{"id":1663,"date":"2012-09-19T20:10:01","date_gmt":"2012-09-20T01:10:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jonfmorse.com\/tog\/?p=1663"},"modified":"2012-09-19T20:10:01","modified_gmt":"2012-09-20T01:10:01","slug":"d-iii-week-three-recap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jonfmorse.com\/tog\/2012\/09\/19\/d-iii-week-three-recap\/","title":{"rendered":"D-III: Week Three Recap."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The Spreadsheet<\/strong>: (<a href=\"http:\/\/jonfmorse.com\/tog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/CFB32.xls\" target=\"_blank\">Excel2003, 385 kb<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p><strong>If This Was Division I, You&#8217;d Have Been Watching<\/strong>:<br \/>\nImagine, if you will, that last weekend had featured Oregon at LSU, Michigan State at Oklahoma, and you heard Alabama was only beating TCU 3-0 with two minutes to play.\u00a0 That&#8217;s what happened in Division III last weekend.<\/p>\n<p><strong>D-III Game of the Week<\/strong>:<br \/>\nWhen the Warhawks of Wisconsin-Whitewater scored on a 21-yard Eric Kindler field goal with 2:58 to go in the first quarter to take a 3-0 lead over lightly-regarded Buffalo State, most people started writing their &#8220;Whitewater wins 48th straight game&#8221; stories.\u00a0 After all, Whitewater&#8217;s defense had absolutely refused to allow Washington (MO) to get on the board in the season opener, and surely the offense had to open up.<\/p>\n<p>Almost 46 minutes later, Kindler hit a 29-yarder with only 1:35 left.\u00a0 Of course, by that time everyone covering the game had started a secondary file, one with a completely different narrative, just in case.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because that field goal made it 6-0, and Buffalo State had been banging on the door most of the second half.\u00a0 In the third quarter, Nate Benoit missed a 38-yard field goal which would have tied the game, and a Casey Kacz fumble at the Whitewater 13 had ended the Bengals&#8217; first drive of the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n<p>Buffalo State took over on their own 25, and immediately Kacz hit Sherman Nelson for a 14-yard gain.\u00a0 Two incompletions, a false start, and a sack later, the Bengals were facing 4th-and-19 from their own 30, and, well&#8230; here.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2bwXLOG_V6Q\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>That was a hook-and-lateral from Kacz to Ryan Carney, then Rich Pete, then Brooks Estarfaa for 34 yards.\u00a0 Not shown in between that and the touchdown pass: an 8-yard run by Kacz, an incompletion, a 33-yard strike to Manny Brooks, and two more incompletions before Kacz found Carney for the game-tying score.\u00a0 When Nate Benoit split the uprights with the PAT and only three seconds remained on the clock, Twitter exploded.\u00a0 Whitewater&#8217;s Lee Brekke uncorked a desperation heave &#8212; 57 yards in the air &#8212; after the kickoff, but when Chris Hall came down with the interception at his own 10-yard line, pandemonium struck.\u00a0 Whitewater had fallen for the first time since Mount Union defeated them in the 2008 Stagg Bowl, and it was only their second regular-season loss to a D-III school since 2004.\u00a0 Meanwhile, Buffalo State &#8212; a team nobody considered better than third or fourth in their own conference &#8212; finds themselves ranked #19, for now.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong>Oh, I Guess We Got Upstaged, Huh?<\/strong>:<br \/>\nA titanic matchup in Dover, which should have been the biggest story of the weekend, had #3 Wesley (DE) hosting #4 Mary Hardin-Baylor.\u00a0 In each of the last two years, Wesley has ended the Crusaders&#8217; season in the quarterfinals of the playoffs.\u00a0 Things looked out of hand in the second quarter when LiDarral Bailey hit Darius Wilson for a 16-yard score to put the Crusaders up 19-6, but Wesley fought back.\u00a0 First, they scored on a Justin Sottilare pass to Steve Koudossou from 22 yards out with just over a minute to go in the half, and then tied the game at 19 when Chris Cummings plunged in from the one early in the third.<\/p>\n<p>The Cru answered on the next drive, though, Bailey finding Wilson for another 13-yard score, and late in the third Bailey scored on a one-yard carry to put UMHB up 32-19.\u00a0 They left the rest up to the defense, and that plan worked out okay.\u00a0 The Wolverines did score midway through the fourth on a 15-yard hookup between Sottilare and Matt Barile to make it 32-25 after the PAT was blocked, but even though the Crusaders went three-and-out on the next possession, the defense all but sealed the game when they sacked Sottilare on third and ten from the Wesley 47, a loss of 19 yards which forced Wesley to give up the ball.