- Good Morning NAIA Hoops Nation!! We will be spending a lot of time this weekend working on our updated conference tournament seeding, and our Top 25 rankings! This is a time of year for both joy, and heartbreak, as we see the thrill of victory, and the sadness of careers coming to an end. We will have a post on this later, but a quick thank you to all of the Seniors across the NAIA basketball world, for choosing to play NAIA!
- Moving on to our circled games from last night. One of the more meaningful games last night saw #19 Central Baptist go on the road to defeat Freed-Hardeman. This was a battle over 1st place in the America Midwest Conference, and the win puts CBC up 1 game now with 5 games left to go in the regular season. Darius Williams led the way for the Mustangs with 16 points. The AMC is still really clustered as the top 5 teams in the league are all separated by just 2 games!
- #1 Georgetown had a great bounce back win, as they hit the road and defeated #13 Cumberlands 71-60. The win puts the defending national champs in a dominant position in the Mid-South standings, as they swept Cumberlands on the season, so their 1.5 game lead, is actually more like a 2.5 game lead. The rest of the Mid-South keeps beating on one another, so Cumberlands still holds a commanding lead for the 2 seed!
- #2 Mid-America Christian continues to impress as they pulled out an 80-79 thrilling win AT #15 SAGU! MACU sits at 24-1 on the year and remains 1 game up on #9 John Brown in the Sooner Athletic Conference. The Sooner Athletic Conference is one of the best in the country this season, and they have several teams who can make deep runs in Kansas City!
- Our last featured NAIA DI game from last night was a FUN one, as #5 Lewis-Clark State defeated #11 Providence 96-87. Some big time performances all around, but the shooting of Josiah Westbrook proved to be enough to overcome another great Zaccheus Darko-Kelly outing of 36 points, 5 rebounds, and 5 assists. Lewis-Clark St. now holds a 3 game lead over 2nd place Carroll College, and a 4 game lead over Providence.
- In our first DII game last night we featured a game in the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference that was important for both teams as there is a log jam in the KCAC standings! Southwestern (KS) helped themselves a bit with the 95-87 win over Kansas Wesleyan. The win puts them in a 3-way tie for 3rd place right now. The loss moves Kansas Wesleyan into a tie with Bethel (KS) for the 6th seed. With most teams having just 3 regular season games left, there is still a lot of sorting out to do in the KCAC!
- The Sun Conference doesn’t always get a lot of love across the country, but last nights game between #21 Southeastern (FL) and #6 Keiser was as good as it gets! Southeastern came up with the big 69-68 road win to move into 1st place in The Sun Conference. Riley Minx came up with a big 28 point showing to help lead the Fire to the victory! 1st year Fire head coach Kevin Lubbers has his Fire Squad in a great position to win a regular season Sun championship with just two games left!
- Congrats to Montana Tech’s Taylor England on joining the 1K Scoring Club last week!
- Also congrats to Thomas Bullock on reaching the 1K club! Not bad for a BMX racer!!
- Dordt Junio Marcus Winterfield also joined the 1K Club!
- Antelope Valley captured the CalPac Regular Season Championship last night! I know we have them in the Top 10 of our rankings, but this team is a little under the radar in the NAIA Polls!
