FB: North Coast Athletic Conference

[BashDad]

Sorry, man. It's because you both occupy the same space of "that guy I respect from another conference."

[HScoach]

For whatever reason, I mixup Usee and HScoach. Just putting that out there.

You cut me deep Shrek.  I am much better looking than HSC.

No doubt.   I have the perfect face for radio.

[mr_mom]

Never realized how good the Wabash web cast is till I started watching some of these other games. Great job whoever is responsible for the Wabash football webcast.

Better than anything I remember seeing on WAKR.  Professional quality.

[mr_mom]

And while I am here, someone please pass to the Witt audio broadcasters today that I thought they did a very professional job. 

[nike]

Watching replay of Witt-Mt Union game. Opening drive by Witt a thing of beauty.

[USee]

Sorry, man. It's because you both occupy the same space of "that guy I respect from another conference."

Nice save!

[jaypeter]

Moved in the pocket well, but not a threat  to hurt you with his running ability.

Yeah, I guess I just don't agree with that. He's gained over 500 yards on the ground this year. Were you there? I'd be curious what exactly you saw.

You've owned up to your mistake, and being from another conference your mistake is understanable, but that was one of the funnier things I've read on here in a while!  +k 

[firstdown]

Santa has been making a list and checking it twice trying to figure out who has been naughty or nice.

Nice List:  Pat, Keith and the folks at d3football.com for all you do for the sport.  This year's group of seniors at Wabash for all that you accomplished.  Wally Wabash for his insight.  The football teams of the NCAC for continuing to improve.  The NCAA playoff selection committee for taking on such a hard job.  St John Fisher for making a good run in the playoffs.  Most of the officials for NCAC football games.

Naughty List:  Santa has a few lumps of coal in his bag for:  The playoff selection process.  The refs from the Witt - Wabash game, no coal for you since you already have rocks in your heads, but you will have to watch a copy of the replay of  the Auburn - Alabama game  daily and to see how hard the SEC refs work to get it right in key match up.  Finally, for the Witt coaches on top of the press box at the Wabash game, Santa is going to bring you a copy of Emily Post's Rules of Etiquette, so that you can  brush up on the values of  civility.

To All a Happy Holiday Season and enjoy the next three week of the Division 3 playoffs.

[wally_wabash]

Always fun to go back and see how off the mark I was when I predicted league standings in July.  I can't believe I did that in July.  Anyway, here's how I predicted it:

Wabash 9-0, 10-0
Witt 8-1, 8-2
OWU 7-2, 8-2
DePauw 5-4, 6-4
Allegheny 5-4, 5-5
Wooster 5-4, 5-5
Kenyon 3-6, 4-6
Denison 2-7, 3-7
Oberlin 1-8, 1-9
Hiram 0-9, 0-10

And here's how it went down:

Witt 9-0, 9-1
Wabash 8-1, 9-1
Wooster 7-2, 7-3
Denison 6-3, 7-3
OWU 4-5, 5-5
DePauw 4-5, 4-6
Kenyon 4-5, 4-6
Oberlin 2-7, 3-7
Hiram 1-8, 2-8
Allegheny 0-9, 0-10

So I whiffed big on Allegheny and Denison.  Mild whiff on Oberlin and Wooster, although I was a little more bullish on Wooster than the coaches poll was.  And by record I missed by two games on OWU, but in fairness, I thought OWU was going to be in play for the league title and a spot in the tournament and they weren't anywhere close to that.  So that's actually a bigger miss on my part than the record difference would indicate. 

After a couple of busy offseason, I think this winter will be pretty quiet.  The only lukewarm seat that I can see is Coach Matlak and I haven't heard or read anything that leads me to believe there is a change coming.  Evaluations and things like that may have been put off until after Thanskgiving, so there could be news there soon, but I would think that if Allegheny is going to make a change, declaring intentions sooner rather than later is a good idea.  The other nine teams in the league I think have good leadership and forward momentum, honestly. 

[seinfeld]

I know this ship has already sailed, but with today being the last day to vote for the Liberty Mutual Coach of the Year (http://coachoftheyear.com) and Frank Colaprete in 3rd place among Div. III coaches, I thought I'd share my thoughts on the NCAC Coach of the Year award.

I don't know what the exact criteria is for evaluation this award, and maybe there isn't any, but I think it basically comes down to what coach got the most out of his talent and how much did they exceed realistic expectations (or if the team had legitimately high expectations, were they at least sufficiently met). Using this as the basis to judge the award on, it seems to my somewhat biased view that Colaprete should have been the clear choice.

