FB: Presidents' Athletic Conference

[SpartanMom_2016]

Biggest win for Case in years.  Cuda is DA MAN!!!

We definitely deserve to be in next week's top 25.

I have been on the Case bandwagon since about week 4, but please note that the W & J win is the first real sign of their legitimacy against good teams....and also then please note that W & J is a long time removed from its relevance as a national powerhouse; last year's playoff win against Wittenberg was their first playoff win in seven years and they promptly lost 67-0 to Mount the next week. 

Case will get some votes, but I would stop well short of "definitely deserve to be in next week's top 25" - and please do not give me the "we're 6-1 and just beat the 15th-ranked team in the nation" line that I can already see forming in your mind.  W & J at 15 last week was an extremely puzzling ranking, coming off a good-but-not-great season last year in which they lost a PAC game and got blown out really, really badly in the playoffs (big difference between a 34-20 loss where you trade scores for awhile vs. 67-0) and carrying an 18-point loss to a team ranked only four spots ahead of them.  There just wasn't much basis for W & J being that high (ranked, yes, but not all the way up at #15). 

Case will not just rocket up to that spot because they beat W & J.  Besides the top 25 teams, another 20 teams were in the "also receiving votes" category last week (so 45 teams received at least one vote for the poll).  Case was not among them.  They will join that group this week, but eight weeks into the season a team isn't going to go from "zero votes" to "ranked" (leapfrogging 20 teams or more) with one result.  It's a very good result, but not enough for that kind of leap.  CWRU is helped by the fact that a number of teams near the bottom of the top 25 and in the ORV group lost, but that would still be an enormous leap, and one that even I am not sure would be justified.

Regardless of what happens in the rankings, Case's postseason chances will hang on their result vs. Thomas More.  They would be a very, very, very long shot for a Pool C bid at 8-2 with a h2h loss to Chicago, who could also be on the list of candidates for last few spots in the South RR's.  So I would probably not worry about whether they're in this week's Top 25.  It has no bearing on their playoff chances.

You recently wrote:

TMC and W & J are clearly a step ahead of the pack.

Case beat W&J and all of a sudden W&J is not that good?  You can't have it both ways.

I saw most of the game last night.  I had to put my phone down and go on stage at the end of the 3rd quarter.  I was impressed with both teams and it was the most entertaining a game I recall in recent years.

I think we learned some of what you addressed in your post 3581 and the Case defense is a solid unit.  They held the mighty Presidents to 105 yards rushing and 17 points below their previous scoring average. 

[ExTartanPlayer]

The league has sorted itself out pretty nicely here.  Pretty distinct hierarchy that can be set up without violating almost any H2H results.  Please note that there's some weirdness in the official league standings because a few games between PAC teams are technically "non league" games (so Westminster only has one PAC loss despite having losses against TMC and W & J).  I am going to rank the teams by how good they actually are, not where they will finish in the standings.

1. Thomas More (8-0, 6-0)
2. Case Western (6-1, 6-0)

Well, how about this.  CWRU pulled it off and gives themselves a puncher's chance to play for the league title.  TMC will be a heavy favorite (much easier time against W & J than the Spartans did) but we're all set up for a league title game in two weeks.

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3. W & J (5-2, 3-2): lost to TMC and CWRU, beat Westminster.  Playing for pride the rest of the season.

4. Westminster (5-2, 4-1): has a real chance to finish 8-2, which would be their best record since 2000.  Losses against TMC and W & J, win over CMU.  Still yet to play St. Vincent but after what I saw yesterday that should be no problem.

5. Carnegie Mellon (4-3, 4-2): lopsided win yesterday against St. Vincent was their best performance of the season.  A win over Thiel next week would secure a .500 season with two tough games remaining against Chicago and Case.  Has already beaten SVC, Bethany, Geneva so whatever their official league record ends up, they belong here in the league rankings.  CMU occupies an interesting space in these rankings - they're sort of the demarcation line between the top four teams (after all, they lost be double digits to W & J and Westminster) and the rest of the league (blowout wins over St. Vincent, Bethany, and Geneva), really underscoring how the league lacks a strong middle class.  You're either really good and competing for the title in the top 4...or you're so far behind the curve you lose by 21+ to the fifth-best team in the league (Carnegie Mellon).  Not much of an in-between there.

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6. St. Vincent (3-4, 2-3): laid an egg at CMU after a strong effort against Thomas More the previous week.  Has beaten the bottom three teams in these rankings with games to play against 7, 8, and 9.  We'll find out how these guys sort out.

7. Bethany (3-5, 2-4): beat Geneva and Waynesburg, belongs here, could still move ahead of SVC depending on the result of their game.

8. Geneva (2-5, 1-4): didn't exactly distinguish themselves against Bethany.

9. Waynesburg (3-5, 2-4): only wins have come against the bottom dwellers and have lost to both Bethany and Geneva.  Yuck.

