Farewell, old friends

More news about: Bryn Athyn | Bryn Athyn | Ferrum | Ferrum | Fontbonne | Fontbonne | Mount Mary | Northland | Northland
Jul 27, 2025
Bryn Athyn College celebrated its first men's basketball conference championship a couple weeks before announcing the end of intercollegiate athletics.
 Bryn Athyn College athletics file photo


By Gordon Mann, D3hoops.com

This month the calendar quietly flipped to the beginning of the 2025-26 athletic season.

July 1 marks the start of the new academic year, and we’re grinding through preparations for the next Division III basketball season. This time of year we create about 1,000 individual pages for each conference and team (men and women) that populate our schedule and scoreboards.

As we move teams to their new conference homes, we’re also removing some from our public facing pages entirely because they’re no longer members of Division III. You’ll still be able to access the team pages from prior seasons, but you won’t find team pages for Bryn Athyn, Ferrum, Fontbonne, Mount Mary, or Northland.

Before we file these programs into our archives, we wanted to acknowledge what each of them brought to the Division III landscape, just as we did last year when we bid farewell to six programs.


Bryn Athyn College

A few weeks after qualifying for the NCAA Division III Men’s Basketball Tournament, this small school in the Philadelphia suburbs announced that it would discontinue its intercollegiate athletic program at the end of the 2024-25 academic year.

College President Sean Connelly announced the change as part of program cuts intended to help stabilize the school’s finances. The letter reads in part:

The review of athletics costs revealed an untenable financial reality. According to benchmarking data from 69 DIII institutions without men’s football, athletic expenses should comprise roughly 3% of an institution’s budget. Ours, conservatively, stand at 12% and climb as high as 21% when accounting for overhead. That places us at 400–700% of the national benchmark. This level of financial expenditure is unsustainable. And the choice, due to NCAA requirements, is binary: maintain ten teams or none.

The men’s basketball program, which is one of the 11 eliminated, will go out as conference champions.

After starting the season 2-6, the Lions came together after the semester break and won 12 straight conference games. Bryn Athyn entered the UEC tournament as its top seed, survived a scare at home from Penn College in the semifinals, and then dispatched Notre Dame (Md.) in the championship game. Bryn Athyn’s starters combined for 77 of the team’s 82 points, including 16 from senior guard Jakir Hampton who scored 69 in the three playoff games and earned Tournament MVP honors. Sean Westerlund, who was recently hired to lead Penn State-Abington, was named Conference Coach of the Year.

Last season was also Bryn Athyn’s most successful in women’s basketball.

The Lady Lions set a program-record with 21 wins including two in the UEC tournament. Bryn Athyn’s final victory was a come-from-behind 51-47 win at Penn College in the UEC quarterfinals. Alayna Day tallied 23 points, three steals and two rebounds for Bryn Athyn, which placed Day and Zhymani Smith on the all-conference team.

The UEC will enter the upcoming season with 14 members in women’s basketball and 13 in men’s, though the conference will shrink again when fellow Philly region school Rosemont ceases operations after the 2025-26 academic season.

 

Ferrum College

Completing a move that was first announced in April 2024, Ferrum College has left Division III to join the most expansive conference in Division II.

Ferrum becomes the 16th member of the Conference Carolinas, which uses three divisions for some sports, and will sponsor football this fall, thanks in part to the Panthers’ entry. The Conference sponsors 30 sports, the most in Division II.

Ferrum joined Division III in the mid-80s as a member of the Dixie Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, the precursor to the USA South Athletic Conference. The Panthers jumped to the ODAC in 2018-19 giving the conference 13 members in women’s basketball and 12 in men’s basketball.

Ferrum had most of its basketball success in its prior Division III conference, especially on the women’s side.

From 2011 through 2014, the Panthers went 74-14 and battled Christopher Newport, Greensboro and Maryville for the top spot in the USA South Athletic Conference. Long-time head coach Bryan Harvey led the Panthers to three consecutive NCAA Tournaments and into the Top 25 rankings, reaching a peak of 15 near the end of the 2013-14 season.

Two-time first-team all-region guard Zarkia Mattox kept the Panthers in title contention in 2017 and 2018, but Ferrum found less success in the ODAC. The Panthers won just eight games total during their first four years in the ODAC and did not post a winning record until this past season when they finished 14-13, 7-9 in conference.

Ferrum’s two best seasons in men’s basketball came almost two decades apart.

During the 1991-92 season, the Panthers went 21-8, reached the NCAA Tournament, and defeated fellow former D3 member Emory & Henry in the first round. That was Ferrum’s lone Division III Tournament appearance, but the Panthers did enter the national rankings in 2010-2011 when All-American Derek Mitchell led Ferrum to a 14-1 start. Ferrum finished that season in second place behind N.C. Wesleyan and lost an overtime heartbreaker to the Battling Bishops in the conference tournament, despite 22 points and 19 rebounds from Mitchell.

Ferrum’s departure trims the ODAC membership back to 13 programs in women’s basketball and 12 in men’s, still more than enough to produce robust conference schedules without a double-round robin format.

 

Fontbonne University

In March 2024, Fontbonne University announced that its next academic and athletic season would be its last, as the Missouri-based Catholic university was forced to cease operations due to declining enrollment. Fontbonne reported 682 undergraduate students in 2022-23, down from 2,000 students a decade earlier.

“Despite our best efforts to cut costs, create new academic programs and launch athletic teams, the university is unable to recover from years of declining enrollments and budget deficits,” said President Nancy Blattner at the time of the announcement.

The Griffins basketball teams made their mark on the Division III landscape by winning multiple SLIAC men’s and women’s basketball titles and producing one of the most memorable upsets in Division III history.

