Tag Archives: Wheaton

post

ATN Podcast 399: A day to remember

Posted on by

When the previous “biggest win in school history” is from the 1950s, replacing the entry at the top of the list means something.

Sure, you could quibble over whether a win against Syracuse from seven decades ago, or a national quarterfinal win at Brockport in 2002, or a quarterfinal win at UW-Whitewater in 2016 should be next on the list, but no regular season win, even one against Mount Union, compares with beating Mount Union at Mount Union in the playoffs.

A win of this nature is so iconic that the head coach’s phone blows up, and so does the feed of everyone else even remotely associated with John Carroll football. The traffic on D3football.com nearly doubled in the course of 10 minutes. There’s no pretending this is an ordinary win.

And to John Carroll’s credit, they didn’t try to. We chat with Jeff Behrman, the JCU head coach, about having confidence in kicker Colin Schuler after a missed chip shot in the first overtime nearly cost them the game, about the key final play of the game, and about the team’s return to campus, the reception, and what’s next for the Blue Streaks. We bring back in former co-host Keith McMillan to break down the play, what he saw on video from his perspective as a former Division III football starting safety.

Mailbag questions came hard for this game. The one we chose to answer was whether this means that JCU is up to Mount Union’s level or if Mount Union has slipped and there’s just one elite team. The answer is perhaps no different than it was when Keith and Greg Thomas wrote a column under the headline “Today, we are all Mount Union” after the 2022 Stagg Bowl, for we are all chasing North Central.

We take your mailbag questions. We have postgame audio from all eight games and break them all down. Keith also sits down with Johns Hopkins coach Dan Wodicka and safety Sam Bourdo. Bethel’s David Geebli talks about recovering from fumbling on the first snap of the game. Susquehanna’s Josh Ehrlich takes the blame for the River Hawks’ slow start. Matt Walker talks about UW-River Falls’ slow start, although it was fairly brief. Jesse Scott talks about what they saw that was familiar in DePauw’s run defense. Berry safety Chaz Pope talks about his game-sealing interception. There’s those clips and much more in this podcast. Plus we drop some scoop as to when we will release our All-America team, we answer whether we really thought Johns Hopkins lost some shine after the F&M loss and we bring the receipts to prove it (they’re all on the website).

Patrick and Greg also hand out game balls, bring you through the stats of the week and we take your questions in the mailbag segment. That and more in this edition of the D3football.com Around the Nation podcast.

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.
John Carroll athletics photo by Jose Figueroa; North Central athletics photo by Steve Woltmann; Wheaton athletics photo by Michael Hudson Photography

post

ATN Podcast 398: Good to be on the road

Posted on by

We knew to expect a ton of snow for every game between Collegeville and Holland. We knew to expect Susquehanna would have more than a fighting chance at Christopher Newport. We knew to expect a likely rematch of former OAC rivals.

What we didn’t know to expect was five road teams winning in the round of 32! Last year, which was the first year the playoff bracket had 40 teams, there was just one road win in the second round. Normal seems to be somewhere in between the two, but way closer to one than five.

We should have known that Wheaton had a good chance at Wartburg. The Hansen Ratings even told us so before the game. But the win, nonetheless, was surprising, and we welcome Wheaton coach Jesse Scott to the podcast to talk about it. He discusses what quarterback Mark Forcucci looks like when he is at his best — helpful info for someone who has only seen him play North Central, a game in which he was battling to get back from injury. He talks about his coaching and leadership philosophy, and which philosophy prof at Wheaton should be credited, or perhaps not, with helping mold that.

Patrick and Greg also go through each of the second-round games. There is postgame audio from around a dozen of the 16 advancing teams, and we are grateful to the schools who got these postgame news conferences online or were willing to share them with us so we could bring this audio to you.

We also hand out game balls, bring you through the stats of the week and we take your questions in the mailbag segment. That and more in this edition of the D3football.com Around the Nation podcast.

Postgame news conferences:

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.
Wheaton athletics photo by Michael Hudson Photography

post

ATN Podcast 397: Now you see it, now you don’t

Posted on by

We thought this year we were going to get to work on staggering playoff game times, so we don’t have eight of the best games going on at the same time. We thought we were going to get to work on getting video review for officials at games before the semifinals. OK, that at least is happening in some places, but otherwise, we found out on Saturday we need to go back one year and work on 2024’s thing some more — having all of these games on ESPN+.

When you look back at this podcast years later, yes, this is the one where the first-round playoff streaming was a borderline disaster. Essentially half of our opening eight games had some streaming issue, one of them so severe that it never got on the air at all.

That’s bad. That’s a problem. The NCAA folks will talk to ESPN about it this week, but it’s also the NCAA that puts all of this work on overworked sports information professionals in a division where we already expanded the basketball season so that these folks are working winter sports and football and any other fall sport that might still be in its playoffs at the same time.

But the action on the field was really good, so we’ll spend the last 85% or so of the podcast talking about that. About the big plays that fueled Susquehanna’s win. The way the final drive of the Chapman-Whitworth game ended. How Muhlenberg came away with the win against Union. What Springfield did to keep Cortland in check. How LaGrange overcame some difficulties to advance.

It’s also the end of the season for eight more teams, and the end of careers for many. At Grove City, this was a season with challenges, and this team got through them to rally and get to the playoffs, and rally when down big in the second half. Patch Flanagan’s career at Union ends on a high note personally, even if he could not will his team into the second round. Crown grew up a lot this season and achieved things never done before in the program’s history. We talk about all that and more.

And our guest is Casey Shine, head coach of Chapman. He’ll tell us what was going through his head when his quarterback took a taunting penalty that left the door open for a Whitworth comeback.

We also hand out game balls, bring you through the stats of the week, we look at a bunch of second round games, and we take your questions in the mailbag segment. That and more in this edition of the D3football.com Around the Nation podcast.

Postgame news conferences:

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.
Susquehanna athletics photo by Michael Lipscomb; photo by Chapman athletics