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10. Grove City (0-7, 0-5)

11. Thiel (1-6, 0-5)

[ExTartanPlayer]

TMC and W & J are clearly a step ahead of the pack.

Case beat W&J and all of a sudden W&J is not that good?  You can't have it both ways.

SpartanMom, I think you're reading one thing I said, and seeing it as another.  That first quote you pulled about TMC and W & J being a "step ahead of the pack" referred to their standing in the PAC.  There is a big difference between being a step ahead of the PAC pack and being ranked 15th in the nation.  The PAC is a mediocre league on the national stage (look at my rankings above; there are three really good teams, one and a half OK teams, and then an awful mess after Carnegie Mellon), and it was probably a bridge too far to think this league had two of the top 15 Division III teams in the country, especially when the second of those had a leaky defense that had been giving big yards and points up to almost every team they played.  If I had bothered to comment on W & J's national ranking before now, which I didn't, I would have said the same thing.  The game against Case isn't what changed my mind about that.  I'd been skeptical of W & J's defense for weeks, and said that several different places on these boards.

I'm not discrediting Case or the big win they just notched.  Hell, I spent a lot of my time writing a preview of the game because I was really excited about it, I picked Case to win, and they won.  But I am generally trying to keep it in the proper national context.  When one of the overzealous folks here takes Case winning a big game to "We're definitely going to be in the top 25 now!" a little reason is called for.

Some version of this happens almost every season.  Team X gets pretty good, Team X fans think their team is pretty hot stuff and can't understand why Team X gets no love from the top 25 voters because they're 6-1 and on a roll; surely they must be a top 25 team!  It takes a couple years following the national D3 picture to really grasp this.  There are a very large number of teams in Division III (relative to FBS) and being in the top 25 isn't easy to do.  Being the second best team in a league with a minimal national pedigree and no recent playoff success doesn't automatically qualify you as a top 25 team...yet.  And really, this is all academic; Case's playoff hopes depend on their game against Thomas More.  Full stop.  They win that game, make plans to be free for the first week of the playoffs.  They lose, it's been a helluva run and they can come visit Pittsburgh for what hopefully can be a fun Academic Bowl.

[Ralph Turner]

W&J has been highly over-rated for some time.
The offense, while exciting at times, is incapable of maintaining possessions against quality pressure defenses.
In addition, by design, the offense puts the defense in an almost indefensible position.
For instance, tonight, following CWRU's 12-play TD drive that tied the game at 21, the W&J offense managed 1 minute of possession before forcing the defense right back out.  The defense gets a stop and a special teams breakdown put them right back out.

And tonight's situation isn't unique to this game or this season.  It IS the prevailing philosophy of the program.
SPRINT SPRINT SPRINT, even if part of your team, an important part, MUST get a break of more than 45-60 seconds.

Another example:  in ETF's oft-posted MU's whacking of W&J in last year's second round:
Following one quarter, W&J trailed the nation's best offense AND best defense 7-0, certainly in the ball game.
In the second period, W&J had four possessions (complete possessions ending with punts) that total less than 5 minutes.
If this program thinks it can SPRINT SPRINT SPRINT with the D3 measuring stick, I guess I have no idea what I'm talking about.

W&J's at a philosophical cross-roads:  from a program standpoint, is it good enough to whack the repetitive doormats of the PAC, knock off most challengers and win several PAC titles every five years, then get shown the exit door early on in the D3 tournament.  If that's enough, it that's programmatically acceptable, so be it.

If it's not the level to which Pres. Haring-Smith, AD McGuinness and HC Sirrianni aspire, some hard facts have to be faced.
And from MY seat, the OFFENSIVE APPROACH has to be looked at first.

Congrats to CWRU and thanks for the great hospitality.  I look forward to working there again down the road.

Wow!  What an assessment!

Thank you.  +1!

[jam40jeff]

XTP, I agreed with your assessment about Case likely not vaulting into the Top 25, so I was pretty surprised to see they did in fact go from "absolute zero" (not even ORV) to being ranked 23rd.

[ExTartanPlayer]

XTP, I agreed with your assessment about Case likely not vaulting into the Top 25, so I was pretty surprised to see they did in fact go from "absolute zero" (not even ORV) to being ranked 23rd.

Ha, I just came here to post this.  I'm a little surprised, too.  Don't get me wrong - I would love to see Case validate this ranking - but I was not sure they would appear in the rankings just yet.  If I was a top 25 voter, I would have put them onto my personal "watch list" of teams just outside the poll that I was keeping an eye on.  I do have them on my South Region Fan Poll ballot and have moved them up a few slots from last week.

On to WashU.  Kind of an odd situation here - CWRU's playoff hopes are now entirely dependent on the Thomas More game, and coming off the biggest win in the last five years, will they be able to bring it against the Bears this week?  WashU is no slouch this year.  Interested to see if CWRU can come down off the high of this win, re-focus, and bring a good effort against WashU knowing that the PAC-title game is one more week away.  It's a really neat finishing slate for Case.

[DagarmanSpartan]

As I said, we deserve to be in the Top 25, AND WE ARE!!!

I mean, I kinda hate to say "I told ya so," but let's be frank.

I really did tell ya so!!!





GO SPARTANS!!!

[SaintsFAN]

more importantly, I hope CWRU is in the South Regional Rankings.. Not sure that W&J will be. 

They may be close since it was a one score game on the victor's home field. 

[SaintsFAN]

As I said, we deserve to be in the Top 25, AND WE ARE!!!

I mean, I kinda hate to say "I told ya so," but let's be frank.

I really did tell ya so!!!





GO SPARTANS!!!

"Deserve" is a really strong word for it.  The W&J result happened to be the same week as some big changes at the bottom of the poll.  I'm pulling for Sparty this weekend, there are some Thomas More haters still out there and I'm glad they get third shot at a ranked team in 2015. 

[ExTartanPlayer]

more importantly, I hope CWRU is in the South Regional Rankings.. Not sure that W&J will be. 

They may be close since it was a one score game on the victor's home field.

Been trying to figure this out myself.  There are only about five real clear slam-dunk picks in the South RR's (UMHB, TMC, JHU, HSU, and W & L).  Past that there are a lot of 1-loss and 2-loss teams that are tough to distinguish - Texas Lutheran, Berry, Hendrix, Chicago, Maryville, Huntingdon, Hampden-Sydney, Guilford; any of them could take some of those last few spots but none are obvious picks.  I think CWRU should be in the RR's next week, maybe even as high as #6 or 7, but whether they stay there will be dictated by their performance against TMC.

[SaintsFAN]

more importantly, I hope CWRU is in the South Regional Rankings.. Not sure that W&J will be. 

They may be close since it was a one score game on the victor's home field.

Been trying to figure this out myself.  There are only about five real clear slam-dunk picks in the South RR's (UMHB, TMC, JHU, HSU, and W & L).  Past that there are a lot of 1-loss and 2-loss teams that are tough to distinguish - Texas Lutheran, Berry, Hendrix, Chicago, Maryville, Huntingdon, Hampden-Sydney, Guilford; any of them could take some of those last few spots but none are obvious picks.  I think CWRU should be in the RR's next week, maybe even as high as #6 or 7, but whether they stay there will be dictated by their performance against TMC.

I don't know how much wins against W&J will be valued at this point.  They surely will value the TM win over the Presidents more than they would CWRU's, even though they are both Home wins. 

And let me be the one to argue JHU should be moved into the Wesley or Mount Union brackets.  You know, for proximity purposes only

[SpartanMom_2016]

As I said, we deserve to be in the Top 25, AND WE ARE!!!

I mean, I kinda hate to say "I told ya so," but let's be frank.

I really did tell ya so!!!





GO SPARTANS!!!

"Deserve" is a really strong word for it.  The W&J result happened to be the same week as some big changes at the bottom of the poll.  I'm pulling for Sparty this weekend, there are some Thomas More haters still out there and I'm glad they get third shot at a ranked team in 2015.

If you look at the new teams at the bottom of the rankings you will see that only Case and Delaware Valley actually beat a ranked team to get into the rankings.  I would say they deserve it as much as any other team with a good record that beats a ranked opponent.

[jknezek]

As I said, we deserve to be in the Top 25, AND WE ARE!!!

I mean, I kinda hate to say "I told ya so," but let's be frank.

I really did tell ya so!!!





GO SPARTANS!!!

"Deserve" is a really strong word for it.  The W&J result happened to be the same week as some big changes at the bottom of the poll.  I'm pulling for Sparty this weekend, there are some Thomas More haters still out there and I'm glad they get third shot at a ranked team in 2015.

If you look at the new teams at the bottom of the rankings you will see that only Case and Delaware Valley actually beat a ranked team to get into the rankings.  I would say they deserve it as much as any other team with a good record that beats a ranked opponent.

W&L beat a ranked team earlier in the year (Guilford) and despite being undefeated didn't get in until the most recent poll. Polls are funny that way. Just beating a ranked team doesn't mean you take their place, though it certainly helps put you on the radar. Great win for Case. Brutal couple weeks with Wash U and TMC upcoming.

[ADL70]

To me the Chicago h2h doesn't really favor them. Chicago won by a missed PATand stats were comparable.  Chicago was at home and even if you only see homefield as worth one point-- it's a tie.

[wally_wabash]

To me the Chicago h2h doesn't really favor them. Chicago won by a missed PATand stats were comparable.  Chicago was at home and even if you only see homefield as worth one point-- it's a tie.

For clarification, who is "them"?  Are you saying the Chicago h2h win over CWRU doesn't favor Chicago?