Phew, I’m beat.
Long day yesterday and staring down a long day today, but definitely worth it. Saw four good teams yesterday and a great game under the lights — Keith McMillan and I were talking and anytime you can see two games in a day, it’s worth it.
Keith will write a lot more about our weekend, so I won’t go too much into depth here. Good turnout with 4,338 fans at UW-Whitewater and 3,500 (this might be even a touch low) at North Central.
Congrats to Hiram for getting off the schneid. Earlham held to two points for the second week in a row with quarterback Justin Rummell. The Quakers had first-and-goal from the 2 with under a minute left and threw four incomplete passes. Amazingly, Earlham was inside the 5-yard line three times during the game and turned the ball over on downs each time, getting its only points on what might have been an intentional safety with 1:18 left in the ballgame.
Utica beat Springfield, meaning nobody who is supposed to be good can brag about beating the Pride this season.
Why does Averett get 40 off Ferrum but only nine against Wesley, a team believed to be of similar quality.
Baldwin-Wallace’s streak of .500 or better seasons is in serious trouble. The Yellow Jackets are 2-2 and have losable games remaining at Otterbein, Capital and Mount Union and at home against Marietta and John Carroll.
Interested in:
Huntingdon. Another solid win. Big test coming with Trinity (Texas).
Rochester. Win at St. Lawrence (never an easy trip travelwise) keeps them in the Liberty League picture a while longer.
St. Olaf. Playing pretty well. Worthy of keeping an eye on.
Worried about:
St. John’s. You can get away with turnovers against Hamline but with games coming up against Bethel, Concordia-Moorhead and St. Olaf, it has to change.
Lycoming. Losing by five touchdowns to FDU-Florham? This program is in trouble.
Thiel. No, seriously. They had at least a shot at hearing their name on Selection Sunday last year before losing at Buffalo State in the season finale. Can’t afford a letdown against Grove City.
No new crazy e-mails this weekend, but a request for Lake Forest’s Pool C chances that came a couple weeks ago looked pretty silly then, three weeks into the season, and looks even sillier after back-to-back losses.
And the bizarre moment of the weekend was running into players from the Centre men’s soccer team at the gas station on Saturday night. Good luck against Aurora today, guys.
As usual, here are my two-cents worth (plink, plink)…
– We’ll give you a head start: This year Albright has rallied from 24-0 (Ursinus), 18-0 (King’s) and 16-0 (Juniata) deficits to win. Me thinks they’ll need to play better early in games with Widener and Delaware Valley up next.
– Mmmm, crow: I’ll try to keep this post short since I have to write 1,000 on the blackboard “I will stop picking Carthage to lose.” They did a nice job shutting down Millikin yesterday.
On a related note, Wooster is poised to join the Top 25 again. The 4-0 Scots were #26 last week and could replace ranked teams who lost yesterday (Whitworth, HSC).Somewhere Dante Washington and Tony Sutton smile in approval.
– Mental Note – Kick it away from him: P.J. Williams had 278 yards and 2 TDs on punt returns against Mississippi College. The Choctaws had 197 yards total, 1 on the ground.
– Sign #513 that Linfield is very good: Lutes outgain Wildcats 445-425. Wildcats outscore Lutes 42-13 thanks to 5 PLU turnovers.
– Cause for Concern?: I worry a little that the off-field turmoil is too much for ONU who got pasted by John Carroll yesterday. I won’t play the comparative score game, but suffice to say ONU will be significant underdogs to Mount Union who beat the Blue Streaks 70-0. At this point, I’m not even sure a win against Capital is enough to get them into the post season.
Thiel’s upset victory makes life more difficult for the NWC to get a second Pool B bid. Whitworth’s loss to Eastern Oregon doesn’t inspire me much. If Willamette wins two of three remaining regional games, they’ll finish 4-1 total. Will the Committee take a 4-1 team over W&J, Salisbury or Wesley?
