GLVC … Best In the Land?

(St. Louis, MO) – Is the Great Lakes Valley Conference the best Division 2 basketball league in the nation? Many in the Midwest believe it is so. GLVC teams have won two of the last three national championships and have sent three different teams to the championship game in the past four years.

Heading into this week’s action there are five teams ranked in the NABC Top 25 with three of them in the top ten!  Reigning national champion Drury is ranked third BEHIND number two Bellarmine and in front of eighth ranked Southern Indiana, number 17, Lewis and 19^th ranked Indianapolis.

How good is the GLVC? Missouri S&T is winless in league play but is the second best scoring team in the country! Three other league members are in the top 20 in that department. Defending East Division champion UW-Parkside was picked FIFTH in the East and they have the best young talent in the league and probably the conference’s best big man in Ziggy Riauka.

Four GLVC teams rank in the top 20 in both assist to turnover ratio and rebounding margin, with the league member Southern Indiana leading the nation in that category!

Prior to the season bennettrankbasketball.com ranked the GLVC as the sixth best league in Division 2.

The problem with comparing leagues is that they rarely play one another. In an era of saving money these D2 schools don’t usually travel very far. Most leagues are regional in nature and the other top conferences are in Florida (Sunshine State), Texas (Lone Star) on the West Coast (Great Northwest), East Coast  (Northeast-10) and in the South (Peach Belt Athletic). Only the Mid-American Intercollegiate Athletics Association, the 11^th best league according to Bennett is regionally close enough to play and the GLVC and MIAA seem resistant to play too often.

So we are left to the play offs and three of the last four years a GLVC team has been playing for the title winning a pair of them. Like they say on the play ground… “SCOREBOARD”

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