By Keith McMillan
D3sports.com 

“That’s why they play the games” might be one of the most overused sports cliches of all time, but if preseason polls determined champions, a whole lot of the fun would be missing from the game. Single upsets are among the fall’s greatest joys — it’s wild to see once-woeful Oberlin top Wooster or FDU-Florham shock Lycoming.

But when a team pulls off a string of surprises, it’s more than an upset. It changes how we perceive them. Suddenly those gimme games don’t look so easy. Suddenly the guys you liked to see scheduled for homecoming deserve your respect.

Delware Valley has been a Middle Atlantic Conference doormat for years, and even that might be a kind description. 

Well, they had been until G.A. Mangus arrived with an eraser. Mangus wanted nothing to do with years of Aggie losing. He didn’t hide it.

“Starting really from Day One, the first thing I’ve always felt is you get rid of everybody you can,” he said.

“There were a lot of older players around here that were used to losing, and were okay with losing,” he said. After taking the job in May 2002, the former Widener and Ursinus assistant put his players through a rigorous preseason.

He had 86 players at the start of the summer. Forty-four came to the end-of-the-year meetings.

“They hit the high road,” Mangus said. “Some were thrown off, some quit, whatever.”

G.A. Mangus, with visor, has put together a surprising turnaround at Delaware Valley.

Mangus made it clear he would not tolerate losing. In his second season, he hasn’t had to weather much. 

Following Saturday’s 38-27 win at Lycoming, Delaware Valley sits atop the MAC at 4-1, 5-1. Though their final four games are against three teams with .500 records or better, if the Aggies don’t lose again, they’ll win the conference. The Warriors are the only other MAC team with just a single conference loss, and “Del Val,” as the Aggies are known throughout the Delaware River Valley, holds the head-to-head tiebreaker.

That in itself is enough for Mangus to believe the program is already turned around.

“Here we are with a month left, and we control our own destiny,” Mangus said. “I told the kids, let’s go win this thing.”

Such talk might have been met with laughter in years past. Mangus said the culture of losing was deeply ingrained in the players and on the Doylestown, Pa., campus.

“There weren’t enough people in the stands to start a fight a year ago,” Mangus said. “Not a good one, anyway.”

Mangus, a former backup quarterback at Florida under Steve Spurrier, cleaned house immediately. The entire staff was ousted, except for Bobby Leach, who Mangus said “loves Delaware Valley” and is a valuable recruiter.

The Aggies had gone 3-7 three consecutive seasons before being outscored 205-42 in the first four games of a 2-8 campaign in Mangus’ first year.

Not pleased with the talent level in the program, the Aggie staff hit the recruiting trail hard, with some major points of emphasis.

“With only 44, you can sell playing time,” Mangus said. “I sold myself. I said I don’t care about the last 20 years here, where they said you can’t win. I didn’t tell them we’d win a conference championship right away, but I said they would be playing in big games. I’d done it at Ursinus with coach [Paul] Guenther. We’d flipped that thing around, so when I said it could be done, I could back it up.”

Though he can sound like his straight-shooting mentor Spurrier, who some call an egomaniac, Mangus said he gives his players credit for how quickly the Del Val program has done a 180.

The staff brought in 104 freshmen to join the 44, and Mangus said there are now 126 players left in the program. Nine freshmen start, including the kicker. But even the older starters are young, either sophomores or upperclassmen with just one year under Mangus’ tutelage. 

“I don’t want to say I’m surprised,” Mangus said, “but they have grown up a little quicker than I thought they would.”

Starting the season 4-1 with wins over William Paterson, Juniata, Susquehanna and Lebanon Valley was nice, but the real growing up came Saturday in Williamsport. Mangus, an assistant from 1995-99 under Bill Cubit at Widener, knew winning at Lycoming was no easy task.

“Last week was about respect,” Mangus said. “You have to beat the big boys if you want that respect.”

Though the Aggies close with 4-2 Albright, an FDU-Florham team that upset Lycoming last season, and trips to 4-2 Wilkes and 3-3 Widener, Mangus likes where the win over the previously unbeaten Warriors puts his team.

“It’s nice not to be the guy pulling for everybody,” he said. “Just don’t lose. We win out, we win.”

The Aggies have won three conference titles in the 45-year history of the MAC, one outright and two shared from 1980-82. Del Val has never made the Division III playoffs.

