The second week of the playoffs is always a different animal … or an odd bird, perhaps.

I just talked to Kevin Niehus, one of our broadcasters at the Johns Hopkins-Thomas More game and he said Johns Hopkins looked pretty good getting off the bus. And that’s what we’re left with here in the second week of the playoffs — the teams that might not look good in that instance have been eliminated.

This is also an odd week because of Thanksgiving. The holiday changes everyone’s travel plans, it keeps students away from the game because they’re at home or otherwise away from campus, and the games just have a different feel. The stadium might be a little more empty. The day might be a little colder. But the games are even more important.

That’s what we’re looking at today.

All aboard.

Keith McMillan will be at Maine Maritime-Montclair State. I’ll be at Coe-St. John’s. Gordon Mann will be broadcasting Susquehanna-Delaware Valley and Joe Davis will be broadcasting at St. Thomas-Monmouth.

Some pretty good teams will be going home today, as well as some not-so-good teams. Someone has to play the part of Mount St. Mary’s or Florida A&M in this bracket, but that shouldn’t make the trip less memorable for them or make the conference championship any less of a recruiting boost among their prospects.

Later in the day, the site probably will get slow. One of the things we do when we have to keep the site operating under heavy traffic is close down the Daily Dose. We always hope it won’t come to that, but I just wanted you to be forewarned.

Scoreboard, Twitter, Daily Dose, lots of live video (more than half of the games). Plenty of ways to get your fix.

St. John’s and Coe trade fumbles. Then SJU’s Bobby Klint drops a wide-wide-open INT. 13-7 Coe 4:29 2nd.

Daily Dose closed. Get updates here:
http://twitter.com/d3football

I just spent an hour plugging games into the D3soccer.com scoreboard and am more than ready to turn my attention to football. The game I’m most interested in is conveniently provided to me by HDNet, so I’m at home watching the DePauw/Wabash game on the big screen, in HD.

I was at this game last year, at Wabash, but I think I might have a better view today.

Aside from that, of course, the five head-to-head championship games, Pool C teams trying to win out and Pool B teams basically secure and looking to preserve their seeding.

We’ll also track who’s in the field, with 11 bids left to hand out.

Have at it! Big day! We’ll have a final set of playoff projections tonight, hopefully pretty early.

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