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ATN Podcast 395: In the Captains’ seat

The Captains of Christopher Newport are back in the playoffs for the second time in three years and for the 12th time in their relatively short history. And they got there by knocking the Sea Gulls of Salisbury off their perch on Saturday night, in a pretty epic battle under the lights.

In one week, Eastern went from the driver’s seat in the Middle Atlantic Conference to booking a ticket to the big dance for the first time — and this is a program that three years ago, had never even been on this metaphorical bus. We bring Eastern coach Billy Crocker for another round on the Fast Five machine, after he last joined us for Podcast 333.

And who knows what seat at the table Hudson Fulcher-Melendy will be relegated to this Thanksgiving when the family gathers for the feast. Hudson is the Amherst kicker, who was 4-for-4 on field goals in Amherst’s 14-13 win, and whose sisters Dylan and Madison played women’s volleyball and soccer, respectively, for Williams, and whose mom, Lisa Melendy, has been athletic director at Williams for the past 15 years!

Honestly, if someone is telling you F&M and Coe have no chance to make this field if they lose … they may be working with faulty assumptions. To do that accurately, you have to project the results of all of the remaining Week 11 games, and projecting the team with the higher NPI as the winner across a hundred games is going to get you some data that doesn’t line up. F&M and Coe absolutely have a chance, and in Analytics 301, Logan Hansen will tell you who else has a chance with two losses.

Plus we hand out game balls, bring you through the crazy stats of the week, highlight the key goings-on in Region 1 through Region 6, get you games to look forward to next week. And we take your questions in the mailbag segment. That and moreĀ in this edition of the D3football.com Around the Nation podcast.

Hit play, or subscribe to get this podcast on your mobile device.

You can subscribe to the Around the Nation Podcast in Apple Podcasts, and many other places. You can also get this and any of our future Around the Nation podcasts automatically by subscribing to this RSS feed: http://www.d3blogs.com/d3football/?feed=podcast

Here’s how to find us on some of the major podcasting apps:

 

Theme music: Power 2 by DJmentos.
Photos by Kris DuFour, Amherst athletics; Hanover athletics; Photo for Christopher Newport athletics by Sydney Smith

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ATN Podcast 391: No. 1, on top of the world

Montie Quinn should have been a household name to you already. He was a D3football.com All-America running back last season, rushing for 1,600 yards. He’d had two 200-yard rushing games already this season, he’s now over 5,000 rushing yards for his career … if you only found out about him on Saturday, or Sunday, that’s a bummer. When he exploded for 522 yards in a win vs. Nichols on Saturday, you should have said, yeah, actually, I can see that happening.

Quinn had an amazing Saturday, and probably spent a good amount of Sunday doing interviews. You can find his story in The Athletic, and on area TV stations, with more to come. And he chatted with us as well, just like he did this past summer. Quinn is our Fast Five guest — sorry, our Fast 522, plus he gets a game ball, of course, and much more.

If not for that, we’d be talking even more about the incredible game that took place between John Carroll and DePauw on Saturday, one that ended in a fashion that people will talk about for years, with the sunlight all but gone and with a touchdown catch with 14.4 seconds left. We talk about the learnings for the Blue Streaks and the Tigers and yes, DePauw still has plenty of weapons.

UW-Platteville and UW-La Crosse had to dig into their two-deeps to find starting running backs this week, and Platteville came out on top. Hear from freshman running back Blake Bangston, who ran for 105 yards and a touchdown, as well as sophomore quarterback Nate Uselding and coach Ryan Munz about the win.

Also, we’ll share the story of the person who thought he held the Division III single-game rushing record some years ago, only to have it taken away.

Plus, Patrick and Greg hand out game balls, spotlight the unusual stats of the week, Logan Hansen talks about which teams have the best chance of getting a top-eight seed and protected home field in the playoffs, we go around each region for even more stories and much more in this edition of the D3football.com Around the Nation podcast.

Note: This edition of the podcast originally contained a reaction to a social media post by a Division III football program’s official account that we later understood to be faked footage. We have removed our reaction and reissued the episode.

Hit play, or subscribe to get this podcast on your mobile device.

You can subscribe to the Around the Nation Podcast in Apple Podcasts, and many other places. You can also get this and any of our future Around the Nation podcasts automatically by subscribing to this RSS feed: http://www.d3blogs.com/d3football/?feed=podcast

Here’s how to find us on some of the major podcasting apps:

 

Theme music: Power 2 by DJmentos.
Photos by Ryan Coleman, d3photography.com; Matt Johnson for Curry athletics; CJ Lyon

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ATN Podcast 390: W’s and L’s, X’s and O’s, 0’s and 1’s

These are the things that make up Division III football this time of year. W’s and L’s as in wins and losses, X’s and O’s as in how plays and schemes are drawn up on paper, and 0’s and 1’s as in the data that is used to determine who will make the playoffs and how they’ll be seeded, in the NCAA Power Index.

We got the first look at the NCAA’s version of the data in the NPI this week, and no surprise to anyone here that the data fully passed inspection and is exactly the same as what we’ve seen on D3datacast — that’s the link on our home page menu, for your reference.

Of course, there were some great games to run down this week, such as how the folks at Johns Hopkins put together a third- and fourth-quarter rally to get past Carnegie Mellon. We talk about how the game turned, what can be learned, how the teams can grow from here. Hardin-Simmons/Mary Hardin-Baylor and Berry-Trinity (Texas) were big games that ended up not being close. What’s up with UMHB? And we also chat with Tony Kunczewski, the head coach at Berry, about his team’s big day and their win in our Fast 5 segment.

And yes, there were upsets in the WIAC. Or were there? What really constitutes an upset in WIAC games these days? Co-hosts Patrick Coleman and Greg Thomas talk it through.

Patrick and Greg hand out game balls, spotlight the unusual stats of the week, Logan Hansen talks about which teams have the best chance of getting a top-eight seed and protected home field in the playoffs, we go around each region for even more stories and much more in this edition of the D3football.com Around the Nation podcast.

Hit play, or subscribe to get this podcast on your mobile device.

You can subscribe to the Around the Nation Podcast in Apple Podcasts, and many other places. You can also get this and any of our future Around the Nation podcasts automatically by subscribing to this RSS feed: http://www.d3blogs.com/d3football/?feed=podcast

Here’s how to find us on some of the major podcasting apps:

 

Theme music: Power 2 by DJmentos.
Photo by Steven Eckhoff for Berry athletics