FB: New England Small College Athletic Conference

[frank uible]

More like the Internal Revenue Code?

[Anon E Moose]

Wesleyan has landed a real nice running back from my home town, John Kuhn. This is a link to one of his lineman's highlight videos but you can check out some of his better runs by jumping right to 2:00. 3:25 &7:19. He ran for 351 yards and 5 td's in a single game. A really good young man. I have no feelings one way or the other about Wesleyan, but I hope John has a great career there.  Wesleyan fans are going to be very happy he chose the Cardinals. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3FT9iXzblI

[iamhuge]

Wesleyan has landed a real nice running back from my home town, John Kuhn. This is a link to one of his lineman's highlight videos but you can check out some of his better runs by jumping right to 2:00. 3:25 &7:19. He ran for 351 yards and 5 td's in a single game. A really good young man. I have no feelings one way or the other about Wesleyan, but I hope John has a great career there.  Wesleyan fans are going to be very happy he chose the Cardinals. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3FT9iXzblI

Nice to see NJ kids moving up to New England to play.  Not enough of them on NESCAC rosters if you ask me.

[frank uible]

Wesleyan's 2011 roster shows 7 (in my view a relatively high number) freshmen from NJ. It is suspected that this somewhat surprising fact has been primarily caused by the arrival of Whelan and his coaching staff. As most of you know, NJ high school football tends to be high quality.

[hazzben]

What constitutes "full contact practice"? One-on-one  or three-on-three line scrimmages? "Thud" where it is not intended that anyone "go to the ground"?  Practice in pads against hand held dummies? Practice iin which free standing dummies are knocked to the ground by players in pads going to the ground? Seven-on-seven bump-and-run practice without pads but with helmets? Et cetera.

I always thought of 'full-contact' as meaning you can take someone to the ground. Maybe the 'non full-contact' days are helmets and shoulder pads?  Don't know. Good question. But I'm sure an ivy scholar will draft up a very detailed addendum.

I'd consider "full contact practice" to require full pads and that certain portions of the practice allowed for players to be "tackled to the ground."

At Bethel, we rarely had a full contact practice after pre-season camp and never once conference play started. Mondays and Fridays were no pads. Tuesday to Thursday usually involved helmets, shoulder pads and thigh boards and everyone needed to stay on their feet. If you went down, you'd quickly have a coach reminding you that 'athletes can keep their feet.'

Personally I think this move by the Ivy League seems like a PR deal. But maybe they still treat practice like we did in HS, where you go full pads 3+ days a week. 

[nescac1]

re: Kuhn, one of the few Williams recruits to really stand out for me, on paper, this year was Tom Cabarle.  I note that Kuhn was second-team all conference in Morris County, NJ.  Cabarle was conference POY as a RB/DB, putting up crazy stats.  He is listed as a DB on the Ephs' roster, however. 

http://www.nj.com/hssports/blog/football/index.ssf/2010/12/nj_football_morris_county_season_review_2010.html

Williams has certainly done well in recruiting from Jersey in the past ... for example last year the Ephs's had three first-team all NESCAC guys from Jersey, including POY QB Moffitt, RB Lupo, and two-time first teamer (likely to be three-time if healthy) Curzi.  So I think it's fair to see Wesleyan's Jersey-influx as a positive sign in football, just as a Jersey-influx is a positive sign more generally (admittedly, I speak with somewhat of a bias here ...). 

Williams' recruiting class is interior-linemen heavy, and it is generally harder to get any sort of bead on how good they will eventually be / how dominant they were in high school. 

[amh63]

All this praise for NJ players!   Amherst has had its share of outstanding talent from NJ.  Senior DL Kevin Ferber has been selected as a pre-season All-American first team player by D-3football.com.  More important, he is also selected as one of the Amherst football captains for this Fall.  Particulars to date for Kevin is on the Amherst football website.

[Anon E Moose]

re: Kuhn, one of the few Williams recruits to really stand out for me, on paper, this year was Tom Cabarle.  I note that Kuhn was second-team all conference in Morris County, NJ.  Cabarle was conference POY as a RB/DB, putting up crazy stats.  He is listed as a DB on the Ephs' roster, however. 

http://www.nj.com/hssports/blog/football/index.ssf/2010/12/nj_football_morris_county_season_review_2010.html

Williams has certainly done well in recruiting from Jersey in the past ... for example last year the Ephs's had three first-team all NESCAC guys from Jersey, including POY QB Moffitt, RB Lupo, and two-time first teamer (likely to be three-time if healthy) Curzi.  So I think it's fair to see Wesleyan's Jersey-influx as a positive sign in football, just as a Jersey-influx is a positive sign more generally (admittedly, I speak with somewhat of a bias here ...). 

