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GDT Thread - SLU vs. UM-SL


billikenbill

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Good games until you lose one like St.Johns by getting manhandled by a D2! Lets you know that a well coached team can beat a bunch of 5 star players thrown out there to play. This is one reason I believe the Bills will a problem for opponents this season. Low expectations and playing with a chip on their shoulders. As for well coached, this season will be a telling example of whether or not JC is the problem or the solution.

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UMSL is the Duke of Missouri. So I take it as a good win. Last year they beat Ferris St. (a good D-II squad) who beat Bowling Green handedly at Bowling Green. Well, Bowling Green beat Cleveland St. who beat UWGB who beat Miami (FL) who beat Duke.

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Anyway, the tl;dr version: There is not a ton of difference in level of competition between D-II and D-III and it doesn't make a lot of sense to think of D-I, D-II, and D-III in a clear heirarchy.

Agree. There does seem to be a pretty wide range of attitudes toward sports at D3 schools, but it doesn't really carry over to competitiveness.

Fontbonne is a good example of a D3 school that travels well, even when their team is not very good. On the other hand, even when Webster is really good, almost no one cares. Last year the conference tournament was at Webster's gym because they won the regular season title, and it was the first time I can ever remember seeing a full crowd there. But it was about 80% Fontbonne fans, 10% fans of other schools from as far away as Iowa and Kentucky, and 10% Webster fans. A little embarrassing, since it was probably one of the best teams Webster had ever had in any sport.

I imagine that has a lot to do with who gets picked for these exhibition games, but it seemed like there were very few people at the game the other night who were there to cheer on UMSL.

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There are a couple differences between D-II and D-III, and the main one is that a partial athletic scholarship may be granted in D-II and no athletic scholarships may be granted in D-III. The other difference has to do with scheduling within football and basketball (D-II schools have to play at least 50% of their games against other D-II - and/or FCS in football - schools).

D-II is intended to represent the cross-section between D-I - where student-athletes have a more intense athletic experience - and D-III, where student-athletes are students first and foremost. But in reality, D-II is sort of a poor man's D-I, where the schools simply lack size and funding to compete in D-I (because if they think they can be a D-I school, they try to move up to D-I). It also offers a logical place for schools with individual programs that compete at the highest division but can't compete in other programs, like Alaska-Anchorage, which competes in high-level college hockey. And honestly, there are some lower-tier D-I schools that probably make more sense in the D-II level.

In practice, the difference in quality of play between most of D-II and D-III is negligible. Instead of having a more competitive athletic environment in D-II because of partial athletic scholarships, high school kids who know they aren't going to have D-I aspirations focus their attention more on the academic environment and what it means for their future, so many of them choose academic scholarships or financial aid at D-III schools instead of partial athletic money at a D-II school. Overall, D-III schools are mostly private and D-II are a mix of private and public, and D-III schools tend to be higher ranked and better funded.

Chaminade had a guard a couple years ago named Andy Kleinlein. He probably could've played at any number of D-II schools but instead plays at D-III Washington & Lee, an excellent academic school that's probably going to open up more doors for him than, say, Illinois-Springfield.

The one area where D-III gets dragged down athletically is that it has schools like Cal Tech and Bard, which have virtually no interest whatsoever in athletics (but are still required by the NCAA to have programs) and have extremely rigid acceptance standards, so very few HS athletes attend and the teams are glorified intramural squads.

Anyway, the tl;dr version: There is not a ton of difference in level of competition between D-II and D-III and it doesn't make a lot of sense to think of D-I, D-II, and D-III in a clear heirarchy.

Most DII men's bb scholarship players are on full rides. Each team gets 10 full Schollies and while they can split those up I don't think most do.

Source - very good friend was on full ride for D2 bball

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Most DII men's bb scholarship players are on full rides. Each team gets 10 full Schollies and while they can split those up I don't think most do.

Source - very good friend was on full ride for D2 bball

Thanks, I wasn't sure; thought it was capped at a level lower than a D-I scholarship (e.g. tuition-only or a set $ amount or something like that). Even if that's the case, it doesn't change more than a couple words in my post.

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UMSL has a wide ranging and diverse student body from many different countries. Probably as much or more than SLU does. Add in their Sundvold, who has connections all over the globe as well. I doubt they take recruiting trips out there though.

