congratulations Sidney, well deserved!