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Posted Nov. 17, 2005

E-mail: mark@d3hoops.com

And so the crush begins

The term “basketball crush” works for us on a number of different fronts as we begin the 2005-06 season. For one, it describes how we feel once the baseball season is over. Pro football is a little too violent for our tastes, and hockey is just coming back from labor ruin, so we’re taking a wait-and-see approach. Basketball remains what it has been: a game of skill, grace, power, and intelligence. The NCAA showed a video called We Are The Game at a seminar I recently attended and that served to get the juices flowing again.

“Basketball crush” also serves to describe the avalanche of information that comes through at this time of year. With more than 800 teams to keep up with, we have to do a lot of research. We’ve increased our communication efforts this season (thanks to those coaches and SIDs who responded to e-mails and phone calls) and as a result, we have a lot to ponder as the season begins. It seemed like a good place to start to tell you what’s been on our mind these last few months.

How did the other team feel?
The first thing we wondered about wasn’t necessarily the ins and outs of the increases in NCAA Tournament bids (plenty of time to get to that). It was whether losing to Albion on a miracle halfcourt shot at the buzzer in the Sweet 16 robbed John Carroll head coach Mike Moran of his sense of humor. We were glad to see that it hadn’t.

Mike Moran brought his team to Salem in 2004, finishing third nationally. Photo by Ryan Coleman, D3hoops.com

Just to recap briefly, the Blue Streaks scored 10 points in an amazing 22-second spurt, turning a six-point deficit into a four-point lead, on the road, with seven seconds remaining. Mike Thomas scored for Albion with just over three seconds remaining and the Britons fouled immediately (Moran argued then that not enough time came off the clock, which showed two seconds remaining), giving JCU a chance to ice the game with free throws. Both missed, opening the door ever so slightly for a bizarre finish. Albion’s Travis DePree grabbed the rebound and whipped it downcourt to Thomas, who flung one, under the arms of two John Carroll players, off the rim, backboard, and into the net for a gut-wrenching, game-ending three-pointer.

“You get to be my age and you think you’ve seen it all,” said Moran, who regaled us and our Final Four broadcast crew with a couple of nifty one-liners in Salem two years ago. “Then you find out that you haven’t. It was a shot. That’s exactly what it felt like. A shot. Sometimes you wake up and say ‘That’s a great dream. I think I’ll go back to sleep.’ In our case, we had a nightmare. But you eventually have to start looking forward to gardening season.”

Moran has been on both sides of this over 34 years of experience in the sport, so he understood the way things work.

“When I coached high school basketball 20 or so years ago, my team hit a shot that ricocheted in off the ceiling to win the game,” Moran said. “I imagine the opposing coach is still in the gym arguing that one.”

Moran had a busy summer. Two more grandchildren made the family roster, giving he and his wife six (“two girls … my son-in-law coaches high school basketball. He’s trying to re-stock his team”) and had hip-replacement surgery (“I’m loving modern medicine right about now.”) Now he’s got a busy winter, with a team ranked No. 16 and picked to win the Ohio Athletic Conference, despite its graduating three seniors, all of whom were on the floor for the final moments of March 2005, and losing leading scorer, forward Brandon Mimes (17.0 points/8.1 rebounds per game), who left for personal reasons. Moran remains hopeful he’ll eventually return.

The Blue Streaks will continue to run the platoon system that has been successful under Moran’s guidance and look to increase their run of regular-season league titles to four. The slogan remains “Our 10 can beat your five ” and the coaching staff feels good about the depth that allows them the luxury of not playing anyone more than 25 minutes a night. Moran said that after two scrimmages, he realized his team was somewhere between a peak and a valley, but he wasn’t sure which yet.

Moran’s son, point guard Pete (8.5 points per game in 2004-05), and forward Jon Franks are the coach-proclaimed old men of the team (Pete is 25 and Jon, a graduate student who sat out last year, is 23, prompting the coach to joke that their varicose veins are showing) and are being counted on for big-time production, along with senior guards Justin Ragor and Demetrius Travis, who combined to average 15 points last season.

“All of these guys can score,” said Moran. “The biggest thing they bring is their knowledge of the game. They’re all very sound players used to handling difficult situations.”

