Notables

The start of the Division III basketball season is less than seven days away so this is prime time to talk about the schools expecting big things in 2009-2010. Franklin and Marshall might not have been on that list coming into last season, but it certainly is now.

"Last year expectations were low and easy to meet,” says Coach Glenn Robinson. “This year expectations are high and we now have a bulls' eye on our backs.” How do the Diplomats intend to meet those expectations that come with a No. 6 preseason ranking? Find out by checking out Franklin and Marshall’s preseason preview or any others that are posted.

Preseason info: Men's All-American team | Women's All-American team | Top 25 | Season previews

High expectations are nothing new in Scranton where the Lady Royals have more wins than any other Division III program. Head Coach Mike Strong begins his 30th season with a preseason All-American (find out who it is here) but has never been afraid to use his reserves. Who will contribute off the bench for the No. 5 preseason pick? Take a look at Scranton’s preseason preview and others.

While teams enter their last week of preseason practice, you can gear up for the season by joining Posting Up, our message board community, or browsing through the hundreds of schedules posted online. And check back later in the week for an introduction to this year’s Insiders, the men’s and women’s players who will give us an inside look at their season as it unfolds.

Senior forward Zoë Unruh scored a game-high 21 points and ignited a 19-5 run late in the second half as the No. 1 Washington U. women’s basketball team posted a 84-74 victory at Division I Southern Illinois-Carbondale in an exhibition game on Saturday night at SIU Arena in Carbondale, Ill.

Unruh, who was limited to five points in the first half, scored 16 points in the second half on 6-of-11 shooting from the field with four three-pointers. Junior guard Alex Hoover added 18 points and four assists on 11-of-12 shooting from the foul line, while her younger sister Dani Hoover added 12 second-half points.

• Preseason info: Men's All-American team | Women's All-American team | Top 25 | Season previews

The Bears shot 59.3 percent (16-for-27) from the field in the second half, while connecting on five of eight from three-point range. For the game, Washington U. shot 47.5 percent (28-for-59) from the field and hit 20 of 25 from the foul line. Full story.

Prognostication is an inexact science known to inhabit the preseason of many sports. And we apply that theoretical formula to teams in the form of the preseason Top 25, and to individuals in the form of preseason All-American teams.

Who are the best returning players? Who do we expect to step up? What players have transferred into key spots or are returning from injuries after dropping off the radar? You'll get a little of all of that here.

Announcing the D3hoops.com men's basketball preseason All-American team and women's basketball preseason All-American team.

Will Wash U be good? Alright, you don't need a preseason All-American team to answer that question. But other sleeper names are on the list.

Scroll down for more preseason coverage, and check out this year's season previews: 90 and counting.

Eric Pugh’s lay up as time expired sent Randolph-Macon to a 49-47 victory over defending Patriot League champion American in a men’s basketball exhibition action on Tuesday night in Washington, D.C.

The Yellow Jackets, who went 20-6 last season, are the No. 19 team in the preseason D3hoops.com Top 25. They were the second Division III team in as many nights to defeat a scholarship-level opponent, following an 82-77 win by UW-La Crosse against Division II power Winona State.

For more scores from the exhibition season, which is just getting underway, check out our Scoreboard page.

With the score tied at 47-all, American had the ball with the chance to pull ahead but Nick Hendra’s three-point shot fell short. Pugh came down with the rebound and was able to go coast-to-coast, laying the ball into the net as time expired.

American led 45-43 with a 1:22 to go in the game after Stephen Lumpkins three-point play. Danny Jones pulled R-MC back to a tie with a pair shots from the charity stripe with just over a minute to play.

Pugh led R-MC with 11 points, while David Carlson had seven points in the victory. Kevin Voekel led the Jackets with six rebounds.

The first half proved to be a low scoring one as both team struggled from the field, resulting in just an 18-12 for AU at the intermission.

An Pugh three pointer just under two minutes into the second half pulled R-MC within three at 18-15.

The game remained close through the first 10 minutes of the second stanza before and Adam Desgain pull up jumper tied the game at 30-30. Two Billy Campion free-throws with 9:22 to play gave R-MC a 32-30 advantage.

Four starters return, and a D3hoops.com All-American guard is among them. The three graduated seniors combined for 18 starts. Twelve of 15 letterwinners are back, and frankly, the rest of the conference lost a lot of talent.

That's a recipe that could spur Carthage back into the spotlight. And with Bosko Djurickovic at the helm and Steve Djurickovic at the point guard position, averaging 27.6 points and 6.4 assists per game, the Red Men could well get to the next level after going 15-10, 7-7 in the CCIW last season.

Check out the Carthage men's season preview, which is one of more than 60 season previews posted on D3hoops.com by schools in preparation for the Nov. 15 tipoff of the 2009-10 season.

Where does your team fall in its conference preseason poll? We've got a bunch of preseason polls in our Press Releases section. Also keep an eye out for our preseason All-American teams, and check out the preseason D3hoops.com Top 25. Plus, check out team pages by region for links to each Division III team's schedule, or plan your schedule using our day-by-day schedule of Division III basketball games.

For the past few years, it's been women's basketball putting the Stormy Petrels of Oglethorpe on the Division III basketball map. But that talented class of players has finally graduated, no doubt prompting sighs of relief in San Antonio, Greencastle, Ind., and elsewhere.

However, the Oglethorpe men have a chance to do damage this season in the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference. The Stormy Petrels return their top seven players from last season, the team's second-consecutive 16-win campaign.

