By Pat Cummings
D3sports.com
As talked about last week, major conference realignment in the Centennial and Middle Atlantic is all but set to take place. Official announcements were expected in the next few days.
Juniata and Moravian will shift their allegiance to the CC from the MAC for football, Susquehanna will undoubtedly increase its travel budget and shift from the MAC to the Liberty League. If the MAC presidents decided to amend conference bylaws allowing teams to leave the conference for a single sport, that would keep these shifts as "football-only." We'll find out, hopefully, with the announcements to come. It may take a while to get used to how it looks below:
Centennial Conference
Dickinson
Franklin & Marshall
Gettysburg
Johns Hopkins
Juniata
McDaniel
Moravian
Muhlenberg
Ursinus
Middle Atlantic Conference
Albright
Delaware Valley
FDU-Florham
King's
Lebanon Valley
Lycoming
Widener
Wilkes
Expect announcements this week at the involved schools. Obviously, this impacts many other programs. The Centennial found itself in a tiebreaking jumble last season with five teams sharing the conference title with 4-2 records. After four tiebreakers, Muhlenberg earned the automatic bid. Having lost Swarthmore's program in the fall of 2000, the conference has operated with the minimum number of teams to keep an automatic bid, seven.
Through the course of my interviews over the last half-decade with Centennial Conference Executive Secretary Steve Ulrich, invariably we discussed potential conference expansion. Multiple names, including Juniata and Moravian (along with Susquehanna and Washington and Lee, among others), have always been in the conversations. The archived minutes of the CC meetings on the conference Web site would frequently note the topic being discussed at annual meetings.
And finally, some action.
As for the Middle Atlantic Conference, everyone will now welcome the MAC to the realm of the normal. With 11 teams in one conference, the league scheduled one team to play all 10, while the other 10 got to schedule one non-conference game per season. The loss of three teams, including a very competitive Moravian squad, opens the MAC to the outside world again.
Coaches in the MAC most likely have a busy slate of phone calls given that two additional slates have opened up for potential non-conference matchups. Culture shock for MAC fans, but it can only help the conference from a national perspective.
Guilford gets over the top
Josh Vogelbach connected with Chris Barnette from 12 yards out with three seconds remaining as Guilford upset Washington and Lee 28-26. Vogelbach, a redshirt-freshman transfer from Division I-A East Carolina has made an immediate impact for Kevin Kiesel's squad.
Washington and Lee took a 26-21 lead with just over four minutes remaining to put the Quakers on the hot seat. Vogelbach completed two, 12-yard, first-down passes to Barnette to push the Quakers to the W&L 30-yard line. Four consecutive incompletions turned the ball over on downs and gave W&L the football with 2:10 remaining.
Following a personal foul penalty that knocked the Generals back to their own 15, W&L rushed for one yard, then gained only four yards between Guilford timeouts, leading to a punt. Donny Banks shanked it just 16 yards, giving the Quakers the football at the W&L 33.
Vogelback found Micah Rushing for a first down at the W&L 12 with about twenty seconds left. The freshman signal-caller then failed to complete three consecutive attempts before the game-winning hook-up to Barnette.
Bridgewater's fans found themselves reveling in the upset, but the Eagles still need two wins to solidify another ODAC crown.
Vogelbach has completed 58% of his passes and tossed 23 touchdowns to 14 interceptions, averaging 313 passing yards per game. Washington & Lee wasted an afternoon on which they managed to force seven Guilford turnovers.
Widener, King's tussle; Florham upsets Albright
A King's 31-24 win over Widener in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., brings Delaware Valley one step closer to another MAC championship. The Aggies can clinch the MAC with a win at Juniata in two weeks. The Monarchs put Del Val in that situation after a feisty win against the Pioneers. According to the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, the two squads exchanged heated words in pregame warm-ups and nearly broke into a melee as halftime wound down. The second half resulted in two ejections.
After Widener attempted an onside kick, "the scramble led to offsetting personal fouls and the ejection of King's receiver Julian Walker, who was accused of throwing a punch ... Earlier in the second half, Widener linebacker Carroll Dixon was hit with a personal foul and ejected after running over the field judge in pursuit of King's Blake Letchford during an 80-yard catch-and-run for a touchdown."
As to how the personal foul gets called when you run over a neutral party, I don't know.
Conditions, and tempers, were less than stellar as King's opened up to a big early lead and Widener could never get past. The loss is the Pioneers' second, decreasing their chances at a Pool C playoff bid. However, with a huge non-conference game with Salisbury in two weeks, followed by a DVC squad that will likely have clinched the week before, Widener would still have a chance to woo the committee in their favor or get an ECAC home game.
FDU-Florham traveled to Albright and Rich Mosca's Devils managed to escape with a 17-14 win. The win is the first for the Devils over the Lions since 1999, and Albright's third consecutive loss following defeats from Widener and Del Val. The Devils have been up against momentum most of the time this season as the Albright contest was held on Homecoming weekend in Reading, the fourth time Florham has played a Homecoming match this season.