Long-time head coach Lee McKinney led the Griffins men’s basketball team for much of the program’s history, winning 330 games and five SLIAC tournament crowns in 23 seasons. McKinney’s best season came in 1993-94 when the Griffins went 23-5 and 13-1 in conference. Fontbonne followed that with a 19-6 record before losing to Westminster (Mo.) in the 1995 SLIAC tournament. The next season, the Griffins won the conference tournament from the two-seed and made their first NCAA Tournament, a first round loss to Hanover.

Fontbonne reached the Big Dance three more times near the end of McKinney’s career. Despite finishing the regular season just above .500, the Griffins won the conference tournament in 2006 and earned the SLIAC’s automatic bid. That run ended with a first-round loss to regional rival Washington U.

In 2007, Fontbonne repeated as SLIAC champs and lost to Mary Hardin-Baylor 65-62 in a tight NCAA first round tilt. The Griffins won a third consecutive SLIAC tournament championship in 2008, this time also winning the conference regular season title.

In 2009, McKinney posted his 500th win the following season, including his victories at NAIA-member Missouri Baptist, and Brian Fogerty became the program’s first D3 All-American after winning his second consecutive conference MVP award.

After McKinney retired, the Griffins had one more SLIAC title run in 2023-24 when McKinney’s long-time assistant Lance Thornhill led Fontbonne to a 20-win season and a dominating win over Spalding in the SLIAC tournament finale. Fontbonne fell in the first round to eventual national champion Trine.

Fontbonne also scored its way back into the national headlines in January 2018 when the Griffins defeated Greenville 164-154 in a game that broke Division III’s record for combined points.

The Fontbonne women reached even higher heights under former head coach Keith Quigley. During a six-year stretch from 1997 through 2003, the Griffins went 124-29 with five conference titles and a pair of NCAA Tournament appearances. Another St. Louis-area team dominated that era of Division III basketball as Nancy Fahey’s Washington U. Bears won 81 straight games and four straight national championships.

When the Bears’ winning streak finally ended, it wasn’t New York University, Rochester or one of the other nationally ranked UAA rivals who snapped it. It was cross-street rival Fontbonne that defeated WashU 79-68 in January 2021.  "We've got five seniors on this club and they really believed they could do it this year," said sports information director Dennis McKinney.

That win came early in a 14-game winning streak that the Griffins rode all the way into the NCAA Tournament. Fontbonne clobbered Rockford 83-47 in the first round and then knocked off Millikin, 69-56, in the second.

The Griffins fell to Wartburg in the Sweet 16, which in turn lost to eventual national champion WashU in the Elite 8. That run earned Fontbonne the No. 15 ranking in the final poll of that season, which remains the highest Top 25 placement by a team that has only been ranked once. Amy Hauschild earned second-team All-American honors as a junior.

Fontbonne leaves the SLIAC as the all-time leader in women’s basketball titles (seven), player of the year honors (seven), coach of the year honors (seven), and freshman of the year honors (six).

Fontbonne’s closure leaves the SLIAC with nine members including recent additions Lyon College, which will become a full member of Division III this season.

 

Mount Mary University

After struggling to find a Division III conference home for two decades, Mount Mary has left the NCAA to join the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA). The Milwaukee-based women’s university announced the move last fall, citing the benefits of offering scholarships and finding a more natural conference home.

  • Mount Mary team pages: Women

That second point is especially important to the Blue Angels who competed as an independent member of Division III for seven seasons, joined the Great South Athletic Conference for a season before it disbanded, competed in ACAA for two seasons before it also disbanded, and then eventually landed in the Coast-to-Coast Conference.

None of those conferences had regular season schedules, so Mount Mary was left to cobble together schedules with games against NACC, MWC, and SLIAC opponents or Bible colleges outside the NCAA. The Blue Angels sometimes struggled to field teams, including in 2012-13 when they canceled their season due to a lack of players.

Mount Mary’s best season in Division III came two seasons ago when the Blue Angels finished 12-12 and lost to Salisbury in the Coast-to-Coast conference tournament. That was Mount Mary’s lone game against a conference opponent that season. Mount Mary will become the 13th member of the Chicagoland Athletic Conference, along with Viterbo, which is Wisconsin’s only other NAIA member.

As one leaves, two more enter. The Coast-to-Coast Conference will add Regent and Johnson and Wales (NC) this season, both of which will be first year provisional members this upcoming season.

 

Northland College

We say goodbye to this Wisconsin-based UMAC program after two difficult years in which the College struggled to stay afloat financially and struggled to compete on the court.

The College’s financial difficulties heightened when enrollment dropped below 500 students in 2023. In Spring 2024, College officials said they needed to raise $12 million to stay operational. The school only raised about $1 million and tried to shrink to a sustainable position during the last academic year. In February, the school announced its closure at the end of the academic year.

Concurrent with those financial struggles, Northland finished the last two seasons without a win in men’s or women’s basketball.

The Northland women did enjoy success under prior head coach Dan Roiger who led the Lumberjills from a 4-21 finish in 2005-06 to a 14-12 mark the following season.

Northland had a winning record in Roiger’s final three seasons, including a 19-8 finish in 2008-09. That season, the Lumberjills won the UMAC regular season and conference titles, and Lindsey Hamm was the conference player of the year. While the UMAC did not yet have an automatic qualifying bid to the NCAA tournament, Northland reached the NCAA Tournament the following season as an at-large participant under head coach Bill Wilson.

Northland men’s basketball had less success. The Lumberjacks’ best season as a Division III program was a 13-13 finish in 2016-17. Northland had just two seasons with double-digit wins since 2005.

Northland’s closure leaves the UMAC with seven members entering the 2025-25 athletic season.