Notables

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.”

The Hamline community is mourning the passing of Joe Hutton Jr., a member of Hamline’s 1949 national championship basketball team and the 1952 Minneapolis Lakers world championship team. He passed away suddenly Monday night at age 81.

A 1950 graduate of Hamline, Hutton was inducted into the Hamline University Pipers’ Athletic Hall of Fame in 1972. His late father, Joe Hutton, Sr., and his younger brother, Tom ’62, are also Hamline Hall of Fame members. The family legacy of Hamline graduates includes his sisters Catherine Hutton Gabrielson ’51 and Barbara Keenan ’56.

“The Hutton Family has a distinguished place in the long history of Hamline University, as does Joe Hutton, Jr.,” said President Linda Hanson. “A university could not ask for more from one of its alumni. Joe not only cared deeply about his alma mater, he cared about doing everything he could to make the world a better place. We will miss him and his deep commitment to service to all he touched.”

While at Hamline, Hutton lettered all four years in basketball and baseball and one year in track. In basketball, he was a three-time all-conference team member, and in 1949 he earned All-American honors as Hamline won the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics Championship.

Hutton was coached by his father during his years at Hamline. Joe Hutton Sr. was head basketball coach and athletic director from 1930-65 and is the namesake of Hamline’s basketball arena. At his retirement, Hutton's 591-207 (344-91 conference) record placed him sixth among all college basketball coaches in the country. In 35 years, his teams won nineteen conference titles, three NAIA championships, and were three-time NAIA runner-ups.

After leaving Hamline, Hutton Jr. played on the 1951-52 Minneapolis Lakers championship team. That year, the Lakers defeated the New York Knicks in the NBA finals in seven games. From 1954 to 1962, he taught and coached basketball in the Minneapolis school system, winning conference championships at North High School in 1957 and 1962. After leaving North, he coached and taught at Bloomington-Lincoln High School where his teams won 70% of their games over a ten-year period and finished with a third-place trophy in the 1972 class AA basketball tournament.

Former Polytechnic player and assistant women's basketball coach Joshua Washington was named coach of the Bluejays' men's team. At 25, he is believed to be the youngest men's basketball coach in Division III, supplanting Philadelphia Bible's Jason Yoder by less than three months.

Washington replaces Dan Nigro, who was 12-38 in two seasons as head coach. Last year the Bluejays were 4-21, with one of the wins by forfeit and two others coming against Bard (1-24).

Bard also hired a recent graduate, Adam Turner, as head coach this offseason.

A 2007 graduate of the school, Washington started 19 games as a senior and averaged 4.9 points and 3.7 rebounds.

“When I became the men’s basketball coach, I was excited for the opportunity to coach at NYU-Poly because it is a place that has given me so much; this is my opportunity to give back,” Washington said.

“My goal for this season is to do better than last year. The team is talented and filled with potential. All we have to do is play as a team.”

Although a 2009-10 roster was not available for Poly, leading scorer Arjun Ohri, who averaged 23.0 points per game, was a sophomore last season.

The Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference has announced that Earlham College will join the membership beginning in the 2010-11 academic year. Earlham, located in Richmond, Ind., will join the conference after spending the past 20 years affiliated with the North Coast Athletic Conference.

Douglas Bennett, Earlham's president, had told Earlham's student newspaper, The Earlham Word, that the school's goal is to win half of its games every season. A switch from the NCAC would help meet that goal, the paper cited Bennett as having said.

Earlham hasn't met that goal in men's basketball since 2003, in which the Quakers went 13-13, 8-8 in the NCAC. Last season Earlham was 3-22, 3-13 in the NCAC and 0-9 outside of it, including five losses to HCAC schools. The women's basketball team last had a winning season in 2003, going 13-11. Last year they were 3-20, 2-14 against the NCAC and 0-5 against the NCAC.

"We are very pleased to have Earlham College join the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference as our tenth member beginning in the fall of 2010, as they have a rich tradition of strong academic and intercollegiate athletic programs," said Christopher Ragsdale, commissioner of the HCAC. "Many of our conference members have already been competing in non-league contests with Earlham College. They (Earlham College) are centrally located to our other conference schools which make them a natural fit."

