East Region Fan Poll

[ExTartanPlayer]

With all due respect, I think that might be a little too much love for Kean.  Dropped the opener at home to an Albright team that is at best 3rd in the MAC, possibly 4th or 5th.  I'll give them a pass for UMHB, but even then the close win over Brockport is the only real high-quality game on the schedule - blowout wins against the two worst teams in the NJAC don't really stamp someone a contender IMO.

I wouldn't rule it out that Kean could make a splash, but do you really trust them to beat Cortland and Rowan in back-to-back weeks at the end of the season?

[pg04]

Yes. I think they have the ability to do so. I have watched a few of their games and think that they have the ability to run the table. Sure, Kean lost to Albright in the first game (a game that Kean was leading 26-7 in the second half), but Buffalo State beat the defending national champions and look how the rest of their season has gone. Could they have been looking ahead to the UMHB game? Also, given last year, I believe they have the ability to turn it on.

[lewdogg11]

With all due respect, I think that might be a little too much love for Kean.  Dropped the opener at home to an Albright team that is at best 3rd in the MAC, possibly 4th or 5th.  I'll give them a pass for UMHB, but even then the close win over Brockport is the only real high-quality game on the schedule - blowout wins against the two worst teams in the NJAC don't really stamp someone a contender IMO.

I wouldn't rule it out that Kean could make a splash, but do you really trust them to beat Cortland and Rowan in back-to-back weeks at the end of the season?

Maybe, maybe not.  I have Cortland and Rowan ranked ahead of them.  At this point, i think Kean is better than who I have ranked behind them.

Salve Regina (6-0)
RPI (4-1)
Lebanon Valley (3-2)
Alfred (3-1)
Brockport (4-2)

[pg04]

Of course now that I've vouched for them publicly, they will probably crumble and turn to crap, losing the next 5 games.

[dlippiel]

dlip thinks Kean is worth having on the radar. He thinks Rowan will win that game but agrees it culd go wither way and will be a great match-up.

[wesleydad]

having seen rowan beat delval and kean beat brockport i think rowan is the better team.  i think del val would beat brockport, so i lean towards that win being better than kean's.  both rowan and kean have nice defenses but i think rowan has the better offense.  it should be a very tight game since i dont think either team will score much and we all know that low scoring games have a way of turning on a turnover or weird play.  i have both the widener/del val game and the kean/rowan games on my travel docket for the last 2 weeks of the season.  looking forward to both of the games.

[Frank Rossi]

Phil Terio intercepts Curry at the Salve Regina 8 late to secure a 37-33 victory for Salve Regina.  They move to 7-0 and are in control of their division's bid to the NEFC Championship game.

[dlippiel]

That Terio kid is a real player. Dlip is very impressed with him!

[ITH radio]

HWSAthletics.com has a poll on their site asking if Hobart will finally crack the D3FB.com Top 10 given the losses by #9 Bethel and #11 SJFC yesterday?

What do you think?

[pumkinattack]

In the context of a collective voting, Fisher should fall off, so Hobart should probably pick up some "east" votes from them.  What I mean is that voters likely look at the regions and sort the 5-10 best teams before stacking them up nationally and for many outside the east, I'd expect some (many?) still had Fisher ahead of Hobart going into this week.

By Pat's theory, you shouldn't move down much for losing to a team above you, but I have to think Bethel would slide a bit in the context of a narrow, last second/ditch win over an unranked team where they probably should've lost and then a 37-0 blowout loss to, an excellent, St Thomas team.  Perhaps St Thomas should beat #10 team by that margin, but it's also probably fair to punish them a little for the score.  UW Platteville lost and Illinois Wesleyan didn't do anything to get rewarded meaningfully.  Hard to see anyone else jumping them, so seems like unless Bethel remains at #10 or slips to #11 instead of falling further.

The real question is should a team drift up on a bye week, or just in general when beating average competition?  I feel like most of Hobart's move up this season hasn't been an analysis of what they've done so much as attrition above them.  They haven't beaten any great teams, but in post patterns it seems that some still want to give credit for a win over Buff St, in which case, the Utica road win looks a little better at 4-2 despite their bad loss to IC.   Beyond that, they just gone out and won by 3-5 tds every week, which is good, but let's see how they do against 5-1 RPI - a team that beat now interesting Alfred by 18pts. 

