Scots Hosting NCAA First and Second Round Games This Weekend

James Cooper

The College of Wooster, which won both the North Coast Athletic Conference regular season and tournament championships, will now serve as a first- and second-round host site for the 59-team NCAA Div. III Tournament, which begins play this week. It will mark the fourth time in five years Wooster’s 3,400-seat Timken Gymnasium has been home to NCAA tourney games.

On Friday, March 2, Capital University (19-8) and Centre College (23-4) will kick off the action at Timken Gymnasium, with their first-round tilt scheduled for a 6 p.m. tip-off. Capital was the regular season co-champion of the Ohio Athletic Conference and then won the OAC Tournament, in which it was the host and No. 1 seed, while Centre was also the co-champ of its league, the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference, and won the SCAC Tournament as the No. 2 seed.

Thirty minutes following the conclusion of that game, or at 8 p.m., the host Fighting Scots (25-3), ranked No. 4 in the latest NCAA Div. III poll (D3hoops.com), will take on Transylvania University (19-8), the same team that knocked them out of last season’s NCAA tourney in the second round. Transylvania won the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference Tournament for the second consecutive year, this season as the No. 3 seed, as all four teams that will be at Wooster got into the national field via automatic bids from their respective conferences.

Friday’s winners will meet in the second round on Saturday, March 3, at 7 p.m., for the right to advance to next weekend’s sectional semifinals, otherwise known as the “Sweet 16.”

NCAA Tourney Notes: The Scots are making their 16th appearance in the NCAA Div. III tourney. Only eight others have been in as many – Calvin College (17), Christopher Newport University (16), Franklin & Marshall College (19), Hope College (18), Illinois Wesleyan University (18), Salem State College (20), the University of Scranton (20), and Wittenberg University (24).

Wooster, which also played in two other NCAA Tournaments prior to Div. III (1971, 1973), has been in the national field 12 of the last 13 seasons and 15 times since 1990. The  Scots’ all-time record in the Div. III tourney is 13-15 – 9-5 in games played at Timken Gymnasium, 3-2 in neutral-site games, and 1-8 in true road games. Prior to second-round exits the last two seasons, Wooster reached the “Sweet 16” four times during a six-year stretch (1999, 2000, 2003, 2004), highlighted by its first-ever run to the “Final Four” in 2003 where they finished third.

Capital is making its first appearance in the NCAA’s since 1996 and sixth overall (1982, 1983, 1984, 1989, 1996). The Crusaders are 5-5 in such games, advancing as far as the quarterfinals in 1982. In its most recent appearance, Capital defeated Ohio Northern University 68-57 during the first round and then lost to Wittenberg 65-60 in the second.

Centre is a member of the NCAA field for the first time in several seasons, as the Colonels were last in it in 1992. This will be Centre’s 10th overall appearance (1979, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1992), highlighted by fouth-place finishes in 1979 and 1989. In 1992, the Colonels dropped a double-overtime affair to Hampden-Sydney College (88-83) in the second round.

Transylvania is in its second-straight Div. III tourney since going to four in a row from 1975-78. The Pioneers, who later joined the NAIA but are now back with the NCAA, own a 7-5 record in tournament play, advancing as far as the quarterfinals just last year when they knocked off Bethany (W. Va.) College 75-56, Wooster 91-88, and Mississippi College 76-64 before losing to Wittenberg 74-61.

*More information to follow later in the week.*