FB: New England Small College Athletic Conference

[nescac1]

Oh my God.  What an awful and unimaginable situation.  For a kid to (allegedly) commit such an indescribably brutal act, there is just no way to understand it.   

[frank uible]

Is this piece a rush to judgment? The defendant apparently has plead not guilty.

[PistachioX]

Very tragic for all involved... and scary.  Could be anyone's kids.

[Frank Rossi]

Frank the Tank said Mini-Huge was only in one game and had one tackle last year with F&M. The Rev wonders if maybe Mini-Huge transferred to get more play time.

iamhuge, come back and fill us in. Why is Tufts going to be huge this season?

That's not quite accurate.  He missed the entire season due to injury in training camp but he's healthy now and working really hard.

You might want to speak with the school about why his name is showing up as having a tackle and participating in a game.  That could hurt his red shirt -- or force an appeal.

[iamhuge]

Frank the Tank said Mini-Huge was only in one game and had one tackle last year with F&M. The Rev wonders if maybe Mini-Huge transferred to get more play time.

iamhuge, come back and fill us in. Why is Tufts going to be huge this season?

That's not quite accurate.  He missed the entire season due to injury in training camp but he's healthy now and working really hard.

You might want to speak with the school about why his name is showing up as having a tackle and participating in a game.  That could hurt his red shirt -- or force an appeal.

It was an error by the official scorekeeper.  We laughed when we saw it.  All of the F&M coaches and officials are well aware that he was a medical redshirt.   

I wouldn't even know how to check into it anyway.  Thanks for pointing it out.

[lewdogg11]

Is it true that mini-huge is foregoing his 4 remaining eligible seasons to join next year's cast of Jersey Shore?

[nescac1]

It is always hard to project impact frosh in football, but RB is one position where a young player can stand out quickly -- just look at Alex Scyocurka at Williams last year, or especially, ROY Evan Bunker at Trinity.  Indeed, four of the top nine rushers in NESCAC were frosh last year. 

My pick for this year's break-out frosh is LaDarius Drew at Wesleyan, who played H.S. ball in Texas.  Wesleyan features a run-heavy offense (at least last year), lose their work-horse back to graduation, and it sounds like this kid has talent rare at NESCAC (4.45 in the 40, recruiting by all sorts of higher-level schools).  An early possible pick for NESCAC rookie of the year if he stays healthy, given the marriage of talent and opportunity. 

http://texasprepstars.com/featured-news/79/look-at-me-now.php
http://rivals.yahoo.com/bostoncollege/football/recruiting/player-LaDarius-Drew-108906

After a year of record passing totals, I think NESCAC will be far more run-oriented this year.  The top four QB's in the league all graduate and I would guess those teams (Midd, Amherst, Williams, Tufts) will all be running more conservative offenses, as those QB's all set school and in many cases league records for yards, TD's, completions, etc.  All four schools have huge questions marks at the QB spot.  And Wesleyan and Trinity are traditionally run-heavy in all events. 

Meanwhile, there are a ton of top-notch backs returning, including the aforementioned Scyocurka (who I think has the talent to be as good as any Williams back since the mid-1990's) plus two other solid Williams rising sophomores who have a lot of talent and will get more touches, Evan Bunker (plus several other Trinity rising sophs who were extremely productive), Eric Bunker and Ryan Silva (another promising rising soph who will see more touches) at Amherst, and a few other rising sophs who had led their teams in rushing as frosh last year at Bowdoin and Hamilton.   I don't think we will be seeing anything close to last year's Tufts-Amherst craziness this season ....

[nescac1]

http://williams.prestosports.com/sports/fball/2011-12/roster

Williams has its preseason roster posted.  A few interesting notes:

-- after bringing in a ton of top-notch skill guys last year, this year's frosh class features only one QB, one TB, and 2-3 WR.  On the other hand, they brought in a ton of offensive linemen (badly needed with only one rising sophomore OL on the roster), eight in total

-- there is only ONE TE on the entire roster, and he is a first-year.  I wonder if some guys will switch over, or if Williams will instead utilize the FB and 3-4 WR sets more often (Ephs have tons of depth at WR and FB, after all).

-- speaking of WR, surprised to see Tyler Cole listed at WR (his original position as an underclassman), after he made first-team all-NESCAC at CB last year.  Seems like, with two first-team all-NESCAC WR's, two more starting-caliber senior WR's, and a great group of rising sophs at that position, that is the last place they need additional depth.  Perhaps they will move J.C. Stickney to TE, he has enough size to handle the blocking, and he'd be impossible for LB's to cover down the seam. 

-- the Ephs are loaded at DL: their top five guys are all very experienced seniors (including three three-year starters), two of whom are two-time all NESCAC linemen, and they have a solid group of three juniors to provide good depth. 