Anything goes in Centennial-land
Johns Hopkins (7-0) may find that 2005 is their chance to break into the postseason, finally, after watching their bubbles burst the past few seasons. A come-from-behind 13-10 win over Muhlenberg, JHU's first in the last five seasons, puts the Blue Jays in control of their own destiny with two conference games remaining. One more conference victory clinches the Blue Jays' first sole CC championship.
The regular-season home finale against Ursinus this Saturday preceeds a non-conference tilt with Hampden-Sydney next week, followed up by a traditional rivalry at McDaniel. Both Ursinus and McDaniel are 1-2 in conference play this season, but that doesn't mean a whole lot. I'll explain below.
For those who have noticed the differences in the AFCA Coaches' poll and the D3football.com Top 25, one thing that stands out are the teams that the coaches have ranked quite high, versus some being unranked in the D3football poll. Johns Hopkins fits the bill. Last week the Blue Jays rated 15th with the coaches but were 29th on ours, falling to 30th this week.
Why the differences, you ask?
Well -- the coaches simply rank the Blue Jays higher. Here is what is indisputable:
1. The Blue Jays are undefeated
2. Every opponent the Jays played this season has a losing record. Not even one team is .500 through eight weeks of the season. While the JHU defense is one of the best in the land, allowing only six points per game to opponents with a combined 21-35 record, the Blue Jays are only scoring 17.6 points per game. Those same opponents, the ones with the 21-35 combined record, are allowing an average of 21.3 points per game.
This could be disputed, but I find this opinion to be true: those numbers are not indicative of the 15th ranked team in the country.
Now, the CC oddities continue.
Congratulations to the Bears of Ursinus for their first Centennial Conference victory since a 40-28 win at Dickinson on Nov. 10, 2001. How long ago was that? Well, yours truly was behind the radio headset that day in Carlisle. Despite the fact that the Bears have been winless amongst their CC rivals for over three years, Ursinus has put together a deceptively strong season.
Nail-biting abounds in Collegeville this year. Each of Ursinus' seven games has been decided by eight points or fewer, with three one-point games, two of which the Bears won. Their other victory was this week's three point win against Gettysburg. One or two more bounces could easily have the Bears at 5-2, but there has been marked improvement for Peter Gallagher's squad this year.
Naturally, the Bears and Blue Jays meet up this Saturday in Baltimore.
Lest I forget, the most memorable collapse of a football team in recent memory continued Saturday when Randolph-Macon, previously 1-5 with their only win against 0-7 Emory & Henry, demolished McDaniel by a 34-10 final in Ashland. Pat Coleman's remarks in the Daily Dose envisioned such a potential decline that could continue to ring true.
"Concerned about ... McDaniel. Even dating to the Week 2 win against Seton Hill (just 28-9) this has 4-6 finish potential, even though the Green Terror are 4-1 right now."
Perhaps the addition of Moravian and Juniata will help sort this conference out.
Methodist tops CNU; Ferrum in control of USAC
A 35-28 Methodist win over Christopher Newport, the Monarchs' first ever win against the Captains, has landed the Ferrum Panthers in control of their own destiny. Owning a win over the Monarchs, should Ferrum continue their winning ways, the Panthers would find themselves in the postseason.
Over the next two weeks, Ferrum has a home game against Greensboro and a road test at North Carolina Wesleyan before returning home for a Week 11 test against CNU.
Playoff radar
Delaware Valley can clinch the MAC with a win at Juniata in two weeks. Not to downplay this week's game with King's, which is officially a conference game for King's but not for Delaware Valley, but the Aggies have a fairly easy road to guarantee a spot in the postseason. G.A. Mangus and the green and gold can thank King's for the ticket based on the Monarchs' 31-24 pugnacious win over Widener.
All MAC teams, except for DVC and Wilkes, have at least two conference defeats. Del Val defeated Wilkes earlier this season to lock up the tiebreaker if Del Val was to lose against Widener win the last week of the regular season.
Also:
->Bridgewater remains in the driver's seat after W&L's loss.
->Ferrum is the only undefeated team in USAC play.
->Johns Hopkins owns a two-game lead in the Centennial with all other squads brandishing their two conference losses. JHU would have to lose their last two CC games and then it gets real dirty. A win against Ursinus locks up the conference for the Blue Jays.
Mid-Atlantic Region Top 5
Delaware Valley
Bridgewater
Ferrum
Johns Hopkins
Methodist
What to watch in Week 9
Bridgewater at Washington & Lee, Wilson Field, Lexington, Va., 1:00 p.m.: The Generals must upset the Eagles if they are to have a legitimate chance to win the ODAC.
Ursinus at Johns Hopkins, Homewood Field, Baltimore, Md., 1:00 p.m.: JHU certainly hasn't taken the easy path to get to where they are, as outlined above. Ursinus has played everyone very close, again, as outlined above. It would be their biggest upset in years if they pulled it out.
