Well-thought-out, respectful discussion on the semifinals

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OK, so I’ve had the idea for this thread all day today. I was hoping to give us, as D3 fans and alumni in general, the benefit of the doubt, that we were all highly-evolved enough not to need it. But we do.

So here’s the deal. This is the new home for discussion about Wesley at UW-Whitewater and St. John Fisher at Mount Union, with a caveat: Your posts have to have some sort of value to them: perspective, insight, well-thought-out reasoning or a question you need answered.

What you’ll get in return is a respectful environment where personal attacks and smack are limited, if not entirely absent. I’ll personally make sure of it.

For those who want to carry on with the immature stuff, the whining about not being respected, the jabs at other posters … we’ll still have other threads for that on the Daily Dose and Post Patterns (I’ll probably be on those threads too). But this isn’t the place for that.

If you’re a fanatical fan of one team and you honestly don’t know anything about the other, save your score predictions. You can be helpful here with the amount of insight you must have from watching the same team each week.

In a way, this thread is an experiment. People seem like they really value, and want, a respectful, intelligent atmosphere. But we’ll find out how much that is really wanted by how much you post here. Perhaps we all like to mix it up a little more than we want to admit.

In any case, here are a few questions to start off the mature, thoughtful discussion about these games:
1. Does the past matter? (Mount Union’s titles, last year’s Wesley-UWW result, Saturday’s games)
2. What’s each team’s biggest on-field strength, or on-field weakness? What will they need to do that they normally don’t do to win Saturday?
3. Which “unsung heroes” will be key to their team’s chances Saturday?
4. These are four cold-weather teams. Will weather matter? Whose style would be most affected by precipitation. Whitewater is a grass field, but the other three teams are turf. The Stagg Bowl is on grass. Factor or non-factor?
5. Kmic, Robinson, Beaver … who’s the best back left? Kleppe, Robinson, Stickley … best D-Lineman left?
6. Who has the most to prove?
7. D3 fans help out your fellow D3 fans … where to eat/stay and things not to miss on game day (besides the game) in Alliance and Whitewater.
8. How do the teams match up, in specific areas? Who is healthy and/or banged-up?

154 thoughts on “Well-thought-out, respectful discussion on the semifinals”

  1. wallyfan,

    You’re dead on. That was my intent. Purple Crush apparently forgot the intent of this new blog, and I hope he understands and appreciates that. I am personally a UMHB fan and attended both the UW-W game and the H-SU playoff game.

  2. PA Wesley
    I agree that if Wesley gets some big plays, UWW might be in a bit of trouble, but I find it interesting that you say we’ll have a hard time catching up by running the ball. Did you forget that we have the WIAC Player of the Year at QB and a host of receivers that have a nack for making big plays (just ask UW-L)? I have to agree that the underneath passing game may have a tough time getting going against our talented linebackers. We will see on Saturday. It should be a great game.

    P.S. So Robinson played a bit of FB last game, right? How about this collision: Robinson vs Kleppe…BOOM!

  4. Purple Crush Says:

    The 6th of December, 2006 at 1:01 am

    lg1970,

    I was responding to another post on this thread that was arrogant. So if your trying to play referee at least be fair and correct everyone.

    I’m playing referee, and you’re one of the main ones mucking up this thread.

    Nine posts that added nothing to this discussion have been moved from Well-thought-out, respectful discussion on the semifinals to Knuckleheaded discussion on the semifinals.

    If you don’t like it, my bad … you were warned. I promised the people who came here for some good, clean football talk that I would monitor this thread, and to those guys, I’m sorry it took me so long.

    I would much rather be putting the time into Around the Nation for you all rather than policing the blogs, so please make my job easy on me.

    Thanks for your cooperation.