We have discussed this many times before but since the NCAA changed the rules we have played only a handful of area college teams, UMSL, Quincy, Rockhurst, Maryville, Fontbonne, Harris Stowe. None of these are the best area programs at basketball. I'd love for us to play Lindenwood, Wash U, or McKendree even bring Central Missouri and some other outstate programs who would give us slighly better competition.

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Thanks, I wasn't sure; thought it was capped at a level lower than a D-I scholarship (e.g. tuition-only or a set $ amount or something like that). Even if that's the case, it doesn't change more than a couple words in my post.

Well luckily there is data for this instead of hunches although admittedly there is not a lot of playing across divisions to get an accurate measure. Massey creates power ratings across all levels of college basketball and here are some of the averages (calibrated that the average team acrosss all college ball is 0):

NCAA I (351 teams) : 1.52

NCAA II (317 teams) : 0.50

NCAA III (420 teams) : -0.40

This is a cardinal scale so DI is 1.02 better than DII and DII is .90 better than DIII. There is a bigger gap between DI and DII but there is still a large gap between DII and DIII. There seems to be more variance across DI and DIII so maybe the top of DIII is somewhat comparable with DII. I just do not think you realize how bad DIII ball gets.

FYI, using the same scale:

CIS (47 teams): -0.28 (Carleton is good but the CIS in general is DIII level)

NAIA I (95 teams): 0.02 (better than DIII worse than DII)

NAIA II (138 teams): -0.18 (better than DIII and little difference with NAIA I)

NCCAA I (36 teams): -0.15 (better than DIII too!)

NCCAA II (32 teams): -1.46 (Ok, this is where the crap happens)

NJCAA I (205 teams): 0.15 (JUCO ball way better than DIII but not as good as DII)

NJCAA II (124 teams) -0.47 (small JUCO only a tiny bit worse than DIII)

USCAA I (15 teams): -0.54 (worse than DIII)

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Well luckily there is data for this instead of hunches although admittedly there is not a lot of playing across divisions to get an accurate measure. Massey creates power ratings across all levels of college basketball and here are some of the averages (calibrated that the average team acrosss all college ball is 0):

NCAA I (351 teams) : 1.52

NCAA II (317 teams) : 0.50

NCAA III (420 teams) : -0.40

This is a cardinal scale so DI is 1.02 better than DII and DII is .90 better than DIII. There is a bigger gap between DI and DII but there is still a large gap between DII and DIII. There seems to be more variance across DI and DIII so maybe the top of DIII is somewhat comparable with DII. I just do not think you realize how bad DIII ball gets.

FYI, using the same scale:

CIS (47 teams): -0.28 (Carleton is good but the CIS in general is DIII level)

NAIA I (95 teams): 0.02 (better than DIII worse than DII)

NAIA II (138 teams): -0.18 (better than DIII and little difference with NAIA I)

NCCAA I (36 teams): -0.15 (better than DIII too!)

NCCAA II (32 teams): -1.46 (Ok, this is where the crap happens)

NJCAA I (205 teams): 0.15 (JUCO ball way better than DIII but not as good as DII)

NJCAA II (124 teams) -0.47 (small JUCO only a tiny bit worse than DIII)

USCAA I (15 teams): -0.54 (worse than DIII)

Good data, thanks.

And I absolutely know that the bottom of D-III is basically high school-level basketball. (Thus, my Bard and CalTech examples above.) But when you look at the D-III programs that actually try to field competitive teams, I don't think there's much difference between that and what you'd see in D-II, for the most part - they could at least compete at that level. Augustana would be a very good D-II team, for example, right?

I think there are a lot of small liberal arts schools in D-III that couldn't care less about athletics dragging the overall division down. But I'm sure it'd be tough to draw the line somewhere in D-III to cut those out.

I guess my main point was that for kids making the decision to play sports at D-II or D-III, it's a similar talent level. That's different than the kids who end up at Oberlin or one of the Sisters or any number of the very religious schools in that division, and those are the schools that make D-III weaker.

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Good data, thanks.

And I absolutely know that the bottom of D-III is basically high school-level basketball. (Thus, my Bard and CalTech examples above.) But when you look at the D-III programs that actually try to field competitive teams, I don't think there's much difference between that and what you'd see in D-II, for the most part - they could at least compete at that level. Augustana would be a very good D-II team, for example, right?

