Amidst all the celebration of the return of the Buffet, I fear that some people have forgotten that the NCAA Division III men's and women's tournaments start tonight, and the Franklin and Marshall men and York (PA) College women are dancing!
Some brief previews, in chronological order:
First, the F&M men's hoopsters face North Carolina Wesleyan later today. F&M (22-5, 15-3) is ranked eighteenth in d3hoops.com's Top 25 rankings and thus presumably would have garnered an at-large bid to the tournament had they not won the Centennial Conference tournament, but they did in fact win that tournament (for the second year in a row) to clinch their third consecutive trip to the dance. The Diplomats are paced by junior guard Georgio Milligan, a 6'2" economics major who leads the team in points (16.5) and assists (5.4) per game, and also in more quotidian categories like field goal attempts, field goals made, free throw attempts, free throws made, and turnovers. But the Dips are not a one-man show; three others [seniors James McNally (15.3) and Mike Baker (11.9) and sophomore Brandon Beckford (10.1)] average in double-figures in points, and senior Steve Tolliver and sophomore Hayk Gyokchynan (a rare Lebanon native playing college basketball) both chip in with just over 8 points per game.
But college basketball is a coach's game, and the Diplomats are really led by the venerable Glenn Robinson, the all-time career wins leader in Division III with 821 since taking over in Lancaster in 1971. This will be F&M's twenty-second trip to the NCAAs under Robinson, a record that includes fifteen regional semifinal appearances, eight regional finals, and five Final Fours, the most recent in 2009; however, he and the Dips are still looking for their first national championship.
F&M lost its last regular-season game this year, to Dickinson, but otherwise comes in mostly playing well, having won ten in a row before that and then avenging that loss by rolling past Dickinson in the Centennial Conference finals.
And in one of the great mascot battles of recent history, they Diplomats square off against the Battling Bishops of NC Wesleyan, and no, I'm not making that up. NCW earned the automatic bid to the show with a 74-70 overtime win over Ferrum to add a USA South Athletic Conference tournament championship to their regular-season crown. Tournament MVP Domarius Thomas, who paced the Battling Bishops with 15 points, including the go-ahead floater with just under a minute to go in overtime, seems to be their best player, but I really can't be sure.
Tip-off is this afternoon at 2:30 p.m. Pacific Standard Time on the campus of Virginia Wesleyan in Virginia Beach, Virginia; live video and audio broadcasts of the game are available. Go Dips!
And on to the women!
I'm sure everyone remembers York's dream season of two years ago, and the heartbreak when the dream ended in the regional semifinals. And now the Spartans are back, but in much different circumstances: at 13-12 (10-6) before the Capital Athletic Conference tournament, they were looking at whatever is the Division III women's equivalent of either the NIT or the CBI (probably a trip to Murph's Study Hall) before sweeping said tourney to snag an automatic bid. Along the way they upset the conference second seed, Marymount, 37-32, in one of the ugliest games this side of the Big Slow, somehow managing to win a game in which they made only ten field goals. Ugh. Somewhere, Henry Iba is happy and J&C's Dad isn't. Still, the Spartans turned things around the next night against fourth-seeded Wesley (who had previously upset top-seeded Mary Washington), sprinting out to a 44-27 first-half lead and upping that lead to 21 early in the second half before withstanding a spirited Wesley rally to win, 70-66.
The Spartans are led by a vibrant combination of youthful exuberance and grizzled experience, with senior Jaimie Sapp and freshman Kristin Haley both averaging 11 points per game; freshman Brittney Hicks pours in 10.4 of her own, and fellow rookies Kelsey Murphy and Aja Wallpher each add 7 points per game. Wallpher paces the team with 4.8 assists per game, to 3.5 turnovers, and Haley has been tossing around the Windex to the tune of 7.6 rebounds per game.
And like the F&M men, the York women are heading to the Virginia tidewater area: specifically, to the campus of Christopher Newport University in Newport News to take on the eleventh-ranked CNU Captains this evening. CNU is riding that vaunted p, finishing the season 25-3 (16-2), rolling through the USA South tournament, and in the final avenging one of their losses (although they had already avenged it in the regular-season finale), to fifteenth-ranked Greensboro College, 53-47. The Captains are led by presumed all-America candidate Chelsie Schweers, averaging a Jimmer-esque 24.9 points per game (on a Jimmer-esque 17 shots per game), almost twice as much as the next leading-scorer, Tiffany Davis, who scores 12.6 points per game. Schweers is shooting a scorching 50% on three-pointers and has been steady at the line, converting almost 81% of her 119 charity attempts. She also leads the team in assists, but, predictably for someone who takes 17 shots per game, doesn't really have all that many, only averaging 2.6. It seems like the formula for stopping the Captains--stop Chelsie Schweers--is easy to figure out, but, as with many great players, the execution is substantially more difficult. York coach Betsy Witman and her staff will certainly have their hands full trying to come up with a game plan; here's hoping they throw a lot of junk defenses at her.
Tip-off in Newport News is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. Pacific Standard Time this afternoon but will likely come later, as it is the second game at the site (Stockton College versus Johns Hopkins being the first). Watch it live! here.
That's it for now. Enjoy the games and the rest of the Buffet.
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