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Around
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Posted March 1, 2006

E-mail: mark@d3hoops.com

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When the season started — in fact, when the week started in some cases — not all of the 63 teams in the Division III women's basketball tournament were on the radar. We picked a few to focus on this week, as the NCAA Tournament tips off.

They’re here because they focused on the present
A couple of days prior to the beginning of the season first-year Manchester women’s basketball coach Josh Dzurick told his team he wanted to establish goals for the upcoming season. He spoke conservatively, of not taking a step back from last season, because Manchester, which had lost 70% of its scoring and head coach Suzy Venet (to Mount Union) from an 11-win team the previous season, was picked to finish last in the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference.

It was then that one of 10 freshmen on the 17-player roster, Kelly Meiklejohn, spoke up.

“Coach, none of us were here last year. Stop comparing us to the teams from the last eight years.”

The comment caught Dzurick off guard, but his players showed that this was a much different Spartans squad than those it followed. Manchester started 8-1, recovered from a 36-point drubbing in its first meeting with Hanover to beat them the second time around to finish second in regular-season play.

That in itself was pretty significant considering how young this team is. They’re young enough that a sophomore, point guard Sarah Conwell (who battled wrist and thumb injuries this season), is a captain, and that the two leading scorers — Stacey Wendel (13.7 points per game) and Meiklejohn (11.6 points) — are freshmen. The team’s top rebounder and No. 3 scorer, forward Heather Terflinger (10.5, 5.4 rebounds), is a transfer from Anderson.

Venet had visions, in her lone year as coach, of building up towards a rather complicated style of play, that would make the team hard to scout. (They went from 3-22 to 11-16.) With so many young players, Dzurick decided to keep things simpler this year and it has worked. The Spartans are at their best when they push the ball and finished the season averaging 67 points.

The Spartans beat Hanover again in the postseason tournament to set up a showdown on the road at Franklin for the league title. Manchester led by two in the final seconds and survived a Franklin 3-point shot at the buzzer that looked like it would go in, but didn’t.

“When that last shot went up, I was thinking, oh, what am I going to tell my kids?” Dzurick said.

He could tell them that they were champs, for the first time in school history. The 21-7 mark is the best in team history and the reward for that is a meeting with national powerhouse Washington U. on Friday.

“Long-term speaking, we hope to get within a mile of what they’ve done,” Dzurick said. “We’ll get to see what the elite of Division III is about. We’ll try to put together our best game against them.”

Dzurick said he heard from a few colleagues who joked that he’d set an awfully high benchmark in his first year, but like one of his players showed him, it’s best to focus on the now rather than the past or future.

“We’ll worry about (the high standards) next year,” Dzurick said with a laugh.

They’re here because they’re deserving of a first look, and a first listen
The team name most likely to be butchered by public address announcers and broadcasters this weekend? We’ll go with the Medaille women’s squad.

Medaille (meh-DIE, as the “L’s” are silent) finally made the Top 25 of D3hoops.com’s rankings after going 25-1 and winning the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference Tournament. You probably won’t notice it though if you check out the team’s bulletin board at the school. When the squad began getting listed in the “Also receiving votes” category, a rather superstitious group of players took the posted poll and folded it such that you couldn’t see that the team was listed. That’s probably just as well because visitors who saw the team’s name wouldn’t pronounce it right anyway. Head coach Pete Lonergan is trying to change that.

“I’m trying to make (Medaille) a household name,” Lonergan said with a laugh. Lonergan left coaching in 1985 having formerly been the men’s head coach at Niagara and St. Francis (Pa.), to work for Jostens but was persuaded to return a few years ago, after his kids had fully grown. After a brief stint as a men’s assistant, Lonergan, now 62, became the women’s head coach and is in his third season.

In his second season, the program enjoyed a dramatic jump with the addition of a strong freshman class. The key to that was two players from the Rochester area — forward Amanda Baker, an All-American softball catcher who is a big presence at 6-0, and point guard Marisa Clark. Baker is one Division III’s better all-around athletes and reportedly is capable of jumping high enough to dunk. Lonergan refers to Clark as “the engineer” because of her tremendous feel for the game. Another solid recruiting class propelled the program to greater heights this season. Both get to return home to play in the NCAAs against a Washington and Jefferson team that starts five seniors (Medaille has none). They’ll be running and pressing as much as possible, trying to match up and figure out just how far they’ve come.

“This is all new to us,” Lonergan said. “It will be a real good test. We’ve been pretty good at the ‘Let’s go play’ approach. They’re mature enough to approach a challenge like that.”

They’re here because they’re deserving of a first look, and listen (Part Two)
The player who is most likely to hear her name garbled during the NCAA Tournament? We’ll tab Baruch center Ally Stamatiades, not only because her name is an adventure, but because her play will merit her name being mentioned. For those at Mount St. Mary’s, Baruch’s foe in its first venture into the NCAAs on Friday, the correct pronunciation is STAM-ah-TEE-ah-DEES (it’s of Greek origin).

Baruch celebrates its CUNYAC win. NYCsports.com photo by Twig

Baruch is an interesting team to watch because of its ability both when it presses frantically and when it is forced into a halfcourt game. NYU found that out last season when it was No. 2 in the country and Baruch came to its gym and won. The Bearcats (22-6) ran the table in the CUNYAC this season under second-year head coach Machli Joseph, who loaded the non-conference schedule with challenging opponents to get them ready for a situation like this (Each of Baruch’s six losses came to teams that finished with at least 16 wins).

Stamatiades isn’t the team’s best player (that distinction falls to do-it-all guard Chiresse Paradise, the CUNYAC Player of the Year), but despite being only 5-9, makes a significant contribution as the starting center. Her effectiveness attacking the baseline early in the CUNYAC title game win over Staten Island helped turn the contest into a romp and she finished as Baruch’s leading scorer with 15 points.

There’s another reason for billing Stamatiades as one of our favorites. She was a guest on D3hoops.com’s postgame coverage at the CUNYAC and was particularly entertaining during off-air conversation, asking questions about possible opponents. I had exchanged e-mails with Joseph during the season and apparently he shared a few of them with his players. In the midst of the discussion, Stamatiades asked aloud a question that this writer particularly enjoyed.

“Are you the guy that our head coach calls the Dick Vitale of Division III?”

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.

2008-09 columns
Feb. 20: York (Pa.), no cliche
Feb. 13: St. Thomas writing history
Feb. 6: George Fox on hunt
Jan. 30: Brother, brother
Jan. 23: Growing a program
Jan. 16: Dudek's rare feat
Jan. 9: Ravin' about Anderson
Dec. 18: Chicago marooned at 0-9
Dec. 12: De Luca back on track
Dec. 4: Ithaca surprises
Nov. 21: Augie gets some delp
Nov. 13: Is repeat possible?

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