  5. Because I’ll be spending my third consecutive Saturday at Whitewater, I’ll toss my .02 on this.

    I’ve seen 4 Whitewater games. @ Oshkosh, both LaCrosse games and the SJU game. Other than LaCrosse 1, all games were fairly close. The thing that I’ve noticed is that Whitewater plays very opportunistic football and at this point seemingly is missing any killer instinct. They should have wiped Oshkosh off the map, but it took a late interception to finally put that one to rest. LaCrosse 2 was much of the same thing. Last weekend, they took advantage of the Johnnies turnovers but they can’t make one final sustaining drive to run the clock out.

    Not rocket science here, but they are going to have to play clean football (way too many penalties last week), force some turnovers, and clean up the kicking game (or at least the snaps) to win. Anything left leaves an opportunity, and if Wesley takes advantage of the mistakes, anything is possible…

  6. PA,
    I think it was lg1970 that was being referred to as a he or she. D3Keith is pretty obvious … I hope.

    Then again, someone who probably played Left Guard and graduated in ’70 seems like a “he” to me too.

    If I was truly 6’6″, 250, I doubt I’d be here with you today. But thanks. 🙂

  7. Robinson vs. Kleppe would be worth the price of admission alone. But B-Rob (or whatever his nickname might be … I think it came up in postgame and it was much more clever) was lining up at TE and going in motion to the 260-pound TE’s side or vice versa … basically giving them three tackles at the point of attack.

    I hope Wesley has done that before and we’re not spoiling it, b/c Whitewater won’t see the UMHB tape (the tapes are on site game day and delivered by the NCAA rep, so obviously they can’t be from that day’s game but the week before)

    Anyway, not sure how often a TE gets to go head-to-head cleanly with a DT … but they’re definitely two of the best DL I’ve seen in D3.

  8. U-Dub-Dub,
    The thing about Berez & the gang gameplanning against the underneath is that Michael Clarke, the guy who did the most damage, is actually more of a long-ball threat, but that was an adjustment Drass and Knapp (Wesley OC) made for last week. So you might not want to spend a lot of time gameplanning for it if it’s not necessarily going to be part of the attack vs. UW-W.

    I don’t think you want Widuch, who is a beast, on Michael Clarke. You’d have to bump down Schultz or one of the corners to cover him to avoid the mismatch. That said, against the TE, the UW-W LBs might do fine. And the TE really exploited UMHB, but UMHB has those small-and-fast type LBs, so it worked really well. Wesley might not even bother with it as much this week against UW-W.

    I keep wanting to say this is going to be a great matchup between a couple of great teams, with great coaching staffs … and I know it’s going to be a better game than last year.

    But I thought it was going to be great last year and it was 58-6. That’s just stuck in the back of my head.

  9. This was from earlier. Hope it’s not piling on:

    I’m sorry … some of you who tried to set the knuckleheads straight … your comments will now seem out of context, as there is no marker that I am aware of to show where the nine posts were moved from.

    Not that you’ll miss them …

    I have e-mailed a couple of the repeat offenders too. We’ll see if we get cordial responses or lose two valued members of our Daily Dose community.

  10. Three comments after reading the Rochester D&C: Fisher Assistant/Defensive Coordinator Faggiano is in Guatemala to pick up his adopted son with the teams support, good for him and his wife and Division III. The right priorites.

    Mt. Union Coach Kehres quote “If they beat us Saturday, I’m getting out of it” refering to the possible opening day games in ’08’ & ’09’ with Fisher currently being negotiated. Not knowing him, I had respect for him as a coach from his teams success. Being able to be humble and humerous with the press, shows a lot of class, I already like the guy. Another plus for DIII.

    Brockport State forfeits with a player not enrolled. Always said part of the responsibility for coaches should be helping their athletes to graduation. If someone was following the registration/classes/grades of these athletes then it would never have got to the last game. Minus one for DIII.

    Two out of three isn’t bad.

    Suggestion:

    SJF use quick counts and hard counts on MU. Their aggressive defense will give you some free yardage and it will slow down the rush.

