FB: Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

[tigersports]

Now that I have recovered from lack of sleep (flew up and back same day, did a HS game the night before and woke up early to take the boys to the Thomas the Tank exhibit in Perris on Sunday), a few observations:

1.  I want to apologize to the loyal oxybroadcast.com listeners out there.   Sometimes you just don't know when your computers gonna say, "you know, I just don't fell like doing what you want me to do right now."  As a result, most of you missed the broadcast.  We were on loud and clear in the second half.

2.  Elliott will be in Indy in Feb for the combine.  He is one of the most accurate passers I've seen on any level.  Wouldn't be surprised to see him go not only in the draft, but the first day.

3.  Linfield was by far the most athletic team I have seen this year.  Their D was in Collins' face when it really counted in the first half and they hit hard.  Though they gave up a bunch of yards, at the end of the day, they held Oxy to its lowest point total.  Linfield's receivers are also top notch as well. 

4.  Not only was Linfield better, this was a bad matchup for Oxy.  Oxy's strength on D was their LB's and that wasn't a factor against Linfield.  I don't recall calling Bryant or Ostland's names very often.

5.  Kelly Bird runs a first-class SID operation at Linfield.

6.  I've enjoyed the postings, for the most part, even from the bitter Redlands' fans.  I suspect that the SCIAC will be a different deal next year, especially if Collins doesn't come back to take ballroom dancing.

[redlandsfan]

Collins getting drafted day one?  Ok, lets be honest....Collins is great, he is...but he is great at the D3 level.  He is not even putting up Danny Ragsdale numbers (not even close) and Rags had a difficult time in the arena league!!!

I give the kid props, but lets "keep it real."

[cawcdad]

redlandsfan, reread the post. tigersports was talking about Brett Elliott, not Collins.

[redlandsfan]

Cawcdad,

My fault!!! Sorry guys!!!

They are both great qb's...the only time I saw Elliot was on TV last year and he didn't have his best game...hopefully the cats make it to ESPN again..then I can check him out.

[OxyFan21]

TigerSports,

What's your take on whether or not Collins is coming back?  I've been trying to get a handle on where he is academically, but can't seem to find out an answer as each person says a different thing.  I figured I'd ask you as you are a weekly (almost) observer of the team.  Clearly, he is listed as a junior so maybe he has a few classes left? 

Perhaps he can enroll in the education grad program (I don't even know if that's his interest), like they did with some players when I was there...if I'm not mistaken.

[scandihoovian]

I think OxyBob posted an article earlier from a paper in Yakima that made it sound like he's coming back for sure. 

Here's a link:
http://www.d3sports.com/post/index.php?topic=3702.msg404893#msg404893

What's the status on the Oxy receiving corps?

[Sabretooth Tiger]

Oxy needs to have a good recruiting year . . . a lot of seniors on the way out.  Having said that, two straight conference titles, national ranking, playoff trips (albeit rather quick this year) and that front page piece in the L.A. Times Sports section a week or two back won't hurt. 

The key will be to find good athletes with the academic chops.  Entrance to Oxy gets more competitive each year . . . and the applicant pool has continued to grow.  It will be an interesting off season.

And everything I've heard indicates that Mr. Collins will be back for the next year.

sabretooth

[rockcat]

Do SCIAC teams lose recruits to NAIA schools like APU?  I've always wondered where the football players from California who aren't D-I or D-II caliber end up going.  It is sort of a mystery to me why the SCIAC isn't one of the best conferences in DIII.  I'm sure admission standards aren't the only thing working against some of these schools.  Besides that, some of them don't have very tough admission standards anyway. 

[rbaikie]

One place to look at is the Northwest -

took a look at the rosters for a few NWC schools -


Willamette - 29 players from CA (Coach Speck has ties all over CA)
Linfield - 13 players from CA
UPS - 16 players from CA

If you figure that the posted roster have between 80 and 100 players listed, that makes a pretty high percentage from outside the Northwest.

[Sabretooth Tiger]

Good question Rockcat, I'm not sure of the answer.  I don't think that APU is a big competitor with Oxy, don't know about the balance of the SCIAC.  Oxy draws from all over the country, we get a lot of kids from Hawaii and the Pacific Northwest . . . but California is certainly the most represented.  Admissions to Oxy, Pomona and Claremont are pretty tough.  I think that, as with any particular DIII school, the competition for really good athletes is with DI and DII schools that offer scholarships, slightly less so with NAIA, but I really don't know.  Tuition is pretty stiff, and the cost of living in So Cal is certainly a lot higher than in other areas of the country.

