Looking ahead to Saturday

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The upper midwest should be the focus this weekend, with Top 15 teams squaring off in both Wisconsin and Minnesota. But neither game is necessarily going to wrap up the WIAC and MIAC races. No. 5 St. John’s takes its 6-0 mark to No. 13 Concordia-Moorhead, where both teams could use a little practice hanging onto the ball. St. John’s has turned the ball over 20 times in six games, while Concordia-Moorhead fumbled it 10 times last week alone, losing eight of them. They’re also the top two scoring defenses in the league, allowing 10.8 and 14.0 points per game.

In Wisconsin, No. 10 UW-La Crosse hosts No. 7 UW-Whitewater. This is a rare game for the WIAC in Week 7, two teams that have combined for one loss, and are unbeaten against Division III teams.

Those games are obvious big games, as is the other Top 25 matchup, with No. 22 Carthage at No. 16 North Central. Here’s some others:

Friday Night Audios: Of course, even though we always call this Looking ahead to Saturday, we can’t ignore Friday’s games this time around. Ferrum (6-0) puts its unbeaten record on the line against Methodist (4-1) tonight at Franklin County HS, a home game for Ferrum. And Johns Hopkins (5-0, 2-0 Centennial) hosts Gettysburg (2-3, 1-0) tonight as well. Both games are scheduled to be broadcast online, check our Scoreboard page for links.

Can’t look ahead: No. 3 Hardin-Simmons hosts No. 11 Mary Hardin-Baylor a week from Saturday, but can’t be caught napping on East Texas Baptist this week. Similarly for Ohio Northern against Otterbein in advance of next week’s game at Mount Union.

Playing favorites: Bowdoin is a surprising 3-0 and now hosts Hamilton, a game it would be expected to win even in a normal season. How will the Polar Bears handle success?

This never happens: Kenyon hosts Allegheny this week, and the Lords are actually ahead in the NCAC standings at 2-0 to the Gators 1-1.

Explain this one: When cardiac kids Albright and Delaware Valley play each other, how will it end? Will it end? If it’s boring, does the loser have to go with Susquehanna to the Liberty League? (And yes, this is apparently more than just Post Patterns rumor.)

Didn’t you used to be good? Springfield travels to Plymouth State. These teams have combined for three wins this season, one against first-year program Becker. When this year’s seniors were beign recruited, Plymouth State was in the process of going 7-3. Springfield averaged almost nine wins over the past three seasons.

Words are yummy: Back in our preseason Kickoff special, I predicted that Southern Oregon would be the team that loses to Linfield by the fewest number of points. Hey Raiders, gotta keep it under 15 points. Best of luck with that. Weren’t you supposed to be better than 0-5? Yikes.

But regardless of what happens tonight (I’m heading to Johns Hopkins), my day has already been made. Picked up the local paper and saw D3football.com cited on the front page of the sports section in a story on Frostburg State defensive lineman Kevin Culbert. Of course, it was the Oct. 4 edition, but that’s what was sitting in the lobby of my daughter’s school.

Press coverage

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Hey all,
just thought I’d use our blog to link any articles about any kind of D3 football that I’m finding while looking for other stuff. I’ll try to avoid standard game stories and previews, but it’s always nice to know who covers us and who doesn’t. Feel free to post links in comments.

The NYU student paper’s take on UAA football

A story, albeit a couple weeks old, on Daily Dose favorite Ferrum being undefeated.

Here are a few papers to Google to follow certain teams:

The Harrisonburg Daily Record (Bridgewater, Va.)
The Marietta Times (Marietta)
Redlands Daily Facts (Redlands)

There are many more, of course, but my day job beckons.

Insider: Three big weeks

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Every matchup between Linfield and Pacific Lutheran has its own distinct flavor. Our offensive game plan has varied year to year, depending on our strengths and weeknesses.

My first two years featured a dominating run game with two All-American tight ends in Luke Bucheit and Marcus Ward opening holes for the triple threat running back core of Marty Williams, David Russel and Thomas Ford. In 2003 and 2004 we took to the air by going four wide and picking our spots to run inside. But regardless of game plans, schemes, personnel or year, you can count on the game being intense. You can’t ignore the 50+ years of competition between the two teams. Lute week practices are always a little more intense than usual and game days have a little extra buzz around them.

The 2005 chapter stayed true to these themes and they came out firing. The first half of the game they were relentless. Their offense controlled the ball, limiting us to only four possessions and we led by only 8 at the half. But as we always do, the defense made adjustments at half and the offense opened things up in the second half to eventually coast to the win.

At the end of the season, we may look back and see this game as a catalyst, particularly for the offensive line. Watching film, we saw an undersized defensive line that we felt we could push around a bit. We were able to put quite a few guys on the ground running the ball and in pass protection. We took it upon ourselves to physically dominate the game and the attitude carried over into the Whitworth match up. Although the Pirates were a bigger team than the Lutes, we knew we could control their front 7 as well. We were able to run the ball inside and out, and by the 4th quarter I believe they were worn down.

It only took another hour or so to wear us down which normally wouldn’t be too bad but we still had another 6 and half to go on the trip back home. Our trip out to Spokane started with bus loading friday morning at 8. We made it to Kennewick, Washington by 1 where we had walk through practices at a local high school. We were graced with the presence of Thomas Ford who is living in town while playing for the Tri-Cities arena team. Former quarterback Blake Kluse is coaching at the high school and was able to pay us a visit as well. After the traditional road trip buffet for dinner, we set off on the last two hours to Spokane. We finished off the night with step-its in the hotel parking lot before calling it a night.

The morning started with breakfast across the street and special teams meetings to follow. We loaded the bus for the final 15 minutes to the stadium and arrive 2 and half hours before game time. The trip home was much more direct, stopping only once at a gas station to fill up, stretch and get some drinks. Total time in transit: 18 hours.

This week against Southern Oregon doesn’t get any easier. We bus out Saturday morning and are on the road until 3:30 for the 6 o’clock game. We head straight home afterwards, usually pulling in by 1 in the morning.

But this trip could very well be one that will go down in history. If won, Linfield will have reached an unprecedented milestone; 50 consecutive winning seasons. It should be a huge game with hundreds of fans making the trip. But by next week it will have been just another game; 1 more step on our journey for another national championship.