So, this weekend, I joined tumblr. Not sure why the bug finally bit me, but it did. Flow is a Construct is not technically affiliated with STF, but plenty of hoops folks link up there, so the worlds tend to collide.
I got an email from John McCarthy, who has a mile-long list of impressive credits in DII and NAIA basketball. He invited me to check out his blog -- Small College Basketball -- and ask him any questions I had.
I thought of one right away. This summer, we've seen a couple of high-profile DI players leave big-name programs and enroll at NAIA schools. There may be others, but C.J. Henry of Kansas (who is at Southern Nazarene now) and Taylor King of Duke-then-Villanova (Concordia) have made headlines for transferring to Non-NCAA programs. I wanted to know why a player with DI skills might choose to join the NAIA rather than move one step down the NCAA ladder to a DII school.
Here is John's thought-provoking reply:
I would say that the top level of NAIA and the top level of NCAA Div. II are quite similar. I wouldn't say that there is much of an advantage either way, as I think that it comes down to the individual situation. In each case, the student-athletes may play right away, as opposed to sitting out for a year if they transferred to another Div. I school. There are some differences in the eligibility bylaws between NCAA Div. II and the NAIA, so each circumstance may be its own.
In the two cases you mentioned, both student-athletes are transferring back close to home. C.J. is going to a program who returns their two leading scorers and several others from a team to made the NAIA National Tournament last year. They are also bringing in two additional Div. I transfers, so they should be a legitimate Top 10 team nationally, from a talent standpoint. Apparently, there were scholarships available for C.J. and the others, even fairly late in the game. Not all schools would have scholarships available well into the summer.
In Taylor's case, he is not only going home, but he is going to play for one of the finest coaches at any level of college basketball, Coach Ken Ammann. They should be #1, #2 or #3 in the pre-season polls within the NAIA. This is a very good program, better than the bottom 50-100 NCAA Div. I programs. They defeated UC-Irvine last year, and had UCLA beat until the last few seconds of the game when UCLA hit a three-pointer.
Please remember that each case is an individual case, and that there are many human elements involved.
True dat. King encountered some nebulous discipline problems at 'Nova, so his situation is different from Henry's. C.J. is a talented athlete who was drafted by the Yankees in '05, but never panned out in baseball. Since returning to college hoops, he's pretty much been a walk-on (the Yanks are paying for his college) anywhere his blue-chip brother Xavier considered going, including Memphis and KU.
In both cases, this might be what makes these guys happy. When the pro dream begins to die, perhaps it makes more sense to find a less public venue near home where hoops is just a relatively minor part of the life equation.