Before I lay out a very detailed reason why Colaprete should have been the coach of the year, I do want to say in fairness to Fincham that it is hard to fairly judge if his team met or exceeded reasonable expectations at the time of the voting – at the end of the regular season. To make a fair judgment of his work, we needed to see how they did in the playoffs. And based on their showing (2nd round loss to Mt. Union), I would say Wittenberg went as far as to be expected this year, but no further. Remember, the Tigers were the preseason favorite to win the NCAC, had a huge and talented senior class, and had the best player in the most important position on the field (Florence at QB). With this lot, winning the NCAC should have been expected.

On the other hand, what Colaprete did with Wooster was wholly unexpected, particularly when digging into the details of what he inherited talent wise, then what he did with that talent. I don't think many people realize how short of a deck Colaprete and his staff were working with this year.

Wooster was 2-8 in 2012. Gone from that team were its leading tackler (Hood), best defensive back and kick returner (Ogletree-Crawford), best defensive lineman and top sack producer (Holtz), all-conference punter (Obery) and their top two receivers (McIntyre and Weidrick). On top of the three defensive starters already mentioned, they also lost four other starters on that side of the ball. On offense, while they managed to keep a majority of those players in the program, they had the big question mark at quarterback, and where Barnes would fit into the equation. The fact that they were able to get Barnes to fulfill his potential and turn the corner as a player, when Schmitz was never able to do so, is enough reason to make Colaprete the Coach of the Year. They also moved Hackel from defense to running back, a brilliant move as he became the NCAC's leading rusher. This was but one of several position changes Colaprete and the coaching staff made before the season, and all of them paid off in a big way.

Wooster had 82 players on the roster to start the 2012 season. The Scots had just 61 players on the 2013 roster. Colaprete was hired in early February, with literally zero recruits already committed to Wooster. He was only able to get 13 freshmen, of which only three really had any kind of impact. The two most impactful, Owens and Vogel, were guys he and his staff were able to get to commit to Wooster late in the process.

So in summary, Colaprete and his staff inherited a 2-8 team and had about 75% of the talent that Schmitz had the year before, yet went 7-3 and finished 3rd in the NCAC. I don't think it was possible for any coach to exceed this, let alone match it.

Here are some statistics on just how remarkable a season it was:

•   One of the five biggest turnarounds in terms of wins in Div. III in 2013.
•   Best one-year improvement (by far) in NCAC history (1 win to 7 wins)
•   The five-win improvement from last year to this season was the most in Wooster history since Jack Lengyl had a five-win improvement from 1969 to 1970 (before leaving for Marshall)
•   The 20-point comeback against Ohio Wesleyan was the largest in school history.
•   Beat five teams (Allegheny, Denison, DePauw, Kenyon, OWU) they lost to in 2012. Outscored these five teams 155-102 after being outscored 131-81 by these same teams last year.
•   Amassed the most yards by any team against Wabash (426) and the most yards against Wittenberg (386) by any Div. III team during the regular season. The Scots were also without the NCAC's leading rusher (Hackel) against Wittenberg.

I know this isn't a court of law, so there isn't really precedents that are set, but the selection of Fincham, by at least this group of coaches, is basically saying the coach of the team that wins the conference is the automatic Coach of the Year. Because I don't know how else you can interpret this vote. If Colaprete's resume this year and the improvement his team made wasn't enough since his team didn't finish first, then it's hard to see how any other coach who doesn't win the conference wins this award.

And to the argument that in basketball it almost always goes to the coach of the winning team, it simply isn't true. We just have to look back to last year, when Kenyon's coach won the award despite finishing in a tie for third. In fact, five of the last six years a coach other than the coach of the conference champion (usually Steve Moore and Wooster) has been named coach of the year.

[Pat Coleman]

For our regional coach of the year, there are basically three or four candidates, and Colaprete is one of the guys we're considering.

[wally_wabash]

I'm sure the vote was extremely close and nobody would have been peeved had Coach Colaprete won COTY.  Fincham was selected by his peers and I think that's more than fair.  I think we should clean up a couple of things here though. 

•   Best one-year improvement (by far) in NCAC history (1 win to 7 wins)

The league went to 9 conference games this year so comparing anybody's win differential from 2012 to 2013 isn't an apples to apples comparison with the past. 

•   Amassed the most yards by any team against Wabash (426) and the most yards against Wittenberg (386) by any Div. III team during the regular season. The Scots were also without the NCAC's leading rusher (Hackel) against Wittenberg.

