Author Archives: Pat Coleman

ATN Podcast: What they got right

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Mickey Inns
Linfield has gone 9-0 with Mickey Inns at quarterback this season.
Photo by Rusty Rae

Usually we have some complaints about the bracket, so much so that there’s a category in the annual predictions column asking what the committee blew.

It’s not so much this time. There are a couple things that would have been better if fixed, and we’ll touch on those, but it’s not a deal-breaker. Unless, say, you’re Hobart.

Pat Coleman and Keith McMillan run down the brackets, give their surprises, look at some of the great matchups potentially ahead in the second and third weekends and have just a word of warning for UW-Whitewater fans. That and much more in this week’s Around the Nation Podcast. Scroll to the bottom and read the tags to see which teams are mentioned in this week’s show.

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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. Keith checks in from Randolph-Macon, Ryan Tipps from Wabash-DePauw and more.

Reaction to the brackets

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Well, this was a stunner! A positive one, but a stunner nonetheless. Just going to paste in some quick analysis and open the floor.

In short, no Endicott in this field and no Case, with St. John Fisher and Illinois College replacing them. So on a day in which we finally officially gave up on getting a two-loss at-large team into the field over a one-loss team, the NCAA finally did the right thing.

The NCAA also sprung for an extra flight, sending Cal Lutheran back to Linfield and giving Redlands a trip to Mary Hardin-Baylor.

The top eight seeds, teams placed at either end of the four brackets: UW-Whitewater and Salisbury (top left), St. Thomas and Delaware Valley (bottom left), Mary Hardin-Baylor and Wesley (top right), and Wabash and Mount Union (bottom right).

This is a bracket similar to the ones the NCAA Division III mens basketball committee has been putting out the past couple of years. Mount Union is in a bracket with three other north teams, two west teams and two south teams. Hobart is essentially a seven seed, sent to Wesley for the first round and would fly if it won that game.

Opening the floor. Thoughts?

Our projected bracket

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Endicott's Mike Fimiani
Will we see Endicott in the field?
Endicott photo by David Le Photography

So this is what happens when nobody loses. The team with the best at-large chance that lost in Week 11 was Louisiana College. (Talk about a loss that barely made a ripple on a busy day.) So in the end, we ended up with the same six Pool C teams that it looked like it would be before the weekend started.

But we still went through all of the steps anyway, just to make sure.

Wesley was our Pool B team. Although they had a regional loss, it doesn’t seem right to make national decisions without the secondary criteria. For more about the selection criteria, check our FAQ. So both teams are 9-1 at that point, Wesley has a much better strength of schedule and a win against a regionally ranked team … whereas Case Western Reserve didn’t even play any.

Pool C went like this for us: Redlands, Illinois Wesleyan, Case Western Reserve, McMurry, Centre and Endicott last. Here’s a shorthand look at their resumes:

Team Reg. W-L SOS Results vs. reg. ranked opps.
Redlands 8-1 .547 WvNCtrl, L@CLU
Illinois Wesleyan 9-1 .540 WvWtn, LvNCtrl
Case Western Reserve 9-0 .487 NA
McMurry 7-1 .530 L@UMHB (also 1-1 vs. two I-AA/FCS opponents)
Centre 8-1 .565 L@TTX
Endicott 9-1 .523 L@WNEU

The remaining 1-loss team, Illinois College, has a .497 strength of schedule. Then there are many 2-loss teams. We think many of them are better than Endicott, however, the NCAA never ever ever sees it this way. If Wheaton or St. John Fisher were to make the field, we’d be surprised, but it would be a better field.

Enough with the explanation. Here’s our bracket. It’s a PDF download, so if you can’t see the PDF on that page, there’s a link to download it for yourself.

That gives us our 32 teams. From that we take picked four top seeds, and we took UW-Whitewater, Mount Union, Mary Hardin-Baylor and St. Thomas. Remember one of the new criteria the NCAA football committee can use as a tiebreaker among unbeaten teams is performance in last year’s playoffs. With that, UW-Whitewater and Mount Union no longer have to worry about their top seeds, but also, it can be used as a tiebreaker for top seeds.

Why no two-loss teams? Pat Coleman explains why.