  11. Here’s something you can see in Alliance if you’re there…
    There’s a great alumnus and supporter of the college named George Weimer, who is at least…well, ole’ George is getting pretty up there…(but he has such a great personality and spirit…) and yet, everytime I go back he always goes out and does pushups with the MUC cheerleaders when the Raiders score at least once…the best thing about George is that he supports all kinds of programs around the college, not just raider football, and the school wouldnt be nearly what it is today without great alumni like himself…so if you hear the crowd cheering for an elderly gentleman doing pushups, that’s him…

    And go have lunch at Grinders…great food…just about a mile down the main drag as you leave the campus..turn left out of the stadium, go about a mile, and its on your left in a little shopping strip next to an IGA grocery store I think…its some kind of grocery store anyhow… 🙂

    safe travels…

  12. D3keith,

    Can you give us some idea as to how prolific the UWW’s pass defense/coverage is? it occurs to me that as good as UMHB run defense “was”, they had to know that Wesley would utilize the pass play, and yet they were really not successful at all in stopping it. Knapp seemed to use various players that have not been used in the mix for some time and with some great packages on offense. Will they continue to have success at this in Whitewater? I know someone mentioned it quite a bit earlier, but Wesley also has a gaggle of running backs that can do some damage as well and UWW will have to respect that. Your thoughts?

  14. Well, that’s a multifaceted question there.

    I will say this, I liked UMHB’s secondary better than UWW’s and Wesley had success against it. But with Kleppe and the front seven putting on a nice rush, it makes the secondary a lot better.

    UWW’s guys back there weren’t bad, i thought CB Gabe Schultz and SS Ben Farley had really good games against UMHB. They played the ball really well. But in the first game against La Crosse, there were a lot of guys open down the field that the QB just missed. So it’s hard to say which game was the truer representation of how they’ll fare against Wesley.

    My guess is it’s going to be hard to run against UWW, and they’ll have to use more than one person to block Kleppe and/or play like they did last week, with screens and short passes functioning as run plays almost, a la the Eagles or someone like that.

    I don’t know if the many backs at Wesley are something that so concerns a defense that you’d have to draw up something special for them. It might even be an advantage, to know who’s in the game and what kinds of plays they run for him. There’s one tailback who’s scored 14 or 15 touchdowns, there’s another that went over 1,000 yards.

    The thing that really impressed me about Wesley’s non-star offensive players is that they didn’t leave any plays out there. The guys who had their numbers called only once or twice in the game made a play when the ball came their way. And I can’t think of any drops Wesley had in the UMHB game, but so-called experienced guys or non-experienced ones.

  15. Well said Keith,

    your last paragraphkind of sums it up for me in the sense that the play-off games prior to MHB, it was mostly Clarke and the TE. Last week, a multitude of players from different positions caught the ball. and the it seemed that after the catch, they worked hard to gain extra yardage. that “second effort” may have sealed the deal so to speak. I understand that UWW’s linebackers are rather quick to react, as well as having raw open feild speed. Should be interesting if Wesley puts some of those screens in that you mentioned. Nice call on that by the way!

  16. Re: PA_Wesleyfan

    That’s a good point about the underneath routes by your receivers. For the most part, the UWW linebackers fair pretty well in coverage. But the past few weeks especially, the overall tackling has been a bit of a concern on the Whitewater defense – this was pretty relevant against both UW-LaCrosse and St. John’s. I think Whitewater will protect that deep stuff and let the underneath stuff go. They’ll trust their linebackers. If this truly is the case, then I guess the most important thing for Whitewater’s defense to do on Saturday (oddly enough) is wrap-up and make sure-handed tackles, thus eliminating the YAC’s and making Wesley put together a long drive, which in turn plays into Whitewater’s hands.