\u00a0 The Cru then killed all but fifteen seconds.<\/p>\n<p>Little did the Crusaders know when this ended that they were definitely going to move up in the polls rather than having to hope for Mount Union fatigue.\u00a0 This leaves Mary Hardin-Baylor in uncharted territory, at least in recent years; they&#8217;re now ranked #2 (even picking up some first place votes) for the first time since the Whitewater\/Mount Union hegemony began in 2005; more importantly, they&#8217;re looking down at Wisconsin-Whitewater.\u00a0 If the situation holds, that&#8217;s going to be very important come playoff time; if the selection committee agrees in principle with the rankings, it&#8217;s entirely possible that a Whitewater\/Mount Union Stagg Bowl will be an impossibility as the two titanic powers might end up in the same semifinal.\u00a0 On the one hand&#8230; about damned time.\u00a0 On the other, I think we&#8217;d all feel a lot better about it if someone knocked one (or both) of them out of the playoffs under their own steam.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I Think I Watched This Game in November<\/strong>:<br \/>\nLinfield and Cal Lutheran last met about ten months ago in the first round of the playoffs, a game won 30-27 by Linfield.\u00a0 Saturday they hooked up again, and basically they each added another field goal to last year&#8217;s result.\u00a0 Unlike last year&#8217;s playoff meeting, however, this game was not a matter of Cal Lutheran furiously trying to catch up.\u00a0 Indeed, at no point in this game did either team lead by more than a single score, only twice did the same team score without being answered, and there were seven lead changes.\u00a0 The final one was a 39-yard Josh Kay field goal (his fourth of the day) with five seconds to go which gave Linfield the win (their fourth in a row over the Kingsmen).\u00a0 The voters were so impressed that Linfield moved up two spots from #5 to #3&#8230; and Cal Lutheran moved up a spot from #9 to #10.\u00a0 How often do you see that happen?<\/p>\n<p><strong>This Week&#8217;s ECFC Update<\/strong>:<br \/>\nIt was not a good week out-of-conference for our pet conference.\u00a0 Only Norwich was able to pull off a victory, but perhaps more importantly all four teams which lost out of conference were mostly respectable.\u00a0 Mount Ida and New York Maritime both lost by a touchdown or less, and Becker and Castleton State combined for 76 points even though both lost; that&#8217;ll happen when you give up 109 points between you, I suppose.\u00a0 Still, the conference now stands at 10-10 out of conference with two games remaining; both are winnable, and one is exceedingly likely (that being this week&#8217;s visit to Gallaudet by the shipbuilders of Newport News Apprentice).\u00a0 For a conference which was sixteen games under .500 in non-conference play last year, it&#8217;s already a victory.<\/p>\n<p><strong>About Time You Got Here<\/strong>:<br \/>\nThe NESCAC finally starts play this weekend, and we probably won&#8217;t have much to say about them until mid-October as things start to shake out.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Good Lords<\/strong>:<br \/>\nKenyon lost almost three seasons worth of games in a row, and now they&#8217;re riding a two game winning streak after knocking off Hiram 24-7.\u00a0 Saturday they travel to winless Washington (MO), and things are suddenly starting to look particularly curious up in Gambier.<\/p>\n<p>Two other teams broke long losing streaks on Saturday, too: Thiel, losers of 24 in a row, beat Geneva 21-14 in overtime at home, while Rockford snapped a 23-game skid with a 28-12 win at home over Olivet.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>The New Top 25<\/strong><\/span>:<br \/>\n<strong>at #1 Mount Union 57, Muskingum 0<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8211; Back on top for the Purple Raiders.\u00a0 This week, they&#8217;ll visit Marietta; it&#8217;ll be a rout.<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>#2 Mary Hardin-Baylor 32 at #6 Wesley (DE) 25<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n&#8211; For the first time in a long, long time someone other than Mount Union or Whitewater is in the top two.\u00a0 The Crusaders earned it (and even got some first-place votes).\u00a0 They will stay on the road Saturday, visiting de-ranked Trinity (TX); Wesley will travel to 2-0 Louisiana for a potentially difficult test.<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>#3 Linfield 33, at #9 Cal Lutheran 30<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n&#8211; Both teams are idle this week.\u00a0 Linfield visits rivals Pacific Lutheran on the 29th, while Cal Lutheran hosts Pomona-Pitzer.