Situations, such as the one that came up in Michigan last March. The measure of whether John Carroll survived that miracle moment likely won’t fully be realized until season’s end when the squad is put in a similar situation.

“Basketball is such a funny game,” said Moran, whose team will warm up for conference play with tournaments at Mt. St. Joseph and national runner-up Rochester. “Each year, you pass the torch and try to outdo what the last team did. It will probably come down to one possession at the end of four or five games. If you execute those well, you have a good team. If not, you’re mediocre.”

Who are these guys?
The next thing that came to our wondering minds was how the defending national champs were doing. UW-Stevens Point had an offseason comparable to Division I men’s champ North Carolina, except that instead of sending its players to the NBA, UW-Stevens Point took on a few as volunteer assistants in Jason Kalsow, Nick Bennett, and Kyle Grusczynski, while two others, Tamaris Relerford and Eric Maus, are finishing up their studies. Oh, and the Pointers lost their head coach, Jack Bennett to retirement, replacing him with assistant Bob Semling.

Jon Krull scored a season-high 22 points against Rochester in the 2005 title game. Photo by Ryan Coleman, D3hoops.com

The one ‘old guy’ still left in the barn is junior forward Jon Krull, with whom the team went 42-3 when he started (including a 13-0 run when he was a freshman). Krull figures to average significantly more than the 8.6 points he averaged last season. Kalsow and Bennett could regularly be counted on for 40 a night, so there’s plenty for Krull and all the newbies, such as point guard Steve Hicklin, who moved into the starting lineup when Relerford got hurt at the end of the season. Senior forwards Brian Bauer and Matt Bouche, who saw time, albeit in rather limited bursts, last season, also will see their responsibilities increase.

“We’re definitely very young this year,” Krull said. “It is kind of neat to be the one guy that people know. We hadn’t had to teach much the last two years, but this year they went through all the drills with us. Coach Semling likes to run a lot of drills. Some of our older guys are still adapting to what he does.”

The younger ones, and there are a lot of them, don’t know it any other way. They’ll get a quick indoctrination to what it means to be a Pointer because a lot of them will get chances to play. Some names you may hear from include Bryan Beamish, Khalifa El-Amin in the backcourt and big forward Jerome Wotachek.

The WIAC is loaded, as it always is and the league should benefit from the increase in NCAA bids. It’s rare though that the league champ, let alone the defending two-time national champ, is such an unknown commodity heading into the season.

“ I think it will benefit us in the beginning of the year,” Krull said. “People aren’t going to know who’s going to score. We definitely have to be patient, but I hope we’ll have some big leaps ahead.”

Your point is …
We gushed at length about how valuable then-senior Audrey Minott was to Millikin’s national title run last season, so our first question for Big Blue coach Lori Kerans was something we had been wondering about ever since our nine-hour drive from Virginia Beach to the home office in Plymouth, Conn. With every other starter returning, who would be Millikin’s point guard, essentially an extension of Kerans on the floor, this season?

“It’s going to be Andrea Riebock,” Kerans said. “She was point guard on a high school team that won a state title here in Illinois and was a teammate of (fourth-team All-American forward) Lindsay Ippel. She played on our JV last season and practiced against Audrey all year.”

Kerans is known for playing her point guards the full 40 minutes every game. That’s not easy for anyone, let alone a sophomore expected to get the team through what should be a very difficult season in the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin.

“All she knows is Audrey as a senior, and she compares herself to that,” Kerans said. “Audrey was a great leader and one of the best defensive players I’ve ever coached. She didn’t see Audrey as a sophomore when she couldn’t do a lot of those types of things. I have to relieve (Andrea) of some of that pressure by just telling her to go out there and focus on one or two things that we need her to do.”

Karin Olson's return to the floor is key for Millikin in 2005-06.

Riebock’s primary focus will be getting the ball into the hands of an All-American, be it Ippel or first-team forward Joanna Conner, or to sharpshooters Lindsay Koehn and Laura Zimmerman when they’re in position to score. The Big Blue will be one of the nation’s dominant teams inside once Karin Olson comes back around Christmas time from the stress fracture that kept her out of the team’s tournament run and was re-injured this fall, necessitating surgery and rehab work. Kerans credited Olson’s unselfishness with Ippel’s development in the NCAA Tournament, noting her value off the floor.

