This is it, this is where the playoffs happen.

Last year, on a drive up to Thiel for the Johns Hopkins/Thiel game, Keith McMillan and I wrote down predicted scores for each of the first-round games, compared them and posted them on the blog.

Well, actually, I wrote my scores down. When I was done, I asked Keith for his scores. He was driving, after all.

Long trip.

But anyway, it turned into something we carried through the rest of the playoffs. Interesting to see the varying takes on the game.

Here we are. I invited Keith to e-mail his before he looks at these. We made our picks as independently of each other as possible.

North
Pat: Mount Union 52, Hope 7; Wheaton 42, Mt. St. Joseph 6; North Central 24, Concordia (Wis.) 21, Capital 50, Wittenberg 14
Keith: Mount Union 49, Hope 7; Wheaton 34, Mt. St. Joseph 21; Concordia (Wis.) 24, North Central 21 (OT); Capital 55, Wittenberg 14
Toss-ups: North Central/Concordia (Wis.)

East
Pat: Wilkes 31, Washington & Lee 3; Rowan 34, Hobart 10; St. John Fisher 31, Union 20; Springfield 48, Curry 24
Keith: Wilkes 20, Washington & Lee 0; Rowan 17, Hobart 13; St. John Fisher 42, Union 38; Curry 31, Springfield 28 (OT)
Toss-ups: Curry/Springfield

South
Pat: Wesley 48, Dickinson 12; Millsaps 35, Carnegie Mellon 34; Christopher Newport 28, Washington and Jefferson 27; Mary Hardin-Baylor 31, Hardin-Simmons 28
Keith: Wesley 42, Dickinson 21; Millsaps 35, Carnegie Mellon 28; Christopher Newport 28, Washington and Jefferson 17; Mary Hardin-Baylor 27, Hardin-Simmons 21 (OT)
Toss-ups: None, other than the margin in Delaware.

West
Pat: UW-Whitewater 62, St. Norbert 3; UW-La Crosse 24, Bethel 21; Whitworth 21, Occidental 19; St. John’s 20, Central 19 (OT)
Keith: UW-Whitewater 52, St. Norbert 14; UW-LaCrosse 35, Bethel 28; Whitworth 23,
Occidental 17; Central 23, St. John’s 21
Toss-ups: Central/St. John’s

I’ll be at Springfield, the guy taking pictures in the D3football.com hat. Keith will be calling color on one of our D3football.com broadcasts for NCAASports.com at Carnegie Mellon.

Alright, well, I’ve had the bracket in my hands for almost five hours so I’ve probably come to grips with it, but you guys haven’t had it nearly as long so it’s time to let out those pent-up frustrations.

I would really like to get to the bottom of the Millsaps mileage issue. The folks on the committee told me that the number they got was higher than 500 miles, so I’d like to know what it takes to standardize these distances. There’s a Web site the NCAA mandates schools to use to determine whether a game is in-region and that is indeed the site I used. Why they got different numbers, neither of us is sure.

In the end, it just means we have a regional semifinal one week early.

Looking forward to the potential matchup of Rowan and Wilkes in the second round. That should be a great game. Rowan is just getting its offense in gear and I’m not sure that Hobart, which struggled with William Paterson and others, can keep up. Wilkes is strong on defense as well. I haven’t seen the field since September, so I wonder what it looks like now.

Springfield, as I mentioned on the air, is in shape to play two games on turf, which bodes well for their offense. They need a lower seed to advance out of the other half of the bracket so they can continue to host on turf. They would get that if Rowan were to beat Wilkes, but I also doubt the Springfield/St. John Fisher potential rematch in round two would replicate round one. Springfield will still be favored but that doesn’t mean the game will be the same.

Can anyone aside from Capital hang with Mount Union in the top bracket? Can Capital even do it?

Kind of a neat story to get two long-time playoff drought teams together in round one in Pittsburgh. Contrast in styles, too.

West, two storied programs meet in the first round in Pella, while Bethel tries again to get the first-round monkey off its back.

Floor open for your thoughts.