At the end of the day, with RPI and Union still remaining, it's all just increasing ammo for the opponents on the schedule.  I'm more focused on the fact that RPI's beaten Hobart two years in a row, including ruining last year's regular season for us.  Should be a noteworthy game within the east region this upcoming week. 

[Frank Rossi]

In the context of a collective voting, Fisher should fall off, so Hobart should probably pick up some "east" votes from them.  What I mean is that voters likely look at the regions and sort the 5-10 best teams before stacking them up nationally and for many outside the east, I'd expect some (many?) still had Fisher ahead of Hobart going into this week.

By Pat's theory, you shouldn't move down much for losing to a team above you, but I have to think Bethel would slide a bit in the context of a narrow, last second/ditch win over an unranked team where they probably should've lost and then a 37-0 blowout loss to, an excellent, St Thomas team.  Perhaps St Thomas should beat #10 team by that margin, but it's also probably fair to punish them a little for the score.  UW Platteville lost and Illinois Wesleyan didn't do anything to get rewarded meaningfully.  Hard to see anyone else jumping them, so seems like unless Bethel remains at #10 or slips to #11 instead of falling further.

The real question is should a team drift up on a bye week, or just in general when beating average competition?  I feel like most of Hobart's move up this season hasn't been an analysis of what they've done so much as attrition above them.  They haven't beaten any great teams, but in post patterns it seems that some still want to give credit for a win over Buff St, in which case, the Utica road win looks a little better at 4-2 despite their bad loss to IC.   Beyond that, they just gone out and won by 3-5 tds every week, which is good, but let's see how they do against 5-1 RPI - a team that beat now interesting Alfred by 18pts. 

At the end of the day, with RPI and Union still remaining, it's all just increasing ammo for the opponents on the schedule.  I'm more focused on the fact that RPI's beaten Hobart two years in a row, including ruining last year's regular season for us.  Should be a noteworthy game within the east region this upcoming week.

As a voter, let me be honest about what the week-to-week view has been this season.  It hasn't really been about strength -- it's been about consistency.  This was my real concern with Wesley of late and the entire lineage that formed underneath (Salisbury, SJF by extension, etc.).  With the exception of Mount Union, UMHB, St. Thomas and Linfield, I have struggled to find real consistency across the board this season, especially in the places we normally expect to find it.  I think you take a view of Hobart as a bit of a contrarian because you're very focused on the team -- which is perfectly acceptable and to be expected.  That said, when you take a look at their overall consistency even without a tremendous strength of schedule (which, honestly, I don't think their schedule has exactly been atrocious so far when measuring against other front runners), the Statesmen have played as consistently as anyone could find in an undefeated team at present.  Even in games that they began to lose control, they ended up winning going away each time.  I have absolutely no problem with seeing Hobart jump to #10 this week based on the overall assessment I've had to use to measure the teams around them.  Ironically, Hobart is NOT my top-ranked East Region team (I have Salisbury and Widener ahead of them based on slightly better schedule strength so far and my confidence in Widener coming into the season with the returning experience the team had).  This is the highest I've ever placed three East teams in one ballot that I can remember (even when I had SJF up around #9 before losing faith in the team's momentum). That tells me that the East could be extremely competitive in the playoffs this year -- but much could change in a month...

One note:  Devin Worthington made a good statement on last week's "In the HuddLLe" about wanting to beat Wesley in order to "make Hobart history" last year.  You should definitely root on the appreciation this team has for historical perspective and remember that even the polling right now is historically unknown territory.  Let the team enjoy the prospect of being #10... And always remind them that when Union faced #8 Ithaca in 2009, the ranking did make Ithaca a bit more red meat in Union's eyes.  As you said, there is an onus that comes with rankings... Enjoy them but be aware of what they mean in terms of driving competition.

[pumkinattack]

So you've got Widener inside of the top 10? 

