Kyle Kellams: It's Wednesday. Let's welcome in Becca Martin-Brown for our latest The Other Way segment. Becca, welcome back.
Becca Martin-Brown: Hey, Kyle. Finally, I have found a way to work basketball into this segment,
Kellams: And I don't have a problem with this at all.
Martin-Brown: I got a chance to interview a gentleman named Will Prewitt, who is the commissioner of the Great American Conference.
Kellams: With teams in Oklahoma and Arkansas. They have their conference championship games coming up this weekend in Fort Smith. I'm so excited about this.
Becca Martin-Brown: Let's go get him.
Kellams: Will Prewitt, you're with us?
Will Prewitt: I am.
Martin-Brown: Fantastic. Will, I was delighted to meet you and delighted to talk basketball with you. Tell our listeners about the Great American Conference schools — it involves Division II basketball.
Prewitt: We're an NCAA Division II athletic conference. I'm sure your listeners are very familiar with a lot of our institutions. We have perfect symmetry — six universities in Arkansas, six universities in Oklahoma. Arkansas Tech, Henderson State, Southern Arkansas and Arkansas-Monticello, as well as our private institutions, Harding and Ouachita Baptist. And in Oklahoma, if you're geographically dyslexic, we're a horrible conference to deal with, because we have Southeastern, Southwestern, East Central, Southern Nazarene, Oklahoma Baptist and Northwestern Oklahoma. We're all Division II members. Our conference is 15 or so years old, so we're a baby compared to the SEC or Sun Belt or Big Ten. NCAA Division II is the intermediate level of NCAA sports. Division I, which people are most familiar with — schools like the University of Arkansas or Arkansas State — operate primarily on full scholarships for student-athletes. Division III is a non-scholarship level. We're in between. Most of our students are on a partial scholarship model, and that really fits what we want to do as a division.
We think the games are — everyone's out to win, it's important for our universities, but there's a balance. We have small to intermediate to medium-sized universities, so we try to be cost-effective in how schools manage their programs. We also try to balance that we want student-athletes to do things in their campus experience beyond what they do on the court or the field. We think all of these things give us a family-friendly product. We would love for people to come out to Fort Smith for our tournament this week. It's really high-level basketball. You're going to see lots of student-athletes from the footprint of our conference — Arkansas kids, Oklahoma kids, some outlying Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Missouri kids. It's really fun basketball.
Martin-Brown: The tournament winners go on to the NCAA Division II basketball tournament — March Madness.
Prewitt: March Madness extends beyond what you see on CBS and TNT. Division II has a 64-team national tournament, almost exactly like our counterparts in Division I. The Great American Conference tournament tips off Thursday in Fort Smith. We have eight men's teams, eight women's teams. Just like the SEC tournament or the Sun Belt tournament or whatever Division I tournament you think of, it's the same type of situation. Some of our favorites — Oklahoma Baptist men, Harding women — they've been in the top 10 or 15 teams nationally for most of the season.
They know they're going to be in the NCAA tournament, so they're playing for NCAA tournament seeding position. We have a number of teams on the NCAA bubble — they need to have a really good week to get selected for an at-large position in the NCAA regionals next week. And we've got those teams that maybe haven't had the season they wanted. But the great thing about March is there's always hope for an underdog. They've qualified for the conference tournament, and now they've got the chance to win three games this week and play their way into the NCAA tournament.
Kellams: I love that this tournament is for both men and women in Fort Smith. One of the things you obviously want to do as a conference when you have a conference championship is get it as centrally located as possible. When you look at the map of the conference members, it seems like maybe Monticello and Alva, Oklahoma — Northwestern Oklahoma — are kind of equal distance as the farthest away. Fort Smith just seems to make sense.
Prewitt: It really is an ideal location. I went to one of these websites where you're able to plot the central location of a number of different geographic points. The exact center of the Great American Conference is about a mile and a half west of downtown Fort Smith. I'm not sure we can find a good venue to play our basketball tournament in a cornfield somewhere over towards Roland. So we're playing in Fort Smith, and they've been a great host. We're in our second year in Fort Smith. The community made a great investment with matching arenas at the two high schools, and they wanted to showcase those venues for as many events as possible. We played at Southside High School last year and Northside High School this year. Fort Smith is a great place to come spend a weekend — plenty of hotels, lots of good restaurants, and you've got things like the Marshals Museum. It's within four and a half hours of all of our member institutions. So it's a great spot for us.
Kellams: We've got basketball championships coming up this weekend. Folks in Bentonville should pay attention to early May, because you've got women's tennis and softball on back-to-back weekends there, don't you?
Prewitt: We do. Bentonville, since day one of the conference, has been fantastic. It's such an incredible student-athlete experience because there's so much to do in Northwest Arkansas. They've been a great host for those events, and particularly the softball community, because it's so vibrant — high school softball, travel softball, all of those things. We would love to have those folks come out, because the softball is really good. We have two teams nationally ranked in the top 15. Most of these student-athletes have Division I skills — they may be just an inch or two too short or a step slow — but these are incredibly skilled players. The transfer portal has given us the opportunity to really prove that. You see large numbers of Division II athletes who finish their career as a grad transfer or transfer at some point in their career to the Division I level and have a lot of success. It really validates that belief, even though sometimes it's hard to see those folks leave your institutions.
Martin-Brown: If people want to come see this great basketball this weekend, the tournament starts Thursday, March 5 and runs through Sunday, March 8. Correct?
Prewitt: That is correct. It's greatamericanconference.com — we have tournament central, links to buy tickets. I think it's a great family value: $12 for every session gets you two games. Children under 5 are free. We're going to have halftime entertainment, giveaways and contests. Lots of fun if you're looking for something really family-friendly to come out to. And come out, watch some basketball — because the forecast looks really terrible to be outside all week.
Martin-Brown: Best of luck with this second year in Fort Smith. Let's stay in touch as other championships for the GAC come up.
Prewitt: I really appreciate the time today.
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