D3football Daily Dose

It’s that time again — probably way past it. When we have 264 comments and counting on last week’s Game Day Updates blog post, it’s time to start looking ahead.

The 32-team field has been drawn (Nov. 12) and quartered (through last weekend). Here we have eight teams remaining and four quarterfinal matchups — perhaps the best foursome in recent memory, if I didn’t make that completely clear in Around the Nation. I think we could see four single-digit margins of victory. And even though Pat Coleman and I provide this week’s expected final scores, and they don’t all fall in the single-digit range, we both know we’re looking at eight teams matched against opponents they can beat, should they put it all together Saturday.

It’s our third consecutive week of predicting playoff scores, and we do so not so much to flaunt our knowledge or embarass ourselves, but just to provide an idea of what’s expected to happen, so you’ll know you’re seeing history in the making should the results go off course. Pat has taken the wrong winner in just three of the 24 games so far, while I rebounded after a rough opening week to go 7-1 last week. Pat and I both missed one of the East bracket games and correctly hit the winners in the others.

Why is that relevant? Because our scores — done separately, without consulting each other — are again very similar. That may not speak much to what will happen, but it does paint a clear picture of what’s expected.

Wesley (South) Bracket quarterfinal in Dover, Del.:
Pat: Mary Hardin-Baylor 27, Wesley 23
Keith: Mary Hardin-Baylor 29, Wesley 28

Mount Union (North) Bracket quarterfinal in Alliance, Ohio:
Pat: Mount Union 42, Capital 21
Keith: Mount Union 35, Capital 23

Wilkes (East) Bracket quarterfinal in Pittsford, N.Y:
Pat: Rowan 20, St. John Fisher 17
Keith: Rowan 23, St. John Fisher 21

UW-Whitewater (West) Bracket quarterfinal in Whitewater, Wis.:
Pat: UW-Whitewater 31, St. John’s 20
Keith: UW-Whitewater 28, St. John’s 17

If Pat and I are wrong, and all four games are decided by a touchdown our less, that would be a first in the eight years of expanded playoffs. I looked back at the seven previous 28- and 32-team brackets, and found that all but three quarterfinal games were decided by seven points or fewer (12 games) or 25 points or more (13 games). No season has featured two margins like Pat and I are predicting in Alliance and Whitewater, but three (’02, ‘03 and ‘05) have featured three games decided by a TD or less.

It makes sense, as the early rounds have always seemed to separate the “playoff teams” from the “Stagg Bowl contenders.”

The road to Salem continues Saturday.

Feel free to comment on our picks or make your own below.

Monday evening, the nomination window closed for our All-Region teams. As I was looking through the ballots and testing the voting software, I found something unusual. Two of the four regions didn’t have even the minimum three tight ends nominated to fill our three teams.

So I started looking through the All-Conference teams to see whom I could plug in to fill the gaps and to my surprise, quite a few conferences don’t even bother to honor tight ends at the end of the year.

What the heck has happened to the tight end?

I do understand that run-blocking tight ends are hard to nominate because the statistics just aren’t there to entice someone to vote. But it seems like there are a lot of schools at which nominating tight ends is simply not on the radar. We saw it all season with the Team of the Week. But one un-nominated tight end was the leading receiver on his team. Another was the No. 2 receiver on his team and came from a school that nominated several other players, so it wasn’t like they forgot to nominate altogether.

I do also understand that teams using a spread or run-and-shoot aren’t always going to feature a tight end in the passing game. And in some cases, the person listed as a tight end lines up in the slot far more than as an actual end. (One of the most prominent “tight ends” in Division III fits that description.) But in the end, how can a region of 55 or so teams not have three tight ends worth nominating?

We’re barely underway and I’m about ready to close the book on Wheaton. Here’s the way the first six minutes have gone so far:
Wheaton got the ball first, punted.
Punt went 26 yards.
Then Pete Ittersagen, Wheaton’s top corner, got hurt.
Nate Kmic ran for a 52-yard touchdown.
Wheaton went three-and-out, giving up only its eighth sack of the season.
Wheaton punted for 25 yards. Mount Union ball on the Wheaton 35.