  18. Well if MUC was to lose a game, it would be the semi-final’s at home. Two out of their four loses in since 1996 have been in the National semi’s at home. I’m hoping they dont though. Go mount

  22. Wow, you guys get a little bit more press coverage out there than we do, unless I’m missing something. But I know the big Milwaukee paper doesn’t cover Whitewater almost at all, only a couple articles that past couple of weeks on the games. Then again, we do have warhawkfootball.com. I haven’t had a chance to read them yet, but I’ll get to that in the morning.

  24. Story from Today’s Canton Repository:
    [url=http://www.cantonrep.com/index.php?Category=17&ID=323436&r=3&subCategoryID=]College football: Mount’s top lineman all about team[/url]

  26. Well guys, I looked at the weather report again, still mid to upper thirties according to the national weather service, with about a 10-20 percent chance of percipitation. If it is that warm, I’ll be the one running around in the shorts.
    AndrewChrz, great articles, thank you. If you want some good articles from our side, there are a few, like I said on warhawkfootball.com.

  27. Thanks for all the great reading material. As a recent UWW grad, I will definitely agree that Whitewater does not get it’s due coverage in the local media. Whitewater may be a small town, but we have a mighty football team that brings a of new people to the area – possibly new recruits, so you would think that there would be more coverage.

    As most are saying, I agree that Saturday’s game will be a good one. (Thank God for the Internet as I will not be by a TV!). I look forward to reading any additional comments that are posted.

    Hey, don’t forget about Randy’s restaurant for food! If you want an excellent burger or steak, you won’t be disappointed. I always go when I am back in town and meet up with other alums. Plus, if you didn’t know they have a micro brewery. Just a quick tip – make an appointment if you are going to eat they are usually busy.

    Going to check on the knucklehead posts – time for an argument!

  28. sjfcftbll has some passion and I really like that about his comments…
    I dont know about scoring 24 points on the MUC D, especially in one half, but I still love the passion…we’ll see who gets it done on the field…
    gotta love Kmic…some crazy stats put up this year…I know you all dont put much weight on stats, and they arent always the best judge of a player’s ability, but there’s are reasons MUC went undefeated, and one of the biggest ones is that they know how to run the ball…

  30. Gentlemen…

    Since I was at the SJU-UWW matchup and have since talked with the coaches of SJU allow me to shed a little light on the game that might be viewed as a little more credible than others…by the way SJU coaches did say that this years UWW team is better than the two MUC teams they played in the STAGG BOWL…

    1st of all…UWW’d defense is very very good…they can stop another teams running game with just their front 7. SJU coaches told me that Kleppe is as talented a DT as they had seen…their linebackers flow to the ball VERY well…you can throw the ball against them but you need solid pass protection, you can move the ball, but its not easy to do…the Johnnies played very well that game and still made crucial mistakes that the Warhawks used to slip away with the win.

    With the UWW offense, first of all Jacobs did not have a good day, he was off just a bit at times had some happy feet, which is unusual…Stanley is for real, if you do not give him room he will run past you…the TE is very good, very underated. What you have to realize is the SJU defense is very assignment orriented…the each do their job, which is why Beaver had troubles running against them, if Wesley has even a few breakdowns this will get ugly…

    A wise coach once told me that teams are a little better or a little worse than they were the past year…so my prediction goes like this: UWW 38 Wesley 14…close for a while but ugly in the end.

    oh and as for MUC…they will win, its what they do…31-3

  31. MUCnash,
    Thanks, I would love to see both teams at their best. I do agree with you, didn’t plan on scoring all those points on the defense. See you Saturday.

  32. D3 Football,
    On the front page of the site it says that you will have links to NCAA streaming video of both games. I went to the NCAA website, they say the same thing but, they’re listing MUC-SJFC as audio and not video on their scheduling page. I’m confused because the people at SJFC had told me earlier in the week that no video was going to be available from Alliance. Do you know if the NCAA is in the process of setting up video with the people at MUC or did they make a mistake in their announcement?

