FB: Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference

[RooBro]

Several plays after a pass interferance call on 3rd down a 40 yrd TD pass puts TU up 31-14 with 10:36 to go.

[RooBro]

Trinity scores another late TD 38-14 with 2:41.

[Ralph Turner]

The Trinity loss at Centre looms large today!

[roocru]

Congrats to Trinity for their victory! 

Also congrats to Austin College for a good year.  Admit it, you Trinity fans were sweating it for a minute there!!   
AC has made some real improvements and I am proud of their effort and their season.  Now all we have to do is find a way to convert on 4th & 1.  It cost us at least two victories this year. 

Tex, let's get together next week.  I owe you a Mexican dinner! 

[Ron Boerger]

The Trinity loss at Centre looms large today!

*sigh* no kidding.

[frank_ezelle]

In all honesty, this was a perfect day for Millsaps:

---They won to complete a 10-0 season and to keep the high ranking they need to hopefully host several games.
---They played very much like a team that wasn't focused or a team that thought they could just walk out on the field and go through the motions.  Maybe that wan't what happened, but a focused team rarely fumbles 7 times, turns over the ball 7 times, and gets penalized 8 times for 128 yards.  If a team is going to have a problem with their focus, they are lucky if they still win and if that problem comes before the first game of the playoffs.
---DePauw winning today was great for DePauw, great for Millsaps, and great for the SCAC.  What would help the SCAC from this point on is for Millsaps to go deep into the playoffs.

And while the big thing is how well the team does, congratulations to Millsaps receiver Eric McCarty for tieing the Millsaps record for most catches in a career.  He is now tied with Dees Hinton who played on the 1975 NCAA team.  Eric is a great guy as well as a great football player--a description I would have also used in 1975 to describe Dees Hinton (Dees is still a great guy who looks like he can still play--I feel sure he can still catch the ball but I'm not so certain about the "taking a hit" part).

I received an email with two corrections to the above.  First, it turns out the Eric McCarty had 6 receptions today which makes him #1 on the Millsaps career list with 160 receptions.  Second, he passed Wes Ingram who had 159 career catches--Dees is third on the list with 136.  Dees holds the record for receiving yards with McCarty having an outside shot at that total.

[Ron Boerger]

Congrats to Trinity for their victory! 

Also congrats to Austin College for a good year.  Admit it, you Trinity fans were sweating it for a minute there!!   
AC has made some real improvements and I am proud of their effort and their season.  Now all we have to do is find a way to convert on 4th & 1.  It cost us at least two victories this year. 

Tex, let's get together next week.  I owe you a Mexican dinner! 

Happy to see the Roos are on the way up - you have a winner for a coach and that program should continue to improve.

I also appreciated Athletic Director Norman's comments on the TU halftime broadcast today. 

Congrats to DePauw for defrauding "#3" Wabash today.  Not bad for the #3 team in the SCAC (tho I guess they are really T-2 and not #3 even if they did lose to Millsaps and Trinity). 

Now let's go deep, Millsaps. 

[Tex]

Congrats to Trinity for their victory! 

Also congrats to Austin College for a good year.  Admit it, you Trinity fans were sweating it for a minute there!!   
AC has made some real improvements and I am proud of their effort and their season.  Now all we have to do is find a way to convert on 4th & 1.  It cost us at least two victories this year. 

Tex, let's get together next week.  I owe you a Mexican dinner! 

I'll be back in town on Thursday!  Congrats to the Tiger D for getting that Black Flag back. 

Pretty horrible officiating in SA today.  Some low-lights...

First AC offensive play, TU gets called for an Unsportsmanlike.  One of those "last guy gets the call" things.

First Q TU receiver gets clobbered and no INT call. 

On that last play of the half, from my vantage point on the 50 yard line, up high, he looked run out of bounds.  I'll have to only assume the runner's knee hit down inbounds.  The AC crowd went ballistic.  The refs had to leave the field at half time by going through the cut in the visitors stands.  They got quite an earful.  Since the AC fans had an even worse view than I did, I can only imagine how ticked they were.  Sounded pretty irate.  But, I think that motivated the Roos in the 2nd half.  The other problem with that entire series is that there should have never been 6 seconds left to work with.  AC got the ball with about 52 seconds left on that drive and the clock failed to start here and there.  Again, karma at work perhaps by having it run out the way it did. 

AC coach made a very controversial decision in the 4th Q to go for the Fourth and goal from the four instead of kicking a FG.  Being 10 points down, you have to wonder why he didn't try and take the points.  TU goes on a 96 yard drive, assisted on a huge INT call that was highly questionable.  Since we had lost a few questionable calls, I guess karma was giving one back to us.  That was my vantage point. 

On the TU QB/Center exchange fumble, the roos d-line guy jumped offsides,TU center snaps it, TU QB not ready for it and the Refs neglect to call the offsides.  That's the risk you take when your center gets aggressive like that.  We certainly won more of those situations than we lost this year.  No complaints.

Austin College played a strong 2nd half and I was worried for a while there.  No doubt I wasn't the only one. 