<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>#19 Buffalo State 7, at #4 Wisconsin-Whitewater 6<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n&#8211; Honestly, I&#8217;m baffled; Whitewater should have fallen further.\u00a0 The Warhawks will host Wisconsin-Stevens Point Saturday; they&#8217;ll be out for blood and will likely get it.\u00a0 Buffalo State, meanwhile, enters the poll; the Bengals host Alfred and I expect them to come out on top.<br \/>\n<strong>#5 Saint Thomas (MN) 43, at Saint John&#8217;s (MN) 21<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8211; The Tommies dispatched their arch-rivals with alacrity, and slid up one spot in the poll.\u00a0 They&#8217;re off this weekend, waiting to host Saint Olaf on the 29th.<br \/>\n<strong>#7 Wabash 35, Denison 2<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8211; It&#8217;s always fun to beat someone, anyone, X to 2.\u00a0 The Little Giants move up a spot, and host Allegheny this weekend.\u00a0 They&#8217;ll manage.<br \/>\n<strong>at #8 Salisbury 69, North Carolina Wesleyan 6<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8211; The Sea Gulls recovered quite nicely from last week&#8217;s loss to Wesley. They&#8217;re off this week before visiting Buffalo State on the 29th.<br \/>\n<strong>at #10 Saint John Fisher 20, Rochester 16<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8211; Tough sledding for the Cardinals, who slip a notch.\u00a0 They&#8217;ll host 3-0 Hartwick on Saturday, and should take care of business if they can slow down Hartwick&#8217;s offense.<br \/>\n<strong>at #11 Bethel (MN) 56, Buena Vista 7<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8211; A blowout win for the Royals moves them up one place.\u00a0 This week, they host 2-0 Carleton; piece of cake.<br \/>\n<strong>#12 North Central (IL) 37, Wisconsin-Stout 10<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8211; The Cardinals slide up a place, and take the week off; they&#8217;ll host 3-0 Elmhurst (also idle this week) on the 29th.<br \/>\n<strong>#13 Hobart 45, at Utica 26<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8211; Hobart moves up a spot; they host Merchant Marine this weekend, and should prevail.<br \/>\n<strong>#14 Baldwin-Wallace 32, at John Carroll 28<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8211; It was expected to be close, and so it was.\u00a0 Baldwin-Wallace, after moving up a spot, visits Muskingum on Saturday.\u00a0 They won&#8217;t have any problems.<br \/>\n<strong>#15 Illinois Wesleyan<\/strong> idle<br \/>\n&#8211; The Titans visit Hope this week, and shouldn&#8217;t have too much trouble there.<br \/>\n<strong>#16 Wisconsin-Platteville<\/strong> idle<br \/>\n&#8211; Platteville hosts winless Eau Claire on Saturday, and will roll into next week&#8217;s clash with Whitewater unbeaten and in first place in the WIAC.\u00a0 Horrors.<br \/>\n<strong>at #17 Brockport State 41, College of New Jersey 17<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8211; Finally, an NJAC team looks like a threat, as 3-0 Brockport enters the poll.\u00a0 They&#8217;ll visit 0-2 Kean this weekend, and one might expect a win but Kean did make a playoff run last year&#8230;<br \/>\n<strong>at #18 Birmingham-Southern 61, Ave Maria<\/strong> [NAIA] <strong>14<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8211; Beating up on an NAIA independent doesn&#8217;t get you bumped up in the poll.\u00a0 However, it also doesn&#8217;t get you knocked down.\u00a0 BSC travels to 2-0 Rhodes Saturday, and will likely stay unbeaten.<br \/>\n<strong>#20 Wheaton (IL) 53, at Luther 7<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8211; Big blowout win, and the Thunder were rewarded&#8230; with a one spot drop in the poll.\u00a0 Go figure.\u00a0 They&#8217;re off this week before visiting Augustana (IL) on the 29th.\u00a0 They should handle that test.<br \/>\n<strong>#21 Widener 67, at Misericordia 0<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8211; Splat.\u00a0 The Pride move up a notch with the win, and host Wilkes this week; they&#8217;ll win.<br \/>\n<strong>#22 Hampden-Sydney<\/strong> idle<br \/>\n&#8211; Up two spots after a week off, the Tigers host Huntingdon on Saturday.\u00a0 It should be a good one, but Hampden-Sydney will probably tough it out.<br \/>\n<strong>at #23 Thomas More 27, Westminster (PA) 23<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8211; Thomas More had a bit of a time here, and they slip two places despite the win.\u00a0 They&#8217;ll visit 3-0 Waynesburg this week, and we&#8217;ll see if it&#8217;s time for a changing of the guard in the PAC.<br \/>\n<strong>at #24 Johns Hopkins 49, Moravian 15<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8211; The Blue Jays enter the top 25 after a solid win.