Joining Angela Vollmer and Christi Blackburn off the bench in a tight rotation will be newcomers Kelly Steers, Whitney Schwartz and Carson Himes. There aren’t a lot of minutes available in Kerans’ system, but that didn’t prevent the school from having its biggest recruiting class in her two-decade tenure. Kerans and company were quite popular this summer, speaking at local functions and serving as grand marshals of two different parades.

The past three national champions didn’t make the NCAA Tournament the following season and Kerans’ primary concern is just getting back in, as she notes with a laugh “I’m still not really sure how we won last year.” A championship banner will likely be hung prior to Friday and there won’t be any special ceremonies before the first game. The last commemoration of last year’s squad was a ring presentation at halftime of the Homecoming football game. The focus now is figuring on how to get past the likes of Wheaton and a much-improved Illinois Wesleyan and North Central squads.

“We talk very little now about winning a national championship,” Kerans said. “Our goal is making the team strong enough to survive the conference. Convincing a team that it has to work together is part of the magic of Division III sports, because in the blink of an eye, it can all be gone.”

Who are the super sleepers?
In between our thoughts about basketball’s championship royalty, we had a personal stake in those other things that made our minds wander, most notably this year’s Super Sleeper selections.

You may recall that last season, after consultation with coaches and SIDs we trusted, we selected 10 teams to our inaugural Around the Nation Super Sleeper list. These were teams that did not get ranked in the Top 25 in our preseason poll, but who had a chance to be something very special if things fell into place. On the women’s side, our panel of experts made us look really smart. Of the five teams selected, four (Randolph-Macon, St. Benedict, Albion, and UW-Stout) made it to the Sweet 16, with Randolph-Macon going to the national title game. That set the bar high for this season, in which we challenged our group to dig hard through the easy picks and make some tough choices. On the men’s side, we fared alright, but not quite as well. Mount St. Mary came through for our panel by winning the Skyline, but they were the only ones to make the NCAA Tournament. Bates and UW-Oshkosh came up a little bit short but proved themselves worthy of making our list with their regular-season efforts.

This season we’ve increased the pool of assessors to the point where we have 25 pages of notes from which to choose our list for 2005-06. The funny thing is that everyone wants to be a “Super Sleeper” (numerous coaches offered their own teams up), but not everyone is quite cut out to be one. Here’s our list, with anonymous commentary from our basketball professors.

There’s a prevailing thought that UAA title contention is a reasonable goal for Brandeis this year, which would necessitate a jump as big as the four league-win climb it had last year under head coach Brian Meehan. That’s a tall order considering that all but one player on the roster is a freshman or sophomore, but three returnees were honorable mention All-UAA last season, so we’ll take the risk., following the advice of three coaches. “Everyone says Brandeis is a year away, but I don’t think so,” said one. “They were one of the top four teams we played last year.” Another echoed those thoughts, stating “Brandeis has great size and talent. Their only weakness is their youth, but those kids can play.”

Out East, Brockport State looms as a challenger both for SUNYAC and regional supremacy. The Golden Eagles add two noteworthy transfers (see chart) in 6-7 all-conference center Jon Rother from Cortland State and Jerry Cheves, who initially went the Division I route with Stephen F. Austin before returning closer to home, to a lineup that includes first-team all-league pick Ben Bellucci. “They make the game very long and keep coming at you,” said one of our advising spies.

We have some smart folks offering guidance on the WIAC and one assured us that we would do well to take the UW-Stout men’s team, which we’re comfy doing, knowing that with the tournament expansion, a second Wisconsin league team should find its way in the mix this year. “They had two real nice freshmen last year and return a lot of experience,” said one local basketball maven, who told us to watch to make sure point guard Ryan Stangl exerts the necessary leadership to prevent his team from being rattled in big spots.

Those in Minnesota insist our poll voters (except one) missed the boat by not tabbing St. Thomas as a Top 25 team. The Tommies returned four starters (most notably 6-8 center Isaac Rosefelt) to a team that finished second in the MIAC, and add 6-5 forward Mike Keating, another impact transfer and a native of St. Paul who was Northeast-10 Freshman of the Year at Division II St. Michael’s (Vt.). “St. Thomas is the team to beat in the MIAC” said one watcher.