But Mangus has always been around winning teams. He said last year’s Aggies were the first losing team he’d been a part of, at any level, in any sport.

He learned organization skills from Cubit, and took a lot from Widener’s Bill Manlove and current Florida head coach Ron Zook. But everything Mangus does, he admits, right down to his wide-open offense, goes back to Spurrier, his mentor.

“A lot of people kid me for being like Coach Spurrier,” Mangus said. “I wear a visor, I throw it, I get excited on the sideline. But I think up here it’s mostly ‘cause we’re both from the south. They think we sound twangy.”

Mangus, a Marietta, Ga., native, most enjoys seeing those 44 holdovers from the 2-8 year when they come out to practice now.

“When we form stretch lines, there’s a lot more hootin’ and hollerin’,” Mangus said. “They’re like ‘this is different. This is what football is supposed to be.’ ” 

Small surprise

Menlo defensive back Brandon Springer had four interceptions in the first two games before coaches found out about him.

Menlo isn’t a surprise in a traditional sense, as the Oaks went 8-2 in 2001 and 5-5 last season. But it is rare to discuss the Atherton, Calif., independent on the national scene.

But on the tips of tongues across Division III is exactly where the 5-1 Oaks will stay if they send No. 3 Linfield back to Oregon with a loss on Saturday.

Win or lose, Menlo is a surprise success, because the one-time junior college has a listed co-ed full-time undergraduate enrollment of 599, the fifth-smallest in Division III behind Eureka (505), Principia (529), Blackburn (566) and first-year Huntingdon (577).

Stuck on a west coast island, 350 miles from most Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference schools and 900 miles from some in the Northwest Conference, Menlo’s success is also eye-opening because they have no similarly sized, nearby neighbors in the Bay Area. Only 16 of Division III’s 226 schools are in the Pacific Time Zone. Seven are in the SCIAC and six are in the NWC. Eastern Oregon, Chapman and Menlo are independent. 

Under third-year head coach Mark Kaanapu, the Oaks still reflect a strong West Coast identity.

Taking over as head coach before the 2001 season, Kaanapu wondered if the Oaks should scrap their traditional West Coast offense. After consulting with Bill Walsh, the former San Francisco 49ers coach who pretty much invented the short-passing system, Menlo concluded that the offense would work if the players fit the system.

Walsh’s son Craig played at Menlo during the junior college days, Kaanapu said, and he later joined the school’s administration. The Oaks have been affiliated with several former NFL players, including former Pro Bowl lineman Guy McIntyre, the current offensive line coach. Tom Rathman, Keena Turner, Tim Harris and Keith Millard have all coached at the school as well.

These Oaks teams are different from the one in 2000, for which quarterback Zamir Amin threw for 500 yards three times and an NCAA-record 731 yards once. That team also had receiver Nate Jackson, who is on the Denver Broncos practice squad. They scored 400 points in 2000 and 2001, before dropping to 253 during last year’s 5-5 campaign.

Though he used four quarterbacks last season, Kaanapu started 2003 with Frank Borba, a former wide receiver. Eight more starters returned on offense, including D3football.com preseason All-American lineman Charlie Dutra, and seven of 11 were back on defense.

“When you have that kind of continuity, you’re going to have success,” Kaanapu said.

Menlo desires similar continuity in its schedule, but their location and lack of conference affiliation make getting games a task. The college’s teams in other sports are a part of the NAIA’s California Pacific Conference, but the football team plays Division III and would like to join a conference. Having all-conference teams, and all-academic teams would be great, Kaanapu said, but finding middle-of-the-season games would be more important.

“We’ve even talked to the other independents about setting something up where we could schedule each other,” Kaanapu said. “Everybody wants to play you in September, or in November when there are plenty of bye weeks. But in October, everyone’s in the middle of their conference schedule and they don’t want to play anybody.”

Despite the administration’s support, Kaanapu said cost and other factors limit what the Oaks can do. But the former Pacific University second-team All-American looks at the bright side.

Kaanapu read a book written by another West Coast Division III coach, longtime Pacific Lutheran head man Frosty Westering, called Make the Big Time Where You Are.

Overshadowed in the Bay Area by Stanford, Cal, San Jose State and UC-Davis, and though his roster is more than a quarter of the 377 men enrolled at the school, Kaanapu still manages to make Menlo feel important. 

