- Good Morning NAIA Hoops Nation!! Welcome to another round of NAIA Bullet Points. For those of you who are new followers, this segment is just you daily dose of whats happening in and around the NAIA men’s basketball realm. We do this in Bullet Point form in order to try and keep it quick and easy to read.
- We will start off with our game recaps from our Circled games last night. There were quite a few great NAIA DII games on last nights docket. One of the games that sparked our interest last night was the Association of Independent Institution game in which College of the Ozarks defeated Crowley’s Ridge 81-61. Trent McBride had 25 points and 13 rebounds for Ozarks in the win. Ozarks is still battling for a better seed in the Aii Tournament, as well as one of the 3 automatic births into the NAIA tournament. Crowley’s Ridge was needing a nice home win to put them stay in the Top 8 of the Aii Standings. However, the loss moves them to a half game back of Holy Family for that 8th and final spot in the Aii Tournament.
- We also circled a game out in the River States Conference that saw IU East beat Rio Grande 79-57. Bishop Smith had a game high 21 points and dished out 6 assists for the Red Wolves. The win helps to set up a BIG River States Conference matchup on Saturday between IU East and WVU Tech. Winner will be alone in 1st place in the East Division.
- Our last two circled games we had featured were games from the Crossroads League. This league has been a fun one all year long, and we were expecting another great one between #8 Marian and #6 Mt Vernon Nazarene last night, but Marian had no issues on the road as they got a 92-70 win over MVNU. Cameron Wolter continues his great season as he finished with 25 points and 7 rebounds in the win. Marian now sits along in 2nd place in the Crossroads League, and will host Spring Arbor on Saturday.
- Speaking of Spring Arbor, they got their 3rd win in a row last night with a big 76-74 OT road win against #11 Bethel (IN). This Spring Arbor team is back to being healthy, and even though they have a tough stretch of games left, they will be looking to continue to add to their at large resume. Paul Marandet led the way with 22 points in the win. He also hit one of the biggest milestones one can hit in his career by surpassing the 2,000 career points scored barrier.
- There was another milestone hit last night in the Crossroads League as Huntington Head Coach Ty Platt, got his 200th win as the head coach of the Forresters. Congratulations Coach!!
- Jacob Conway continued his big year last night, as he joined the 1k club in their win against Oakland City University. Congratulations Jacob!!
- The official NAIA Top 25 polls will be released later today. Just 4 polls left until the National Tournament! This is always such a great time of year, because games get taken to another level as teams fight for regular season championships, NAIA automatic births, playoff seeding, and some are even fighting for playoff spots. No easy games this time of year.