  33. ’93,

    I was at a meeting at Fisher tonight and they indicated that it will be available on game day and won’t show the link prior to. Again, this is about as 3rd hand as you can get.

    Wish you were coming to the game. A lot of us will start making the trip to Canton first thing in the morning.

    57

  34. Fisher @ Mt. Union

    with all the predictions aside, i just wanted to say a few things in accordance to the questions. Again only fisher insights.

    1. Past matters – for both teams. For Mt. Union it keeps their confidence and swagger going. It helps “mystify” everyone. For Fisher – its something to prove. Something to show all the work theyve done to get here. Past matters to Fisher because at one time we were a CLUB team. At one time we were 1-9. We like being the underdog.

    2. What’s each team’s biggest on-field strength:
    Using defensive stops to motivate offensive performance
    What will they need to do that they normally don’t do:
    Finish strong. They havent had to do that really in the last few games because of the scoring margins.

    3.Fisher’s unsung heroes:
    Steve Stepnik, Josh Gottlieb – Interception/Tackles/Motivators
    Ricky Tatar – if hes got a good kicking game it sets us up for a great game also. Hes been on.
    Timmy Marion – 3rd down god. Gets us through a lot of mess.

    4. Fisher does well on grass, better than most teams that only play on turf. If you can remember any of the games the last 3 years i have been at — grass is not a factor.

    5. I have to say that knowing Robinson, he is strong and gets enough rest to stay healthy. I dont know the other ones, but Robby is the real deal. Robinson, Reile, and our third string runningback hanson are basically a running machine. Robinson fits the team well and thats all we can ask. We have 3 backs that could be a first string at any other college. Same with quarterbacks. Kramer, Suchnya, and Hammel.

    6.Fisher. we’ve never been beyond the second round of the playoffs.

    8.I was just talking about this today. We have one serious injury that happened in springfield and he is out the rest of the season, but anything after that we look real strong considering its this late in the season. Couple of nagging injuries on a couple of players, but overall we are looking healthy and ready.

  37. Can someone help me out here, what’s this I hear about Wesley complaining about our cannon guy? And now he’s banned from the game? And What’s the difference between him and the West Virginia Mountaineers’ mascot that fires a gun or any other team that does so as a celebration?

  38. Fisher5797,

    I’m really hoping there’s a link for video. I’d love to be at the game but have my engagement party…yeah thats right I finally did it, anyways impossible to get out of this party. B.M. and I will be sitting in front of my computer tommorow afternoon here in Philly either listening to or watching the game. How about the ink he got in the D&C yesterday? The little midget is still getting it done! Have a good time at the game, tell all the alumns I send my best and I’ll see you next week in Salem.

    42

  39. I can’t say that I’ve heard anything about the banning of our cannon guy, but if that is the case, I have to say I find that to be absurd. I’m not sure what the complaint would be to justify the removal as he does not affect the game other than getting the fans going a bit more after a score. Isn’t that just part of home field advantage?

  40. Yes we’ll have a video link for you tomorrow.

    U-Dub-Dub — the difference between this and a West Virginia game is that this is an NCAA playoff game and is under the auspices of the NCAA. West Virginia’s home games are not ever playoff games and they fall under the rules prescribed by the Big East.

  41. Pat

    So does the NCAA have rules that would prohibit the cannon guy in postseason games? If so, what are they and why are they just now being enforced? It’s not like he’s affecting the game at all. Again, I haven’t heard anything about this outside of this thread, so any help would be appreciated.

  42. I think Pat is right. The University of Montana has a cannon, and i “think” it’s banned for playoff games too. They are on ESPN tonight, so I guess I can find out if that’s true…….providing they score.

  45. ^^ That’s it, it counts as artificial noise so i guess it’s out for the playoffs.

    Kinda a stupid rule, if they want a cannon let em have a darn cannon…

  48. Just throwing this out there…Montana field goal…BOOM! Cannon goes off. Take it for what you will.

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