FB: American Rivers Conference

[Jack Parkman]

What's the ticket situation at Wartburg? Are there pre-sale tickets required or will showing up Saturday be sufficient?

[wartknight]

What's the ticket situation at Wartburg? Are there pre-sale tickets required or will showing up Saturday be sufficient?

Showing up Saturday will be sufficient. There will be ticket sales @ the stadium.

[Jack Parkman]

What's the ticket situation at Wartburg? Are there pre-sale tickets required or will showing up Saturday be sufficient?

Showing up Saturday will be sufficient. There will be ticket sales @ the stadium.

Thank you. Looking forward to catching the game.

[Schipper Strong]

If your No. 3, No. 4 and No. 5 teams go out, consistently play teams, and consistently win, then they may well get ranked as well.

I guess consistently winning is where we differ in opinion. Week 8 had five WIAC teams in the top 25. Two of which had 4-3 records. Is that consistently winning or every other week losing?

[Pat Coleman]

If you're playing a Top 100 team every week, and three-quarters of the time playing a Top 50 team, you might lose a few. There are no Luthers or Simpsonses in the WIAC.

[wartknight]

If you're playing a Top 100 team every week, and three-quarters of the time playing a Top 50 team, you might lose a few. There are no Luthers or Simpsonses in the WIAC.

Obviously I'm a Knight)ARC fan; I agree w/Pat here. In my latest region 6 fan poll vote, I had 6 WIAC teams in the top 10.

[kiko]

If your No. 3, No. 4 and No. 5 teams go out, consistently play teams, and consistently win, then they may well get ranked as well.

I guess consistently winning is where we differ in opinion. Week 8 had five WIAC teams in the top 25. Two of which had 4-3 records. Is that consistently winning or every other week losing?

I would think you would want to rate the WIAC highly if your argument is that wins over them show the quality of the wins that Wartburg and Aurora turned in last weekend.

From my POV the rankings are supposed to be an attempt to encapsulate the top overall teams, not simply to list those with the best records.  Central saw how good the WIAC is last year, and those type of teams are not anomalies in that conference.  Those 4-3 records would be 5-2 or 6-1 across the board in a lot of other conferences.

[Schipper Strong]

For the record, I never said the ARC or any other conference was better than or equal to the WIAC. What I said, and stand by, is that five WIAC teams in the top 25, two of whom were 4-3, was more than deserved. Pat said that if you consistently played and consistently won, you deserved the ranking. I disagreed that winning consistently was a 4-3 record. Then it changed to playing a top 50 or top 100 team weekly you would lose a few. I have no problem with the idea that the WIAC teams are mostly top 50 and definitely top 100. My issue was 5 being top 25 in a year when the two top teams lost in the first round to lower ranked teams. Even the top conference can have a down year. I was shocked too that both teams got knocked out in round one.

[bleedpurple]

For the record, I never said the ARC or any other conference was better than or equal to the WIAC. What I said, and stand by, is that five WIAC teams in the top 25, two of whom were 4-3, was more than deserved. Pat said that if you consistently played and consistently won, you deserved the ranking. I disagreed that winning consistently was a 4-3 record. Then it changed to playing a top 50 or top 100 team weekly you would lose a few. I have no problem with the idea that the WIAC teams are mostly top 50 and definitely top 100. My issue was 5 being top 25 in a year when the two top teams lost in the first round to lower ranked teams. Even the top conference can have a down year. I was shocked too that both teams got knocked out in round one.

I understand the bolded thought and I think it is a plausible argument.  But I don't think that the top two teams losing to lower ranked teams in the first round and the overall WIAC being as strong as always are mutually exclusive.  I believe UW-La Crosse is better than they were last year.  But they weren't as good at the end because they were playing without their best QB and a primary weapon. And they also played a team that is perhaps very special, especially defensively.  Hats off to Wartburg. I think they are better than anyone COULD have known. If they had played like this last year, they would have been ranked much higher this year. 

UW-W was very talented but didn't play consistently this year. They ran into another team that has been rising under a very talented coach. The Aurora teams under Beebe are probably the most dangerous teams to come out of their conference ever.  They have rare strength on the line of scrimmage for that conference and excellent skill players.  They executed brilliantly against UW-W and got us.

My point in all of this is just that I would be careful to conclude the WIAC was down this year based on two results. It's true that the top dog, UW-W wasn't consistent.  But the WIAC ranking has always been more about top to bottom strength than top two strength.

