Triple Take: Half off in Round 2

Isaiah Hall Delaware Valley
Delaware Valley is one of this week’s toss-up games, where our picks don’t agree.
Delaware Valley athletics photo

The field of 32 has become a more elite group of 16. Last week, several games were decided by 10 points or less. How many of those met your expectations?

The first week fell mostly according to form, and no three-game sweeps were wrong. And few games were outside of the general range of scores that we predicted: Projected blowouts were often just that, and narrow projections often came down to the wire.

So we’ll walk you through our predictions again for Round 2. We’re soon wrapping up the November games and moving closer to the Division III championship Stagg Bowl on Dec. 16.

Remember, these postseason Triple Take predictions are not intended to be lines on the games, but rather a broad test of expectations vs. outcome.

If you’re feeling prescient, leave your final score guesses for any or all games below, and be sure to come back afterward to see how you did. There’ll be a live blog running here on The Daily Dose during Saturday’s games, and all tweets with hashtag #d3fb are included.

For more info on the 32-team race to Salem, including the brackets, info on each team and feature stories, check our playoffs home page.

UW-Whitewater Bracket
Ryan’s take: UW-Whitewater 42, Franklin 7
Keith’s take: UW-Whitewater 35, Franklin 14
Pat’s take: UW-Whitewater 45, Franklin 10

Ryan’s take: Salisbury 38, Kean 24
Keith’s take: Salisbury 35, Kean 21
Pat’s take: Salisbury 35, Kean 17

Delaware Valley Bracket
Ryan’s take: St. Thomas 49, Monmouth 27
Keith’s take: St. Thomas 27, Monmouth 21
Pat’s take: St. Thomas 45, Monmouth 24

Ryan’s take: Delaware Valley 38, St. John Fisher 21
Keith’s take: Delaware Valley 20, St. John Fisher 10
Pat’s take: St. John Fisher 24, Delaware Valley 21

Mary Hardin-Baylor Bracket
Ryan’s take: Mary Hardin-Baylor 35, McMurry 24
Keith’s take: Mary Hardin-Baylor 38, McMurry 23
Pat’s take: Mary Hardin-Baylor 35, McMurry 24

Ryan’s take: Wesley 28, Linfield 27
Keith’s take: Linfield 24, Wesley 20
Pat’s take: Linfield 35, Wesley 34

Mount Union Bracket
Ryan’s take: Wabash 24,  North Central 21
Keith’s take: North Central 28, Wabash 20
Pat’s take: North Central 31, Wabash 20

Ryan’s take: Mount Union 41, Centre 14
Keith’s take: Mount Union 42, Centre 17
Pat’s take: Mount Union 50, Centre 13

ATN Podcast: A week in the books

Kean
UW-Whitewater was opportunistic on defense, to say the least.
Photo by Larry Radloff, d3photography.com

Four backup quarterbacks, a wide receiver at corner, a triple-overtime game, an “upset” that all three Triple Take predictors got right and a lot more happened in the first round of the 2011 Division III NCAA playoffs.

Best game? Check. Biggest surprise? We cover that. Best performance by a quarterback off the bench? Best time to turn off the cameras? Most surprising stat? Best defensive effort? Pat Coleman and Keith McMillan cover that and more in the Around the Nation podcast.

Plus Pat gets on his soapbox for a minute or two. But it’s quick.

You can also get this and any of our future Around the Nation podcasts automatically by subscribing to this RSS feed: http://www.d3blogs.com/d3football/?feed=podcast

Plus, here’s this week’s D3football.com reports, with eight of them, seven of which are mostly understandable. Keep your camera’s back to the wind!

Game Day: The best two hours of the year

McMurry
Josh Chatman is one of 10 players to catch a TD pass and one of 20 McMurry players to catch a pass this season.
McMurry athletics photo by Gerald Ewing

Around 2:00 p.m. ET, it will get really crazy. With nine noon games, six 1 p.m. games and a 3 p.m. game, things get really intense, and they do every year.

Some of the noon games come down to the wire. Some will be upsets. Some will have last-minute victories. The dust we’ll settle, we’ll move names forward in the brackets, and then the 1 p.m. games will come down as well. Follow it all here, with our live chat, on the scoreboard, and all the rest.

Follow with the live chat below, and use the #d3fb hashtag to join the conversation as well.