D3 Datacast

The D3 Datacast Pool C Fantasy Draft returns for the new season! As we have done during previous seasons, we have some fun making way too early predictions on which teams will secure at-large bids to the NCAA Division III men’s basketball tournament. Our contest is set up in a draft format where we alternate picks. At the end of the season each team on our list that does indeed make the tournament...

A total of 79 different teams have received at least one vote through the three D3Hoops.com Top 25 polls that have been released this season. Does that mean all the good teams are accounted for and already on the radar of voters? Not according to the D3 Datacast computer efficiency ratings! According to the D3 Datacast computer, ten of its top 50 teams (as rated by games played through 12/8/24) ha...

Now that we are a few weeks into the 2024-2024 Division III basketball season it’s fair to start setting aside preseason expectations as teams show us who they truly are for this season. With each game played the D3 Datacast computer ratings rely less and less on the preseason ratings and more and more on this season’s results. Most teams have played enough games that the weighting has moved to at...

The 2024 Great Lakes Invitational is in the books and it once again gave us two great days of action. After seeing all eight games in person, we asked a panel of Division III basketball media to vote in a poll to determine our power rankings based on what we saw from Calvin, Emory, Hope, John Carroll, Johns Hopkins, Marietta, Saint John’s, UW-La Crosse this weekend. These games involving so many h...

The first full week of the 2024-2025 Division III men’s basketball season is in the books and in a lot of ways the preseason Top 25 picture has been completely blown up. As we did in last week’s show, we take a look at some of the big results involving Top 25 teams and other games that caught our eye this past week. We are still a week away from the first in-season D3hoops.com Top 25 poll but Matt...

The 2024-2025 Division III men’s basketball season got off to a fast start over the weekend and it is already having an impact on the Top 25 picture. Join us this week as we react to the biggest wins, surprising losses and best games and how that makes us think about the national rankings moving forward. We also look back at how we did against our week one picks slate and make our decisions on a n...

The first week of the 2024-2025 Division III basketball season is finally here! We dive right back into the comfort of our familiar weekly show. Back again this season are discussions about Matt’s Top 25 ballot and the Top 25 poll as a whole, a main show topic, a five game slate we pick against the efficiency ratings computer line and our weekly mailbag. We are also bringing back upset watch but i...

The Division III men’s basketball season gets off to a hot start when play begins on November 8. It seems more and more teams are out in search of high-level non-conference competition and we get great games as a result! As has been our tradition since the creation of The D3 Datacast, we prepare for the turn of the calendar from October to November by taking a look at what we consider to be the to...

It’s the time of the year when more and more focus shifts onto the national picture as Division III football fans try to make sense of the developing playoff picture. In the past that meant trying to filter through weekly regional rankings but that system is gone, replaced by the NCAA Power Index, also known as NPI. We have been digging into the details of NPI going back to last summer and while w...

The weeks leading into a new Division III basketball season is the perfect time for previews and predictions and we’re putting those two things together in our second-annual conference champion draft contest! Friends of the program Karl Barkley (D3Direct), Bob Quillman (Q-cast) and Ryan Whitnable (Great Lakes Invitational) are back to take part once again. The cast remains the same and so do the r...

We typically leave the coach interviews to other great Division III basketball content creators but we can’t resist the chance to get in a pre-season conversation with Calvin men’s basketball coach Bill Sall. Coming off a solid season that saw an Elite 8 finish for the Knights, we take a quick look back to hear from Bill on what the tournament run meant to him and his team. It was then time to tur...

What started as a simple tweet grew into a full episode of The D3 Datacast! D3Hoops.com columnist Ryan Scott once wondered about a fairly simple question: what if every team made the Division III men’s basketball tournament? That question struck a chord with Matt and it’s one that has been rattling around in the back of his mind ever since. In this week’s show we take an honest effort at answering...

The D3 Datacast is back in season mode with weekly episodes starting with this show taking a look at preseason efficiency ratings for the 2024-2025 Division III men’s basketball season. These ratings are not meant to be predictive for how the season will (or even might) turn out, but give The D3 Datacast computer a starting point to smooth out early-season results. Each game played will reduce the...