[Schipper Strong]

Thanks Bleed Purple. Again, absolutely no disagreement that the WIAC top to bottom is the strongest conference even if it might have been a down year. That was never my issue. I didn't have an issue with three teams in the top 25 either as Central has played a number of WIAC teams in the NCAA playoffs with a 3-5 record against them. I just didn't think 5 teams in the top 25 was valid when 2 of them were 4-3. If you put those 4-3 teams against 4-3 teams from other conferences the WIAC teams would probably win all of those games. But to say they were better than the top 1 or two teams from all other conferences was my point.

[kiko]

I'm curious... what do you think Coe and Dubuque's record would have been in the WIAC this year?

My issue was 5 being top 25 in a year when the two top teams lost in the first round to lower ranked teams. Even the top conference can have a down year. I was shocked too that both teams got knocked out in round one.

Keep in mind that we didn't know that the top two teams in the WIAC would go out on the first weekend.  You were shocked by it.  I was shocked by it.  The committee clearly expected Whitewater to win and had LaCrosse/Wartburg as a 4/5 matchup.  But the rankings happened before this new data point was available to any of us.

I don't think you hear anyone saying that the WIAC deserves 4-5 teams in the final top 25.  At that point, though?  You could make a case for it.  Wartburg was ranked at that juncture, as they deserved to be.  Aurora's credentials at that point in the season was a loss to a middling MIAA team and running the table in a conference that had never won a playoff game.  It's really challenging to make a case that a team with that CV deserves a spot in the rankings.  Now?  No doubt they belong.

[hazzben]

Yeah, hindsight is 20/20 here. UWW was a two loss team going in (no one should have been thinking they were the UWW of 2010), but had a really nice win down at UMHB. UWL beat a D2. Sure they both lost Rd 1, but it's as much about the quality of Wart and Aurora as it is UWW and UWL. Another data point is Wash U losing to UWRF in the Isthmus Bowl.

Part of this puzzle is the sheer attrition of playing in the WIAC every week. As Pat mentioned, there are no Luther, NWU or Simpsons (or Hamline/CSS for that matter) on the schedule. UWP is far from elite, but they're better than the middle of the pack from every other conference in the country. It's the grind of the season. Every team faces a war of attrition this year (Wartburg at QB right now).

The great benefit of playing in the WIAC is that if you emerge from the regular season healthy, you're as battle tested as any team in the country. I think Linfield is a talented team that's probably better in the playoffs this year if they faced stronger competition in the regular season. But the flip side is that a meat grinder of a schedule also means you might emerge with a playoff bid, but in rough shape for a run.

The best part of the playoff is it gets proved on the field. I'm on record saying Wart was underrated. Aurora had shown they could hang, but no one outside of Aurora was picking them to be in the region finals. What's unanswered is what do a UWRF, UWO, UWS or UWP do in another conference? Put another way, would you rather face those teams or UD, Central, Loras, BV or GAC, Aug, Carleton, Concordia? The bottom two on both those lists don't stack up to UWS/UWP. And if you drop UWRF and UWO into any conference not the WIAC, there's a good chance they're at least 8-2/9-1. Aka, Top 25 or close, caliber teams.

[Schipper Strong]

I can't recall the score of the Coe/Wartburg game, but it was very close, maybe 14-9?, just a week before Wartburg beat LaCrosse. Dubuque lost to LaCrosse 30-3. They may have held their own against the 4-3 teams. I don't know, that's why they play the games. I do think part of the reason the WIAC teams all seam so close in talent is because they know each other so well. That happens within conferences note Bethel-SJU, Wheaton-North Central, Wartburg-Central, etc.

I acknowledge for the last time (5th, 6th, whatever) the strength top to bottom of the WIAC. My opinion is not changed on the issue of 2 teams at 4-3 being in the top 25 over some of the top contenders in ALL the other conferences in the nation. Yes it is hindsight that the WIAC lost in the first round. My statement was can we get away from 5 WIAC teams being rated in the top 25. That's it. My opinion may not be popular, and may be wrong, but I have the right to it.

[kiko]

Nobody is suggesting you don't have a right to your opinion.  It's just that others don't necessarily share it.

What I am suggesting is that, if a 4-3 team is likely among the top 25 in the country based on all available data points, then it should be ranked accordingly.  It's an extension of my lifelong wonderment of why, like clockwork, when #6 beats #7 (random example) by two points, #7 gets punished.  Thankfully that happens less in the D3 poll than in polls for other, lesser divisions.

We'll never know because we didn't play the games, but I very strongly believe that any of those five who were ranked would finish second in the ARC and would win a fair number of conferences.  And I consider the ARC to be a solid conference.

Good luck to Wartburg on Saturday.

[Pat Coleman]

My opinion is not changed on the issue of 2 teams at 4-3 being in the top 25 over some of the top contenders in ALL the other conferences in the nation.

Make a case for "some of the top contenders in ALL the other conferences in the nation" based on what their resume looked like in Week 8.