The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
A group of gifted unicorns
Time to respect DIII college basketball
Few things send me into a sports rant quicker than the following seven words and three Roman numerals: “Division III is just glorified high school basketball.”
You’ll see them on social media. You’ll see them on some Division I college’s fan forum. Those seven words and three Roman numerals are so stupid that I’m going to give the offenders the benefit of the doubt and say they just haven’t watched DIII games.
“Division III basketball has almost a cultfollowing,” said Wesleyan coach Joe Reilly, who scored more than 1,000 points and was a twoyear captain during a Trinity career that ended in 1991. “People start watching it and they become followers for life.
“There were some very good teams when I played, but the level of Division III has really elevated the last 1015 years. And the NESCAC is one of the premier conferences in the country.”
You needn’t look any further than Reilly’s own team for proof.
Austin Hutcherson, the 2018 NESCAC Rookie of the Year, was named to the AllConference first team in 2019 as a sophomore after leading the league in scoring at 20 points a game.
“Austin could have been our school’s alltime leading scorer and he would have been a National Player of the Year candidate,” Reilly said.
He will not be. Hutcherson has transferred to Illinois. Yes, of the Big Ten. And Hutcherson chose Illinois over scholarship offers from Notre Dame, Creighton and Marquette. National champion Virginia showed interest. He’ll sit out a year per transfer rules and have two years of eligibility.
Gary Parrish of CBSSports.com did a piece on Hutcherson a few weeks
ago and the 6foot6 guard explained his plan to spend the summer working out in New York with trainer Tim Burns and pros like Ron Baker and Noah Vonleh.
“I was going to go back to Wesleyan and I was going to kill it, and then I was going to try to make the jump (to Division I) after my junior year,” Hutcherson told Parrish. “But after working out with a bunch of guys this summer, they were like, ‘Yeah, bro. You need to go now.’ ”
Hutcherson, whose dad Eric leads the NBA human resources department, had posted YouTube clips. More video was requested from coaches. Offers, an acceptance, little known to phenomenon, it all happened within a few months.
“He kept us in the loop every step of the way,” Reilly said. “This is Austin’s journey, his dream. We believe he’s ready for that next step. We support him. We take great pride in his success and the role Wesleyan played. It is a strong indication of how good the players in our program and in the NESCAC are.
“He’s is a gifted athlete, big wingspan, high basketball IQ. We’ll have to make some adjustments without him, but we have a lot of talent and like I tell the seniors when they leave, let’s be happy it happened. Austin was a great teammate and he’s a great individual. We wish him the best.”
Duncan Robinson left Williams of the NESCAC after his freshman year for Michigan and played a key role in the Wolverines’ run to the 2018 Final Four. He played 15 games for the Miami Heat last season and scored better than 20 points in the G League. The jump from DIII to a national DI contender and a full scholarship? Sports Illustrated called Robinson a unicorn.
Then again, Miye Oni was set to go to Williams before Yale stepped in, and this spring Oni became the first Ivy League player drafted by the NBA in 25 years. Now Hutcherson.
Yes, these are the rare ones. Yet highlighting the unusual arc of their careers should not take away from the fact that DIII ball overall is much better than the ignorant ones may have thought. Honestly, it includes me. My son has played two years in DIII, and not having watched many games in the past, I admit my eyes were opened. That’s a really good thing about Jim Calhoun’s decision to coach DIII St. Joseph. It has helped catch other people’s eyes, too. You go to a St. Joe games and the stands are packed.
I watched MIT, which lost to Harvard by only 11 in November, play against my kid’s team and the ball barely hit the floor. MIT plays a beautiful game and, no, they don’t play with slide rules and pocket protectors. Bradley Jomard from France caught my eye. Didn’t know a thing about him. He was selected a fourthteam AllAmerican, one of the nation’s top 20 DIII players.
You look at the New England guys on AllAmerican list. Ty Nichols of Keene State and Springfield, Mass., was first team. Marcos Echevarria of Nichols and Lynn, Mass., was second team. Jake Ross of Springfield College and Northampton, Mass., was third team. Kena Gilmour of Hamilton, who was NESCAC player of the year, was fourth team. As talented as Hutcherson is, he didn’t make the AllAmerican list. A school like Nichols doesn’t get a ton of publicity, but Echevarria and Ledyard High’s DeAndre Bruton were one of the top 12 punches in the nation. Nichols beat Wesleyan by 19 early last season.
“They were dynamite,” Reilly said. “Nichols ended up two possessions from making the Final Four.”
Reilly, who coached 11 years in the NESCAC at Bates before returning to Connecticut, will enter his 12th year at Wesleyan. He has gotten the Cardinals into the NCAA Tournament three times in the past five years. He has taken them overseas in the offseason and to Miami during the season. He has seen players go overseas to play after graduation. He knows the landscape.
So give me a read, Joe. How many DIII kids could play DI.
“I would say the top twothree players from the schools in the top half of the NESCAC are good enough to compete in Division I, make the roster, fit in,” Reilly said.
He didn’t say they were all Duncan Robinson or going to the Big Ten. Let’s not get crazy. He also wasn’t talking about them being the last bench player on the team rated 350th in the RPI. Reilly points to a guy like guard Carlos Gonzalez from Eastern Connecticut, repeat LEC Defensive Player of the Year, and says, “he could be an elite DI defender.”
I have no doubt Jaqhawn Walter, twotime GNAC Player of the Year at Albertus Magnus who signed to play pro all in Argentina last year, had DI level talent.
“Recruiting in Division III is an inexact science,” Reilly said. “Since the players aren’t as high profile out of high school and in AAU, you really rely on your contacts, your resources, do your homework.”
While participation in other sports is down, millions of kids want to play basketball. Everyone wants to hoop. Especially among 61 guards, there is a thin line between DI bench players and top DIII players.
There are a number of reasons why a kid doesn’t get a DI scholarship. Grades, family matters, underscouted, a latebloomer. With the NESCAC, a lot of these kids have their eyes on the Ivy League. There are maybe four roster openings a year times eight schools. That’s only 32 spots, and a heck of lot more smart kids that can really ball. They look to the NESCAC. There’s academic aid. There’s financial aid.
“The NESCAC is sort of a niche league,” Reilly said. “Overall I think a big thing is players in DIII can come in play right away, so they learn to play through their mistakes. We don’t have them through the summer (like DI). The ones who really continue to improve are guys who love the game, develop some on their own, have a great work ethic. They know they’re not going to be on CBS, but their effort and competitive drive is every bit the same.”
Yes, Aaron Hutcherson was an elite young DIII talent, but consider this.
Wesleyan’s Nathan Krill played at San Francisco, a DI school in the WCC, as a graduate transfer last season.
Harry Rafferty, a 1000point scorer at Wesleyan, played some in the G League last season. And now Hutcherson. These DIII unicorns sure do get around.