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Posted Feb. 12, 2004

More than spoilers
There are always plenty of reasons to write a team off — coaching changes, a slew of graduations, playing in a tough conference. Now, as the regular season enters its final stages, these teams find themselves at center stage, with the chance to be more than just spoilers.

There’s a fresh face sitting with the usual suspects at the top of the UAA standings. Brandeis is locked in a four-way battle with Rochester, Washington, and NYU. The Judges (16-3, 7-2) actually have the most control over their own destiny, since they play each of those other three teams once more (as does NYU, but Brandeis has homecourt advantage in that matchup, which closes out the regular season).

Judges head coach Carol Simon (no relation) has run this program for 17 seasons, but can’t remember the last time her team was in the thick of the hunt this late.

“It has been a gradual progression,” said Simon, who earlier this season won her 200th game. “You could see it by the types of players we’ve brought in. The kids we get here now are ones that get Division I and Division II looks.”

Likewise its rare in a league that has produced so many dominant players that Brandeis could lay claim to having the best in the UAA. This season they just might in senior forward Danielle Fitzpatrick (18.7 points, 7.1 rebounds, 55.4% shooting), who led the UAA in field goal percentage each of the last two seasons but was overshadowed by opponents from dominant programs. The Judges are a power team, whose three top scorers (Fitzpatrick, reserve Caitlin Malcom, and 6-2 center Christine Clancy), have combined for better than 40 points and 21 rebounds per night, getting the ball from senior point guard Jayne Wise and experienced teammates Amanda DeMartino and Catherine Brady (212 assists combined).

Brandeis started the season at 5-0, recovered from losses to Western New England and Rochester (which it hosts this weekend) to win nine of the next 10, including a key overtime triumph at NYU. The only really difficult loss was against Washington, though the Judges did rally from a 21-point deficit to fall by only six and position themselves nicely for a rematch. They’re ready for what’s coming.

“They’re just a bunch of hardworking kids with good team chemistry,” said Simon, who thinks that the league, which does not have a postseason tournament, should get three NCAA bids. “Our players understand their roles.”

Eastern heading north
The women’s program at Eastern Mennonite was one mired in turmoil this offseason, with the resignation of head coach Mike Dunavant in April after he was accused of improper conduct by one of his players.

So the Royals, under first-year head coach Richard McElwee, were one of the forgotten squads this season in the Old Dominion Athletic Conference. Now they seem to be on everyone’s mind.

EMU has been winning despite a lack of depth. McElwee wasn’t hired until late July and was left with just six returnees, and an eight-player roster by Christmas after two walk-ons quit the team. Jenny Cline, who was the ODAC’s runner-up for newcomer of the year two seasons ago, gave the team a boost with her return in early January. The roster consists of two juniors, five sophomores, and two freshmen.

“Our sophomores should be commended for staying with the program,” McElwee said. “It has been an adjustment for them. I’m kind of like their stepfather because I didn’t recruit them, but they’ve bought into my system. The nucleus of a team is there.”

The Royals win via hustle, tenacity, and good passing, with three players averaging four assists or more per game. McElwee thinks he has three legitimate candidates for first-team league honors, led by player of the year candidate, sophomore Laura Ludholtz (15.2 points, 7.9 rebounds, 2.5 steals) and teammates Carrie Grandstaff (18.7 points, 4.1 assists) and Stephanie Matthews (12.2 points, 9.2 rebounds, 2.8 steals) to go along with center Amanda Renalds and first-year starting point guard Shantee Bryant.

“There are five or six teams in our league that could win the tournament,” McElwee said. “I don’t know if we can win three games in three days because we only play seven players, but I think we’re as talented as anyone

Surprise, we're still here
It’s hard to take a men’s team that won 22 games and advanced to the Sweet 16 last season and put them into the category of surprise team, but we will in the case of the Illinois Wesleyan Titans, who graduated seven seniors from that team and was picked to finish fifth in the CCIW’s preseason poll. Those voters should know better by now.

“I don’t pay attention to the preseason rankings,” said IWU head coach Scott Trost, now in his third season. “We’ve had our ups and downs, but we’ve played pretty well this season. We’re trying to maintain an even keel.”

Stability was something that Trost talked about often during our conversation. He felt that a key turning point was the insertion of senior guard and captain Jim Lehan into the starting lineup at the beginning of the conference season.

“That had a calming effect,” Trost said. “Maybe that give us a little bit of a different look too.”

The Titans, in a funny way, actually the same kind of look when they go to their reserves. Among the starters are sophomore forward Cory Jones (9.7 points per game) and freshman frontcourt mate Zach Freeman (11.7 points, 7.2 rebounds). Each has an identical twin brother (Chris Jones and Andrew Freeman), who is an inch shorter and a few pounds lighter, getting a handful of minutes off the bench. IWU has a regular unit of 10 players, nine of whom are freshman or sophomores. The strength of the team is in its ability to execute in transition, with sophomores Keelan Amelianovich (17.7 points, 49.6% from 3-point range) and Adam Dauskas (14.7 points, 5.6 assists) leading the attack.

“Physically, we’re tall and lanky,” Trost said. “Teams that get us playing halfcourt have been our nemesis. But if teams let us run, then we’re awfully tough to beat. We’re a very young team. If we can keep (the kids) together, good things will happen to us.”

Advancing by degrees
The academic reputation of Macalester came in handy when Minnesota native Chris Assel, who ranked among the best 3-point shooters in the NEC at Division I Sacred Heart, was looking to transfer closer to home for his senior season.

Macalester has two former players, both of whom transferred to the college, in medical school (including Ryan Geary at Harvard), and though Assel wants to pursue a career in law rather than medicine, he realized a Macalester degree would help more than one from Sacred Heart.

The basketball benefits for the Scots happened to be a bonus. Assel, above, stepped into the role of No. 2 scorer immediately, averaging 16.6 points per game and his presence made senior post and Scots' all-time leading scorer Ben Van Thorre (19.6 points) even better. The result is that Macalester is 15-7, 14-3 and in second place in the MIAC, and was within a point of sweeping first-place Gustavus Adolphus.

“Offensively, we can do a lot of different things,” said Macalester head coach Curt Kietzer. “When they double the post, Chris and (point guard Erik Jackson) can make teams pay. Defensively we’re solid. Our returning players have all gotten better, so we’ve improved slightly at all positions and improved greatly at one.”

Macalester got a sense that it was for real early on in the league season after a challenging early schedule which included current No. 25 UW-River Falls when it beat Concordia-Moorhead and Carleton on the road, then topped Gustavus at home. The games have been tighter recently, but Macalester has managed to win 10 of 11. The difference between this team and the one that went 9-16 last season is stark.

“To be honest, I feel good about our chances of winning the conference tournament and making NCAAs,” said Kietzer. “This is the best team I’ve had in seven years here. We were rebuilding for awhile. We started about as far down as you could go. We’ve been reasonably competitive the last couple of years. Now we hope to get to another level.”

ALMA MATTERS: The Alma men got a giant-sized monkey off their back, snapping its 37-game MIAA losing streak with a 76-61 win against Olivet on Feb. 7.

“I told our guys not I’m not looking to buy beachfront property and retire just yet,” said third-year head coach Ed Kohtala, a former assistant to Rick Barnes at Texas. “I told the team that sometimes a win like that is a breakthrough that leaves you hungry for more. Sometimes, after you get one, you relax.”

The Scots (3-18, 1-7), not surprisingly are a young team. Eight of the top 10 players in the rotation are freshman or sophomores, though the team’s only double-digit scorer is senior Anthony Jones, who is averaging 16.5 points per game.

“If there’s any reward to this, it’s that our kids are very resilient,” Kohtala said. “They rebound much more quickly than an old guy like me.”

The chances of Alma getting another chance to celebrate seem unlikely. The Scots conclude the regular season by facing the top four teams in the standings, three of them on the road.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? Jeff Seifriz says he is still a dead-eye 3-point shooter, even 15 years after his collegiate basketball career ended at UW-Whitewater with a Division III championship and as a national record holder.

“I certainly can still shoot,” Serifriz said with a laugh, “as long as I get an open look.”

Seifriz got a master’s degree in sports management from the University of Minnesota and now works there as the assistant athletic facilities director.

Seifriz played in an alumni game last week when Whitewater held reunions for its 1984 and 1989 championship teams, and knocked down a couple of trifectas. The 1989 Warhawks beat Trenton State (now College of New Jersey) for the championship, led by the shooting of Seifriz, the passing of point guard Ricky Spicer, the multiple dunks from Elbert “Tree” Gordon, and the defense of current Whitewater coach Pat Miller on NBA bound All-American Greg Grant. Seifriz ended his career with 217 3-point field goals and the best 3-point shooting percentage (51.3%) in NCAA history.

“We would shoot to get hot and shoot to stay hot,” Seifriz said. “The percentages were usually with us. We had a green light to shoot. The run we had that season was unexpected and it was a fun run.”

ON FIRE, RELATIVELY: You don’t have to be one of the best teams in the country to be one of the hottest teams in the nation. So with that in mind, we’ll salute the John Jay women’s basketball team, which reeled off its 10th consecutive victory by beating Lehman on Wednesday night.

