The Azusa Pacific women’s basketball program picked up three recruits for the 2012-13 season. One of those three has a familiar name, a name that is known from Azusa Pacific, Westmont, Biola, and the rest of the original Golden State Athletic Conference. The name is Hardeman, and the recruit, Kelly, is the niece of the team’s current head coach T.J. Hardeman.

Basketball and family have been intertwined in the Hardeman household for years. As we found out during the Cougars’ championship run in 2011, family is at the core of the Azusa Pacific women’s basketball program. Hardeman (T.J.) had all four of his children play collegiate basketball. His daughter Katie has multiple records at Westmont. His other daughter Heidi played at Biola, where she met her husband, Dan Ploog , who has been an assistant for T.J. at Azusa Pacific since he took over the once irrelevant program and turned it into the power it is today. His two brothers, Todd and Tom, work at Faith Academy in the Philippines where Hardeman went to school as a child and where Kelly was a three-sport athlete. Now with the newest edition to the Cougar family already being a member of the Hardeman family, it begs the question: where did they all come from?

Read more on The Cougar Countdown: Day 30…

Most of the Azusa Pacific athletic department is preparing for a bit of the unknown in its transition to the Pacific West Conference (or Great Northwest Athletic Conference for football). The Cougar women’s swimming and diving team isn’t. Over the past four years the team has competed in the Pacific Coast Swimming Conference (PCSC), which includes programs from all levels of the NCAA and the NAIA. And amid all of the changes at Azusa Pacific it will be one of the few constants as it continues to be the conference home for the Cougars.

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In recent years, the opinion of a few was that one of the best college rivalries along the west coast had seen its best days and was headed for irrelevance.

A long stretch of Azusa Pacific dominance over Biola, particularly in men’s basketball – the crown jewel of Biola’s entire athletic program – had some people wondering if the rivalry would ever be the same. It was around that time that a certain article appeared on the Cougar Athletics website that impatiently proclaimed the Azusa Pacific-Biola rivalry “over,” “done,” and “finished.”

Later that same year, Biola silenced a crowd of over 2,500 with its biggest win over the Cougars in nearly 20 years, holding Azusa Pacific to just 54 points, its lowest scoring total by a Cougar team in the Felix Event Center since the building’s opening in 2001. The next year Biola claimed double-digit wins in both regular-season meetings before Azusa Pacific rallied from double-digits to conjure a one-point overtime win in the conference tournament, and the Cougars built on that win with five more postseason victories to advance to the national title game for the second time in program history.

Read more on The Cougar Countdown: Day 28…

Up until a year ago Azusa Pacific vs. California Baptist was developing into one of the best college rivalries on the West Coast. That rivalry was put on hold as California Baptist initiated its NCAA Div. II membership transition a year earlier than the Cougars. But with both schools playing in the Pacific West Conference in 2012, that once budding rivalry will have a chance to develop into what everyone saw it becoming: the new rivalry for Azusa Pacific athletics.

While Azusa Pacific was in the midst of its unprecedented run of Director’s Cups, California Baptist was steadily ascending up the national stage. Over the final three years in the NAIA, the Lancers finished seventh, sixth, and fifth in the final Director’s Cup standings. In that run towards the top CBU and Azusa Pacific had their fair share of run-ins.

Read more on The Cougar Countdown: Day 27…

Women’s water polo at Azusa Pacific may be new, with the program entering its fifth season in 2013, but that doesn’t mean head coach Julie Snodgrass is taking baby steps towards bringing the Cougars into national prominence. With a fearless approach in scheduling her team has had the opportunity to play some of the nation’s elite, most notably in 2012 as the Cougars squared off with half of the teams that earned a spot in the eight-team NCAA tournament, including fifth place Loyola Marymount.

No other team at Azusa Pacific plays a tougher schedule than does the polo team, which in 2012 faced off with seven teams ranked inside the Collegiate Water Polo Association’s coach’s top-20, a poll that consists of mainly NCAA Div. I programs, but can include Div. II, III, and NAIA teams.

Read more on The Cougar Countdown: Day 26…

Nothing is certain but death and taxes… and for the past two decades, 20-win seasons from Azusa Pacific men’s basketball.

