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| A week before Bethel hit on a two-point conversion as part of an infamous ending to its game against Concordia-Moorhead, it denied Augsburg’s go-ahead two-point try and held on to win. Photo by Ryan Coleman, d3photography.com |
Earlier in the week, before we published the annual Around the Nation Year in Review column, we provided a sneak peek to some of our avid Twitter followers. They of course, enjoyed the peek, but pointed out things we missed.
The ATN YIR can’t be completely comprehensive, what with 1,200 games per season, but since we all have different perspectives, perhaps there were some moments that didn’t make our cut that still deserve discussing.
Augsburg SID Don Stoner pointed out a pretty relevant oversight:
Keith:
An addendum to your end-of-year story, regarding Bethel’s living and dying by the two-point conversion:
The week prior to Bethel’s last-second win over Concordia-Moorhead, the Royals claimed a 21-20 win at Augsburg. With 1:46 left to play, Augsburg scored on a fourth-down touchdown pass to cut the Royals’ lead to 21-20, but a Bethel defender knocked away a pass by the Auggies on a two-point conversion attempt. Augsburg did have another chance to win the game with 32 seconds remaining, but a Bethel interception ended the threat.
One other possible note for you:
Augsburg claimed last-second, “Hail Mary” victories on the road two seasons in a row. In 2011, the Auggies claimed a 32-31 win in the “Miracle in Collegeville” at St. John’s; this year (Sept. 15), the Auggies scored a 26-24 win at Gustavus in the “Miracle in St. Peter,” as first-year quarterback Ayrton Scott threw a 42-yard touchdown pass to Hakeem Bourne-McFarlane on the final offensive play of the game. Augsburg drove 80 yards on seven plays in the final 34 seconds of the game to claim the win. Bourne-McFarlane pulled double-duty for the Auggies this year, as both a safety on defense and wide receiver on offense.
I’d be glad to consider your oversights, especially if you point them out as kindly as Don did. Not everything we missed is because we didn’t want to include it. Sometimes we just forget.
And in case you missed them in the column, here are our Plays of the Week, compiled into a Plays of the Year video:
Also two-point conversions that could have been mentioned: UW-Platteville trying and missing at UW-Whitewater, losing 27-26 and missing the playoffs at 8-2, like Concordia-Moorhead did.
And Framingham State in Round 1 of the playoffs, missing a normal PAT (if I recall correctly) and losing 20-19 at Cortland State.
Also Ryan Coleman sent this regarding the number of starters:
Well, I look at it this way… you have n games, right? and each game has 2 teams… each team has 11 defense, 11 offense, a punter and a kicker… so…
24*2 = 48 starters per game…
48 * n = z (number) of starters on the year
z – 1 (missing man formation used by W&J) = actual number of starters used (since the first play from the line of scrimmage on offense would be 10 and not 11)…
Right — I am sure the idea behind Keith’s number was to recognize the number of starters in Division III in general, not the overall number of people who started a game this season.
Keith (and crew), I think you nailed it. Good wrap up of the season. It was a nice breath of fresh air in the midst of the winter blahs – thanx! See you all next year.
St Thomas Defense had 12 sacks on week 5 against Gustavus.
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