Committee decides fate of championships

Feb 03, 2021
Best of luck finding a basketball that says 2021 Division III Women's Basketball Championship or 2021 Division III Men's Basketball Championship.
Photo by Larry Radloff, d3photography.com
 

By Pat Coleman
D3sports.com

There will be no NCAA Division III national champions crowned in winter sports for the 2020-21 season, including men's basketball and women's basketball.

It will be the second consecutive year without an NCAA Division III national champion in men's and women's basketball. The announcement came down from the NCAA as the result of an Administrative Council meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 3.

This moment was clearly on the horizon a few weeks ago, when D3sports.com research showed that around 50% of Division III members were not scheduling nine games early enough to make the NCAA's Selection Sunday deadline of March 6. While there were indications that the relevant NCAA committees were willing to budge on the number of games, where schools that made a good-faith effort to schedule nine but were unable to do so because of the pandemic were likely to still be considered eligible, there was no indication that the NCAA was willing to move the dates.

Even moving the tournament back one week would be likely to bring in more than a dozen additional eligible schools in both men's and women's basketball.

On Jan. 18, D3hoops.com published its findings that stated the participation numbers were going to hit around 50%. On Jan. 19, the NCAA sent a championships declaration form to the membership which was eventually completed by 98% of Division III members.

In the three weeks' time since, more schools have made it clear they were either not playing or starting their schedule too late to qualify. The NCAA said the number that their survey found was that 51.4% of men's programs and 53.8% of women's programs would not be eligible. Back in September, the NCAA had announced that 60% of Division III's 430 women's basketball programs and 416 men's programs needed to be eligible to participate in order to sponsor a championship.

“While some institutions have been able to safely return to sport, the recent declaration form data show that more than half of our division has not returned to winter sport practice and competition to be in a position for NCAA national championship participation,” said Fayneese Miller, chair of the Presidents Council and president at Hamline. “This was a very difficult decision to make, and we are saddened to do so. However, none of our winter sports meet the Championships Committee’s established thresholds of participation to hold a championship. We are committed to ensuring that our student-athletes have the best possible experience, and, for us, this means having a meaningful number of competitions. We hope this is possible for our spring championship.”

All Division III winter sports fell below the participation threshold, including wrestling, which has 61.8% of its members participating. For wrestling and ice hockey, the requirement was 70%.

The full numbers, from the NCAA's release:

  60% Threshold 70% Threshold
  MBB WBB MSW WSW MTI WTI MIH WIH WRE
Sponsorship 416 430 238 265 291 297 84 67 109
Yes 48.6% 46.2% 43.1% 42.0% 48.8% 49.3% 52.3% 51.4% 61.8%
No 51.4% 53.8% 56.9% 58.0% 51.2% 50.7% 47.7% 48.6% 38.2%

Reaction came swiftly from all corners of Division III on Wednesday evening: