FB: Presidents' Athletic Conference

[DagarmanSpartan]

I just saw today that Case had added a transfer from the University of Minnesota (that's right, the B1G!!!) to its defensive backfield.  He's a graduate student at Case, and played three years for the Golden Gophers, earning academic all B1G honors.

I'm assuming that we should pencil him in as a starter, right?

This season could be special!

[ADL70]

There is an opening at safety with graduation of Esteban. [edit]  he even has Esteban's #21

His hs coach Jim Stphens is now a CWRU assistant.

[E.115]

^Yep, sounds like Case Western Reserve found their man to fill in the secondary gap of losing Esteban.

McKelvey will join a Spartans' defensive backfield that already features a pair of returning All-Presidents' Athletic Conference selections in senior cornerback Nick Kwon and junior safety Cody Calhoun.


CWRU Football Adds Former Minnesota Gopher & University School Standout McKelvey

http://athletics.case.edu/sports/fball/2016-17/releases/20160805k317i6

[SaintsFAN]

From what I understand, Thomas More has had a VERY successful recruiting season.  Taking advantage of the most recent success and location of the program, they have 89 NEWCOMERS reporting to camp.  Now, you expect they'll have about 8-10 who don't report and/or quit during the Preseason.  But that is an astronomical number of newcomers.  There are a few transfers in this list as well both from the Division and Upper Divisions.  I hear there are some real impact Freshman coming in.  As a result, there is incredible depth and skill at the RB, WR, DL, LB and DB positions. 

Two keys to this season for Coach Scafe and his team;

1.  Need to replace 3 starting OL.  Otis Miller returns to help anchor the OL. 
2.  Keep Brenan Kuntz upright and healthy.  The kid has more athletic ability than the Saints are used to at the position.  He's a budding star. 

Ranked #11 in the D3 Poll and opening the season at Franklin, this team will be tested early in the season.  The best 5 teams on the schedule are in the first 5 weeks of the year. 

[SaintsFAN]

Can't speak for all of the returnees, but having Cuda back at QB is big.

He appears to be one of those Dan Whalen type players that can almost carry the rest of the team on his back.

I'm hoping that we can turn the corner.  But those other teams will also be stout and tough to beat.

Query: Suppose CWRU doesn't make the DIII playoffs, but does get one of those Division III "bowl" bids.  Would that officially count as our second bowl, after Western Reserve's win over Arizona State in the 1941 Sun Bowl?

I don't think you should be comparing him to Whalen yet.  He's started 1 season.  How long was Whalen under center?  I think we'll find out alot more this year about Cuda.  To me, he's going to miss his big target in #1 (WR) and will have to adjust to not having him.  The last time I saw him, he was very athletic but this also got him into some trouble against Thomas More.  Two of the turnovers and 9 of the points were related to this.

I spoke highly of him on the Pat's podcast after the game but I also said TMC's defense got after him and forced TO's.

[wally_wabash]

The playoff selection nerd in me is super interested in the PAC this season.  I know I'm putting the cart way before the horse here, but how does the PAC deal with two undefeated league teams?  Should we get that far, how is the South RAC going to treat CWRU as opposed to single loss teams in other conferences that lost only to their league champion?  Or even to a single loss SCAC team?  The PAC is at the center of the Pool C storm this year and this is going to be fun to revisit in the last couple of weeks of the season should you all steam ahead toward dual undefeated league champions. 

[DagarmanSpartan]

Can't speak for all of the returnees, but having Cuda back at QB is big.

He appears to be one of those Dan Whalen type players that can almost carry the rest of the team on his back.

I'm hoping that we can turn the corner.  But those other teams will also be stout and tough to beat.

Query: Suppose CWRU doesn't make the DIII playoffs, but does get one of those Division III "bowl" bids.  Would that officially count as our second bowl, after Western Reserve's win over Arizona State in the 1941 Sun Bowl?

I don't think you should be comparing him to Whalen yet.  He's started 1 season.  How long was Whalen under center?  I think we'll find out alot more this year about Cuda.  To me, he's going to miss his big target in #1 (WR) and will have to adjust to not having him.  The last time I saw him, he was very athletic but this also got him into some trouble against Thomas More.  Two of the turnovers and 9 of the points were related to this.

I spoke highly of him on the Pat's podcast after the game but I also said TMC's defense got after him and forced TO's.

Even during Whalen's first season, you could tell he was special.

Same for Cuda.  Similar level of dominance.

[SaintsFAN]

Can't speak for all of the returnees, but having Cuda back at QB is big.

He appears to be one of those Dan Whalen type players that can almost carry the rest of the team on his back.

I'm hoping that we can turn the corner.  But those other teams will also be stout and tough to beat.

Query: Suppose CWRU doesn't make the DIII playoffs, but does get one of those Division III "bowl" bids.  Would that officially count as our second bowl, after Western Reserve's win over Arizona State in the 1941 Sun Bowl?

I don't think you should be comparing him to Whalen yet.  He's started 1 season.  How long was Whalen under center?  I think we'll find out alot more this year about Cuda.  To me, he's going to miss his big target in #1 (WR) and will have to adjust to not having him.  The last time I saw him, he was very athletic but this also got him into some trouble against Thomas More.  Two of the turnovers and 9 of the points were related to this.

I spoke highly of him on the Pat's podcast after the game but I also said TMC's defense got after him and forced TO's.

Even during Whalen's first season, you could tell he was special.

Same for Cuda.  Similar level of dominance.

I'm going to disagree. 

I don't think its necessarily a bad thing to not put Cuda in the same space as Whalen yet. 

I just know from talking to Pat, it seemed like he got away with alot against Washington U and I know what I saw doesn't really compute with Whalen's ability.

EDIT:  In other words, I feel like Thomas More gets beat last year in Cleveland if Whalen were the QB.

[wally_wabash]

Dan Whalen was 31-3 with three tournament appearances in his Soph-Senior seasons.  He did not have to get through the PAC to make those tournaments, but still, he strung together three straight 10-0 regular seasons which is pretty incredible regardless of the schedule.  This may be Cuda's best shot at 10-0.  If he doesn't get there this year, I don't know where else a Cuda-or-Whalen conversation could reasonably go. 

[E.115]

From what I understand, Thomas More has had a VERY successful recruiting season.  Taking advantage of the most recent success and location of the program, they have 89 NEWCOMERS reporting to camp.  Now, you expect they'll have about 8-10 who don't report and/or quit during the Preseason.  But that is an astronomical number of newcomers.  There are a few transfers in this list as well both from the Division and Upper Divisions.  I hear there are some real impact Freshman coming in.  As a result, there is incredible depth and skill at the RB, WR, DL, LB and DB positions. 

Feel free to send some of these newcomers up north to Cleveland if you don't end up needing them...Case Western Reserve has 1/3 of these numbers!

[ADL70]

Whalen and Cuda were each 3rd team region as sophs.  I would say that they have similar but somewhat different skill sets.  Cuda was leading rusher something Whalen never did. Whalen had the advantage of the same core players around him for 3-4 years.  He also had the intangible - he [nearly] always found a way to win. He also had the advantage of playing his whole freshman season. Cuda loses 2 top receivers and RB is a ? with Hochman and Canganelli gone.

Time will tell.

[SpartanMom_2016]

RE:  87 new recruits-How does a coaching staff evaluate that many new players?

There are some obvious advantages to having large numbers but I would imagine that it also has its disadvantages.  How do you develop young players when there are so many of them? 

[E.115]

Thomas More freshmen...errr, I mean 2016 Case Western Reserve Spartans (via team Twitter page):



https://mobile.twitter.com/caseathletics/status/764528471527809026

[E.115]

A couple season previews ... Also there are plenty of the PAC interviews on YouTube as well:

Thomas More Team to Beat in PAC
http://www.observer-reporter.com/20160803/thomas_more_team_to_beat_in_pac

Thomas More picked 1st in Presidents' Athletic Conference preseason poll; W&J 2nd
http://triblive.com/mobile/10895312-96/poll-conference-preseason

[HansenRatings]

Here's how my model projects the conference standings (without returning starter adjustments, yet):

Team	Overall W-L	Conf W-L	Pool A Probability
Thomas More	8.9-1.1	7.1-0.9	56.8%
Wash & Jeff	7.7-2.3	6.7-2.3	14.2%
Case	7.7-2.3	6.3-1.7	12.2%
Carnegie Mellon	6.6-3.4	5.2-2.8	10.7%
Westminster	6.4-3.6	5.5-3.5	4.2%
Bethany	4.6-5.4	4.2-4.8	1.2%
Waynesburg	4.2-5.8	3.7-5.3	0.2%
St. Vincent	4.2-5.8	3.5-5.5	0.3%
Geneva	3.4-6.6	3.0-6.0	0.1%
Thiel	2.2-7.8	1.4-7.6	0.0%
Grove City	1.5-8.5	1.4-7.6	0.0%

Source: https://loghan.shinyapps.io/Season_Projections/

There's a couple flips in there from where the conference preseason poll has everything, but lines up pretty nicely. In the hopes of building a better model though, I would need more information about what the PAC considers "conference games," because not every team plays the same number of conference opponents, and from looking at the standings last year, it appears that some of the conference opponents are non-conference games. Wally Wabash also brought up the point a few days ago, what happens if there's two undefeated teams in conference? Who gets the Pool A bid? I had to make some assumptions that probably skewed the results more in favor of Thomas More than they will be in reality. So take my projections for the PAC with a few more grains of salt than you would for a different conference, especially the Pool A projections.