FB: Liberty League

[Ice Bear]

Ice Bear says great ****ing write up on Hilbert College on the front page. Ice is wishing them well. The Bear got the sense of just how much there is to cover on the daily to get a program going from scratch. Ice will be rooting for Hilbert with his right paw.

[Pat Coleman]

Thanks! Yeah, I can't imagine what it takes to start up a program from scratch like that.

[unionpalooza]

Ice Bear says great ****ing write up on Hilbert College on the front page. Ice is wishing them well. The Bear got the sense of just how much there is to cover on the daily to get a program going from scratch. Ice will be rooting for Hilbert with his right paw.

I agree it was a really great write up.  The Herculean effort begins to make sense when you consider Hilbert's context - like so many other small colleges, they have major financial viability issues, and this presumably is ultimately a bet that bringing on another 90 paying students will help them hold off the forces crushing these kinds of schools. The Hendrix playbook lives on.

While I am in grumpy old man mode, what's with all these UW schools' cross-country no conference games?  I mean, as a D3 fan, they make for some awesome games.  But how on earth is flying the team out for a nonconference regular season game a good use of state school athletic department money?  (Who knows, maybe they are making 16 hour bus trips...)

[IC798891]

While I am in grumpy old man mode, what's with all these UW schools' cross-country no conference games?  I mean, as a D3 fan, they make for some awesome games.  But how on earth is flying the team out for a nonconference regular season game a good use of state school athletic department money?  (Who knows, maybe they are making 16 hour bus trips...)

I mean, I'll say that plenty of other programs do it — though those teams usually make a trip out of it. Last year, Whitewater's first 11 baseball games, for example, were either in Texas or Florida. The softball team made a Florida trip. M/W Basketball went to Georgia/California. Volleyball went to NYC. Tennis looks like they have a spring trip to Cali.

Obviously, some of these are driven by weather — IC has teams do it all as well, for the same reason. But it might just be a sense of, why all those teams but not football?

[Bartman]

Bartman listened to yesterday's  Hobart HC podcast revealing, as anticipated, that it was for disciplinary reasons that Krewson and starting WR LaBella were not played against the Mustangs. Also, Boswell(scored on 1 of every 9 touches last year) has a nagging leg injury. No excuses, the next man up did not get it done and , although some good game experience for backups that might be valuable later this season. That said, this was a gut wrenching loss to the pride of the program. The Statesmen need to focus against an improved SJF team that will be looking to deliver another shock loss , this time at the Boz. This was circled on the calendar as a key pre LL game and the intensity should be up a few notches after the Hobart loss last week. We will see. No predictions of the result or the score this week, the boys need a "good" win. This Hobart team has enough talent to compete with every opponent on it's schedule, let's see if the team can grab a win with some controlled anger and put last week in the rear view mirror .

[unionpalooza]

Bartman listened to yesterday's  Hobart HC podcast revealing, as anticipated, that it was for disciplinary reasons that Krewson and starting WR LaBella were not played against the Mustangs. Also, Boswell(scored on 1 of every 9 touches last year) has a nagging leg injury. No excuses, the next man up did not get it done and , although some good game experience for backups that might be valuable later this season. That said, this was a gut wrenching loss to the pride of the program. The Statesmen need to focus against an improved SJF team that will be looking to deliver another shock loss , this time at the Boz. This was circled on the calendar as a key pre LL game and the intensity should be up a few notches after the Hobart loss last week. We will see. No predictions of the result or the score this week, the boys need a "good" win. This Hobart team has enough talent to compete with every opponent on it's schedule, let's see if the team can grab a win with some controlled anger and put last week in the rear view mirror .

This should be a good weekend to get a better sense of who's what in the LL this season.  Ithaca v. Alfred will give us a H2H comparison to Hobart, the Hobart/SJF game should tell us whether last week was a fluke or not, RPI/WPI will just show us what RPI looks like against lesser opponents, and Union/Springfield should give us a sense of whether Union's been pounding cupcakes versus might have something special.  For obvious reasons the latter game interests me most - Union has beaten Springfield three games in a row, but the last two close games where Union played poorly and could have lost had a few bounces gone differently.  Springfield also plays with a toughness and physicality that Union has not yet seen (but will see lots of at the end of the season), so it will interesting to see how Union rises to that occasion.  I suspect it will be a high scoring affair but hopefully the Dutchmen can win the turnover battle, which usually decides it's Springfield games.

[Bartman]

+k to palooza for the analysis of the weekend games. I'm thinking Union-Springfield will be the game of the week and
will be a real rock'em sock'em affair with many scores. Good luck to all of the LL teams.