UW-Eau Claire is going to have to score some points to hang in the WIAC race. They had 17 total against good Whitewater and St. Francis (Ind.) teams. But keep in mind that 21 of the 28 points against SJU came off blocked punts.
– Club D3football.com: If anyone listened to Lewis & Clark/Chapman on SportsJuice.com last night, they heard a rather interesting broadcast. There was an audio cart with techno music playing over and over and over during broadcast…even when the play-by-play guy was on the air.
The effect was that you had football set to techno. “First down Chapman (thump-thump-thump-thump) on the Pioneers 45 (thump-thump-thump, beep-BOOP beep-beep-BOOP).” I feel for the broadcasters as I’ve made worse mistakes that created far less interesting audio experiences for listeners. In fact, maybe I’ll try my next broadcast set to Flock of Seagulls.
– Three Cheers: Kudos to Thiel which was the first PAC team in who knows how long to beat W&J on their own turf. Congrats to St. Olaf. The last time they started 4-0, I was about 2 months old. And congrats to the Clamorin’ Clucks of Trinity College. They broke Williams’ record for consecutive wins by a New England Division III football program by beating the Ephs 34-6.
Wesley may have only given up 9 to Averett, but I bet Ferrum would still beat them. Last year it was an Overtime Win for them against Ferrum. This year Ferrum is healthy and experience. Ferrum walks into their homecoming game as the top team in teh USAC, and yes took Averett for nothing. Look at the second half when Ferrum’s Defense took over. The offense, just as strong as any team in the Mid- Altantic. Anyways a 5-0 team cannot be just lucky, you have to have some skill. Oh and how is CNU (2-2) get more quality points than Ferrum? Well its up to voters.
CNU has played two teams that are better than anyone on Ferrum’s schedule. Ferrum would have two losses against those teams as well.
Also, CNU has players in the lineup that have started and won in the postseason. It’s hard to beat that.
Maybe Wesley is a much better team than they are getting credit for!!!!
To say they would lose to Ferrum because of a game last year is rediculous. And the fact is Averett DID score 40 on Ferrum which in percentile would mean Wesley would score hmmmm 176 pts, OF course that is comparing apples to oranges!!!! But we won’t find out because Ferrum chose not to play Wesley this year.
Saying that Ferrum “chose” not to Play Wesley this year is taking it a step too far. Ferrum if I remember correctly split the last two games. Ferrum would have loved to have played a non-conference game against Wesley. Ferum wants to play teams which will give them more recognition than the ODAC teams they have played. Looking at Wesley, they may be in the same boat at Ferrum, having to wait till a game late in the Year(Salisbury) before recieving any attention. As for CNU losing to two teams that Ferrum could not beat, I dont know? Rowan only beat them by one score. Ferrum can score with anyone and besides the lapse this past weekend, has played solid defense. The only team in VA that I would consider better than Ferrum would only be Bridgewater and by a small margin. Just keep watching because they keep rolling on.
Rbrockwell, that is correct about the scheduling. Ferrum dropped Wesley, and did so pretty late in the offseason, all things considered.
Kings Point could have won. Union should have tacked on another 21 points. Coach John Audino probably doesn’t have any hair left. The Union team probably doesn’t have any feet left. They shot them all off! But they won. To put up 500 yards of offense and lose would have been tragic. One wonders what Hobart and RPI must be thinking. If Union can suvive WPI, St. Lawrence , and Coast Guard, the end of the season is going to be a ” can’t miss.”
Lycoming offensive line has no heart. Can’t block for inexperienced QB and RBs. They don’t like to hit. The DBs never turn to look for the ball and the top two defensive players are hurt. Looks like second losing season in 29 years. Was this team every really that good or was rest of the division just that bad?????
Congrats to Del. Val. Scoring that many points without their starting HB, Cook and their huge TE, McMahon. They’ll both be back against Albright in two weeks. Go Aggies
Just to add to MacJack’s point, Del Val’s plan was to use Cook sparingly and let Jake Sheffield, whom Coach Mangus likes a lot, carry the load this week. McMahon and Cook could’ve played more, but the Aggies figured they could get some extra rest with the bye leading up to the Albright game.
