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Around
the Nation

Posted Dec. 2, 2004

Lawrence
still for real

The performance of the men’s team at Lawrence has been a pleasant melody for a school best known nationally for its conservatory, and becoming better known over the last couple of seasons as a hoops power.

Fresh off a surprising performance in last year’s NCAA Tournament, in which the Vikings scored a road upset of Buena Vista, a stirring second-half comeback in the Sweet 16 against Sul Ross State and the narrowest of defeats in overtime to eventual champ UW-Stevens Point, Lawrence is in the argument, both as to who is the best Division III team in both the state of Wisconsin and the nation. The Vikings are 3-0, have already won at UW-Platteville, and get to visit UW-Oshkosh in two weeks. They are the favorites to win again in the Midwest Conference, a league where Grinnell has earned most of the headlines for its unique style of play. MWC play opens Dec. 4 against Ripon.

“Our theme this year is to write a new chapter,” said 11th-year coach John Tharp, who this season became the winningest coach in team history and is now one win shy of 150. “I think the loss haunted us for awhile, but we told our kids afterwards that they’ve got to enjoy the journey, that the daily steps we take to get there are important. You hope that you can end up (in position to get to the Final Four) again.”

The trip conductor, at least on court, is second-team preseason All-America forward, junior Chris Braier (left), nicknamed ‘The Bopper’ by the coaching staff. Braier passed up the chance to walk on to play tight end and defensive end for Wisconsin, and after deciding basketball was a better fit, chose Lawrence over a host of WIAC schools. Braier, who grew up just outside Milwaukee (literally two blocks from the city in the suburb, Wauwatosa), played on the same high school team as current Dallas Maverick Devin Harris, and didn’t emerge as a go-to option until he reached the collegiate level.

“The only way to get shots in high school was to get rebounds, which takes effort,” Braier said.

Despite standing only 6-4½, Braier was among the nation’s leaders in rebounding last season, adding 13.4 per game to go along with a 15.0 per game scoring average. Braier is shooting only 41% from the field in the first three games, but is averaging 10.7 points and 11.7 rebounds, and is second on the team in assists.

Braier, a biology major with medical school aspirations, has a strong competitive streak. Team observers said he took the 35-point loss in a preseason exhibition game to Division I UW-Milwaukee very seriously. Earlier this season, when the team broke down a rebounding competition by position, Braier got annoyed when his team was losing and switched to go up against the team’s point guards to ensure victory. Braier plays to win every battle for every loose ball.

“When the ball is in the air, he does a great job of positioning himself for the rebound,” Tharp said. “He’s strong and has tremendous hands. If his hands touch the ball, he’s going to win the battle for it.”

Tharp says that his Lawrence squad is full of battlers, noting that they often win by outworking their opponents rather than through athleticism or talent. The Vikings returned five of their top seven scorers from last season, all of whom looked quite good under the pressure of big moments. Senior point guard Dan Evans drew praise from Braier, who lauded seniors Jason Holinbeck and crafty forward Brendan Falls as the squad’s sharpshooters.

“I don’t draw as many double teams because of them,” Braier said.

Fellow Wauwatosan Kyle McGillis is the defensive stopper and is used to guard whomever the top opposing threat is, from point guard to center.

For a few moments in overtime against UWSP last season, it looked like Braier was going to be the one to send Lawrence to Salem Va, as he twice gave the Vikings the lead in the final minute, first with free throws and then with a basket inside. But a tough shot by UWSP’s Eric Maus with five seconds remaining and a missed 3-pointer at the buzzer left Lawrence one shot short and put the Pointers in position for an eventual national crown. Coming that close to the biggest of dances left the team hungry for next season to begin. The wait lasted eight months and made them appreciate how remarkable the most successful season in team history was.

“I think the experience made us greedy,” Tharp said. “We don’t talk about last year anymore, but that feeling is something we just want to experience again.”

The Lawrence women may be poised to make a nice run of their own this season. That 59-56 score from Nov. 20 wasn’t a misprint. Lawrence did indeed beat 2004 Final Four participant UW-Stevens Point on the road.