I actually don't want Hobart to be this high at this point.  I had a beef basically in the first couple of weeks, not really nationally, but that they were seen as like 5-7 in the East from what I could tell, but otherwise, I'd much rather they sit in the 15-25 area in the national poll.  It's neat to get to #10, especially from us barely cracking .500 in my days in the late 90s and that was big improvement over Hobart in the early 90's and prior sans the one good year (93).  They've come a long way, but until the go past the second round of the playoffs, it's nice to say "hey we've made the playoffs 8 out of 12 years" or whatever, but consistent first and second round exits and a good regular season ranking aren't as special as they would've seemed to me in 2002 or even 2005.  And for all the success they've had in the Cragg years, there's never been a perfect regular season - even in 2004 with a perfect league record they dropped a dumb one out of conference, so I'm terrified of this team being ranked really highly nationally and still having to go to RPI and play Union.  They're good, but they have to bring their A game every week until the season's over and I just hope Cragg, DeWall and Yoder (and Backhaus who's been there a long time also and was a really underrated and damn good Mike LB in my days) have them ready to rock each and every week. 

[Frank Rossi]

So you've got Widener inside of the top 10? 

I actually don't want Hobart to be this high at this point.  I had a beef basically in the first couple of weeks, not really nationally, but that they were seen as like 5-7 in the East from what I could tell, but otherwise, I'd much rather they sit in the 15-25 area in the national poll.  It's neat to get to #10, especially from us barely cracking .500 in my days in the late 90s and that was big improvement over Hobart in the early 90's and prior sans the one good year (93).  They've come a long way, but until the go past the second round of the playoffs, it's nice to say "hey we've made the playoffs 8 out of 12 years" or whatever, but consistent first and second round exits and a good regular season ranking aren't as special as they would've seemed to me in 2002 or even 2005.  And for all the success they've had in the Cragg years, there's never been a perfect regular season - even in 2004 with a perfect league record they dropped a dumb one out of conference, so I'm terrified of this team being ranked really highly nationally and still having to go to RPI and play Union.  They're good, but they have to bring their A game every week until the season's over and I just hope Cragg, DeWall and Yoder (and Backhaus who's been there a long time also and was a really underrated and damn good Mike LB in my days) have them ready to rock each and every week.

It's ironic that we're having Lenny Reich, Assistant to Athletic Director Larry Kehres / Sports Information Director of Mount Union University, as our co-host tonight after reading this.  The thought I have is that Mount Union faces the "bullseye" treatment every weekend they walk out onto the field.  So, if you want to be the best, you have to repel all oncomers, no matter what the uncharted territory is.  That's what gives teams longevity inside the Top 10-15 every season -- that consistent ability to win regardless of the bullseye.  If you want to see Hobart among the elite in the nation, then there should be no fear of the ranking itself -- in some ways, you should embrace it.  The team just needs to remember it's an honor, a number and not much else.  They still have to win the games.

[lewdogg11]

Just in case anyone wants to know, I'll be facetiming with Enginegro tonight to find out his feelings on the rain outside.  Then i'll be hosting a call with Regulator to see what he thinks of little people.  Then you should all probably listen in to my podcast where i'll be taking a dump for 45 minutes while playing Words With Friends.  I won't tell you what it sounds like or what my letters look like, but I promise, you'll want to listen in.

[lewdogg11]

I just inserted my poll and after all of the yapping about Salve, their NEFC schedule just completely cripples them.  Where all of the other 'good teams' in 'good conferences' start to play the meat of their schedule, Salve unfortunately gets penalized for barely beating Curry.  Again, at the end of the year, if they run the table and respectfully show up to the dance, it might change, but how in my right mind can I think Salve could beat St. John Fisher or Kean just because they have 2 losses?  I think they would get buried.  So that said, Alfred's big win jumped them quite a bit and while I had a hard time with it, I had to have RPI follow them close and move up a bit(at least for now).  The next 2-3 weeks will really shake out the top dogs, but I have Salve at 11 and can't fathom them beating one of the 5-10 teams in my poll. 


   LD11's Week 7 Poll
1   Salisbury (5-1)
2   Hobart (6-0)
3   Widener (6-0)
4   Rowan (5-1)
5   Lycoming (5-1)
6   Cortland St. (6-1)
7   Alfred (4-1)
8   RPI (5-1)
9   Kean (4-2)
10   St. John Fisher (4-2)