For the fifth week in a row, Wheeling Jesuit men’s basketball team rose up the National Association of Basketball Coaches/Division II rankings. The Cardinals moved to No. 2 in this week’s poll and tied their program’s best national ranking in program history.
WJU increased its NABC national ranking two spot from No. 4 to No. 2. The Cardinals (22-1), the lone one-loss Division II team, received four first-place votes and 388 points. WJU ranks second to only the new No. 1 and previous No. 3 Western Oregon (20-2), which garnered 11 of the 15 first-places votes and 394 points.
The No. 2 WJU ranking ties its highest program ranking from when current head coach Danny Sancomb led the Cardinals during the 1996-97 season.
The West Liberty University men’s basketball team continued its climb back up the Top 25 ladder on Tuesday when the Black and Gold checked in at No. 3 in this week’s NCAA Division II national coaches’ poll, compiled by the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC).
Coach Jim Crutchfield’s Hilltoppers (20-2) rode a pair of big wins – including an 85-77 road victory before an overflow crowd at then-No. 2 Fairmont State on Thursday – to make the jump from No. 6 in last week’s Top 25.
This is the 71st consecutive Top 10 ranking for Crutchfield’s Hilltopper powerhouse. That’s the second-longest run of Top 10 appearances since the first NCAA Division II poll was conducted during the 1960-61 season. The record for consecutive Top 10 rankings belongs to Grambling, which was ranked in 77 straight Top 10s from 1961-67.
This also marks West Liberty’s 92nd consecutive appearance in the Top 25 poll. That run, which began during the 2009-10 season, is by far the longest in NCAA Division II history.