The addition of Earlham marks the first change in membership for the HCAC since Rose-Hulman joined the league in 2006. Earlham will be centrally located in the conference that also includes Anderson, Bluffton, Defiance, Franklin, Hanover, Manchester, Mount St. Joseph, Rose-Hulman and Transylvania.

"I am extremely excited that Earlham has been invited to join the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference," says Bennett. "In joining Heartland, we are rejoining a number of colleges and universities that have been institutions with which Earlham has competed for many decades. We are delighted to now be in a conference with them."

The HCAC currently sponsors 16 championships in men's and women's athletics. Beginning in the 2010-11 academic year, Earlham will be competing in 13 of 16 sports in the HCAC, excluding men's and women's golf and softball.

"Games against HCAC members permeate throughout Earlham's athletic history, with rivalries that began years before formal conference affiliations," stated Frank Carr, Earlham's athletic director. "We believe that renewing this relationship will be a winning situation for all involved."

A large rookie class helped propel George Fox to the Division III women's basketball national championship this past fall. But the centerpiece of that class won't be around to help the Bruins defend their title.

Sage Indendi, the D3hoops.com Rookie of the Year, did not return to school at George Fox this fall.

Indendi scored a team-high 12.8 points per game last season and led the team with 3.3 assists, while shooting 36 percent from three-point range. She and Kristen Shielee, a first-team D3hoops.com All-American (12.2 points, 9.6 rebounds, 3.8 blocked shots) are the only two significant losses from last year's team. But they're big ones, having combined for nearly 40 percent of the team's scoring.

Arianna Mohsenian, who averaged 5.7 points per game and played 21 minutes a game off the bench for the Bruins last season, is expected to step in at Indendi's wing spot. She shot 32 percent from beyond the arc, making 45 three-pointers, just five behind Indendi's team high. Hannah Munger, a 6-4 freshman post player from Newberg (Ore.) High School, is expected to challenge for Shielee's starting center position.

Indendi had the chance to play Division I basketball out of high school in Montana, and spoke with D3sports.com's Gordon Mann about it after the national championship game this past March.

The Immaculata women’s basketball team will make the program’s second appearance at Madison Square Garden when the Mighty Macs meet Cabrini in Manhattan on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2010 at 5 p.m.

The game at Madison Square Garden marks a historic return for the Mighty Macs, who were a part of the first women’s basketball game ever played there. Immaculata and Queen’s College met on February 22, 1975 with the Mighty Macs defeating the Knights, 65-61, in front of a crowd of 11, 969 fans.

"We are excited and grateful for the opportunity to play at Madison Square Garden, not only because of its rich basketball history, but because of the significance of Immaculata's return there and the impact school made on women's basketball,” said Immaculata coach Patty Canterino.

Being part of the first women’s basketball game ever played at Madison Square Garden was one of many firsts for Immaculata during the school’s “hey day” in the early 1970s. Just a month prior to its appearance on the sports and entertainment world’s grandest stage, Immaculata defeated Maryland, 80-48, in what was the first women’s basketball game ever to appear before a national television audience as the independent Mizlou Television Network sold broadcast rights to more than 100 stations.

These two events were just a few of the many strides that Immaculata made as pioneers for college women’s basketball after winning the first three national championships consecutively in 1972, 1973 and 1974.

The contest will mark the third consecutive season Cabrini’s women’s basketball team has played a regular season game at the Garden. The Cavaliers are 2-0 in those contests. Cabrini claimed a 71-37 victory against Notre Dame (Md.) on Jan. 23, 2008 and defeating Neumann 47-40 on January 24, 2009.

Immaculata’s game against Cabrini will be the final game of a triple-header scheduled for January 23 at Madison Square Garden. The day will begin with the Villanova men’s basketball team taking on St. John’s at 12 p.m., followed by the Red Storm women’s basketball team against South Florida at 2:30 p.m.

