Did you hear about that Rose-Hulman game?

Posted on September 15, 2014 by Pat Coleman

Greg Lee celebrates scoring the winning touchdown in a game that went into three overtimes and tied the record for most points in a game in D-III history.
(Rose-Hulman athletics photo)

On Saturday afternoon the buzz was about the way Wartburg defeated Bethel and kept its early-season surge going at 2-0.

Long after the sun had set, however, Rose-Hulman and Illinois College were still playing, attracting the attention of college football fans across the country and ending up on a little program called SportsCenter. Hard to say that was the most important game of the week, but it certainly was the most intriguing, and suffice it to say that Pat and Keith found a few ways to talk about it.

It’s game that Rose-Hulman and Illinois College players and fans will be talking about for a lifetime.

Meanwhile, game balls were handed out, and more. It’s Week 2 of the retooled Around the Nation Podcast, so listen in.

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You can subscribe to the Around the Nation Podcast in iTunes. 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, the D3football.com Postgame Show is back: Check out highlights and reports from games across Division III. Are we missing your highlights? Post in the comments below.

Top 25 poll analysis

Posted on September 8, 2014 by Pat Coleman

Wartburg played its way up in the Top 25.
Photo by Caleb Williams, d3photography.com

I’ve often told people that you can’t just analyze a team’s placement or movement in the Top 25 in a vacuum. The reality is, all 25 teams’ placement (and those in the others receiving votes) are all relative.

Case in point this week: Wittenberg moves down three spots in the first regular-season D3football.com Top 25 after losing by six to Butler, a Division I FCS team (albeit, a non-scholarship opponent). When I’m voting, I try to keep a few things in mind: Did we expect this result, or should we have expected them to win? That may mean I don’t drop Wittenberg or a team in a similar situation (Thomas More) on my ballot.

Nonetheless, Wittenberg dropped three spots. And in all honesty, that’s because Wabash and Wartburg really deserved to move up. Wabash beat a ranked team, while Wartburg basically dismantled a pretty decent team.

It may also be helpful to look at the poll points. They can tell you two things — first of all, where are the tiers of teams, and secondly, how far a team truly moved each week.

Going back to Wittenberg as our example: The Tigers received 244 points in the preseason poll and 225 in the Week 1 poll. That difference of 19 points means that the 25 voters moved Wittenberg an average of about one spot on their ballot. But Wartburg went from 175 points to 267 (plus-92) and Wabash went from 191 to 294 (plus-103). Johns Hopkins, the other team that passed Wittenberg, gained 74 points as they helped erase one of the preseason concerns about their offense.

Wesley and Linfield swap spots. I think it’s pretty easy to see that Wesley beating a ranked team is more impressive than Linfield not playing. And this was only a shift of 12 points: Wesley trailed Linfield by five in the preseason and leads by seven now. There is a cluster of teams ranked 4-7 that are within 18 points of each other, then a big dropoff to No. 8 UW-Platteville and another one to No. 9 St. John Fisher.

A new podcast for the new season

Posted on September 7, 2014 by Pat Coleman

Thomas More gets credit for scheduling up, as go a handful of other teams, even though they lost.
(Wesley athletics photo)

The eighth season of the Around the Nation Podcast is underway. Pat and Keith run down the big news of the day, plus share their picks for game balls, most interesting stat lines, run through the past week’s predictions and more.

Is it better to schedule down or schedule up in non-conference games? Pat and Keith give their opening week opinions. Plus, please let us know how you feel about the new podcast format, as we continue to tweak it for the 2014 season.

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