Our entire roster played at least 15 minutes, but theirs actually did the same with 13 players playing 10+ mins and no one playing 20. I made the point here before, and I think I pissed several people off, but I stand by my belief that much of these D3 programs are basically scams to get people to come pay their exuberant private tuition in exchange for being able to say they "play college basketball." Most of these schools would not exist if not for exploiting kids desire to continue their high school glory days in their sport. Some of those kids on the court would not start at on an average D1 high school varsity team. If your kid really wants to be a "college athlete", they almost always can be.
Someone help me - I know D3 is non-scholarship and I think NAIA has some scholarship money. What kind of financial aid is available to be an athlete at Defiance? None? If it were me, no matter how much I'd want to be a college athlete, if it's not financially more prudent than being a regular student at a public university, there's no way I'd give a school like that any consideration.
There definitely is financial aid available for practically all students, and for athletes schools really want, they will find all financial support possible. However, tuition is around $35,000, so the cost tends to remain huge.
Many of these schools do rely hugely on athletics to exist. My wife teaches at a Division II university with an enrollment of around 3,000 and it seems that nearly half of her students are athletes of some kind. It's probably not quite that much, or maybe it is because many of her classes are basically remedial English for students who basically have to do high school English over again. Many of them probably should not be in college at all, and in fact, are not in college for too long.
Defiance says its enrollment is about 650 students. It has 17 athletic teams, with 119 players on the football roster. Many of the other rosters have far more players listed than a typical Division I school (19 on the men's basketball roster, 21 on volleyball). As a whole, I'm certain that the majority of students at the school are athletes.