\u00a0 They&#8217;ll visit 3-0 Muhlenberg Saturday, and are slight favorites.<br \/>\n<strong>#25 Franklin 48, at Manchester 27<\/strong><br \/>\n&#8211; I don&#8217;t think they should still have been ranked as it was; a 21-point win over Manchester cost them five spots they should have already lost.\u00a0 They&#8217;ll host 0-3 Earlham this week, and the tragic thing is that they&#8217;re going to destroy them and stay ranked at the expense of some other deserving team.<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>at Sul Ross State 62, XX Trinity (TX) 35<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n&#8211; Trinity falls all the way from #11 to out of the poll, and has to host #2 Mary Hardin-Baylor Saturday, and they&#8217;re pretty much toast now since they have no autobid to reach for.\u00a0 Sul Ross, on the other hand, gets their first win of the year after losing to two full-scholly D-II teams by a total of 13 points, and may be a quiet threat in the ASC.<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>at Washington &amp; Lee 34, XX Centre 16<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n&#8211; The Colonels were #23, and now they are gone.\u00a0 This week, it&#8217;s a date at home with 3-0 Kalamazoo, and someone&#8217;s going to watch their season fall apart.\u00a0 (Probably Kalamazoo.)<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>Pacific Lutheran 28, at XX Redlands 14<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n&#8211; Redlands, formerly 25th, falls out of the poll after their second straight loss.\u00a0 They&#8217;re off Saturday, and host Occidental on the 29th.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>More scores of mild interest<\/strong><\/span>:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Nail-Biters<\/strong>:<br \/>\nat Ithaca 27, Union (NY) 24 (OT)<br \/>\nAugsburg 26, at Gustavus Adolphus 24<br \/>\nFrostburg State 17, at Case Western Reserve 16<br \/>\nat Aurora 24, Alma 21<br \/>\nEureka 17, at Crown 14<br \/>\nMinnesota-Morris 24, at MacMurray 21<br \/>\nat Hanover 28, Mount Saint Joseph 24<br \/>\nat Benedictine (IL) 32, Albion 28<br \/>\nSaint Norbert 35, at Ripon 31<br \/>\nat Merchant Marine 19, New York Maritime 14<\/p>\n<p><strong>Lesser Blowouts<\/strong>:<br \/>\nat Cortland State 72, Western Connecticut State 14<br \/>\nat Rowan 51, William Paterson 0<br \/>\nat Menlo [NAIA] 56, Occidental 6<br \/>\nHuntingdon 62, at LaGrange 17<br \/>\nOtterbein 54, Wilmington (OH) 10<br \/>\nat Macalester 49, Maranatha Baptist 6<br \/>\nCarroll (WI) 48, at Knox 6<br \/>\nat Saint Scholastica 45, Greenville 3<\/p>\n<p><strong>Defense Is an Optional Package<\/strong>:<br \/>\nat Concordia (IL) 63, Hope 47<br \/>\nat Hartwick 53, Becker 41<br \/>\nat Springfield 49, Mount Ida 42<br \/>\nRensselaer 56, at Castleton State 35<br \/>\nat Randolph-Macon 49, Bethany (WV) 33<br \/>\nGuilford 45, Averett 35<\/p>\n<p><strong>No Offense, But No Offense<\/strong>:<br \/>\nat Montclair State 7, Morrisville State 0<br \/>\nPlumouth State 13, Maine Maritime 7<br \/>\nat Capital 13, Marietta 7<br \/>\nat Concordia (WI) 13, Trine 10<br \/>\nat Wisconsin-Oshkosh 16, Wisconsin-La Crosse 7<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Spreadsheet: (Excel2003, 385 kb) If This Was Division I, You&#8217;d Have Been Watching: Imagine, if you will, that last weekend had featured Oregon at LSU, Michigan State at Oklahoma, and you heard Alabama was only beating TCU 3-0 with two minutes to play.\u00a0 That&#8217;s what happened in Division III last weekend. D-III Game of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,7],"tags":[11],"class_list":["post-1663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-division-iii","category-division-news-and-notes","tag-d3"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p185sV-qP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jonfmorse.com\/tog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jonfmorse.com\/tog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jonfmorse.com\/tog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jonfmorse.com\/tog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jonfmorse.com\/tog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1663"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/jonfmorse.com\/tog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1666,"href":"http:\/\/jonfmorse.com\/tog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1663\/revisions\/1666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jonfmorse.com\/tog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jonfmorse.com\/tog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jonfmorse.com\/tog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}