Feb 29, 2016 4 min read

So what does a 22-5 record get you?

Not a spot in the NCAA Division III tournament if you are the Washington & Jefferson women’s basketball team.

The NCAA announced its field of 64 teams for the Division III women’s tournament and the Presidents were not invited.

It’s not all that surprising, considering the Presidents were unranked in the Great Lakes Region. Then again, considering three of W&J’s losses came at the hands of top-ranked and unbeaten Thomas More, perhaps the Presidents deserved a better fate.

W&J’s other two losses came against two other tournament teams, Carnegie Mellon (18-6) and La Roche (22-3). And the Presidents handed La Roche, the Allegheny Mountain Conference Champion, one of its three losses, splitting a home-and-home series.

Of course, as a conference champion, LaRoche was one of 44 teams that received an automatic berth. That left just 20 spots for at-large invitations and Carnegie Mellon received one of those at least in part because it beat visiting W&J, 95-63, in the regular season opener for both teams.

Had W&J won that game, or at least kept it closer than 30 points, it might be readying itself for the NCAA tournament later this week. Instead, they will be preparing to host Penn State Behrend at 7 p.m. Wednesday in an ECAC game.

As it is, Presidents’ head coach Jina DeRubbo will face the task of readying for life without Beka Bellhy.

Bellhy, a Fort Cherry High School graduate, averaged nearly 19 points and 8 rebounds per game this season and scored just over 1,500 points in her career.

• Waynesburg’s women’s team also accepted a bid into the ECAC tournament. The seventh-seeded Yellow Jackets (14-13) at McDaniel (21-6) Wednesday.

• Pirates’ ace Gerrit Cole went on the record over the weekend saying he was unhappy the team low-balled him in contract negotiations, giving him an increase of $7,000 on his base salary this season.

Cole, who went 19-8 with a 2.60 ERA in 2015, felt he deserved much more and was unhappy because he thought the Pirates low-balled him.

General Manager Neal Huntington said the team uses an algorithim to determine its salary figures for their players with less than three years of experience.

As it was, they gave Cole a slight raise, one Huntington said was a team record for a player in Cole’s position.

“We made a mistake in the process,” Huntington said. “We didn’t have to move (the figure). We felt they made a valid point (and) we made the adjustment.”

That being said, both sides are wrong on this one.

Cole seems to be forgetting he received a $8 million signing bonus from the Pirates in 2011 and has earned $9.5 million from the team since then. That’s hardly peanuts.

And he’ll be eligible for arbitration next season, at which he’s likely to get a major bump in salary, even if he doesn’t repeat his performance of 2015. After all, Jeff Locke was eligible for arbitration this year and got $3.025 million from the team after winning 15 games – over the past two seasons.

So Cole will get his. He just needs to be patient with the system in place.

As for the Pirates, they look bad for nickel and diming one of their best players. It wouldn’t have broken the bank to give Cole an extra $100,000.

• The NFL Scouting Combine finished up on Monday with the defensive backs going through their on-field workouts.

And it’s safe to say the Steelers’ top draft pick in April was on the field in Indianapolis.

Eli Apple, a cornerback from Ohio State, is a player many mock drafts have linked with the Steelers and he performed well, running his 40-yard dash in 4.4 seconds and looking smooth in drills at 6-1, 199 pounds.

In fact, he just might have run himself right out of the Steelers’ plans.

If that happens, keep an eye on Houston cornerback William Jackson III. Jackson had the fourth-fastest time among defensive backs at 4.37 seconds and at 6-0, 189 also has good size.

And, unlike Apple, who had one interception last season, Jackson is something of a ball hawk. He had five interceptions and led the nation with 23 pass breakups last season.

F. Dale Lolley can be reached at dlolley@observer-reporter.com.