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.
– As mentioned yesterday in our NAIA Hoops Report Top 25 – 4th Edition, there is a lot to still be figured out with the NAIA National Tournament. As soon as we have the answers we will look to share with you. With conference tournaments starting up in Mid-April, we only have a couple weeks left of the regular season. It is going to absolutely fly by and it is also going to make for some great games as teams are battling for seeding, or to even make it into their league tournament.
– Today’s games will matter some for the official Top 25 coaches poll that will be released on Wednesday. One thing that has been known is that the NAIA was planning on using the Massey Ratings as part of their equation to determine RPI’s. Many coaches use it as a guide for their Top 25 rankings. We too love looking at the Massey Ratings, but I hope those who are using this data as a major aspect of their ratings, actually know what the formulas are behind these numbers, because if you do a deep dive into those numbers, there is actually quite a bit off with the output, even when the site is up to date on records. It is always fun to look at, but don’t think it always tells the full story.
A Look Around at League Leaders:
As of 1/25/2020
| LEAGUE | Currently in 1st Place (League Record) |
| American Midwest Conference | Columbia & Central Baptist (5-1) |
| Appalachian Athletic Conference | Point (GA) (12-3) |
| Association of Independent Institutions | – |
| California Pacific Conference | No League Games Played |
| Cascade Collegiate Conference | Only # 4Lewis-Clark St/#22 C of Idaho playing |
| Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference | Holy Cross (3-0) |
| Crossroads League | #1 Indiana Wesleyan (9-1) |
| Frontier Conference | # 13 Providence (6-0) |
| Golden State Athletic Conference | #6 Arizona Christian & William Jessup (2-0) |
| Great Plains Athletic Conference | #15 Morningside (13-2) |
| Gulf Coast Athletic Conference | #17 Talladega (4-0) & Dillard/Xavier (3-0) |
| Heart of America Athletic Conference | North – #3 William Penn (13-1) South- Benedictine (9-4) |
| Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference | #25 Bethel (KS) (12-3) |
| Mid-South Conference | #7 Shawnee State (12-1) |
| North Star Athletic Association | Mayville State (5-2) |
| Red River Athletic Conference | Just 5 teams – #2 LSU-Shreveport (3-0) Texarkana (2-0) |
| River States Conference | No League Games Played |
| Sooner Athletic Conference | #12 Science & Arts (Ok) (4-1) & Central Christian (1-0) |
| Southern States Athletic Conference | East – #10 Faulkner (6-0) West – Stillman (6-1) |
| The Sun Conference | Warner (9-3) |
| Wolverine-Hoosier Athletic Conference | Lourdes (@-0) & Indiana Tech (1-0) |
– With about 2-3 weeks left of the regular season, we still have many leagues that are wide open! Shoot, we still have several leagues who haven’t even played a league game yet!!! We are truly in the last spring of the season and with many teams now having to play 3-4 games a week, it will be interesting to see what that does to their legs come tournament time!
Once the league ratings are out later today we will make sure to get those posted on Twitter. Plenty of league games today, including some Top 25 games today! Make sure you check back in later today to catch the Games of the Day and Five Players to Watch in another action packed day in NAIA Hoops!