… as I write this Wheaton picks the ball off.

As I said on the front page, this should be a good week of games, at least outside of the top two teams in Division III. Looking forward to what should be classics in the other six games, especially these two East Region games.

As in the past, Keith McMillan and I are making our picks indpendently, without consulting each other. But as you can see, we’re on the same page on which games will be the most competitive, even if we don’t know who will win them.

Predicted scores:

East
Pat: Springfield 42, St. John Fisher 39; Rowan 17, Wilkes 15.
Keith: St. John Fisher 35, Springfield 34; Wilkes 13, Rowan 12

South
Pat: Wesley 24, Carnegie Mellon 20; Mary Hardin-Baylor 40, Washington and Jefferson 17.
Keith: Wesley 17, Carnegie Mellon 7; Mary Hardin-Baylor 42, Washington and Jefferson 14.

North
Pat: Mount Union 49, Wheaton 10; Capital 22, North Central 20.
South: Mount Union 31, Wheaton 9; Capital 24, North Central 17.

West
Pat: St. John’s 17, Whitworth 14; UW-Whitewater 42, UW-La Crosse 28.
Keith: St. John’s 31, Whitworth 21; UW-Whitewater 35, UW-La Crosse 21.

Other storylines
The rematches: Rowan blew out Wilkes in the first round last year. Springfield beat St. John Fisher in a regular season game in October. Mount Union ended Wheaton’s season in 2002, 2003 and 2004, while UMHB did the same to W&J in 2004. Capital beat North Central in the playoffs last season. UW-Whitewater and UW-La Crosse play every year in the WIAC, obviously.

Who’s healthy? Will Justin Beaver play for UW-Whitewater? Is Joel Clark back to 100% for Whitworth? Eric Lowry, Wesley’s top kick returner, may not play.

Who wins in the East? As Keith and I showed, the bracket is up in the air.

Enjoy your travels and cheer responsibly. Let’s play ball!

Thanksgiving is a time to … uhhh …. give thanks, right?

Here’s some things we should be thankful for as D-III fans.

We should be thankful we don’t have to deal with or worry about the BCS. When I read and hear the constant commentary about who should get to play Ohio State for the national title, I’m grateful we have five teams lined up in the bracket to play our Ohio team.

We should be thankful we’ve had three consecutive competitive Stagg Bowls and five such games in six years. Compare that to 1994-99, where the game was never decided by fewer than 20 points.

We should be thankful there are enough people at the NCAA who care about Division III to get our selection show on national television, and hope that the telecasting package the NCAA has put together for Division II football gets translated up a level for Division III next year.

I’m thankful that my 19-month-old still recognizes me, considering I’ve been working in Connecticut the past three months and the rest of the family is still in the D.C. area.

I’m thankful that my 180,000-mile car has gotten me everywhere I’ve needed to go in recent years. Hopeful it can get through the end of the football season, but not positive it will.

I’m thankful there are so many Division III fans that this site has become self-sustaining over the past couple of years. (And that Google does a good job at selling our space.)

And I’m thankful for the recent influx of registered users over the past couple weeks. A lot of them have been players whose playing careers have just ended. We’re glad you are sticking around, and we’re also thankful for your contributions on the field. Bring your classmates.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Last night as I was updating the NCAA playoff results by conference on the front page — something that sits on the site 52 weeks a year and only changes five times — I was struck by the old adage: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Apologies for the un-fanciness of the standings, but here they are:

Conference    W   L   Pct.
OAC          35   8   .814
NWC          18   9   .667
MIAC         19  11   .633
E8            5   3   .625
NJAC         16  10   .615
MAC          12   8   .600
CCIW         11   9   .550
WIAC          9   8   .529
SCAC          9   8   .529
ODAC         10   9   .526
NCAC         10   9   .526
ASC          11  10   .524
ACFC          4   4   .500
UAA           1   1   .500
PAC           6   8   .429
Independents  5   7   .417
UCAA/LL       7  11   .389
FFC (defunct) 3   5   .375
IIAC          6  11   .353
Centennial    4   9   .308
SCIAC         2   5   .286
Dixie/USAC    2   6   .250
MWC           1   8   .111
HCAC          1   8   .111
MIAA          0   7   .000
IBC           0   7   .000
NEFC          0   8   .000

Who gained and who lost? Well, I think the concept that a rematch automatically follows the original game took a big beating (thankfully). I’ve been reminding people all season that a team playing its first game loses to another team playing its second game does not mean that team is automatically better.

Conferences which gained this week

Northwest Conference: League champion Whitworth became the third conference team to win a playoff game this weekend with the first-round victory against Occidental. It probably is the only one the NWC will get this year but serves as a reminder that the league is not a one-trick pony. (And that’s only for people who don’t remember Pacific Lutheran.)

Ohio Athletic Conference: No. 1 and No. 2 seeds and two big blowouts. ‘Nuff said.

Empire 8: Two W’s for a league that hasn’t sponsored football for very long. The 5-3 record looks a lot better than 3-3 did.

Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference: Two wins gets the league, much maligned for its 1999-2004 performance, above the .500 mark in the automatic bid era.

University Athletic Association: Off the schneid thanks to Carnegie Mellon.

Conferences which fell this week

Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference: Ouch. The SCAC has already been looked at as a one-trick pony league with Trinity the only team to qualify for the postseason. The league hasn’t won a playoff game since Roy Hampton’s ill-fated night on the Riverwalk. The Millsaps loss doesn’t help.

Old Dominion Athletic Conference: Washington and Lee’s loss is almost as bad, though no No. 8 seed has ever won a playoff game … in the two years that No. 8 seeds have existed. Only Bridgewater has won a playoff game from this league, though at least Catholic, Emory and Henry and Washington and Lee have had the opportunity.

Illini-Badger Conference: Only disbanding can pull the league out of this hole.

Liberty League: Two one-and-outs from teams that each won playoff games last year. The conference loses a little bit of the ground it gained in the 2005 playoffs.

Partly cloudy, mid-to-high 40s here at Springfield, no wind as we are about 15 minutes away from kickoff between No. 2 seeded Springfield and No. 7 seeded Curry. I’ll be down on the field shooting for most of the game and won’t be checking in much but wanted to get the ball rolling for those of you at other games and those sitting at home.

Parking lot is packed with tailgaters — in fact, an hour before game time, there was nowhere to park. Excellent football weather, especially for mid-November in New England.

It’s the first meeting of these schools. Should be a quick game — you may have heard that Springfield runs the triple option, plus Curry runs for 227 yards a game so expect the clock to roll.

This is it, this is where the playoffs happen.

Last year, on a drive up to Thiel for the Johns Hopkins/Thiel game, Keith McMillan and I wrote down predicted scores for each of the first-round games, compared them and posted them on the blog.

Well, actually, I wrote my scores down. When I was done, I asked Keith for his scores. He was driving, after all.

Long trip.

But anyway, it turned into something we carried through the rest of the playoffs. Interesting to see the varying takes on the game.

Here we are. I invited Keith to e-mail his before he looks at these. We made our picks as independently of each other as possible.

North
Pat: Mount Union 52, Hope 7; Wheaton 42, Mt. St. Joseph 6; North Central 24, Concordia (Wis.) 21, Capital 50, Wittenberg 14
Keith: Mount Union 49, Hope 7; Wheaton 34, Mt. St. Joseph 21; Concordia (Wis.) 24, North Central 21 (OT); Capital 55, Wittenberg 14
Toss-ups: North Central/Concordia (Wis.)