Wooster runs more plays than anybody else in the league.  79 plays per game.  More plays equals more yards.  The Scots took 92 plays (92!!) to get those 426 yards against Wabash.  Just 78 plays against Witt to the 386 yards, but that 4.9 ypp average is below the season average for Wooster.  And the set of D-III teams that Witt played in the regular season is the rest of the NCAC.  There is no all of D-III there...it's just league play. 

There's no doubt Colaprete took a broken down vehicle and got it running again and he deserves a ton of credit for that.  I've said that Fincham would be my choice because his team was pretty flawless and the job he did in beating Wabash like he did was the best piece of coaching in the league this year.  I also think that the win differential here is equal parts good job by Colaprete and really, really poor job by Schmitz in 2012.  Colaprete didn't inherit bad players and make them good.  He inhertied some pretty good players and put them in a better position to succeed.  And again, the results are exacerbated by just how colossal the failure was in 2012.  And while Wooster's offense was quite something this year, they did have maybe the league's worst defense.  4500 yards and 319 points were taken from that Wooster defense in 2013.  That is a lot. 

So yes, Colaprete did a really, really good job.   He stopped the freefall up in Wooster for sure.  I think you could have taken your pick from Fincham and Colaprete for the award, but it's really not a big miss by the league's coaches that they voted for Fincham. 

[DPU3619]

Wooster runs more plays than anybody else in the league.  79 plays per game.  More plays equals more yards.  The Scots took 92 plays (92!!) to get those 426 yards against Wabash.  Just 78 plays against Witt to the 386 yards, but that 4.9 ypp average is below the season average for Wooster.   

Since it's the off-season and we don't have anything better to talk about, I'll start this discussion. Tempo shouldn't matter in yards. We realize that Wooster isn't the most efficient offense in the NCAC. But, they're probably not trying to be, either. That's their system. If I run 90 4 yard plays to get to 360 yards in a game, am I doing worse than the team that runs 50 7 yard plays to get to roughly the same number? I don't think a team should be penalized for implementing that system. Everybody wishes they could be Oregon, but if you don't have the dudes, you're going to have to chip away. I'd love for my team to average 7 yards per play. But, I don't have Reed Florence.

It's offensive improvement. I don't see why we should poo-poo them for electing to do it with tempo.

[wally_wabash]

Wooster runs more plays than anybody else in the league.  79 plays per game.  More plays equals more yards.  The Scots took 92 plays (92!!) to get those 426 yards against Wabash.  Just 78 plays against Witt to the 386 yards, but that 4.9 ypp average is below the season average for Wooster.   

Since it's the off-season and we don't have anything better to talk about, I'll start this discussion. Tempo shouldn't matter in yards. We realize that Wooster isn't the most efficient offense in the NCAC. But, they're probably not trying to be, either. That's their system. If I run 90 4 yard plays to get to 360 yards in a game, am I doing worse than the team that runs 50 7 yard plays to get to roughly the same number? I don't think a team should be penalized for implementing that system. Everybody wishes they could be Oregon, but if you don't have the dudes, you're going to have to chip away. I'd love for my team to average 7 yards per play. But, I don't have Reed Florence.

It's offensive improvement. I don't see why we should poo-poo them for electing to do it with tempo.

No, no.  I'm not poo-pooing Wooster's offensive improvement.  That was absolutely necessary and we finally got to see Richard Barnes do his thing, which was fantastic.  But if we're saying that the coach deserves special recognition because his team gained more yards against Wabash than anybody else but then ignore the fact that 92 plays were run to get there, then we're not telling the whole story.  Of course they gained more yards.  They ran a million more plays (or exactly 30 more plays than Wabash's opponents's per game average...who's not going to gain more yards with 30 extra snaps?).  That's like giving Arsenault COTY because Grinnell scores more points than anybody else.  Of course they do...they shoot twice as many shots. 

[wally_wabash]

I'll add this to the coaching conversation- right this minute I think we've got the best collection of head coaches that we've had in the league in the 14 years that I've been following the NCAC.  I can't speak too much on the 90s era coaches with Fincham and Barnes and O'Keefe, but as a whole I'd be willing to bet that what the NCAC has right now is about as good as the NCAC has ever had.  There are a lot of guys doing really, really good work in the league right now and it's going to be really difficult to decide who has done the "best" job year after year.  I think it's a great thing for the league that we can have this kind of debate over several great coaches.