Game Day: Sixteen go home

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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

Triple Take: We predict the scores

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We go into everything with expectations. That’s part of human nature, and the approach to the Division III postseason is no different.

Undoing an element of those expectations is the fact that there are no seeds attached to any of the games listed below. Consider this, then, to be a blank slate of sorts. Pat Coleman, Keith McMillan and I give you our individual predictions for Saturday. We didn’t collaborate in any way on these (no discussions, no sneak peeks, etc.) and it appears we have picked a consensus winner in all but a handful of games.

The postseason Triple Take predictions are not intended to be lines on the games, but rather a broad test of outcome vs. expectations.

— Ryan Tipps

Pat: Mount Union 53, Washington and Jefferson 10
Ryan: Mount Union 42, Washington and Jefferson 10
Keith: Mount Union 35, Washington and Jefferson 16

Pat: Montclair State 24, Maine Maritime 19
Ryan: Montclair State 20, Maine Maritime 17
Keith: Montclair State 19, Maine Maritime 7

Pat: Alfred 31, Albright 27
Ryan: Alfred 24, Albright 20
Keith: Alfred 28, Albright 27

Pat: Delaware Valley 37, Susquehanna 14
Ryan: Delaware Valley 31, Susquehanna 13
Keith: Delaware Valley 28, Susquehanna 10

Pat: Wesley 41, North Carolina Wesleyan 17
Ryan: Wesley 34, North Carolina Wesleyan 14
Keith: Wesley 31, North Carolina Wesleyan 3

Pat: Huntingdon 38, Mississippi College 35
Ryan: Mississippi College 24, Huntingdon 7
Keith: Mississippi College 28, Huntingdon 17

Pat: Hampden-Sydney 38, Johns Hopkins 20
Ryan: Hampden-Sydney 28, Johns Hopkins 14
Keith: Hampden-Sydney 35, Johns Hopkins 14

Pat: Thomas More 20, DePauw 17
Ryan: DePauw 20, Thomas More 17
Keith: Thomas More 20, DePauw 9

Pat: UW-Whitewater 58, Lakeland 7
Ryan: UW-Whitewater 52, Lakeland 6
Keith: UW-Whitewater 44, Lakeland 0

Pat: Illinois Wesleyan 24, Wabash 20
Ryan: Illinois Weseylan 28, Wabash 21
Keith: Illinois Wesleyan 14, Wabash 13

Pat: Trine 35, Case Western Reserve 31
Ryan: Case Western Reserve 41, Trine 31
Keith: Case Western Reserve 31, Trine 21

Pat: Wittenberg 20, Mount St. Joseph 6
Ryan: Wittenberg 17, Mount St. Joseph 9
Keith: Wittenberg 21, Mount St. Joseph 3

Pat: Coe 10, St. John’s 7
Ryan: St. John’s 28, Coe 7
Keith: St. John’s 14, Coe 12

Pat: St. Thomas 31, Monmouth 24
Ryan: Monmouth 34, St. Thomas 31
Keith: Monmouth 31, St. Thomas 28

Pat: Mary Hardin-Baylor 28, Central 17
Ryan: Central 21, Mary Hardin-Baylor 17
Keith: Mary Hardin-Baylor 27, Central 24, 2OT

Pat: Linfield 31, Cal Lutheran 14
Ryan: Linfield 38, Cal Lutheran 20
Keith: Linfield 28, Cal Lutheran 21

There are no seedings

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Apparently, the reason we can’t get seedings for this year’s Division III football playoff bracket is because they don’t exist.

Before 1999, the bracket was seeded fairly simply: There were only 16 teams in the playoffs, four in each bracket, always four from each region and they never crossed over. The seedings followed the last regional ranking. Hosting privileges in the national semifinals rotated from region to region.

Starting in 1999 and beyond, the bracket got larger and more complicated, but we always got seeds from the NCAA, applied them to the bracket and passed them along to you, the Division III football players, fans and coaches. This year, apparently the seedings were never even discussed.

I explained that that seemed unlikely — that somehow they had determined who would play whom and who had home games this weekend. Therefore, there must be some pecking order of teams somewhere. I mentioned that our readers are familiar with the occasions where No. 1 does not play No. 8 because of geography, or No. 2 does not play No. 7, etc. I said that people understood that teams were seeded by bracket, not by region. I said you people know that sometimes teams cannot host because they didn’t file paperwork, or their stadium doesn’t meet standards.

But none of this had an effect.

I explained that openness was a good thing. That men’s and women’s soccer released their final regional rankings. That, as a result of the discussion at the NCAA Convention, everyone will be going in that direction soon, next year even.

But that didn’t help. They would have to reconvene the committee in order to seed teams.

What we can get, and we will pass along to you, is a set of scenarios that determine who will play where in the next round depending on who wins this week.

That will have to be what passes for openness.

But for the first time in my experience following the playoffs, back to 1994, we won’t know who will go where. Not yet.