I really don't think your resume at Hope is good enough to get you to D1 even if you seriously turn things around this season and go S16 and then pull off Final 4 next year.  Too many mediocre seasons behind that.

No, it's not that difficult. I just did it in knight 2 seasons ago with only a decent tournament history the past few seasons at D3 Tufts.

You think a 4-year window of no postseason, 1st round, S16, F4 would let you jump to D1?  I don't.  I wasn't eligible for any D1 jobs this past offseason in Knight after 5 consecutive 2nd-round appearances and coming off a 5-ranked, 5-RPI, 30-win season.  Don't even want to go into how I managed to win 30 games with a 2nd-round exit.  I actually wonder how often that's happened in this game.  It's pretty tricky.

My Redlands squad just hit A+ prestige this last offseason and I qualified for several low to mid-level D1 jobs. I've made the NT in each of the last 6 seasons, but have never been past the Sweet 16. 

Check out my history in Phelan as another way to go about moving up from d3 to d1. I had something of a dynasty at Colorado College and then decided to move up to d1 as I enjoy it more than d2 or d3. Anyhow i didn't like the teams available at d1 that offseason so I didn't apply for any of the jobs available to me. Once season 30 began I decided to see what teams would be interesting for the following season and many jobs I was not qualified for became open to me to reserve. So I grabbed Wyoming which was my desired destination. I don't know if it is fair but I appreciated the loophole.

It's possible if you have A+ and have gone deep into the NT continuously, or won a NT. I am fully qualified for D1 jobs for the D1 jobs with D-/D baseline, longshot for a bunch of the D and D+ baselines. 

Posted by fd343ny on 4/26/2011 1:18:00 AM (view original):
someone with more recent experience in this than I should comment, but I think you need to look at the risk too - say you do well in D3 and look like you are on the path to getting there, but then get unlucky, blow recruiting and have a real bad year - likely sets things back a bunch....may be less risk in the D3 - D2 - D1 progression

I can attest to this. After my two E8 runs in Smith at SUNYC, I had my first losing season there (I lost like 5 seniors, didn't do a great job recruiting and I think the engine was tweaked around that time). After that season, I was no longer qualified for any D1 jobs.

Posted by abitaamber on 4/25/2011 9:57:00 PM (view original):
Look at uglyskunk3 @ Morris Brown in Knight.  He was able to do it...but that was after winning 5 NT Championships in 20 seasons.  He's pretty much the only one I've seen pull it off recently.

i did it and so did mbalding in knight, so it can be done.