Immaculata enters the season looking to make a return to the Colonial States Athletic Conference postseason tournament after finishing with an 8-8 league mark during 2008-09. Immaculata returns three starters in Chelsea McTigue, Bridget Welz and Kelly Brown. McTigue averaged 12.4 points per game, second-highest on the team, and 4.5 rebounds per contest. The junior forward shot a club-best 60 percent from the field (69-of-115).

Practice for the 2009-10 season is several weeks away but that isn’t stopping us from preparing for tipoff.

We are entering and posting schedules for men’s and women’s teams so you can check out when your big rivals come to town. On the men’s side we have the dates for Hope-Calvin, Wooster-Wittenberg and Amherst-Williams. On the women’s side geographically isolated champion George Fox only has two Division III opponents on its non-conference slate.

Tufts spent the offseason rotating the court at Cousens Gymnasium so it can be lengthened to the required 94 feet. That would allow the Jumbos to host games in the NCAA tournaments, which they have reached the last two sesaons. According to NCAA.com and Tufts, the unusual location of the visitors' locker rooms high above the court (see photo) will remain. Check out the full and partial schedules by clicking a region on the right-hand menu rail.

If you’re a sports information director, be sure to check out Pat Coleman’s note on the Daily Dose to learn how you can post your schedule now and game stories and notes during the upcoming season.

Geneva women's basketball head coach Ronald Galbreath, who formerly won 448 games as the head coach of Westminster (Pa.) men's basketball, announced his retirement. Galbreath coached the Golden Tornadoes for six seasons before taking last season off to recover from a stroke.

“I simply love the game of basketball,” said Galbreath in a school release. “It has always been about helping people improve and helping the teams that I have coached get better throughout the year. I just don’t feel comfortable enough that I can physically handle the demands that a basketball season will bring.”

Galbreath spent 25 seasons at Westminster (Pa.) coaching its men's team to six regular season district titles and three trips to the NAIA Division I National Tournament. He wracked up 448 wins with the Titans along with another 75 in five seasons as the head men’s coach at Clarion (Pa.). In 2002 Galbreath took over the women's program at Geneva and went 111-48 for a total career record of 634-192.

“This has been a very difficult decision for Ron in that he has been coaching at the college level for nearly 45 years,” said Geneva College athletic director Kim Gall. “We are so thankful and appreciative for his faithful service to Geneva College and especially the women’s basketball program. We are looking forward to seeing Coach Galbreath remaining active on campus as he will still be teaching classes in the Physical Education department.”

Geneva began its transition from NAIA to NCAA Division III in 2007-2008. The program, which enters its third of provisional NCAA membership this season, will conduct a search to fill the head coaching job with an interim tag for the first year.

Following a nationwide search, Angie Zeuch has been named to the position of head women's basketball coach at Thiel, it was announced Wednesday.

She replaces Artina Trader, who left to take the coaching position at North Carolina Wesleyan, her alma mater.

“We are very excited to announce Angie Zeuch as our women's basketball coach,” said Thiel athletic director Jack Leipheimer. “Angie is very detailed oriented, has a solid knowledge of the game, and possesses a very strong commitment to the Division III philosophy. I am confident she will serve as a very positive role model for our student-athletes, and be a valuable contributor to our athletic department.”

Zeuch takes over the women's basketball program at Thiel after spending two seasons as an assistant at Wesleyan (Conn.). During her time with the Cardinals, Zeuch was responsible for recruiting and scouting while assisting with administrative and on-court duties.

“I am so thrilled to be a part of Thiel College,” said Zeuch. “It is an exciting time at Thiel with great leadership in place and a shared vision of tradition and success. I am looking forward to building relationships on and off the court and throughout the community.”

Prior to her stint at Wesleyan, Zeuch spent three years (2004-07) as an assistant at Division I Colgate. In addition to assisting with player development, practice and game planning, she coordinated the team’s conditioning program and handled aspects of recruiting and scouting activities.

A 2004 graduate of Case Western Reserve, Zeuch was a four-year starter and two-year captain for the Spartans and was named All-UAA as well as Academic All-UAA on three occasions. A 1,000-point scorer during her career, she was named the college's female athlete of the year as a senior and served as chairperson of the Athletic Captains' Council.