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Around
the Nation

Posted Jan. 5, 2006

E-mail: mark@d3hoops.com

Construction project on schedule
It’s been a recurring theme in “Around the Nation” this season for us to focus on the teams that have made significant improvements. The good thing is that every season these teams are plentiful. They’re easy to find and come winter break, they’re usually in pretty good moods because they’re on rolls that they don’t want to end. This week, we talked to three more and got their takes on their strong starts:

Scott Bergman shot 42% from three-point range last season and has improved from downtown so far.

Bluffton’s men have nibbled away at success for the last three seasons. The current senior class went 10-16 both as freshmen and sophomores, with the lack of victories being a result of not closing out close games. It posted a 14-13 mark last season, including a road win at Hanover and Neal was pleased with the progress. It was something he’d seen before in his 15 seasons but, for the most part, hadn’t been able to capitalize on in back-to-back seasons.

So for this season, feeling ambitious and knowing that he had a nice group of juniors and sophomores returning too, Neal set loftier goals. He has drummed the point home again and again that this can be one of the best teams that the program has ever had.

“We told them that they had two respectable years and one good year,” Neal said. It’s time to take it to being a ‘great’ year,”

Through part one of a campaign that Neal divided into four segments (non-conference play, first round of conference, second round of conference, postseason), Bluffton has gone almost unblemished. The Beavers are off to the best start in team history at 11-1 and are unbeaten in Division III (the only loss was to Concordia, Mich.) after winning their Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference opener over Manchester on Wednesday night. They lacked a signature win, at least from a national perspective, until Monday night, but got a pretty nice one when they got a 13-point triumph against a Carnegie Mellon team that was fresh off a win against Division I Princeton.

The Beavers were picked fourth in the HCAC in the preseason with the thought being that they would be secondary to Transylvania and Hanover, even though they returned the league’s player of the year in senior guard Scott Bergman (19.5 points, 47% from 3-point range).

Eric Sweet is second on the team in scoring and blocks nearly three shots per game.

“He was a very good jump shooter his first two years, but last year he added a driving game to his offensive arsenal,” Neal said. “He’s a hard person to guard. He can hit the ‘3’ with anybody and he can take it to the basket. The thing he’s brought to the table is that his defense and rebounding have gotten better.”

Bergman, despite being only 6-1, is second on the team in rebounding at better than six per game. That’s indicative of the team’s hardworking mentality, which can also be seen in the play of fellow all-conference members, forward Eric Sweet (14.6 points, 2.8 blocks) and guard Michael Anthony (10.6 points).

“If you saw us, you’d say that our kids compete really hard,” Neal said. “We take a lot of pride in that. We play with a lot of energy. They are very unselfish. They are good players who know that the sum of their parts is greater than the individual.”

Bluffton went from being unranked to earning the No. 25 spot in the most recent D3hoops.com poll and while some coaches don’t consider the rankings significant, Neal put some stock into the numbers.

“We’ve had some teams that were right there, but just couldn’t get over the hump,” Neal said. “This group has accomplished some things that have gone a step or two farther than other groups. It was very rewarding to get ranked, though we’re trying to keep a balance and not be complacent. I know how hard these guys have worked. We’ve earned it. And we still feel like our best basketball is ahead of us.”

SWIMMING UPSTREAM: An unexpected beneficiary of Bridgewater’s upset of 2005 women’s national finalist Randolph-Macon is Virginia Wesleyan, which enters Thursday in the unlikely position of first place in the Old Dominion Athletic Conference. Perhaps some of the good karma from hosting the Final Four the last two seasons was of benefit to Stephany Dunmyer’s team, which holds the top spot at this late a date for the first time since the 1992-93 season. The Marlins, picked sixth in the league’s preseason poll, are 8-2, 5-0 in league, 7-0 in regional play, and riding a seven-game win streak heading into a road game with Lynchburg on Thursday.

“We’ve really matured,” said Dunmyer, who went 5-20 and 12-14 in her first two seasons as head coach, but has the program off to its best start since 1987-88. “I see a real calm over them. They know how to win and they expect to win. That wasn’t there my first two years.”

Although Virginia Wesleyan still has to play Bridgewater and Randolph-Macon twice apiece, the Marlines have already chalked up some key road wins, in addition to a home triumph over 7-1 Salisbury. The Marlins won at Roanoke for the first time since 1986, beating the team that was picked No. 3 in the league’s preseason poll, It has also won at Washington & Lee, rallied to beat Eastern Mennonite, and come back from 17 points down at halftime to top local non-conference rival Christopher Newport. It’s wins like these that have Dunmyer and her players thinking very optimistically about this season.

