If it seemed like all the good games were clustered in one time zone on Saturday, well, yeah, you’re right. The 1 p.m. ET games featured some great finishes, with onside kicks coming minutes apart and a double overtime game coming down to the wire. Hear the end of the Illinois Wesleyan-Wabash game (thanks to Wabash’s broadcast), as well as the Coe player who returned two turnovers for touchdowns and get a report from the Thomas More-DePauw game.

Plus, Keith McMillan and Pat Coleman report on the games they covered and break down the rest of the brackets. What did Case Western Reserve and Monmouth have in common? Who had the biggest letdown of the first round? Where is the success concentrated in the playoffs? And looking further down the road, is there a team that can prevent a fifth Mount Union/UW-Whitewater matchup? There’s that and more in this week’s Around the Nation Podcast.

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Good morning, Division III fans.

As those of you focused on the playoff picture eagerly await Wednesday afternoon’s release of the selection committee’s regional rankings, I thought I’d further an experiment I started Tuesday morning on the Pool C thread of Post Patterns.

Attempting to illustrate the not-seen-before possibilities the geography of this year’s potential field allows, I slapped together a mock bracket to get some discussion going. I’ll run a slightly-adjusted version of that bracket below, plus a more traditional one, and maybe even a third to show how slightly altering the field via Pool C can have a domino effect.

Let it be very clear that these are not things I think will or should happen, necessarily. And I wouldn’t want anyone to confuse a few of my hastily-assembled mocks with Pat and Gordon’s carefully crafted, traditionally accurate night-before-Selection-Sunday projections. There are too many unknowns as of yet to spend a lot of time working up something we’re likely to see Sunday, but it’s not too early to consider as many possibilities as situations might allow.

Mock One

Pool C teams: UMHB, St. Thomas, Coe, Wabash, Redlands, Lebanon Valley/Albright winner

1 Mount Union
8 Union

4 Thomas More
5 Alfred

3 Case Western Reserve
6 Mount St. Joseph

2 Wittenberg
7 Trine
————
1 UW-Whitewater
8 DePauw

4 Ill. Wesleyan
5 Wabash

3 Monmouth
6 Coe

7 St. Thomas
2 Central
———–
1 Wesley
7 LV/Albright

3 Hampden-Sydney
8 NCWC/Averett winner

4 Kean/Montclair State
5 Curry

2 Delaware Valley
6 Johns Hopkins

————
1 St. John’s
8 NathCon champ

3 Huntingdon
6 Mississippi College

4 Cal Lutheran
5 UMHB

7 Redlands
2 Linfield

Mock Two

Pool C teams: St. Thomas, St. Norbert, Dickinson, Coe, Mary Hardin-Baylor, Ohio Northern

1 Mount Union
8 Susquehanna

4 Mount St. Joseph
5 Ohio Northern

3 Case Western Reserve
6 Alfred

2 Kean/Montclair
7 Johns Hopkins
————
1 UW-Whitewater
7 Trine

4 Wittenberg
5 Thomas More

3 Monmouth
6 Ill. Wesleyan

8 (Nath Con)
2 Central
———–
1 Wesley
8 Curry

4 Huntingdon
5 Mississippi College

3 H-SC
6 NCWC/Averett

2 Delaware Valley
7 Dickinson
————
1 St. John’s
8 St. Norbert

4 St. Thomas
5 Coe

4 UMHB
5 DePauw

7 Cal Lutheran
2 Linfield

Mock Three

Pool C teams: LV/Albright, Otterbein, Wabash, W&J, UMHB, St. Thomas

1 Mount Union
8 Wash. & Jeff.

4 Case Western Reserve
5 St. John Fisher

3 Montclair/Kean
6 Maine Maritime

2 Susquehanna
7 Delaware Valley
————
1 UW-Whitewater
8 Concordia (Wis.)

5 Otterbein
4 Wabash

3 Wittenberg
6 Mount St. Joseph

7 Illinois Wesleyan
2 St. John’s
———–
1 Wesley
8 Randolph-Macon

4 Dickinson
5 Leb Val/Albright

3 Miss. Coll.
6 UMHB

7 Averett
2 Huntingdon
————
1 Central
8 St. Thomas

4 Thomas More
5 Trine

3 Monmouth
6 DePauw

7 Cal Lutheran
2 Linfield

No. 1 seeds: as for the top seeds, I did not determine who would meet in the semis with these brackets. But I think it’s likely that UW-W and St. John’s brackets would be paired and Mount Union and Wesley would, based on how the teams have been ranked.

Quick observations: This is hard work. … As you can see in mock 3, I tried, but I don’t think with all the Ohio area teams set to make the field that it’s a great idea to build the East around Mount Union. It makes sense to do the North there and group a bunch of the Pa. teams around Wesley … I tried in mock 3 to throw some of the improbable AQ winners in there to bump the familiar names … unless UMHB misses out, splitting up those three deep south teams is going to be costly … seeds vary a lot through the mocks, and some of the brackets would likely be seeded differently than the traditional 1-8, 5-4, 3-6, 7-2.

Anyway, let me know what you think below. Happy speculating!