The Daily Dive is your deep dive into the news and notes from around the NAIA Hoops World. Every day we will highlight some of the top headlines, conference updates, player accolades, coaching milestones and more. This used to be our Morning Bullet Points series. We went away from it this year, as others were doing similar things and we didn’t want to step on any toes. At the request of many, we have elected to bring it back for the second half of the season. Feel free to DM us on Twitter (@NAIAHoopsReport) or send an email to naiahoopsreport@gmail.com to recommend stories to be included into this segment.
Happy MLK Jr Day everyone and before someone jumps into my DM’s with a “stick to sports, not politics” statement, I want to make it very clear that equal rights and social justice is not, nor ever should be, a political stance. It is a great day to reflect back on his teachings. We need to be better to one another.
Busy weekend around the NAIA. We now have 18 leagues that have played at least one conference game. We generally have 21 leagues with the Association of Independent Institutions factored in. The Cascade won’t have a regular season scheduled until later in the Spring, and the CalPac has a revised conference schedule with only six teams playing for a chance to qualify for a National Tournament birth.
Combing through some stats over the weekend and it is a bit unique that the three top ranked teams in the Top 25 poll are also the three top scoring teams in the country.
A lot of really good basketball being played with those three teams. LSU-Shreveport and William Penn are also both inside the Top 10 in Field Goal Percentage Defense.
Some of it is competition level and some of it is just teams being that good, or a combination of both, but it’s interesting to see that inside of the Top 10 Field Goal Percentage Defensive teams, eight teams are ranked in the Top 25 poll with four of those being inside of the Top 10 in the polls.
No real point being made here, just a fun with numbers as we take a deep dive into some team stats. There are a lot of different styles of play throughout the NAIA. It’s one of the beautiful aspects of basketball. Different philosophies, different views on how the game should be played. Ultimately, it comes down to are you better at what you do then what your opponent is at what they do?
Shameless Plug:
In case you missed it, make sure you listen to this weeks NHR – The Podcast
Fab Four Preview – Road To Muni Podcast
Episodes can also be found on iTunes and Soundcloud. We do more than just talk with coaches, but this week’s episode was particularly great because we got some great insight from XULA Head Coach Alfred Williams. Easily one of the weirdest parts of this last Top 25 poll, was Xavier dropping out of the poll despite not losing a game between polls. This is a bit of an underrated team to keep an eye on moving forward.
The conference weekly reviews will be out here shortly. With the Schedule and Links article will be out around Noon CT.