The Bloodhounds (15-7, 9-3 CUNYAC) have won 10 games in a row, remarkable for a program that hasn’t had a winning season since 1991-92, and with a change in midseason, is on its ninth head coach in four years.

Granted, the Bloodhounds are a long way from national formidability and still have steps to take to become regionally respected (they lost to Kean by 66 points early in the season), but head coach John McGraw has reason to believe in his players. Three different players have won league Player of the Week honors, senior guard December Bails is a leading Player of the Year candidate, and John Jay snapped a 27-game losing streak to Hunter. The enthusiasm about the program has increased to the point where McGraw’s players travel around New York to see league rivals play on their off nights.

“These kids have had a losing mentality for all these years,” said McGraw, whose only collegiate coaching experience prior to taking over from Sean Couch seven games into the season was as a student assistant to John Calipari at Massachusetts. “Now they have a winning mentality. The talent has been here, but now I feel like I’ve gotten through to them.”

GAME OF THE YEAR? On Feb. 6, With his team trailing Loras by two points and two seconds remaining, Simpson men’s coach Bruce Wilson reached back in his memory bank for a special play, though one he doesn’t remember fondly.

“When I was an assistant at Gonzaga and we had John Stockton, St. Mary’s beat us on a shot at the buzzer by David Vaughan,” Wilson said. “I borrowed the play they ran.”

All it entailed was a three-quarter court inbounds pass by Scott Ellens, a quick touch pass to the sideline by Jason Soppe, and a 25-foot 3-pointer at the buzzer by Nick Boyd, that lifted Simpson to a 65-64 win. That capped a wild finish in which the teams combined for 10 points in the final 23 seconds. It wasn’t quite Stanford-Arizona, but it was a special enough ending that Simpson’s fans stormed the court in celebration.

“It’s a play that works on football principles,” Wilson said. “You throw the ball to different zones and you react off those zones. We actually ran it at halftime too, but didn’t make it.”

The win had a carryover effect for Simpson, which beat Dubuque the next day on a free throw with a second remaining, then beat Central, 88-31, the fewest points the team has allowed since the 1924-25 season. The Storm have won five in a row and are 12-9, 8-4 in the Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.

ALUMNI REPORT: Seeing Bo Ryan’s Wisconsin Badgers take on Steve Alford’s Iowa Hawkeyes on Wednesday night reminded us how many people with connections to Division III programs (Ryan’s UW-Platteville team topped Alford’s Manchester squad in the 1995 championship game) were in the news this week.

The Jones brothers, Joe and James garnered national attention for coaching against each other in Yale’s win over Columbia. James, who ranks second all-time in steals at Oswego, got the better of his brother who both played and coached at Albany State before starting the Division I path that took him to his rookie season as a head coach.

St. John’s (N.Y.) interim coach Kevin Clark had a rough week, dealing with a sex scandal involving players and a strip club patron. Clark starred, coincidentally, at Clark and ranks seventh in NCAA history with his career average of 14.4 rebounds per game.

Then of course there’s former Brandeis coach Chris Ford, who parlayed failure in two seasons at Division III into an assistant’s job and now the interim coaching gig with the Philadelphia 76ers.

Honorable mention, by the way, to Stanford coach Mike Montgomery, whose team remained unbeaten with that remarkable buzzer-beating win against Arizona on Saturday. Montgomery got his coaching start as an assistant at the Coast Guard Academy. Division III was not in existence yet for Montgomery’s stint during the 1969-70 season in which the team went 0-21.

RESEARCH QUESTION: We recently got a note from regular column contributor, Muhlenberg SID Mike Falk. He wanted to know if anyone had seen a stranger stat line than the one Ryan Bonda had in the Mules’ loss to Haverford. Bonda played 23 minutes and registered zeroes in every boxscore category (statisticians refer to such a performance as a “trillion” since the list spans 10 digits across a boxscore line). So we’ll put out a call, either for bigger “trillions” or weird boxscore lines and print the best ones we get.

Notes for Around the Nation are compiled with the help of sports information directors across the country. If you have suggestions or information for this column, please send it to mark@d3hoops.com.

Previous columns
2007-08 columns
March 6: Faith restored
Feb. 27: John Jay, Cinderella
Feb. 21: No safety net
Feb. 14: Ursinus better enough
Feb. 8: Hope-TMC on collision course
Jan. 31: Plattsburgh's big shot
Jan. 24: UMD answers call
Jan. 18: Like Bosko, like son
Jan. 11: Keystone stakes
Dec. 13: Unstoppable
Dec. 7: UWW aiming deeper
Nov. 30: Coach's shadow lingers
Nov. 15: Strong duo
2006-07 columns
2005-06 columns
2004-05 columns
2003-04 columns
2002-03 columns
2001-02 columns

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