Tag Archives: UW-Whitewater

Tiers of a crown

Posted on by

As Keith McMillan touched on his 2008 season review, I have a theory that tries to make sense of who beats whom during the Division III football season. Instead of thinking about the landscape in terms of regions or conferences, I break it into three tiers.

• Tier I are the elite teams who are likely to finish as national champion. This is a very small group.

• Tier II has great teams who will have great seasons. They will likely win their conference and usually go a couple rounds in the playoffs. But, unless everything breaks for them, they will not win a national championship.

Come playoff time, one or two Tier IIs will be upset by a Tier III. Most Tier IIs will knock each other off in the early playoff rounds or lose to a Tier I, often by 14+ points. If a Tier II team plays a tremendous game and Tier I team plays poorly, an upset is possible.

• Tier III teams are everyone else who makes the playoffs or just misses it. They are good teams and their accomplishments should not be diminished. But, unless they have a very favorable draw, they will be eliminated in the first two weeks of the playoffs. Tier III might beat Tier II if it plays a tremendous game, but the same Tier III is highly unlikely to do that twice in the same postseason. And they definitely don’t beat Tier I.

So why bring this up before teams even break training camp? Why worry think about the playoffs at all when there are hundreds of good stories to follow between now and the Stagg Bowl on December 19? Because the fun of this theory lies in predicting which teams go in which tiers and that changes every year, particularly for Tiers II and III. And that, like the Top 25 Poll released today, is a matter of debate.

Based on my preseason ballot, I’d break them down like this.

• Tier I: Mount Union, UW-Whitewater

Recent seasons make it easy to slot the Purple Raiders and Warhawks here and they stand alone.

• Tier II: Mary Hardin-Baylor, UW-Stevens Point, Hardin-Simmons

These teams could beat a Tier I if they play great and the Tier I stumbles. That’s what separates them from the teams in Tier III who aren’t beating Mount Union or UW-Whitewater. UW-Stevens Point is an easy choice since they return a lot from the team that beat UW-Whitewater last year. Mary Hardin-Baylor hasn’t gotten over the Warhawk hump, but they’ve been competitive. Since the games between teams at this level should be competitive, Hardin-Simmons gets the nod.

A couple more teams will rise to this level, like Wheaton, Wartburg and Willamette did last year. But the first two lose a lot on defense and the third a lot on offense. And if you ask me which teams could upset the two purple powerhouses — and that’s a requirement to be in this tier — right now it’s three’s company.

• Tier III: Everyone else in the Top 25 or receiving votes

This does not mean every other team will have the same level of success. And there will be some wonderful stories at this level that will help define the season ahead. But this is how I see the landscape now.

You know, given all the games that have been played. 🙂

Mount Union vs. UW-Whitewater again!

Posted on by

OK,
never you mind which D3football.com columnist said this season was wide open. Turns out it was always the Warhawks and the Purple Raiders.

So, I figured I might as well get a jump on this week’s chatter by setting up a thread where we can speculate if UW-W will even the score at 2-2, or will Greg Micheli and Nate Kmic go out as champions. Have at it below.

We’ll be approaching the story this week from several angles, through our Road to Salem features, the first installment of the Around the Nation year-in-review, an expanded slate of predictions for Stagg Bowl XXXVI and the release of the D3football.com all-Americans on our Stagg Bowl pregame show.

And this is as good a place as any to start sorting out the memories from the past three season that have run together. Off the top of my head, here’s what I recall:

2005: The Pete Schmitt (non-)TD before the half becomes the first instant replay review in D3 history, and a 95-yard Nate Kmic TD run helps put away a 35-28 Mount Union win.

2006: UW-W’s Derek Stanley makes a great catch along the sidelines as UW-W tries to send longtime coach Bob Berezowitz out a champion, but it’s Pierre Garcon who goes airborne for a TD in leading Mount Union to a 35-16 win. Micheli comes off the bench to go 18 of 22 and win MVP honors.

2007: Two-time champion sends one of the most talented and statistically dominant teams in Division III history to Salem, but an early goal-line stand, a determined 239-yard rushing day from Justin Beaver, and the running of QB Danny Jones, a Cal Lutheran transfer, lifted Whitewater to the title.

2008: You tell us how the story will end.

I’m sure I’m not remembering some of the numbers correctly, or mixing up the Kmic and Garcon big plays, but that illustrates my point. After three of these, some of the details are beginning to run together. D3football.com will re-visit the games this week and get all the details straight leading up to this week’s webcast of the championship game.

ATN Podcast: High fives, sevens

Posted on by

So our predictions weren’t great this week. But picking five road teams to win in the second round of the playoffs was more than a lot of people could have pictured. Two seventh seeds advancing? Well, we did nail that one, at least.

Keith McMillan did the home game this past week, so he watched and listened to pretty much everything, while Pat Coleman took the trip west to Willamette. And the red-eye home. Still catching up on sleep.

But while that happens, you can get their take on a great weekend of Division III playoff football.

You can load the podcast page in iTunes or can also get this and any of our future Around the Nation podcasts automatically by subscribing to this RSS feed: http://www.d3football.com/dailydose/?feed=podcast

Or you can click the play button below to listen.

[display_podcast]