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 Valentines Day to everyone across NAIA nation. It’s pretty brutal outside for majority of the country right now, so we hope everyone stays safe and warm. Yesterday brought us a lot of shifting in the standings across the NAIA. Today’s Daily Dive will be a deeper dive into the landscape of Conference Standings across the Country.
– The AMC Standings tightened up a bit last night. We talked about the two major games in the league in our Schedule & Links post and indeed, Lyon beat Columbia and Central Baptist lost to Missouri Baptist. Lyon is now tied with CBC for 1st place in the AMC with 1 week left!
– Point (GA) still has a 1 game lead in the AAC Standings. It sets up a BIG game tomorrow between Point and Reinhardt for what could be the AAC Regular Season Title and a possible Auto-Bid coming from the AAC Selection Committee.
– The Aii is a unique league, where as independents, they don’t have a full conference schedule. Their automatic births will come from the Aii Tournament.
– The CalPac is down to just 3 teams left playing in the league. BenU Mesa, Saint Katherine and Simpson will all play a Round Robin style play in for the CalPac auto-bid. Those games begin February 24th.
– The Cascade Conference has two teams left playing for the right to go to the National Tournament. #4 Lewis-Clark State and College of Idaho will go to battle in a best of 3 series beginning February 18th!
– The Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference Standings has Olivet Nazarene still a game up on Governors State. The two teams face off at ONU tomorrow. The Top 2 teams in the CCAC regular season capture auto-bids along with the CCAC Tournament winner (or 3rd place in regular season standings if tournament champ already captured auto-bid). Saint Xavier, Saint Ambrose and Holy Cross are all tied for 3rd right now with just a couple games left.
– The Crossroads League Regular Season title was already captured by #1 Indiana Wesleyan. The CL Tournament will determine the 2nd auto-bid from the league. Here is the current CL Standings!
– #10 Providence continues to run away from the rest of the league in the Frontier Conference Standings. The Tournament champion is the only one that gets an auto-bid to the NAIA National Tournament. Bubble teams will be cheering on Providence.
– With no GSAC Conference Tournament this season, the 2 auto-bids in the GSAC will go to the two division winners. You can check out the GSAC Standings, but looks like Vanguard is currently winning the GSAC West while #5 AZ Christian and #24 William Jessup will play two games this upcoming weekend with the winner setting up to take home the GSAC East title.
– #9 Morningside has already taken home the GPAC Regular Season Title. 2nd Place in the GPAC Standings is going to be a battle now headed into the final week of the regular season! The Tournament Champ also gets an auto-bid, but if Morningside wins, then 2nd place will get that auto-bid.
– #11 Talladega won the regular season GCAC Title. The GCAC Tournament Champion is the only one to get an auto-bid though. Bubble teams outside of Dillard and Xavier will be rooting on Dega.
– #3 William Penn has already been crowned the Heart of America Champions. Benedictine won the Heart South Regular Season Title and locked up 2nd place in the Heart of America Standings. The Heart Tournament Champion or the regular season runner up will get the other Heart auto-bid. The Heart of America also receives the Host bid to the National Tournament.
– #18 Bethel (Ks) and #22 Oklahoma Wesleyan sit tied for 1st place in the KCAC Standings. Bethel only has 1 game left while OKWU still has 3 games remaining. The Regular Season Champ and Tournament Champ get auto bids to the National Tournament.
– #6 Shawnee State has locked up the Mid-South Regular season title. With Mid-South games being cancelled instead of postponed they own a 4 game lead in the MSC Standings with a couple games to go. The Regular Season and Tournament Champions get auto-bids into the National Tournament. 2nd place in the standings gets the auto-bid if Shawnee wins both.
– Mayville State clinched the NorthStar Regular Season Title last night. The NorthStar is still a 1-bid league, so the tournament champion will get the leagues auto-bid!
– The Red River Athletic Conference is down to just 4 teams left. Three of them are ranked inside the Top 25. Only 1 will get the Auto-bid while the other two will hope for at-large spots. Right now there is a 3-way tie for 1st place between #2 LSU-Shreveport, #19 LSU-Alexandria and #21 Texas A&M Texarkana.
– The River States Conference did not have a regular season conference schedule. Instead, they will randomize seeding for the RSC Tournament and the two teams who make the championship game will get the leagues two auto-bids.
– With just 1 week of games left, #9 SAGU leads #12 USAO by 1 game in the Sooner Athletic Conference Standings. The Regular Season Champion and Tournament Champion will get auto-bids to the National Tournament.
– #7 Faulkner locked up the SSAC Regular Season title yesterday. They are still tied with #15 Stillman overall in the SSAC Standings. The regular season champ and the tournament champ will both represent the SSAC in the NAIA National Tournament.
– The Sun Conference got really interesting this week as Warner loses twice and Ave Maria gets two wins to be tied for 1st place in The Sun Conference Standings. Both teams have 2 games left this week. The Sun Regular Season Champ and Tournament Champ get auto-bids to the National Tournament.
– The WHAC Standings show 4 teams tied with just 1 loss in league play. The WHAC got a late start to their season and are now on a mad dash to the finish line. The Regular Season and Tournament Champions will get auto-bids.
Shout Outs:
– Congrats to DP Harris of St Thomas (FL) on his 350th career coaching win!
– Stephon Hall of Science & Arts (OK) scored his 1,000th career point in just his 78th career game!
– The Cornerstone Men’s AND Women’s programs both set program records for most 3’s in a game yesterday!
Shameless Plug:
– We had a great NHR – The Podcast episode released yesterday. Coach Blankenship of LSU-Shreveport is a rater for the national polls and sits on the NAIA men’s basketball national tournament selection committee. He provided some great insight into what he looks for when doing his polls and when selecting teams to make the National Tournament.
Today’s NAIA Schedule & Links To Watch:
