The first weekend of the 2025 NCAA Division III men’s basketball tournament is in the books and what a weekend it was! The first and second rounds saw a little bit of everything - favorites cruising, upsets, overtime, great plays and great games. We can expect more of that in the tournament’s second weekend and we’re back to break it all down. As we did going into the first round, we have another in-depth look at the matchups we will see in Friday’s matchups in the sectionals. Join us as we dive...
Mar 10, 2025•1 hr 7 min
Our last show took a look at the first round favorites in the 2025 Division III men’s basketball tournament but what about beyond the first round? We’re back with another tournament preview show zooming out to look at the odds for each team to advance through the bracket. Who are the favorites to move on to the tournament’s second weekend? Who are the favorites to make a run to the Final Four and which teams have the best odds to win it all? We fire up the computer powered by the D3 Datacast tea...
Mar 05, 2025•33 min
The 2025 Division III men’s basketball tournament bracket has been released so it’s time to break it down like only the D3 Datacast can! As we’ve done in past years we go game-by-game taking a look at how the D3 Datacast computer sees each game, talk about how the teams match up and use the computer ratings to compute win probabilities and computer lines for each matchup. Upsets are what make tournament basketball so much fun but that can only happen with some understanding or context of which g...
Mar 04, 2025•1 hr 25 min
We had a blast tracking the 2025 NCAA Division III basketball tournament picture as the final games of the regular season played out on Sunday afternoon. All the games are now in the books so we take one more look at the final NPI rankings and talk about who is in, who is out and where everyone might be headed with a mock bracket. The official bracket will be released on Monday, March 3 at noon. Stay tuned for our reactions to the official bracket and more content coming your way as we break dow...
Mar 03, 2025•37 min
Conference tournament week is here for the 2024-2025 Division III basketball season and what happens this week will shape the landscape heading into the 2025 NCAA Tournament. Join us this week as we talk through all the conference tournament outlooks that have implications for the tournament bubble. Who is in good shape should they fail to win their conference tournament and who has at-large chances hanging on by a thread? There is also still a lot to play out for the race for the top eight prot...
Feb 24, 2025•1 hr 12 min
The stretch run of this Division III basketball season is playing out a little differently with the change from the old regional ranking system to the new NPI. As this would have been the week we got the first set of fully ranked regional rankings, we take a look at how those regional rankings might have looked this week under the old criteria. How would those regional rankings have slotted teams into the national picture? How do they compare to the rankings we’re getting with NPI? Has the move ...
Feb 17, 2025•2 hr 39 min
After another terrific week of the 2024-2025 Division III men’s basketball season it’s time to check in on the developing picture as the NCAA Tournament draws nearer. It’s hard to believe just three weeks remain until the national tournament and there is a lot of important jockeying for position yet to play out. With the help of the D3 Datacast computer running simulations to play out the final weeks 1,000 times, we take a look at the race for the top eight protected seeds, the top 16 seed that ...
Feb 10, 2025•1 hr 3 min
The calendar turning to February marks the start of the Division III basketball season stretch run. Teams are locked in to the conference races and doing all they can to secure an automatic qualifying bid to the 2025 NCAA Division III men’s basketball tournament but all but one team per conference will fall short of that goal. That leaves just 21 at-large bids up for grabs. Which teams are real contenders to receive an at-large bid should they need it and which are going at risk of seeing their ...
Feb 03, 2025•59 min
We are deep into the Division III men’s basketball season but if you think that means we’re gaining any clarity into the Top 25 picture, think again! This week we go deep into Matt’s Top 25 ballot then go a step further by taking a look at his next 25. Which teams are just off the ballot and do these next 25 teams have anything in common? We break it down and talk through it all. Top 25 consideration may be nice but it’s really position within the NPI rankings that teams are fighting over. We fo...
Jan 27, 2025•1 hr 15 min
There is a lot of basketball to be played between now and when at-large selections to the 2025 NCAA Division III men’s basketball tournament are made but we can still get a picture of where those bids are likely to come from. With the help of the D3 Datacast computer we simulated the rest of the season 1,000 times and applied NPI to the results. That produced results ranging from a group of conferences that had at least one team receive a Pool C (at-large) bid in all 1,000 simulations to some th...
Jan 20, 2025•1 hr 5 min
The Division III basketball landscape has changed in terms of how teams are selected and seeded for the national tournament. The regional ranking system is a thing of the past, replaced by a single national ranking system called the NCAA Power Index, or NPI. The old system, for better and worse, was familiar so moving to a new system can lead to questions and confusion. That’s where we can help. We’ve been deep into NPI going back to an offseason episode giving an initial explanation but we’re b...
Jan 13, 2025•1 hr 9 min
The start of January marks the traditional start to conference play so we fire up the D3 Datacast computer to run 1,000 season simulations to see which conferences are shaping up to have the tightest races. Some conferences have already started conference play, giving some teams conference wins in the bank. How remaining games yet to be played end up turning projected odds into hard wins and losses will determine which of the branching paths through our 1,000 simulations becomes reality. It is f...
Jan 06, 2025•1 hr 8 min
The break in the Division III basketball schedule has given us the opportunity to pause and reflect on what we’ve seen so far and how it may have differed from our expectations heading into the season. With a fresh set of eyes we take a look back at some things we thought in the preseason that haven’t, at least not yet, turned out the way we thought they would. Yes, we were wrong about some things and we’re ready to admit it and talk about them! We also look back at how we did against our week e...
Dec 30, 2024•1 hr 5 min
Now that most teams have played at least eight games the D3 Datacast computer is relying solely on in-season results for calculating efficiency ratings. That makes this week the perfect time to check in to see how the computer views the developing national picture - both in terms of teams that stand out as the Top 20 overall but also dive in a little deeper to see which teams are performing as the top ten offenses and defenses. There are a lot of ways to get it done so it’s more about how well y...
Dec 23, 2024•54 min
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 as a Pool C pick earns three points while any team that we selected that ends up a Pool A team will...
Dec 16, 2024•35 min
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) have yet to be named on a single voter ballot in either the preseason Top 25 poll or either of the two...
Dec 09, 2024•1 hr 9 min
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 least 50% of current season results feeding into their computer rating rather than relying on any h...
Dec 02, 2024•1 hr 12 min
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 high-level teams will have a definite impact on the first in-season D3hoops.com Top 25 poll expected ...
Nov 25, 2024•55 min
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 put together a mock bracket to give his updated outlook on the Top 25 picture. We also look back at...
Nov 18, 2024•54 min
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 new five-game slate for week two picks, then wrap up with a look at some ranked teams who have import...
Nov 11, 2024•49 min
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 in a slightly different format. Rather than trying to predict an upset we will take a weekly look at ...
Nov 04, 2024•1 hr 8 min
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 top 50 games in November. We exclude any conference games and don’t project any games that may take pl...
Oct 28, 2024•1 hr 6 min
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 we may not be equipped to break down the teams on the field we are equipped to break down the teams i...
Oct 24, 2024•26 min
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 rules: each participant makes a pick to win the regular season conference champion as we snake throug...
Oct 21, 2024•32 min
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 turn our eyes forward looking ahead to the new season and the new landscape that comes with the change ...
Oct 14, 2024•42 min
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 question, each taking a different approach to trying to make a full national tournament with ev...
Oct 07, 2024•48 min
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 weight of the preseason projection on a team’s rating by 1/8th so that by the time a team has playe...
Oct 04, 2024•41 min
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 Programs Ever: Ranking the top teams of all time [CBS Sports]: https://www.cbssports.com/college-ba...
Sep 03, 2024•37 min
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 replication of RPI. Join us in this episode as we go through all the important questions with NPI: wh...
Jul 31, 2024•2 hr 38 min
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 expansion into a pro combine as well as the team's performance in TBT. After a disappointing sh...
Jul 15, 2024•52 min