We stewed for a good hour on our fifth pick, but elected to go with Rutgers-Newark in the NJAC, because we didn’t want to go with a more obvious choice like New Jersey City in the Atlantic or an “already awake” squad like Southwestern. “They should be the best team in the conference,” said one coach we know. “They have the best player in Jermont Horton and they picked up two outstanding freshmen in David Cherry and Chad Barnes.” Added another individual familiar with the NJAC, who watched several Scarlet Raiders play this summer: “Horton will be a shoo-in for all-region if he plays good defense.”

Others we considered: CCNY, Centre, Muskingum, Rhode Island College, Southwestern.

Many in New England are high on Williams to challenge Bowdoin for the NESCAC title. The Ephs have taken Bowdoin to the wire on multiple occasions but have not been able to get at them come playoff time. “(They’re) a great team with the combination of Maggie Miller and Colleen Hession in the backcourt. They are well coached and play as a team” said one onlooker, while another observer noted “They’re way more deserving than one vote (in the Top 25 poll).

Two teams from the same state make the list, in Illinois Wesleyan and Chicago. The CCIW is loaded this season, with Millikin returning four starters and Wheaton nipping at its heels with All-American center Jill Trenz. The Titans, who return four starters, figure to be right in the mix, as they were last season. “They have a freshman point guard who is going to be terrific,” acknowledged a Central region advisor. Meanwhile, multiple sources pointed to Chicago’s strong performance last season, and the return of All-American candidate Susie Gutowski. “Chicago is a team that people think is coming on quickly” said one UAA watcher, though this one’s going to be tough considering that the top of the UAA is occupied by the likes of Washington University, Brandeis, and NYU.

We’ll put our trust in a source who knows the SCAC and deems Sewanee as a “legitimate threat” to DePauw for league supremacy. “I thought Sewanee glided through last year with a glitzy record and easy schedule — until I saw them play. They have almost everyone back and play tough defense. Their style is not conducive for back-to-back days because of the energy they expend, which could hurt them at tourney time. But no one wants to face Sewanee with something on the line. Dani Pettay and Sally Jackson have game-breaking potential.”

Our ace sleeper-picker (the one who tabbed Randolph-Macon) gave us a list of five teams from which to pick this year and we’re going to go on reputation and pick Johns Hopkins, which some may say is too easy a choice, but since we’re going out on a limb with our other nine picks, the Blue Jays can be our “safety school” so to speak (not many college students would say that). Johns Hopkins returns two of its top three scorers to a team that won 21 games last season, and adds a freshman point guard who was a McDonald’s All-American selection. Dickinson returns the most talent in the Centennial, but Hopkins should be there at the end. “If they don’t beat Dickinson in the conference finals, they’ll still make the NCAAs as a Pool C” said our hoops sage, “and when there, they’ll definitely have a good shot at the Sweet 16.”

Others we considered: Franklin, Keene State, North Central, St. Norbert, St. Lawrence, Whitman.

Could we be wrong?
There’s one team that’s not on the “Super Sleeper” list that could have been, but we’ll blame their absence on the national once-yearly basketball publication that tabbed them the No. 10 team in the country. This was a squad that didn’t even get a sniff in our Top 25 vote.

So thinking about that occupied some of our time. Our conclusion was that this seemed rather odd, so we launched an investigation, from which we believe no alumni of Wilkes are involved in the voting process for any national publication’s Division III rankings.

The feeling is that the Colonels are going to be good, but how good is as much a mystery to them as it is to us. Wilkes was the choice to win the MAC Freedom but starts a squad that matches the previously mentioned Brandeis in terms of youth.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a team that started three sophomores and a freshman,” said Wilkes coach Jerry Rickrode, who guided Wilkes to the Final Four in 1998 and the Elite 8 on two other occasions

One of those aforementioned sophomores is a local guard that many claim will be as good as former All-American Dave Jannuzzi. Chris Shovlin (18.8 points per game), who transferred to be close to home after spending a month at Division I Monmouth (N.J.) won Rookie of the Year honors despite missing a third of the season. The lone senior starter is center Evan Walters, who chips in about nine points a night but at 6-8 looms as a tough defensive presence and a difficult matchup. The best word to describe the front line is lanky.