The recent L.A. Times article provided a bit of insight, particularly as in the case of Collins:  

"When Sports Illustrated did an article last month on then-undefeated UCLA, "the other team in town," the other other team in town barely batted an eye.

"We're Division III. We expect that," linebacker Mike Bryant said. "I think we need to be mentioned a little bit, though. We work just as hard."

Some of them work a bit harder, during games.

Bryant is a two-time defensive player of the year in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.

He also kicks off.

Caleb Small, a wide receiver and defensive back, plays both ways — and he doesn't just dabble.

Against Redlands last month, he played all 78 plays on offense and all 80 on defense, leaving the field once, on a special-teams play.

In a night's work, Small caught six passes for 59 yards and a 24-yard touchdown during the game, was second on the team with 6 1/2 tackles, and returned a punt for 19 yards.

"Our three top safeties have had injuries," Widolff said. "We have about 65 kids. It's not like we've got a million guys and go two-deep or three-deep."

The offensive star of an explosive team averaging 40.5 points and 474 yards a game is Collins, a 6-foot-2, 210-pound quarterback who started his career in the Pacific 10 Conference at Oregon, then found his way down a winding road to Eagle Rock.

"Do you have about two hours to hear the whole story?" he said.

"I went there to play quarterback, and they wanted me to play defense."

He left after one season, and after a brief flirtation with Division I-AA Eastern Washington, took a year off from football at Yakima Valley Community College, near his hometown of Zillah, Wash.

Sifting through all the recruiting letters he received in high school, he decided he wanted to go to a smaller, academically oriented school and called Occidental.

It was a piece of luck for Oxy, but it was luck by design.

"A big part of our challenge is finding very strong academic students, so we contact every high school basically in the western United States and subscribe to recruiting services and send out about 2,000 letters," Widolff said.

"By the time we got going, it was clear he was going to be a Division I guy. But when he went back through his recruiting materials, he came back to our stuff and basically contacted us."

That's how a Division I-caliber quarterback whose passing ability and penchant for pulling down the ball and running fits Widolff's spread offense so well ended up at Occidental.

"We've had some great players," said Widolff, in his 24th year as coach. "Vance Mueller played for the Raiders and had an NFL career. But to get a guy who was a Pac-10 player, no, that doesn't happen often."    

And bottom line is that none of the SCIAC schools that I'm aware of, especially Oxy, Claremont, Pomona put an overpowering emphasis on developing a national championship team in football and/or any other sport.  While we/they delight in getting into the playoffs and want to be competitive in the conference . . . and love  bringing home a DIII championship trophy every now and then . . . it is simply not an institutional priority, at least at Oxy . . . in my view.

[cawcdad]

rockcat, I think many would be D-III ball players in CA go the Junior College route hoping for the scholorship money with a little more experience. And if they do not get the scholorship, they hang up the cleats. The JC here seems to funnel quite a few to NAIA schools like EOU and University of Mary.

[Sabretooth Tiger]

Another thing that I just noticed, by way of example, is that Linfield's football roster carries 128 players.  

Oxy carries 68.

Willamette has 95

The Cobbers have around 140

Pomona has 49

Redlands has 89

Cal Lu has 98

Claremont has 62

Think roster size has an impact?

[OXY Oswald]

oxyfan21 - Collins is coming back next year, much to the chagrin of the rest of the SCIAC, and we'll be returning Kyle Stowers at the safety spot left open by Small's graduation.  He has unfortunately been out all season with a knee injury but is looking much better.

Scandihoovian - The recieving core returns 2 starters, Mike Winchell (Sr) and Rocky Ciasulli (Jr) who both had strong years, but will need to pick up the slack from losing Fukushima, Small, and Jones. 

Oxy will need a great recruiting class this year, but from my experience they run one of the best recruiting trips in the SCIAC.  Their emphasis should be on the O-line (they are graduating 4 of the 5 starters), they will need some help there from incoming Frosh next year.

And..  cawcdad is right, the SCIAC loses a lot of potential D-III players to JuCo which is painful.  With any luck the conference as a whole will beging to get better recruits from the area due to our recent success.


Go Tigers!

[OXY Oswald]

Correction, Winchell is a Jr.  My bad. 


How do you edit a post?

[cawcdad]

Correction, Winchell is a Jr.  My bad. 


How do you edit a post?

In the upper right corner of your post is a button that says "modify"