NCAA Basketball: Current overlooked storylines in the 2018-19 season
Cal Baptist Assimilating To Division 1 Like We’ve Never Seen Before.
When teams make the transition into the Division 1 ranks, it almost always ends pretty poorly as the given program adjusts to higher expectations, busier travel, an even more hectic schedule off the floor for staff and players alike, and of course the insane spike in competition.
But don’t tell Rick Crory and the Cal Baptist Lancers this!
In their first season as a D1 program, the Lancers have turned heads in a way that many probably didn’t expect. Currently sitting three games above .500, the Western Athletic Conference residents have shown that they don’t need sympathy as the new kids on the block.
light. Related Story. D-I newcomers off to good starts in conference play
The Lancers have already hit double digits in the win column and hold an already banner win over New Mexico State. Of their seven losses, one came at the hands of the Nevada Wolf Pack and tough road outing against UMKC.
When looking at their other five losses, however, you see that maybe this team is better than their record tries to tell us. A 3 point loss to Tulsa, an 8 point 3OT loss to Arkansas Pine Bluff, 2 point loss to Howard, 3 point loss to UC-Irvine, and a 7 point loss to UT Rio Grande Valley all show that this team is scrappy.
In those five losses, the average margin of defeat is 4.6 points. For a program in their first season as a D1 program, that’s certainly not too shabby.
For comparison sake, North Alabama is also in their first year as a D1 program and sit at 5-13 with just two wins coming against fellow D1 schools (NJIT and Florida Gulf Coast.)
As a double-digit winning team, Cal Baptist is bucking the trend of a team falling flat when they transition. In the past decade, there have been some teams who have transitioned far less gracefully:
Houston Baptist, 2009: 5-29 (104-206 entering 2018-19, 1 winning season)
SIU Edwardsville, 2009: 3-12 (84-194 entering 2018-19, 0 winning seasons)
Bryant, 2009: 8-21 (96-211, 3 winning seasons)
Incarnate Word, 2014: 21-6* (75-67, 3 winning seasons)
The outlier of this group is Incarnate Word who, in 2014, played 12 non-D1 in their inaugural season, all of which were wins. Only three of Cal Baptist’s games have been non-Division 1 in comparison.
In Mid-January it’s hard to forecast where the season will take Cal Baptist, but we can all agree that as of this moment the Lancers have been quite the nice surprise this basketball season.