Brian Out Loud

But back to the column.

The University of Findlay won the NCAA Division II national championship in 2009, finishing 36-0. They went wire-to-wire as the nation’s No. 1 team. They won the title in overtime. A 3-pointer at the buzzer by Tyler Evans put the exclamation point on the season of a lifetime.

Last week marked the 10th anniversary of that amazing season.

It also marked the latest attempt to steal the Oilers’ throne as the last unbeaten champ in men’s hoops.

Northwest Missouri went into the D-II tournament unbeaten. And yet, no one was talking about it.

If Findlay and Northwest Missouri were D-I schools, everyone would be talking about it. We’d be talking about the possibility of a team duplicating what Indiana did in 1976 when it went undefeated.

The story would be the lead on ESPN, on Fox Sports, on TNT. On every sports platform imaginable.

But because it’s D-II, because it’s a level of college hoops that doesn’t get the exposure it deserves, no one talked about it until the day of the national championship game on CBS.

And that’s unfortunate.

If going undefeated was easy, it would be accomplished more often. If winning a national title was easy, more teams would have them.

It shouldn’t matter if it’s done at the D-1, D-II or D-III level.

D-II and D-III athletes don’t work any less hard than their D-1 counterparts. It doesn’t mean their efforts are less worthwhile and it doesn’t mean their accomplishments are any less impressive.

It drives me nuts when people disregard the lower levels of NCAA athletics because it doesn’t carry the same status as D-I.

But make no mistake about it. D-II and D-III athletes put a lot of work into perfecting their craft while juggling rigorous class schedules as well, much the same way the athletes at the D-I level do.

When Findlay made its run to a championship, the entire season was a grind. The Oilers played every team on their schedule twice, all while playing with the pressure of being the No. 1 team in the country.

The tournament run was brutal and would have tested even the best D-I teams.

Three of the six games Findlay played in the NCAA tournament went to OT. A fourth could have very easily gone that route, instead decided by one possession. Keep in mind that one of those OT games was in the Elite Eight against second-ranked and unbeaten Long Island-Post.

The championship game was against an unranked Cal Poly team that probably should have been ranked and would go on to win the title in 2010. The Oilers were without the nation’s best player in the final minutes of that game, and yet, they found a way to win and finish the season without a loss.

If Findlay had been a D-I team, the world would have been talking about it and recalling memories of that season 10 years later.

As it is, only those who witnessed it talked about it and still recall the memories today.

The reality is more people should be talking about it because D-I isn’t the only level that matters.