Williams' recruiting class is interior-linemen heavy, and it is generally harder to get any sort of bead on how good they will eventually be / how dominant they were in high school. 

Forget about on paper. I saw him play in person many times. Cabarle is a top notch player as well. A smart kid and a very good all-around athlete.  He will excel wherever they play him.

As far as their class being lineman-heavy, one thing I noticed from going trough the recruiting process this winter was that big lineman-sized kids who had the grades and SAT scores for the top academic schools were definitely a hot commodity. You've got to play them 5 at a time and you're right about not being able to gauge how they will adjust to the speed of the college game, so stocking up makes sense. 

[frank uible]

In my view and generally speaking, QB is the position, the success of which is most difficult to project from one level of competition to a higher one,then RB and ILB or MLB, then all the rest except for PK and PT and finally PK and PT.

[nescac1]

Yeah, I didn't meant to suggest I had any thoughts in terms of projecting performance of skill guys vs. interior linemen as competition increased (it's safe to say that Frank U. knows more about that than any other poster on this board), I just meant, interior linemen tend to get very little publicity, especially at the high school level, relative to skill guys, so it is hard to get a sense from the very sparse high school resumes available online just how good they might have been, even in high school.  Compare, for example, to a guy like Scyocurka at Williams or some of the RB's at Trinity last year -- they received a lot of publicity, in a way that a star offensive guard recruit likely would not. 

Williams is uncharacteristically thin at the line spots heading into last recruiting season (only one OL and one DL in the class of 2014 on next year's projected roster, and only seven returning OL in total ...), so some of those linemen (on the offensive side for sure) will need to be in the two-deep to start the season. 

[amh63]

Forgot to mention in my earlier post that K. Ferber is from Mahwah N.J. and Don Basco school.  Amherst has 9 players on the team from N.J., not counting the incoming freshmen players.  There is a Soph, RB listed at 6' and 249 lbs.  Maybe he will become a blocking back that has been missing from the offense for several years.   I also believe that Amherst will have an offense based on a ground attack with an option QB early in the season as they evaluate their QB's.

[iamhuge]

Forgot to mention in my earlier post that K. Ferber is from Mahwah N.J. and Don Basco school.  Amherst has 9 players on the team from N.J., not counting the incoming freshmen players.  There is a Soph, RB listed at 6' and 249 lbs.  Maybe he will become a blocking back that has been missing from the offense for several years.   I also believe that Amherst will have an offense based on a ground attack with an option QB early in the season as they evaluate their QB's.

I remember that kid when he played for the Hun School.  They play in the MAPL which is a private school league.  The competition is suspect.  The one time they played a public school team, Sayreville, they lost.

[amh63]

the Amherst website posted several "tease" bits of info.  One that the Fall previews of the Fall teams will be out later in the Summer....the full fall schedules are out.  In the lead sports article, there are several short write-ups dealing with the mens soccer team, the women's field hockey team and the OB situation on the football team.  The football article did point out that there are four FY quarterbacks coming in.  The present team has only three QB's with only one having game experience.  Should be an interesting season with a strong offensive team with a "rookie" starting QB.

[amh63]

Back from the beach and scanning the conference schools for news.
Wes. has posted a 2011 preview!  Also noted that on Sept. 9-12, Wes. will have a big football weekend.....with a golf tournament, scrimmage, and a NYC reception.  Seems that Wes. is raising the football image up a notch....for its alumni/supporters.
Talking about scrimmages...noticed that Bates has even put up a scrimmage date on its schedule.  I hope that Amherst doesn't have its NESCAC "scrimmage" again with Williams.  Never could comprehend this.   Its like Trinity scrimmaging Wes., etc.  Maybe they do?   
Who does the conference teams scrimmage with?...by the way within the conference.

[frank uible]

The rationale of Whalen, when he was at Williams, for an Amherst/Williams scrimmage was that it eliminated or reduced (as the case may be) travel time/distance and that it provided more challenging opposition for Williams. It is my view that the scrimmage will continue indefinitely because and so long as the rationale holds.