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ATN Podcast 416: Living up to the hype

The task seemed impossible: For as long as we’ve been waiting for these Week 1 games and talking about them, especially the two in the Chicago suburbs featuring four of the top five teams in the country, they couldn’t possibly live up to the hype we’d given them. Could they?

Well, perhaps they couldn’t both live up to the hype, but one sure as heck did, as No. 5 Wheaton knocked off No. 3 Mount Union when offensive guard Aiden Byrne blocked the Purple Raiders’ attempt to tie the game with an extra point kick with 22 seconds left. So it was all celebration for the Thunder, and Patrick Coleman was there and brings the sounds and the observations, as we hear from Wheaton coach Jesse Scott in Fast Five, and we’ll hear from Byrne as well.

Patrick was also at the Bethel-North Central game, three-quarters of it anyway, so he got the gist, and we’ll talk about the key new personnel for North Central as well as what was missing for Bethel, plus the things that the No. 1-ranked Cardinals and No. 2 Royals need to work on. And we’ll dive heavily into No. 11 St. John’s win vs. No. 10 UW-La Crosse also. And how many viewers did the Wheaton win get?

Logan Hansen comes back to the podcast for the regular season with his breakdown of the top learnings from the week from an analytics perspective in Analytics 301, a 3 minute and 1 second swing through the big games coming up as well as key questions: Will the WIAC have a decent shot of getting four teams in the playoffs again?

Plus, Patrick and Greg Thomas swing through all six regions of Division III. Who’s only just begun in Region 1? Who has a clue in Region 2, etc.? Plus they hand out game balls, pick out the stats of the week, and answer your mailbag questions. How did our team’s Week 1 predictions go? Yes, we hold each other accountable for that and we’ll own up to it on every weekly podcast. Plus, in the Final Countdown, three results that surprised each of us from this week. We talk about dozens of teams and dozens of games, so check it all out on 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

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Photos: Michael Hudson Photography; Ryan Coleman, d3photography.com; Steve Woltmann for North Central athletics

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ATN Podcast 394: All the Falcons, and Knights, and Panthers

Two top 10 teams square off, and one team does something it hasn’t done in a quarter century. Yep, that’s a big deal. Heck, UW-River Falls hadn’t beaten UW-Whitewater that handily since the 1980s. We have talked about Kaleb Blaha fairly often on this podcast in the last few years, and that’s because he’s darn good, and was a big-game player on Saturday.

Three of the 27 automatic bids to the playoffs have already been handed out, and we give our assessment of how Wartburg, Concordia Wisconsin and Hanover will likely fare, what type of seeding they might end up with, and the like. Plus there are several head-to-head games for conference automatic bids this weekend, and we’ll talk through those as well.

Of course, you’ll never guess whether home teams or road teams won the big games in the WIAC. OK, maybe you’ll guess.

Plus, one time drove perfectly all day in Division III, and another drove perfectly long, more than 12 minutes?! Patrick and Greg hand out game balls. We take four mailbag questions, and make good use of Logan Hansen’s D-III NPI Simulator in the process. Who should you root for or against if you need an at-large bid? There are answers out there for you.

Logan Hansen talks about which teams still have a chance of getting an at-large bid and at least one of them may surprise you! 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.
Photos by Wade Gardner, d3photography.com; Hanover athletics; Photo for Concordia (Wis.) athletics by Katelyn Cardinale

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ATN Podcast 361: Big wins from new faces

With so many teams taking the week off, there was a big opportunity to step up and grab the spotlight, and boy did schools such as LaGrange and Bates do exactly that. Nothing like getting a double-digit game losing streak off your back.

Plus, a game of the week that absolutely looked like one, as we break down Carnegie Mellon at Washington & Jefferson. In addition, Patrick got eyes on Bethel for the first time this season as the Royals hosted St. John’s and we get his take on how the Johnnies look and how the new-look Bethel offense is shaking out.

And then Patrick has some words for the D3football.com Top 25 voter panel — some of them, at least.

Plus, Hope keeps running and running and ran its way into our Top 25 this week. Like we said in Podcast 360, they could run enough to keep the Alma offense off the field and they did just that. Flying Dutch coach Peter Stuursma joins us to talk about it in Fast Five.

We’ll whip you through the big games in Division III from this past weekend, catch up with a brand-new running back with an interesting background, see who had an overflow crowd and who will have to wait a long time to see if they are truly playoff material. Plus, who’s having fun in the 1? Who’s pulling through in the 2? What do we see in the 3? Who’s looking for more in the 4? Who’s looking alive in the 5? And, who’s got a new bag of trick in the 6? To see a list of all the teams talked about in this podcast, look at the list at the bottom of the post.

Math Correspondent Logan Hansen talks about the three biggest playoff leverage games for Week 5, plus gives his usual snapshot for how those top eight seeds are looking. How did that change after this past week’s games? Remember, my goodness, people, this is based on projection of how the season will play out and of course, teams with harder schedules might have a harder time making the top eight because they might not actually win all their games.

We also hand out game balls to the top performers, pick out the stats of the week, and run through region by region to get some of the other stories you might have missed, such as all the great finishes for various schools on Homecoming this past weekend. And since that never seems to be enough, Greg and Patrick have to pick one more region to tell one more story about on the fly. There’s that and so much more in this week’s podcast, so give it a listen!

The D3football.com podcast is a weekly in-season podcast by Patrick Coleman and Greg Thomas, which was started in 2007. New episodes are published weekly during the season.

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 Steve McLaughlin for Wesleyan athletics