Rickrode’s feeling was that this particular magazine looked to make an impact pick with a program that had a storied tradition. That makes as much sense as anything.

“I’ve coached teams that were at that (Top 10) level,” said Rickrode, whose squad has been ranked No. 1 in preseason mags before. “We can be good. But we’re not there … yet.”

Poll watching
Some notes on the D3hoops.com Top 25 preseason poll

Variance isn’t uncommon. On the women’s side, Southern Maine was ranked as high as No. 1 and as low as No. 24. On the men’s side, opinions on defending champ UW-Stevens-Point ranged from fourth to not ranked.
Twenty-four of 25 voters had Illinois Wesleyan’s men either first or second, with their one other vote being a fifth-place selection.
Voters were split on the men’s No. 2 team. Ten had UW-Oshkosh, four had both Amherst and Puget Sound, and three had Wooster (five had IWU).
Fifty-five men’s teams got votes, down from 59 in our 2004-05 poll. Forty-nine women’s squads were voted for, down from 53 the year prior.

Whatever happened to those first-year coaches?
You ever have that recurring dream that you forgot to turn in a homework assignment? We did that, so to speak last year, when we promised the conclusion to our three-part series on first-year coaches and never delivered. So we’ll follow up our fearsome foursome now.

When we last spoke with Clark men’s coach Mo Cassara, he was telling us stories about life on the recruiting trail. This season, with 10 new players added to the roster, he’s telling us how he’ll be scouting different opponents each of three days this weekend, and how the team’s philosophy has gone from “Lower and Slower” to “Run to the Rim.”

“We lack experience, but we have depth,” said Cassara, who made his commitment to long-term work at Clark by buying a house in the Worcester area. “The tradition of this program has been here, but now it’s about getting it back to where it can be.”

Cassara: 11-15 in 2004-05. Team retooled, with 10 new faces.

When we last spoke with Centenary men’s coach Andy DeStephano he had the question “Do you love basketball?” taped to his desk. Now he has something new alongside it, a piece of paper that reads “0-25” and reminds him of last season’s struggles. “It inspired us to work a little harder as a staff,” said DeStephano, who added eight recruits, dipping south to Florida and Maryland to add talent. “Now I’ll come in even a little earlier, or I’ll make that one extra recruiting call. One of the good things we did last year was to change the culture of the program. Our players are now respectful to others and we’re very pleased by that. We’re a long way from getting to where we’d like to be, but I feel we’re on the right track.”

Proof of that came in the team’s first scrimmage, a 90-77 win over Sussex County College.

DeStephano: 0-25 in 2004-05. Nowhere to go but up.

When we last spoke with Case Western Reserve women’s coach Jacki Windon, she felt she had successfully answered the question “Where do I begin?” Now she can pose the question “Where did we leave off?” since her team returns all but one player from a season in which her squad did much better than the initially-predicted last-place finish in the UAA preseason poll. This time, the team is tabbed as sixth-best. “There’s a lot of familiarity with this group,” Windon said, of a roster that counts five seniors. “We’re scrappy. There’s a sense of urgency to them. We’re not setting lofty goals, but we have a group of seniors who want to go out with quite a year.”

Windon: 11-13 in 2004-05. Good wins vs Baldwin-Wallace, Chicago.

When we last spoke with then-Manchester head women’s coach Suzy Venet she was in full voice, but now, after moving on to coach her alma mater Mount Union, Venet has a touch of laryngitis three weeks into practice. “I got it back quickly at Manchester, but here I keep losing my voice.” Venet is essentially in Year 1, Part II, starting over again. “We ended last year on a great note,” said Venet, whose team upset the No. 2 seed in the HCAC Tournament, “and I thought I was going to be there awhile, but Mount Union came open in June, and I couldn’t turn down my alma mater.” The Purple Raiders are in a similar situation to what Venet faced last year, in the beginning of rebuilding (interestingly their first game is against Case Western Reserve). “Our goal is just to make it to the conference tournament,” Venet said. “We want to take small steps and be peaking by the end of February.”

Venet: 11-16 at Manchester in 2004-05. Departed for alma mater Mount Union.

Thanks to all those who provided their input. 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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