If you've been reading the local papers, you might have seen Wabash earned their first NCAA tournament berth since 1998. They won their first NCAC regular season and tournament titles this year. I've been watching Wabash basketball since 2002, which means I have seen two of their previous three NCAC tournament championship trips, where they all came up short. This year was different. They played Wooster, a perennial NCAC power. After leading for most of the game, things got tight fast towards the end of the half and ended up going to overtime. While Wabash never really got a big lead, they more or less took care of business in the extra period, with a lot of credit going to clutch free throw shooting by Ahmoni Jones. It was a great game, and if you have some time, I highly recommend going back to watch it. So now that one big monkey is off the program's back, now it's time to see if we can have a repeat of 1982. Jack Davidson is a much different player than Pete Metzelaars, but basketball is also a much different game than it was forty years ago. In 1982, the championship game was held at Calvin College in Grand Rapids. If this year's team were to make the finals, they would play in the Allen Co. War Memorial Coliseum in Fort Wayne. Those are both pretty short trips from Crawfordsville, but if they're going to make it that far, they've got at least one pretty good road trip to go. For the opening two rounds, Wabash has drawn into a group hosted by Emory College in Atlanta. Wabash vs. Emory seems to be a likely second round matchup, and they actually played each other early in the year, Wabash winning 98-90. That game was at a neutral site in Marietta (OH), though. Wabash plays Berry College tomorrow at 4:40, and it will be streamed. I really wanted to make the trip, but just couldn't swing it on that short of notice. In any case, I thought it might be worth taking a look at the teams in Wabash's pod. One important note. I wanted to include how many total bids each school has, but I couldn't find a good source with complete brackets for every D3 tournament, just championship game appearances. If somebody at the NCAA could break into their archives and make that information available somewhere, I would be pretty grateful. Averett University CougarsLocation: Danville, VA Arena: E. Stuart James Grant Center Capacity: 2500 Built: 1998 USA South Titles: 5 (1990, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2022) National Titles: 0 21-22 Record: 17-11 Berry College VikingsLocation: Mount Berry, GA Arena: Cage Center Capacity: 1900 Built: 2007 Southern Athletic Association Titles: 3 (2018, 2021, 2022) National Titles: 0 21-22 Record: 23-2 Emory College EaglesLocation: Atlanta, GA Arena: Woodruff Center Capacity: 2000 Built: 1983 University Athletic Association Titles: 8 (1989, 1990, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2019, 2020, 2022) National Titles: 0 21-22 Record: 19-5 Wabash College Little GiantsLocation: Crawfordsville, IN Arena: Chadwick Court Capacity: 1800 Built: 1917 North Coast Athletic Conference Titles: 1 (2022) National Titles: 1 (1982) 21-22 Record: 24-3 Comments are closed.
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