One key for Lawrence in its 3-0 start was the addition of freshman point guard Jenny Stoner, a five-foot sparkplug who was rated as one of Chicago’s 10 best defensive players in high school. She had 19 points and was credited with 10 steals in her collegiate debut against Dominican for a defense that is averaging around 20 picks per game and is capable of getting the ball to Felice Porrata (18.7 ppg, 16 steals in three games) and two-time MWC scoring leader Claire Getzoff.

“If (Stoner) was 5-foot-7, I don’t think she’d be at Lawrence, but we like the diamonds in the rough,” said head coach Amy Proctor. “Every year I think we’re a good team, but we don’t feel like we’re dominant. We get hardworking players. Our defense is good, our depth is good, and our leadership is good. (Beating UWSP) was a good confidence boost. Talk to me in a couple of weeks though, and see if I’m saying the same things.”

NEW ‘YORK’: A year ago at this time, the York (Pa.) men’s basketball team was 0-5 with three defeats coming by single digits, so a reversal of fortune qualifies as one of the biggest early surprises of the 2004-05 season.

The Spartans were 5-0 for the first time in team history, with solid wins over Albright and Methodist among the triumphs before a 75-72 loss at Goucher on Wednesday. It may be too soon to tell if the groundwork has been set for a special season, but there is reason for 28th-year coach Jeff Gamber to be optimistic. Scoring is spread out, with seven players averaging at least eight points per game and five players are grabbing five rebounds per game.

“We used to open in the Franklin & Marshall Tournament every year, so it was hard for us to even start at 2-0,” Gamber said. “We had a lot of new kids last year, and they’ve been in the system for a year. Our depth is really good now. I love the way that they’re listening to us.”

Two local newcomers, both forwards, have made an impact. Paddy Lee, a transfer from Penn State-Mount Alt, and freshman Chad McGowan have combined to average 19 ppg, and Lee, a high school teammate of leading scorer Brandon Bushey, is the squad’s leading rebounder. They have been significant additions for a team that finished 11-15, 7-7, good for fifth place in the Capital Athletic Conference, where the Spartans haven’t been regular-season champs in a decade. Whether they will have a lasting effect remains to be seen.

“It’s early,” Gamber said, something he repeated several times during the conversation. “We can be a very good team. But one thing about really good teams is that they’re a lot better in January and February than they are in November and December.”

Other early surprise squads
North Central men: Ex-Nebraska Wesleyan coach Todd Raridon hasn’t wasted time establishing successful foundation

UW-Superior men: Beat UWSP twice last season, are they ready for next step in WIAC after 5-1 start?

Rockford women: Not the record that’s a surprise, but rather that Hope was among the teams they beat.

COMPETING OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM: People tend to think that Division III is a whole other world of basketball, but within that, the basketball programs at Caltech are in a universe of their own. Faced with what might be the toughest entrance standards in the country (SATs over 1500 do not guarantee admission), the athletic programs there do not have much history of success, let alone being competitive, but a new regime is trying to change that basketball-wise. Roy Dow, who formerly started the men's basketball program at Wheaton (Mass.) and Sandra Marbut, a former assistant at Division I Western Illinois, made vast improvements to their team last summer.

Last season’s men’s team had only two players that played varsity basketball in high school, played most of the year with a 6-2, 165 pound power forward, and usually lost by upwards of 50 points. The women’s team was in a similar situation, with only one player with more than one year of high school experience. There was a lot of time spent getting players used to things — like how tired they would feel after a college practice. This season, Dow brought in four newcomers — Paxon Frady, Bryan Hires, Nick Goeden, and Michael Underhill and Marbut brought in three — Lindsay King, Jessica Roberts, and Rene Davis — who had previously played high school basketball and most of both rosters were retained. So there is a different feel, evident from the result of a 51-49 win on Nov. 22 over Life Pacific that snapped the.men’s 47-game losing streak and a 53-44 victory for the women over Southwestern (Ariz.) that stopped a 41-game skid.

Any win at this school, one that competes to bring students to the Pasadena campus with Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and MIT, and is ranked among the best in the world producing the world’s future scientists (“Not many schools have kids majoring in astrophysics, or who while in high school built their own telescope to study the moons of Jupiter,” Marbut said.), is significant.

Caltech’s men haven’t beaten an NCAA opponent since 1995 and hasn’t won a league game since the 1984-85 season. The women’s team scored in single digits five times last season and lost every game by at least 36 points.

Neither team has much size, or depth, but they have gone from none to some of each now, and that’s something to build on. Marbut is showing next year’s potential freshman the numbers. Her team has made 21 3-pointers through four games. Last season’s team had made 21 baskets in four games.

“It’s great to get a win, but we have some aspirations beyond that,” Dow said. “A win validates what we’re doing.”

“If we can add three to five players next year, so we would have eight to ten freshmen and sophomores who we could give three years and see what happens. Last year, people on campus got excited. They started asking ‘Are you going to win?’ We have a lot to live through first”

“I told our freshmen that we’re going to build a program here,” Marbut said. “This is already way more than I thought we could do overnight. I told them, I’m not going anywhere, so let’s chip away at this. I’ll take these kids any day. They’re nice kids who are excited to be on the court. They like to learn, and they remember to say ‘Thanks coach’ at the end of the day They’ve said ‘We’re going to get there.’ I think it’s going to be a fun ride.”

TRIPPED UP: Among the highlights of Carleton’s tour through the Northwest Conference — lost luggage, a speeding ticket, a 14-hour trip one way, 3½ hours of delays coming home, foul trouble, and, oh yes, three defeats.

The Knights women’s team gets points from us, even though they won’t get any from the NCAA on the Pool C charts for the most ambitious scheduling of the opening weeks, by playing at Linfield, 2003 league champ Pacific Lutheran and 2004 Elite 8 participant Puget Sound. The trip west fulfilled a promise made during the recruiting senior Kate Krueger, who grew up just outside Seattle, that they would make a trip to her home state during her senior year, and gave what was the No. 12 ranked preseason team a look at some of their best regional non-league foes. Carleton had a tough time at Linfield (which, while not predicted to finish in the top four is 11-5 at home the last two seasons in league play), then played very tough NCAA-tournament like games in a pair of six-point losses to Pacific Lutheran and current No. 7 ranked Puget Sound.

“I told all those teams, we’re not coming out here again until you come to see us,” Metcalf-Filzen said with a laugh.

Carleton is in a unique position of trying to schedule road trips early in the season, because the semester break is lengthy — from Thanksgiving until early January. Finals coincide with practices just prior to the opening week of the season. That means they may lose a few more than they would like, and go through odd stretches like this one, in which the team shot 35% from the field, 55% from the foul line, and committed 38 more fouls than its opponents. Things returned to normal on Wednesday night with a win against St. Thomas in the MIAC opener.

Carleton, which returned four seniors and junior second-team preseason All-American Megan Vig will definitely be in the hunt for the MIAC title with the likes of St. Benedict (which interestingly opened its season in a tournament at the Final Four site, Virginia Wesleyan), Gustavus Adolphus and Concordia-Moorhead. Pool C positioning doesn’t concern the coaching staff as much as the conference schedule does.

“We could schedule teams that we’d beat by 30 to 50 points, but what good does that do?” Metcalf-Filzen said. “I think we’re a team that’s going to take longer to get going. Our motion offense is all recognition-based, and we only had six practices with a full team because of our volleyball season. Those are factors, not excuses. I think we’ll get better with time.”

ATTENTION GRABBERS: Lakeland senior center Nick Zeck earned conference player of the week honors in two sports in the same month, nabbing basketball honors last week in the Lake Michigan Conference and defensive honors in the Illini Badger Football Conference.

There are rumblings that the Puget Sound men might not only repeat as NWC champs, but could be the first team to go unbeaten in the league since 1988. The Loggers style of blitz basketball worked wonders last season and is off to another good start.

Aurora's men are 2-2, but has beaten Randolph-Macon and its two road losses to Illinois Wesleyan and Chicago came by a combined three points and were both winnable games in the final seconds.

Muhlenberg's women outscored Montclair State 67-24 in a 19-minute stretch to turn a 16-point deficit into an 89-74 win on Nov. 20. The Mules finished 17-for-37 from 3-point range.

Trinity (Texas) thought it scored a coup when Lauren Andrews transferred from Michigan, but after two impressive practices following soccer season, decided not to play.

It would have been interesting to see one of the best frontcourts in the nation go up against the national champs, but an upset by Kalamazoo handed Wilmington its first loss and thwarted a potential matchup last week with the dynamic Whitworth duo of Tiffany Speer and Sarah Shogren.

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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