I think there are a lot of small liberal arts schools in D-III that couldn't care less about athletics dragging the overall division down. But I'm sure it'd be tough to draw the line somewhere in D-III to cut those out.

I guess my main point was that for kids making the decision to play sports at D-II or D-III, it's a similar talent level. That's different than the kids who end up at Oberlin or one of the Sisters or any number of the very religious schools in that division, and those are the schools that make D-III weaker.

I definitely think you are still looking at outliers (Augustana) to make your case. Augie's conference, much better than any other conference in DIII is still worse than the average DII team (Massey scale 0.30). Is Augie better than a lot of D-II teams, better than average DII? Yes, absolutely but there are many D-II teams that are better than an average DI team as well.

I figured out how to get exact records between divisions (fascinating!) and it includes exhibitions:

DI vs. DII: 118-5

DII vs. DIII: 65-8 (I am surprised how few games are played across the DII - DIII divide).

DI vs DIII: 113-2 (both DIII wins were in exhibitions)

DII vs. NAIA: 226-76 (a lot of games between DII and NAIA)

DIII vs. NAIA: 82-118

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Damn, good stuff. Thanks. I'm also surprised at how few D-II vs. D-III games there are. Maybe the D-II schools are afraid the D-III schools would play with a chip on their shoulder and strengthen my (now weakened) point!

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There are a couple differences between D-II and D-III, and the main one is that a partial athletic scholarship may be granted in D-II and no athletic scholarships may be granted in D-III. The other difference has to do with scheduling within football and basketball (D-II schools have to play at least 50% of their games against other D-II - and/or FCS in football - schools).

D-II is intended to represent the cross-section between D-I - where student-athletes have a more intense athletic experience - and D-III, where student-athletes are students first and foremost. But in reality, D-II is sort of a poor man's D-I, where the schools simply lack size and funding to compete in D-I (because if they think they can be a D-I school, they try to move up to D-I). It also offers a logical place for schools with individual programs that compete at the highest division but can't compete in other programs, like Alaska-Anchorage, which competes in high-level college hockey. And honestly, there are some lower-tier D-I schools that probably make more sense in the D-II level.

In practice, the difference in quality of play between most of D-II and D-III is negligible. Instead of having a more competitive athletic environment in D-II because of partial athletic scholarships, high school kids who know they aren't going to have D-I aspirations focus their attention more on the academic environment and what it means for their future, so many of them choose academic scholarships or financial aid at D-III schools instead of partial athletic money at a D-II school. Overall, D-III schools are mostly private and D-II are a mix of private and public, and D-III schools tend to be higher ranked and better funded.

Chaminade had a guard a couple years ago named Andy Kleinlein. He probably could've played at any number of D-II schools but instead plays at D-III Washington & Lee, an excellent academic school that's probably going to open up more doors for him than, say, Illinois-Springfield.

The one area where D-III gets dragged down athletically is that it has schools like Cal Tech and Bard, which have virtually no interest whatsoever in athletics (but are still required by the NCAA to have programs) and have extremely rigid acceptance standards, so very few HS athletes attend and the teams are glorified intramural squads.

Anyway, the tl;dr version: There is not a ton of difference in level of competition between D-II and D-III and it doesn't make a lot of sense to think of D-I, D-II, and D-III in a clear heirarchy.

Maybe this is a stupid question, but why are those schools (and I assume others) REQUIRED by the NCAA to have programs? This is news to me but colleges and universities MUST have intercollegiate sports??

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Maybe this is a stupid question, but why are those schools (and I assume others) REQUIRED by the NCAA to have programs? This is news to me but colleges and universities MUST have intercollegiate sports??

http://www.ncaa.org/about/who-we-are/membership/divisional-differences-and-history-multidivision-classification

"Division III institutions have to sponsor at least five sports for men and five for women, with two team sports for each gender, and each playing season represented by each gender. There are minimum contest and participant minimums for each sport. Division III athletics features student-athletes who receive no financial aid related to their athletic ability and athletic departments are staffed and funded like any other department in the university. Division III athletics departments place special importance on the impact of athletics on the participants rather than on the spectators. The student-athlete's experience is of paramount concern. Division III athletics encourages participation by maximizing the number and variety of athletics opportunities available to students, placing primary emphasis on regional in-season and conference competition."

I guess there's a reason some of the D-III schools that are disinterested athletically remain in that division; being in the NCAA must be important to these institutions.

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