Meet the Newest Division I Member: Mercyhurst
Mercyhurst University announced that they would be transitioning to Division I and join the NEC this summer. Lets introduce their program!
This week, Mercyhurst University announced that they would be transitioning to Division I and joining the Northeast Conference starting in the 2024 season. Personally, I love it when new schools move to Division I. It’s usually a smaller school, someone who is going to come up and join the beauty that is college basketball. Unfortunately, they will have four years until they can compete in the NCAA Tournament, but it still makes great stories. Look at Le Moyne this year. They defied the odds and entered the NEC tournament as a 4 seed in their first season in Division I. These are the stories that make it so fun to follow these new smaller schools. Without further ado, lets introduce you to Mercyhurst.
Mercyhurst is a small school in Erie, Pennsylvania with roughly 2,700 students as of this academic year. This is a private Catholic university, thus the smaller size in student body. Despite it’s smaller size, they actually developed some smaller satellite campuses, bringing their total student body across the board to a little over 4,000.
The university’s athletic programs were primarily a member of the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference which includes a couple of other schools you might recognize like Indiana University of Pennsylvania and Shepherd University. In recent years, Mercyhurst has dominated in Men’s basketball, going to the NCAA Division II Tournament every year between 2019-2023. In 2019, the Lakers made the Elite 8 in Evansville, Indiana. This season, they had a slightly down year going 15-16 overall and 11-11 in conference, snapping their tournament appearance streak.
The NEC has historically picked up new Division 1 schools transitioning from other divisions in college athletics. In the last few years, they picked up Le Moyne, Merrimack, Stonehill, and now Mercyhurst. They also announced that the lone independent team in Division 1, Chicago State, would be joining this conference. Picking up Chicago State and Mercyhurst will now repl
ace the open slots as Merrimack and Sacred Heart both announced that they would leave the NEC and join the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) in the 2024-2025 season.
Adding Mercyhurst is a great pickup for the NEC. This is a team with a lot of success in basketball in recent years, they fit the enrollment range in the conference perfectly. We wish the Lakers nothing but success in their transition to Division I.