“I don’t want to use the word envy,” he says, “but sometimes you look at what other people are doing, and you want to have something like that. But you can do two things, sit around and wish you had it, or go get it. ‘Make the big time where you are,’ that’s what we do.”

The Oaks will traditionally play not only the West Coast’s best teams, like Linfield and Willamette, but they also have no problems playing teams from Texas, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Part of that is by design, but part is out of necessity. After the 16 Pacific teams, the next closest is independent Colorado College in Colorado Springs, some 1,300 miles away.

The road trips, of course, can be a positive.

“What’s been exciting, when we’ve gone to Texas the past two years, is for the kids to see how other people live,” Kaanapu said. “How they treat football at McMurry and Hardin-Simmons, that was great for our kids to experience.”

The Oaks have 24 Hawaiians on the roster, which makes a trip to Texas serious culture shock.

“We had one kid who had never seen a cow live, and we’re driving by one in Texas,” Kaanapu laughed.

Another of Kaanapu’s favorite things about his team has quite a bit to do with geography. Kaanapu has coached everywhere from South Dakota to the Arena League, but he still gets a kick out of seeing players from Hawaii, Oakland and Pocatello, Idaho, unite for a common cause.

“They all have different value systems, different experiences, different backgrounds, but to see them come together like that … that’s the exciting part.”

Though stuck on the so-called island, Kaanapu and his players wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but out west. Sure, some games may kick off too late for East Coast media to cover and road trips may involve more air travel than road, but there’s a sense of unity among Division III’s West coasters. At least coming from Kaanapu there is.

“When you get to the playoffs, if we don’t go, I’m going to root for the teams on the west coast. Traditionally, only two of us make it. Two out of 28.”

Other pleasant surprises
Allegheny (3-0 NCAC, 3-3): The Gators’ record is misleading, because two of their losses have come to No. 7-ranked Baldwin-Wallace and No. 13 Washington & Jefferson. The other is a 3-0 loss to Westminster (Pa.) of the PAC. Under alumnus and second-year coach Mark Matlak, the Gators have defeated Wabash, Hiram and Wooster, and close with Denison, Wittenberg, Earlham and Ohio Wesleyan.

East Texas Baptist (5-0 ASC, 5-1): Tigers are coming off 6-4 year, but are legitimate contender for ASC title these days.

Elmhurst (1-2 CCIW, 4-2): Only powers Wheaton and Millikin have beaten the Bluejays, 3-7 last season.

Gettysburg (1-1 Centennial, 4-2): Only losses have come to No. 16 Hampden-Sydney and No. 20 Johns Hopkins.

Pomona-Pitzer (3-1 SCIAC, 5-2): Re-joined SCIAC after six-year hiatus; before 65-32 loss to Cal Lutheran this week, had been undefeated in conference play and pulled off non-conference stunner, a 35-31 win over Stagg Bowl runner-up Trinty (Texas).

North Central (2-1 CCIW, 5-1): Beat Illinois Wesleyan in its 5-1 start, but 27-7 loss to Augustana, and remaining games against Wheaton, Millikin and Elmhurst don’t bode well.

Muskingum (4-1 OAC, 5-1): They had the same sort of front-loaded schedule that North Central did, as they lost 58-0 to Mount Union and still have to play John Carroll, Capital and Baldwin-Wallace. But then again, they haven’t been losing to some of the teams they have in the past.

Lakeland (3-1 IBC, 4-2): The Muskies, coming off a 6-4 year, nearly stunned UW-Oshkosh before losing 26-23 in four overtimes, and smacked defending conference champ MacMurray 53-7. But Concordia (Wis.), a 41-20 winner over Lakeland, is in the IBC driver’s seat.

Loras (4-1 IIAC, 5-1) and Monmouth (5-1 Midwest, 5-2): Each 5-5 last year, they’ve equaled that win total already this year. Duhawks beat Scots 38-21 in opener for both.

Endicott (2-1 NEFC Boyd, 3-3): The first-year Gulls have won three games and lost another by a field goal. The most impressive stat is the two conference wins.

Two’s news
Mount Union is firmly planted at No. 1, with all 25 first-place votes. However, the teams who have received No. 2 votes have not been so lucky. First UW-La Crosse fell, then Brockport State. We’re used to seeing a 25 next to the Purple Raiders, who face No. 18 Capital this week, so it’s worth monitoring who’s getting the No. 2 votes.

