Tuesday, in
my post about the Elmhurst Bluejay Classic tournament pairings, I linked to
the
latest Hoopsville Podcast in which Dave McHugh alludes to impending
regional alignment (which could go into effect as soon as 2013-14) (25:45 mark
of the video/podcast). The apparent goals of the realignment process (as far as
basketball goes) are (1) to even up the number of teams across the regions and
(2) to have consistent regions between the Men’s and Women’s game.
I’m not overly concerned with goal number two (although I
find it funny and mildly annoying that the ‘Midwest’ region is called ‘Central’
region in the Women’s game), but the first goal really piqued my interest: evening out the number of teams in each region.
The geography of the MIAA Schools (particularly Hope and
Calvin) and the Division III regions make it difficult for to find close
in-region games during the non-conference season (I’ve
grumbled about this before). For Calvin, only six of the closest 12
non-conference schools would be considered in-region. The big reasons being
that Michigan (and West Michigan in particular) is on the far western edge of
both the Great Lakes geographic region and the NCAA Administrative region, and
Lake Michigan makes it nearly impossible to travel any sort of distance to the
West while staying within 200 (road) miles.
So when I first heard word of the (potential) upcoming
realignment I got very excited. Maybe the NCAA’s new grouping of schools would
allow Calvin to play in-region games against some nearby leagues such as the
CCIW (of which annual Calvin opponents Wheaton and Carthage are members). If
this were the case, it would be fairly easy for Calvin to meet the upcoming
75% in-region requirement without making any drastic changes to their
typical schedule.