NCAA Division III celebrated its 50th Anniversary last season. Which men’s basketball programs have proven to be the very best over the course of that half century? Taking inspiration from a November 2020 CBS Sports article that ranked the top all-time men’s basketball programs in Division I, we applied their methodology to the Division III landscape. Related Links: The Greatest College Basketball...

NCAA Division III is in the process of rolling out the NCAA Power Index (NPI), a new ranking system that will be used to select and seed teams for the national tournament in all team sports. The process to adopt and implement NPI has often been met with confusion and frustration but we can help. We've followed the process every step of the way and Matt has been able to produce his own unofficial r...

We Are D3 has grown from just a participant in The Basketball Tournament (TBT) to a brand arching over much more of Division III basketball. We Are D3 held their first pro combine this spring to help former Division III basketball players reach their goal of playing professionally. In this episode of the D3 Datacast we talk with Mike Rejniak, head coach and general manager of We Are D3 about their...

Coverage and exposure of NCAA Division III is at an all-time high thanks to people like Karl Barkley. He has created a wide-range of resources and content around Division III athletics such that there is something for everyone no matter how they might intersect the D3 world. D3Direct provides an invaluable resource for prospective student-athletes through things like camp lists, recruiting advice...

After a great 2024 Division III basketball season we have a good idea how the teams stack up against each other, but what about conference to conference? With the help of conference efficiency ratings, the massey ratings, NCAA Tournament results and some good old fashioned internet “yeah but I think” we put each conference into tiers then rank the top ten based on the 2023-2024 season. Where does...

We were pleased to be joined by Ben Kaplan to talk about his new book Pipeline to the Pros, How D3, Small-College Nobodies Rose to Rule the NBA. As a former Division III guy himself, Ben is well-positioned to write on this topic. We heard from him on his background and how that may have laid the foundation for this project, the early days of how this project got started and ultimately completed, t...

Final Four weekend never disappoints and Fort Wayne was once again a tremendous host. We got great games in a great atmosphere with the National Champion Trine Thunder coming out of the weekend with the greatest performances. Join us as we recap the weekend and give some final thoughts on what was a tremendous season of Division III basketball. This week’s show wraps up with a look back at our Fin...

All eyes turn to Fort Wayne, Indiana as the 2024 Division III men’s basketball season is down to its Final Four. Join us as we go through what remains of the bracket to talk about what we saw during the second weekend of tournament play and highlight some of the great games and great performances. Then it’s time to turn our attention to the final three games to be played - two semifinals and a Nat...

We had upsets and blowouts and everything in between as the 64-team field for the 2024 NCAA Division III Men’s Basketball Tournament has been whittled to the Sweet 16. Join us as we go through the whole brackets to talk about what we saw during the first and second rounds and highlight some of the great games and great performances. Then it’s time to turn our attention to the second weekend of the...

Our last show was all about digging deep into the first round matchups we will see when the 2024 NCAA Division III Men’s Basketball Tournament begins on Friday. Now it’s time to zoom out and take a look at the bracket as a whole. How does the D3 Datacast computer see the tournament playing out? Who are the favorites to advance to the second weekend, to the Final Four and to win it all? There is a...

The bids have been awarded and the bracket has been set. It’s time for the 2024 NCAA Division III Men’s Basketball Tournament! To get ready for first round play beginning on Friday we walk through each game using the D3 Datacast efficiency ratings to see how the teams stack up in every first round game and assign win probabilities and point spreads. Find out who the computer ratings see as the fav...

The NCAA Tournament selection show aired on Monday afternoon and we all got a chance to see who made the tournament and where they were headed. Matt and Zac give their initial impressions and reactions to the bracket, the seedings, and selections in an early-week bonus episode! Related Links: NCAA Regional Ranking Data: https://d3datacast.com/regional-ranking-data/ Efficiency Ratings: https://d3da...