[Ice Bear]

Ice Bear is looking forward to all the LL matchups this weekend. Ice is very interested to see how SLU does against Morrisville up in the north country. Ice says a competitive SLU team is a very good thing for the LL. Ice will also be looking to see how Roch Cha ****ing Cha does against Brockport. Ice obviously expects Port to get the W but is hoping this game marks a specific point of improvement for the Yellowjackets. Ice is just as curious as the Guru how the O-line and Papantonis stacks up.

Ice is hoping RPI can bounce back against former LL foe WPI. While WPI is the clear underdog here they have some very good athletes that can certainly compete with RPI, but for how long? The Endicott D ****ing shut them down and Ice believes the defense sitting in the can in Troylet is better.

The Bear wishes the Pumpkinheads well and hopes the return of Krewson and LaBella on top of the feeling left from last week will allow the Pumpkinheads to explode their seeds all over the Boz on Saturday. Ice believes the improving Cardinals will be more likely to exploit any mistakes Krewson makes, so he needs to be as consistent as possible. Let's ****ing go Bart!

As far as Ice's beloved Dutchmen are concerned...enough of the ****ing 76 points talk. Don't get Ice wrong, it was a solid W where U did everything it was supposed to do. Worcester St. was overmatched at every position (props to the Lancers for never quitting. Some of those mother****ers keep playing hard. Ice respects that) so it was exactly what the **** should have happened. Ice read an article in the Shocktown Gazette yesterday touching on the huge W. While Ice loves the attention he fears that come Saturday the Dutchmen, who have basically played what Ice considers a step up from Pop Warner football to this point, are going to get punched in the mouth and not recover. The bear says that we shall see. Union's inexperience on D sits up front and in the LB core which is exactly what the triple option can exploit. Ice agrees from having watched the Pride play twice (admittedly only in parts) that they are very physical and incredibly athletic. ****, Rowan had to cheat to barely beat them. Ice believes the Pride will be coming out for blood in this rivalry and the Garnet will have to be ready to respond.

To Ice, what the Dutch will need to do in order to allow them to compete is more of that Saturday Afternoon Fever running game. Ike, Ferraria, Fiore, and Anderson need to bring it with that O-line pushing mother****ers around like the big bellied bully with chocolate sauce on his face, who dominates the playground at ****ing day care. Defense be disciplined and be ready to be absolutely challenged on each and every play. Ice says, "Oh, here is a secret...they will throw the ball once or twice so don't ****ing fall asleep!" Let's go U! Huge, huge early season test. Your beloved alum Frank Rossi will be in the house. Ramp it up and let's really give him something to talk about on ITH next week.

[stlawus]

Going to be a long season in Canton.  0 pass rush is going to lose this team many games if they can't get it straightened out.  Gave Morrisville just about anything they wanted on 3rd and 4th down.

[Bartman]

Going to be a long season in Canton.  0 pass rush is going to lose this team many games if they can't get it straightened out.  Gave Morrisville just about anything they wanted on 3rd and 4th down.

Disappointing result for SLU and the LL. In the end , you gotta give the Mustangs credit for back/back wins against LL opponents. LL really needs to come up big today .

[IC798891]

Disappointing result for SLU and the LL. In the end , you gotta give the Mustangs credit for back/back wins against LL opponents. LL really needs to come up big today .

That's three games for SLU with a relatively worse result than last year

A 13-point loss to Endicott went to a 27-point loss
A 30-point win vs. Norwich went to an 11-point win
A 13-point win vs. Morrisville became a 2-point loss

It's always interesting to think about what team might play spoiler in the LL. But these results, and Buff State's disaster of a Week 1 — a 41-point loss to a Fisher team they only lost to by 7 (despite going 0-10) makes me think it's not these two.

Rochester looks like they could be tough, if Papantonis has risen from good back to to the "carry the offense to a win by myself" level of play and Rose gives them a decent passing game.

On the whole though, I think the LL is a bit down this year.

[stlawus]

SLU lost their entire offensive line from last year, there was always going to be a drop off this season.

[XREDDRAGON77]

Buff State could be in for a long season! Ouch! I'm guessing like last weeks, the dragons will call the dogs off this half.

[Caz Bombers]

Ithaca 52-3 Alfred. Hmm, not bad, I guess.

[IC798891]

For 15 years (2004-2018), Alfred was almost always good to excellent.

The last few years, they seem to have fallen to mediocre. Tough to see. Ithaca rolled, and looked sharp, though there were a few drops in the passing game. But overall, that's picky stuff.

IC gets a chance to rest before the conference schedule kicks off.