And with five scorers last season averaging in double figures, Oglethorpe will look to put as much pressure on the opposing defense as its defenders put on the ball-handlers, who averaged 15 turnovers per game last season.

Oglethorpe is just one of many 2009-10 season previews on D3hoops.com. Check back frequently, as more previews are added by schools every day. Also keep an eye out for our preseason All-American teams, and check out the preseason D3hoops.com Top 25. Plus, scroll down to our news releases section to get the latest on preseason conference coaches polls.

D3sports.com has learned that there will be no third-place game in the Division III men's basketball Final Four this season and it will be replaced with an All-Star game featuring Division III seniors.

The game, which is sponsored by the National Association of Basketball Coaches, will take place in the third-place game's normal time slot, three hours before tipoff of the championship game. This season, that will be 10 a.m. ET on Saturday, March 20.

The decision was finalized on the NABC's conference call late last week.

Although the details are still being worked out, plans are for two teams of 10 players apiece to be named. At least one spot on each team will be set aside for players from teams who lose in the national semifinals the previous evening, the teams who normally would play in the third-place game.

Coaches for the game have yet to be determined and could be drawn from the national semifinalists as well, or from the NABC's annual lifetime achievement awards, which are announced around the same time. Traditionally, there are at least a dozen Division III men's basketball head coaches already in Salem attending the Final Four, if not more. Players would arrive in Salem, Va., on Thursday, take part in a community service event on Friday, have a practice and play Saturday morning.

Four teams received No. 1 votes in the preseason D3hoops.com Top 25 women's basketball poll, with Washington University edging on top, nine points ahead of Amherst.

Wash U received seven No. 1 votes; Amherst picked up five. At No. 3, Hope was just 11 overall points behind the leader and had seven more No. 1 votes, while defending national champion George Fox picked up the remaining six nods for the top spot. The Bruins lost both a first-team All-American and the D3hoops.com Rookie of the Year from last year's unbeaten squad, as Sage Indendi, who was also the team's leading scorer, did not return to school this fall.

It's the fourth preseason No. 1 selection for the Bears, but their first since the fall of 2002, following the last of their four consecutive national championships. Fueled by two title game appearances in the past three seasons, the Bears have rebounded from three consecutive preseason finishes outside the Top Six.

Wash U's seven No. 1 votes ties for the fewest garnered by a preseason No. 1 team in the 11-year history of the D3hoops.com Top 25. Mary Washington got seven No. 1 votes in the 2007-08 preseason poll, while eventual national champion Howard Payne was No. 2 overall.

The full Top 25. Scroll down for coverage of the D3hoops.com men's basketball Top 25.

Two-time defending national champion Wash U got all 25 No. 1 votes in the D3hoops.com preseason men's basketball Top 25.

After that, however, there was no consensus.

At No. 2, but nearly 100 points behind Wash U, is John Carroll, which returns its top 11 scorers from last season's Sweet 16 team that finished 25-5. The Blue Streaks are just nine points ahead of Guilford, which won at John Carroll last March and loses two starters, one of whom essentially was a ceremonial starter.

It's just another 17 points down until you find St. Thomas at No. 4, having lost two starters, including its top defender, not to mention its home floor from last year's 30-1 team. The Tommies will spend this season playing at Concordia-St. Paul, a Division II school about two and a half miles away. National runner-up Richard Stockton is just two points behind St. Thomas at No. 5, followed by Franklin and Marshall at No. 6, the last of five teams clumped within 37 points.

The full D3hoops.com Top 25.

The D3hoops.com Top 25 is entering its 11th season. It's the only men's basketball Top 25 voted on throughout the season. The D3hoops.com Top 25 is voted on by a panel of 25 coaches, Sports Information Directors and media members from across the country, and is published weekly.

The D3hoops.com women's basketball preseason Top 25 will be released later this week.

Billy Clapper has been hired as men’s basketball coach for Penn State-Altoona. Clapper was an assistant men’s basketball coach at Pitt-Johnstown from 2007 to 2009, helping the team to back-to-back NCAA Division II Tournament berths. The Mountain Cats earned the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference regular season championship in 2008 and the WVIAC tournament championship in 2009 while they posted a 47-16 record during his time with the program.

Prior to joining the UPJ staff, Clapper held assistant men’s basketball coaching positions at Penn State-Altoona from 2005 to 2006, where he was active in recruiting some of the players currently on the team, and Indiana State, where he worked as a graduate assistant from 2006 to 2007.

Clapper began his college playing career at Mount Aloysius and continued on to Division I Youngstown State. He holds a master’s degree in Educational Technology from Indiana State.

Clapper has delivered instruction as a clinician at over 225 basketball camps, including camps at universities such as Dayton, Duquesne, Louisville, North Carolina State, Penn State, Pittsburgh, Rhode Island, Rutgers, West Virginia and Xavier. He is the founder of Billy Clapper Basketball LLC., and he created the instructional basketball video “Ball Handling at Its Best.”

Clapper was also the regional basketball coordinator of the Pennsylvania Keystone State Games, where he served as a head coach, planned team tryouts and oversaw the recruitment of athletes in a seven county region.
Clapper is a strong advocate for community involvement by his players.

“Billy has a true passion for the game of basketball, and he brings a great deal of enthusiasm to our program,” said Penn State-Altoona athletic director Fredina Ingold. “We look forward to him continuing the growth and success of our men’s basketball program.”