No. 2 votes, this week: St. John’s 20, Linfield 2, Baldwin-Wallace 1, Springfield 1, Wheaton 1.

No. 2 votes, last week: St. John’s 20, Linfield 2, Baldwin-Wallace 1, Brockport State 1, Wheaton 1.

Pool C Watch
For those keeping an eye on the likeliest playoff participants which are runners-up in automatic qualifier conferences, here are the top-to-bottom rankings of teams with the best Pool C chances, with most conference leaders omitted:

1. Baldwin-Wallace (4-1 OAC, 5-1)/Capital (5-0 OAC, 6-0) winner: Same as last week. Unless Capital upsets Mount Union, the winner of the two OAC teams’ Nov. 1 showdown is in very good shape (otherwise, Mount Union would be on this list). The Yellow Jackets lost to Mount Union but topped John Carroll, while Capital has hardly played a close game.

2. Bethel (5-0 MIAC, 7-0)/St. John’s (5-0 MIAC, 6-0) loser: Both have beaten UW-Eau Claire, which could force a tie for the top spot in the WIAC this week, and they meet Nov. 8. The Royals’ win over Whitworth looks much better than St. John’s Nov. 15 finale against Crown.

3. Mary Hardin-Baylor (5-0, 6-0): The Crusaders, tied for the ASC lead with Hardin-Simmons and East Texas Baptist, have good insurance for an ASC loss, a non-conference win at Willamette.

4. UW-La Crosse (2-1, 5-1): Trailing UW-Whitewater, the Eagles’ only loss is by three to UW-Eau Claire.

5. Millikin (2-1 CCIW, 5-1): If they finish 9-1 with just the 43-29 loss to a 10-0 Wheaton team, they’ll have a strong case. Non-conference wins are convincing against mediocre competition.

6. Simpson/Loras (both 4-1 IIAC, 5-1): If either finishes 9-1 with only a loss to 10-0 Wartburg, they’d be in the same boat as Millikin. The Storm and Duhawks meet Nov. 1.

7. Hampden-Sydney (3-1 ODAC, 5-1): A 9-1 finish is likely, but it could rank behind IIAC and CCIW runners-up, because the team it lost to, ODAC leader Bridgewater, has a loss to Christopher Newport.

8. East Texas Baptist (5-0 ASC, 5-1): The Tigers’ loss to D-II Southeastern Oklahoma State may hurt, as Hampden-Sydney’s loss to I-AA Davidson did last season. The Tigers finished 8-2, with a loss also to Bridgewater. Last week, I said I thought it wouldn’t factor into a decision on a playoff spot, but an 8-1 ASC record would. Now I don’t know.

10. Hardin-Simmons (5-0 ASC, 5-1): A team should be rewarded for scheduling an out-of-conference game against a team like UW-Stout, but that 31-21 loss and an ASC loss would put the Cowboys in a tough situation.

11. Concordia-Moorhead (4-1 MIAC, 5-1): Chances are slim after early loss to Bethel, but if Cobbers beat St. John’s and then the Johnnies beat the Royals, there could be a three-way tie. In which case the MIAC runner-up would have to be considered.

Augustana, Albion, Allegheny, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, Hope, Muhelberg, McDaniel, Nichols, Redlands, Wabash, Wittenberg and everyone else: Early losses for each of these teams means their playoff chances appear slim aside from winning the automatic qualifier.

Dropped out of the picture with a loss last week: Bridgewater State, Gettysburg, Elmhurst, Lycoming, Pomona-Pitzer, Wooster.

National game of the week
No. 18 Capital at No. 1 Mount Union: The Crusaders have the last legitimate chance for someone to knock off the Purple Raiders before the playoffs start. There’s a big ASC game worth watching as well.

Honorable mentions: Concordia-Moorhead at No. 2 St. John’s, No. 3 Linfield at Menlo, East Texas Baptist at No. 17 Hardin-Simmons, Centre at No. 19 Trinity, Muhlenberg at No. 20 Johns Hopkins, McDaniel at No. 24 Brockport State, No. 25 St. Norbert at Ripon, Albright at Delaware Valley, Augustana at Millikin, King’s at Susquehanna, Oberlin at Wabash, Hanover at Anderson, Kalamazoo at Albion.

Hindsight games of the week 
Brockport State at Ithaca and Delaware Valley at Lycoming had the biggest impact on the national scene and D3football.com Top 25.

Your feedback
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