Terrible officiating, but both sides seemed to suffer from it about the same amount.  It's a shame when the officials insert themselves into the game through bad calls and no calls. 

I guess I leave my first year D-3 experience being quite impressed with all the student-athletes in the SCAC and their dedication to play the best game in the world while still keeping up with a full college load in challenging liberal arts schools.  Each team can't win the championship every year, but all these young men will be highly successful in life when they graduate from one of these fine schools. 

My other impression is how incredibly poor the officiating in this conference is.  Every game I saw, home and away.  Worse than what I was used to watching years Texas 5A high school football.  If there was one thing the AD's in the SCAC should do in this off-season, fix this issue somehow.  Maybe pay more to attract the best.... I don't know the answer.  I expect the AD's should have the answers.  It's their jobs. 

I'm sorry our season is over.  I wish Milsaps the best and hope you win it all. 

[frank_ezelle]

DePauw going to the NCAA Playoffs?!?!?!?  I had to add one more question mark than exclamation mark because that is not official, but it is the prediction of the D3 football experts.  By no means does that make it a guarantee but those guys know what they are talking about and if they think DePauw has a very good chance, then I have to think that DePauw has a very good chance.

D3 Predictions at this link:  http://www.d3football.com/dailydose/2008/11/16/final-playoff-projection/

I won't spend a lot of time discussing this since it will either be a moot point or a hot topic in 7-8 hours, but it would be an interesting turn of events. 

---From the Trinity side of the coin, I would argue that Trinity should be ahead of DePauw because they are both 8-2 and Trinity won the head-to-head. 
---From the DePauw side of the coin, I would argue that DePauw's two losses were both road games against teams that were/are regionally ranked and they have a road win over a highly ranked region team. 
---From a practical point of view, I would say that there's a good chance that the location of DePauw might make them a better fit than throwing in another Texas team and then having to fly Trinity or UMHB or Hardin-Simmons somewhere OR matchup Millsaps and UMHB in the first round.  Pat always gets irratated with me when I suggest that the NCAA might pick teams because they make more economical sense, but I continue to believe that it is a factor when people get behind closed doors.

[Ralph Turner]

I had Cal Lu on the table because they had two results vs RRO, losses to #1 Willamette and #2 Oxy.

Pairing Oxy and Cal LU in the first round would save a plane flight and the winner could go to Willamette.  If Oxy beat Willamette, they would get the Regional Finals.

[RooBro]

Congrats to the Tiger D for getting that Black Flag back. 

Pretty horrible officiating in SA today.  Some low-lights...

I think they should add some white stripes to that flag. AC was flaged 13 times, that almost twice as any other game this year. We only average 4 a game with 7 being our season high.(until our trip to SA) This is not to say the TU players did not earn the victory, they simply took advantage of the situation GIVEN to them. I agree we should have kick the field goal to make it a one score game. I still feel that the only game we did not have a chance to win was in Jackson, and as young as we are the Roos are poised to make some noise in '09.

[Ron Boerger]

When you look at teams with equal records, you have to look at not only H2H but things like OWP and results vs. RROs.  Trinity's soft non-conference schedule cost them dearly in the OWP department.  Both have one win vs RROs (since you would have to consider DePauw a RRO in this situation) but Depauw's victory is much more impressive (came on the road against a better opponent - not to mention being yesterday, which never hurts criteria or not).  Both DePauw losses were to RROs - Trinity lost to a non-RRO.  I think when the committee is looking at the last spot between two-loss teams that DPU will have a real shot.

The only monkey wrench might come in with Wheaton, who has a similar OWP (29th vs 20th), better OOWP, and one more regional win (8-2 v 7-2).  They don't have the signature win that DPU has, though, and I think that will outweigh the additional in-region win.  DPU only has 7 due to BSC's provisional status.

[MajorDad]

De Pauw going to the playoffs with Millsaps is a knee-slapper on top of being well deserved. While they did lose to both MC and TU, they stepped it up when they had to, unlike TU. Kudo's to De Pauw, hope today is a good day after your awesome day yesterday.

[D3_DPUFan]

De Pauw going to the playoffs with Millsaps is a knee-slapper on top of being well deserved. While they did lose to both MC and TU, they stepped it up when they had to, unlike TU. Kudo's to De Pauw, hope today is a good day after your awesome day yesterday.

Thanks, Major Dad. Whatever the case, I think it sheds a little more light on the overall strength of the SCAC.   

[wabashcpa]

De Pauw going to the playoffs with Millsaps is a knee-slapper on top of being well deserved. While they did lose to both MC and TU, they stepped it up when they had to, unlike TU. Kudo's to De Pauw, hope today is a good day after your awesome day yesterday.

Thanks, Major Dad. Whatever the case, I think it sheds a little more light on the overall strength of the SCAC.   

For what it's worth, I hope DePauw gets into the playoffs.  I've seen several playoff teams the last few years, and your team can compete and beat a good percentage of them.  The team I saw yesterday was the team I expected to see all year (unfortunately, the Wabash team I saw yesterday resembled nothing that I was familiar with).  I just want to know where that effort has been all year?  Hopefully the beating you gave us will serve as a wake-up call and we can still make some noise in the playoffs.