Since 1993, the Cougars are one of just three four-year collegiate men’s basketball programs to post 20 consecutive 20-win seasons. The only others are Georgetown (Ky.) and Oklahoma Baptist, which both compete in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA). Azusa Pacific, however, is putting its streak of 20-win seasons on the line on a bigger stage — literally.

The average arena seating capacity for games during Azusa Pacific’s 2012-13 season more than doubles the average capacity of the Golden State Athletic Conference gyms it played in a year ago. With its transition to the NCAA Division II’s Pacific West Conference for the 2012-13 season, the Cougars’ home arena – the Felix Event Center – goes from easily being the largest facility in the GSAC to the fifth-biggest in its new league. The average capacity of GSAC gyms in 2012 was 1,935, while the average gym capacity of the 14-member PacWest Conference seats over 1,000 more people (2,996 average).

Read more on The Cougar Countdown: Day 25…

The Felix Event Center is one of the premier NCAA Div. II venues on the west coast, playing host to the Azusa Pacific men’s and women’s basketball, volleyball, and acrobatics & tumbling teams. And while it has been a great home to the Cougar volleyball program since opening in 2001, it will undergo a bit of a change for Azusa Pacific’s 11 regular season home matches.

With a seating capacity of 3,500, the Felix Event Center is the fifth-largest arena in the Pacific West Conference (trailing Grand Canyon’s brand new 5,000 seat facility and Dixie State’s 4,779-capacity Burns Arena), which isn’t exactly ideal for viewing volleyball.  So to create a more fan-friendly environment head coach Chris Keife opted to make some minor changes for gamedays.

Read more on The Cougar Countdown Day 24…

Azusa Pacific’s athletic success is measured by eight consecutive Directors’ Cup trophies, but the Cougars have also been honored for success in the classroom. For the sixth consecutive year, at least 10 Cougar teams were recognized as NAIA Scholar Teams, and the 2011-12 campaign also featured the selection of 11 players who were the first student-athletes in school history named to their respective Capital One CoSIDA Academic All-America teams.

Ten Azusa Pacific teams earned the designation as an NAIA Scholar Team, which requires it to have a minimum 3.0 grade point average (on a 4.0 scale) as defined by the institution. The team grade point average must include all varsity student-athletes certified as eligible. Azusa Pacific was one of four schools who finished in the top 10 of the Directors’ Cup standings to have 10 or more NAIA Scholar Teams, as well.

Read more on The Cougar Countdown: Day 23…

Eddie Garcia met the Azusa Pacific football team in 2006, when the Cougars hosted a day of Special Olympics as part of the football program’s outreach into the community. That event marked the beginning of Garcia’s friendship with the Cougar football program, and over the course of that friendship Eddie has had a steady presence with the team, attending practices and games while keeping Azusa Pacific’s coaching staff updated on his Special Olympics performances and academic achievements.

Garcia is a gold medalist Special Olympics athlete, although he is most proud of his 27-0 record in surgeries he has had to undergo to treat the disease he was born with. In addition to his athletic accomplishments, Garcia has his bachelor’s degree from Cal Poly Pomona along with a master’s degree from UCLA. In addition, he was recently accepted into a doctorate program in psychiatric care at UCLA.

Read more on The Cougar Countdown: Day 22…

After decades of competing in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) Azusa Pacific has a two-year “waiting period” before becoming eligible to compete as a full member of the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) Division II postseason. However, in the meantime the Cougars will compete in the National Christian College Athletics Association (NCCAA), an organization which Azusa Pacific was a founding member of in 1968 and which currently sponsors 23 championship events.

Many of those championships will see a hefty boost in competition with the association’s recent membership growth. Over the past few years the NCCAA has seen multiple NAIA powers join its ranks, as a number of schools are in the midst of their transition period to NCAA Div. II and are restricted from competing at the national level in the NAIA or NCAA (tired of the acronyms yet?). The NCCAA provides the opportunity for schools like Azusa Pacific to continue to compete for national titles while competing with similar Christian colleges and universities.

Read more on The Cougar Countdown: Day 21…