-- of course the big question for Williams is who will play QB, senior Chris Cleary or one of the two talented rising sophomores.  Whoever it is will need to get acclimated quickly, having to play Trinity on the road in week two.  And for that matter, Bowdoin often gives the Ephs a lot of trouble, at least in recent years. 

[mattvsmith]

Iamhuge,

I hope your son stays healthy and has a great season. Keep us posted.

By the way, you said that Tufts will be great this year. did they do something big to re-gear their program?

[mattvsmith]

Looks like Trinity has lost an incomming recruit.....

http://bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/2011_0706slay_arrest_rock_wayland_cops_charge_ex-boyfriend_in_murder/srvc=home&position=0

Hope the kid is smart enough not to talk with police.

[Jonny Utah]

Looks like Trinity has lost an incomming recruit.....

http://bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/2011_0706slay_arrest_rock_wayland_cops_charge_ex-boyfriend_in_murder/srvc=home&position=0

Hope the kid is smart enough not to talk with police.

You mean if he didn't kill her or if he did?

[iamhuge]

Iamhuge,

I hope your son stays healthy and has a great season. Keep us posted.

By the way, you said that Tufts will be great this year. did they do something big to re-gear their program?

Thanks for the kind words Hobart.  I am pulling for the 'Bos this year.

[mattvsmith]

Hope the kid is smart enough not to talk with police.

You mean if he didn't kill her or if he did?

Either way, but especially if he didn't do it. There's no better way to hang yourself than to imagine to police and DA are interested in truth and facts. They need big arrests and big courtroom wins, and are shameless in their hounding of suspects.  Viz. Duke Lacrosse Case

The whole debacle with Casey Anthony could have been avoided if the DA had tried her on charges he knew he could get her on. He gambled to get headlines and in hopes of being elected to higher office. He lost, and now he'll retire. Oops.

Another famous trick is to charge suspects with a laundry list of offenses, figuring than at least some will stick. After all, most juries are trained to think that a person wouldn't be accused unless they did something (even if not the most serious charges) so there is pretty much a 100% chance to nail something on someone no matter what. The other side is simply to make a list of charges so long it is easier for the suspect to plead out to something he didn't do in order to avoid the possibility of going to jail for life. Grandma will get charged with assault with a deadly weapon, but plead out to simple battery charges because the jury, being obedient to the judge, will agree that when she took her cane to walk to buy cat food this morning, she really wasn't going to buy cat food, but was a seething vicious hunter on prowl for a victim.

People should never talk to cops. Ever. And never ever ever call 911. It's a sure way to get someone killed.

[Frank Rossi]

The preceding is a commentary and not necessarily the view of D3sports.com, its management and/or its contributors.

Just sayin'...

[nescac1]

Rossi's utterly ridiculous commentary is sort of like saying, "no one should ever go to a doctor because some doctors commit malpractice, instead, why not treat yourself?"  Are some police officers / prosecutors lazy, unethical, and/or corrupt?  Of course.  Are we most likely to hear in the media about those ones, rather than the 98 percent of cases which are handled properly, and end up with a just result?  Again, of course.  I have worked with innumerable prosecutors and law enforcement agents, both at the state or federal level.  The vast, vast majority are honest, ethical people who care about doing justice, do not want to see the wrong person convicted for a crime, and work within the parameters of the law, and oftentimes make tremendous personal sacrifices to get the job done right.  To taint everyone in law enforcement with the Duke Lacrosse / Casey Anthony brush is just as stupid as, to bring it back to the terms of this website, say that everyone in D-3 sports OBVIOUSLY is cheating after reading about the Kean scandal. 

In this particular case, the suspect is, as always, innocent until proven guilty.  That being said, based on the extensive physical evidence in the case, including all sorts of bloody items hid throughout the defendant's house, I can't imagine how any comments he may or may not make to police will affect the outcome of the case, unless this has been the most devious frame attempt of all time.  The Anthony case had some very, very unusual features: a combination of a decomposed body making finding physical evidence nearly impossible, no eyewitnesses to the crime, no admissions, and so on.  There is a reason that well over 90 percent of charges end in plea agreements, and the primary reason is, folks are only charged after there is a mountain of nearly incontrovertible evidence, in most cases that are charged.  Acquaintance rape and cold-case murder cases of the type that have dominated the news coverage lately are the exception, not the rule, and are far harder to prove than typical criminal case, by a long shot. 

We hear most about cases that go to trial because, generally, those are the weakest cases.  But most of the time, prosecutors DON'T want to egregiously overreach, and DO want to do justice, and, like in any profession, we hear about the bad eggs, the mistakes, the controversies, far more than we hear about the normal operation of our system of justice, and the innumerable good cops, prosecutors, and FBI agents busting their butts, and often risking their lives, to effectuate justice. 

I hope at some point we can back to discussing NESCAC football rather than having to defend the integrity of the entire criminal justice aparatus against someone who, frankly, has no idea what he is talking about.