Pat,
“Utica beat Springfield, meaning nobody who is supposed to be good can brag about beating the Pride this season.”
I take some offense to this, being a former Pioneer and an alum. I take this to mean that because we beat them anybody else who beats them like Ithaca or St. John Fisher shouldn’t be happy about it just because Utica (who you obviously thinks still stinks) beat those guys.
Those boys played their guts out Saturday, Pat. It’s too bad you weren’t there to watch an incredible game. Just remember, UC has only been a varsity program for 4 years.
Utica’s 3-1 with Mount Ida next, so we’ll see what happens this week.
Just felt I need to defend their effort.
I understand your frustration, but let me offer a slightly different take.
In the past beating Springfield was considered a quality win over a likely playoff contender. Using past performance as a guide, Union and UW-Stout (both receiving Top 25 votes) could arguable point to Springfield as evidence that they can beat playoff worthy teams. If nothing else, Springfield usually finishes above .500, meaning a win against them helps you in the strength-of-schedule (SOS) calculations.
None of this is the case so far this year. Barring some upsets, Springfield won’t finish over .500. And they aren’t the best teams that Union or Stout. A win against Springfield has a little less glamour this year. Just like a loss to Fisher hurts a lot less now than it did three years ago.
None of that should detract from a great effort by a developing Utica program. The win last year against RPI was big for Coach Kemp. This one is, too. I thnk we can both agree that Utica is not a playoff contender this year.
But these wins show the Pioneers are no longer a guaranteed W, that they are on the rise. What seemed unimaginable a month ago to most outside observers a month ago — a 6-4 or 7-3 finish for Utica — is now a real possibility. The program deserves a lot of credit for that.
So….Linfield’s pretty good this year.
Trinity Football has brooken the Division III record for consecutive wins. What do they have to do to get recongnition on this site? It takes alot to win 24 straight.
The Division III record for consecutive wins is actually 55, not 24, so they would have to win 32 more games — four full NESCAC mini-seasons, to break it.
Trinity broke the record for New England Division III wins, not Division III as a whole. Mount Union won 55 straight games including a handful of national titles not too long ago.
I referenced that in the post below Pat’s. Keith mentions Trinity’s streak every week in his “Around the Nation” column. And Mark Simon did a feature on the Bants last year, which you can read here.
Ftball87, You are mistakened about the record for consecutive wins.
http://www.d3football.com/school_info.php?school=Mount+Union&year=2005
I am happy for the accomplishments of Trinity CT, but they are playing in a very narrow realm of College Football, the NESCAC.
IN fact, the long-standing national and current state record for consecutive wins in the historic annals of Texas High School Football belongs to Pflugerville High School back when they played 6-man football in Class B and played no playoff game beyond the 2-game regional playoffs. In Texas, that is a huge (*) aasterisk.
Trinity’s 24 consecutive wins would mean much more to D3football fans if they included wins over Rowan, Mount Union, UMHB and Linfield.
Or any one of the four. 🙂
Speaking of winning streaks, congratulations again this week goes to the Bowdoin College Polar Bears. Off their first opening day win since the first Bush (George HW Bush), they came back this past Saturday with a three-point win on the road at Pratt Field in Amherst. Best of luck to Coach Caputi’s Polar Bears this coming week.
Pat,
Which conferences do you think will have teams with At-Large Bids?
I think Keith might write about our discussions along those lines in ATN this week. Stay tuned.
Not sure where Ferrum stands in relation to the national stage. As a Ferrum grad., hopefully the Panthers can run the table and find out where they stand. Mark the final week of the regular season on your schedule vs CNU. Could be a classic. Like H-SC, their SOS is suspect. Unlike H-SC, they can get the automatic by winning their conference.