“Walking out of the locker room at halftime of the Newport game, I was worried that the game could be a real negative turning point for us,” Dunmyer said, noting the contest came just prior to a lengthy winter break. “But we came out and knocked down some shots.”

Virginia Wesleyan may not light up a stat sheet with gaudy numbers, but it has found ways to win and thrive in close games. The Marlins play a run-and-jump press, with two units of five rotating every four minutes or so, so 10 players are averaging double figures in playing time on a roster that, for the second straight season, has no seniors. Virginia Wesleyan has athletic post players who can get up and down the floor quickly, like, sophomore forward Heather Phillips (12.9 points per game) and junior Nicole Thurston (9.2 points, 7.2 rebounds). Junior tri-captain 5-1 guard Lauren Rector is the team’s vocal leader, and chips in 6.6 points.

“You never know who is going to step up for us,” Dunmyer said. “We like to use the phrase: A team above all, above all a team. We don’t feel that we’re the best out there yet, but we believe that in everything we do, we are foremost a team.”

TRIP TIME: The University of the Ozarks women have a Texas two-step coming up this weekend and next and the results should be rather revealing. The early returns are promising, as the Lady Eagles are 7-3, 6-1 in the American Southwest Conference East Division, as another surprising first-place occupant. Ozarks, one of two Division III teams in Arkansas (Hendrix is the other) went 4-21 last season, Kelly Stutz’s first as head coach, but this squad bears a significantly different and deeper look in its effort to return to past success.

Stutz replenished the team with a freshman class that included top-scoring forward LaTisha McCalister (16.0 points, 2.1 steals), and got a break when junior center Mandi Carter returned to the program. Carter didn’t play basketball last season after playing her first two at Ozarks. She transferred to Alabama, missed playing, and transferred back to join her freshman sister Savannah on the squad. Carter is third on the team in scoring at 12.3 points per game and is the team’s leading rebounder at 6.9 per contest. Ozarks, which only has two seniors on the roster, plays with a simple goal in mind — outwork the opponent. Their games are played at a quick pace and the scoring has progressed to where the team has averaged nearly 90 points in its last three games, all wins.

The Eagles have two on the road in a three-day stretch with two of the best in the West Division in Hardin-Simmons and McMurry then repeat the Texas trip next week taking on East Division foes Texas-Tyler and Texas-Dallas.

“Both these games will be big tests,” said Stutz, referring to the upcoming first set. “This is an opportunity for us to prove to ourselves where we are, more for ourselves than for anyone us. We need to maintain (this level of play) to continue to improve our confidence. It’s definitely not an easy task, but we’re looking forward to it.”

A TRUE DIVISION III MOMENT: Our favorite leftover note from Carnegie Mellon’s win over Princeton (arguably the most noteworthy opponent beaten by a Division III since this site began, Princeton’s current record notwithstanding) came from the postgame press conference. There were representatives not only from the local papers, eager to pick up on a Cinderella story, but from national media investigating Princeton’s early-season struggles. When Tartans head coach Tony Wingen sat down with a couple of players in the team’s first postgame “press conference,” one had a question for him.

“Coach,” whispered Nate Maurer. “What are we supposed to say?”

PONDERINGS: Surprise teams of the semester that we haven’t mentioned already: The Gallaudet men (6-3, with a five-point loss to unbeaten Widener) and the Oglethorpe women (10-1, including a win over Bridgewater).
Teams we’ll be learning more about this weekend: Wilmington men (at Baldwin-Wallace after a real nice win over Ohio Northern) and Chicago women (go figure that they would be the only unbeaten team playing at Washington University this weekend).
Have a funny feeling that the Bates women’s team is going to make a nice push here. This is a different Bobcats squad than the one that started the season, with two impact transfers (Jackie Powers, who was in school, but didn’t play at Boston College and 2005 NESCAC Rookie of the Year Matia Kostakis from Amherst) providing support for center Meg Coffin, who has been outstanding this season (17.7 points, 11.2 rebounds, 3.0 steals).
How about we spice up the Final Fours this year with a slam dunk contest, a 3-point shootout, and a free throw festival. The latter two have plenty of worthy candidates judging from the NCAA stat report, with 13 players from each gender qualifying at better than 50% from three-point land and Rose Hulman’s Suzy Carlson a perfect 54-for-54 on free throws.
Here’s an odd scheduling quirk. In the Skyline Conference, the Yeshiva men have already played eight league games. Two teams in the same conference have only played one league game, while Kings Point hasn’t played any.

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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