East
Pat: Wilkes 31, Washington & Lee 3; Rowan 34, Hobart 10; St. John Fisher 31, Union 20; Springfield 48, Curry 24
Keith: Wilkes 20, Washington & Lee 0; Rowan 17, Hobart 13; St. John Fisher 42, Union 38; Curry 31, Springfield 28 (OT)
Toss-ups: Curry/Springfield

South
Pat: Wesley 48, Dickinson 12; Millsaps 35, Carnegie Mellon 34; Christopher Newport 28, Washington and Jefferson 27; Mary Hardin-Baylor 31, Hardin-Simmons 28
Keith: Wesley 42, Dickinson 21; Millsaps 35, Carnegie Mellon 28; Christopher Newport 28, Washington and Jefferson 17; Mary Hardin-Baylor 27, Hardin-Simmons 21 (OT)
Toss-ups: None, other than the margin in Delaware.

West
Pat: UW-Whitewater 62, St. Norbert 3; UW-La Crosse 24, Bethel 21; Whitworth 21, Occidental 19; St. John’s 20, Central 19 (OT)
Keith: UW-Whitewater 52, St. Norbert 14; UW-LaCrosse 35, Bethel 28; Whitworth 23,
Occidental 17; Central 23, St. John’s 21
Toss-ups: Central/St. John’s

I’ll be at Springfield, the guy taking pictures in the D3football.com hat. Keith will be calling color on one of our D3football.com broadcasts for NCAASports.com at Carnegie Mellon.

Senior Day was held at many places around the country this past week, and more in previous weeks. The Class of 2006 (yes, we know, most will graduate in ‘07, but this is their final football season) experienced a fun time to be in Division III football.

This class saw the playoff expansion from 28 to 32 teams, giving more than twice as many conference runners-up a chance to participate. This class never knew the days in which the NCAA selections came via fax or telephone; rather, they always were able to watch on ESPNews.

We offer up two different takes on Senior Day 2006, and leave this post open for comments congratulating your own favorite senior.

The first piece comes from a columnist for The Sun in Baltimore. His son is a senior on the Johns Hopkins football team. There are likely many stories like this across D-III, so this one is definitely worth a read.

At Christopher Newport, Senior Day was treated a little differently. It was cancelled. But you didn’t hear any complains from the senior class, according to a piece in the Newport News Daily Press.

Congrats to all the seniors who have played their last games, and those participating in the playoffs. Don’t go away after graduation — be a Division III football fan for life.

Alright, well, I’ve had the bracket in my hands for almost five hours so I’ve probably come to grips with it, but you guys haven’t had it nearly as long so it’s time to let out those pent-up frustrations.

I would really like to get to the bottom of the Millsaps mileage issue. The folks on the committee told me that the number they got was higher than 500 miles, so I’d like to know what it takes to standardize these distances. There’s a Web site the NCAA mandates schools to use to determine whether a game is in-region and that is indeed the site I used. Why they got different numbers, neither of us is sure.

In the end, it just means we have a regional semifinal one week early.

Looking forward to the potential matchup of Rowan and Wilkes in the second round. That should be a great game. Rowan is just getting its offense in gear and I’m not sure that Hobart, which struggled with William Paterson and others, can keep up. Wilkes is strong on defense as well. I haven’t seen the field since September, so I wonder what it looks like now.

Springfield, as I mentioned on the air, is in shape to play two games on turf, which bodes well for their offense. They need a lower seed to advance out of the other half of the bracket so they can continue to host on turf. They would get that if Rowan were to beat Wilkes, but I also doubt the Springfield/St. John Fisher potential rematch in round two would replicate round one. Springfield will still be favored but that doesn’t mean the game will be the same.

Can anyone aside from Capital hang with Mount Union in the top bracket? Can Capital even do it?

Kind of a neat story to get two long-time playoff drought teams together in round one in Pittsburgh. Contrast in styles, too.

West, two storied programs meet in the first round in Pella, while Bethel tries again to get the first-round monkey off its back.

Floor open for your thoughts.