Speaking of H-SC: Make no mistake this is a good football team. I realize they won’t get respect until they beat Bridgewater and/or Hopkins. OR play and beat tougher non conference opponents. My hats off to the Tiger defense as they hung tough against a very good BC offense. They have been questioned in recent weeks. The nature of the Tiger offense keeps them on the field an awfully long time. That, along with it being a hot day and being put in bad field position several times Sat. they still hung in there. Unfortunately, in the 4th Q with the game on the line Sat., I think they just ran out of gas. Hopefully, they can win out and pick up a pool C bid.
Thanks to the d3 website. I have truly enjoyed following D3 football in recent years on this site.
See this is where I do not get the comparasion, HSC is a very good offensive football team, yet there defense is suspect, they still allowed 30 in the loss too Bridgewater. John Hopkins is a solid team, but still will not close to the quality of Bridgewater. Ferrum’s conference is tougher than the ODAC, just look at the head to head match ups between the two. The only Difference is maybe Bridgewater is a better team than what the USA South might have to offer, yet I believe CNU and Ferrum would give them a tougher game than HSC. Last year Shenandoah and CNU went to the postseason, I dont think there is much doubt that Shenandoah is done for the year, yet they will still end up 7-3. But Ferrum should be at worst 9-1, but I would bet the Nov. 12th (played at Ferrum) will allow the panthers to end the season 10-0. HSC gets credit because of there star quarterback. But as someone mentioned last week, he does not play defense. HSC will not get thier credit until they beat Bridgewater. Ferrum or CNU in my opinion should recieve the automatic bid and the at large. I however do not know how other teams around the region and nation are doing in comparsion, just teams in VA.
“Ferrum’s conference is tougher than the ODAC, just look at the head to head match ups between the two.”
Almost all of which consist of USAC teams beating up on the bottom three in the ODAC, hardly a valid comparison.
The Trinity Bantams have much to be proud of. It would be interesting to see how they would stack up today against that erstwhile NESCAC member, Union, whose football fortunes have soared since their departure from that league. Union is batting well over .700 with two Stagg Bowl appearances over the last twenty five years. I doubt the Dutchmen would fare very well today against the Linfields and Mt. Unions of the world. I suspect Trinity would have a very rude awakening against teams of that caliber. But Trinity and Union will always eclipse the perennial D III powers in an academic context, which makes their football accomplishments that much more impressive.
I agree that the best way for H-SC to get respect is to beat Bridgewater. Plain and simple. I also agree that the USAS is stronger than the ODAC. But frankly, that isn’t saying much. No disrespect intended to either conference but the ODAC is as weak overall as I can ever remember since it’s inception in the 70’s. However, I am not certain that Ferrum or CNU could give Bridgewater any better game than H-SC did Sat. short of actually beating them. (which they might) The game wasn’t decided until the final play. I stand by what I said in regards to H-SC’s defense Sat. Particularly in the first half. They held BC to 3 field goals when BC started at least 2 drives inside Tiger territory. (31yd line and around midfield on the the other) They do have much room for improvement.
BTW- As a grad of Ferrum (AA) , Maryville (BA), and the son of an H-SC coach that has followed Tiger football for many years, I am a fan of both the ODAC and the USAS. Having this format to debate/ discuss is truly alot of fun.
Another BTW- Rumor has it that H-SC is dropping Sewanee either this year or next. Wouldn’t it be fun if they could pick up Ferrum or CNU?
I agree with AllSky7 and I think that would be a great game Ferrum and HSC this year. Both teams hurt themselves with National Attention for not having a strong non-conference schedule. Pat you were right about Ferrum pulling out against Wesley, this was to accomadate Maryville which entered the conference. Rememeber they only lost by a point last year to Wesley so there was no intimidation involved. The USA South has played every team I believe expect for HSC. The only lost has come against Bridgewater, a solid team. Out of the two conferences say Bridgewater would have the slight advantage, yet I still believe Ferrum and CNU would give them a great game.(CNU has beat them the past two years) Looking at a conference as a whole, one would have to place the USA South higher than the ODAC.
Again with your spin. Why did the first version of the Ferrum schedule have Wesley and Maryville?
Gotta close this topic. Too much spin and whining.