It was a bit of a slow start offensively for Albright and John Port (17-for-33, 246 yards).

By Keith McMillan
D3sports.com

Quick. What wins championships?

You’re doggone right. Defense. So how come so many of the teams in or hovering near the Top 25 can’t seem to play any? 

Perception, folks, is not always reality. Join Around the Nation for a look at four teams currently known for highly successful offenses, as we ask them how they tackle the relationship between that unit and the D.

Last season, Whitworth averaged 40.7 points per game and allowed 31.0. Albright scored 40.6 and allowed 29.3. Texas Lutheran scored 37.5 and allowed 33.7, while Hampden-Sydney scored 39.0 and allowed 23.4. 

By comparison, Mount Union was great on both sides of the ball. The Purple Raiders scored 42.1 and allowed 10.9.

Whitworth, Albright, Texas Lutheran and Hampden-Sydney didn’t return the same number of experienced players, and they aren’t off to the same starts in 2005. But all four hold a common trait. Their ability to play offense is unquestioned, and pretty much what their reputations at the moment are staked upon. Yet their defenses will have to succeed in their roles if these teams are to reach their goals.

“No matter how far ahead one side of the ball may be than the other,” says Albright coach E.J. Sandusky, “there’s going to come a time in the year when the offense will need to go down and score or the defense will need to make a critical stop.”

While numbers can sometimes be deceiving, football is always a team game. That held true on Saturday, when several early blunders put the Lions down 24-0 one minute into the second quarter. The defense allowed just nine more points while the offense scored four TDs in a row to take a lead by the third quarter (although two PATs were blocked). Together, they rallied for a 34-33 win.

“That’s what people won’t see from our game with Ursinus this past week,” says Sandusky. “They’ll say wow, they gave up 33 points this week, they must be having problems on defense.”

But to get behind 24-0, Albright fumbled the opening kickoff, had a penalty nullify an intercepted Ursinus pass in the end zone, threw an interception at midfield, had a punt blocked and fumbled a punt return. Sandusky called it the “worst possible scripted scenario to start a season.”

But instead of letting the game turn into a blowout, both units turned the game into a character-building exercise. And actually, the Lions defense allowed just 257 yards, while the offense gained 383.

“Coaches will all say they can point to five or six plays in a game that make the difference,” Sandusky said. “But you don’t know when those plays are going to be. Sometimes they are on offense, sometimes they are on defense.”

Whitworth coach John Tully can relate.

“There may be a point where we win a game 35-34,” he said. “And there may be a point where we win 7-6. And in the 7-6 game, the offense doesn’t turn the ball over (to give the other team easy scoring opportunities). And in the 35-34 game, the defense will cause a few turnovers to help the offense score.”

“In some of the bigger games we’ve had,” Sandusky said, “the offense has gained the notoriety, but it was the defense that made the plays that carried us.”

To the untrained eye, perhaps the defense takes all the blame for the points a team allows. But a coach recognizes when a defense puts an offense in good position, or an offense does its teammates no favors.

“As our offense was scoring 40 points a game (last year),” says Tully, “it was like ‘these 21 points here were because our defense gave us good field position.’ ”

In the Pirates’ 35-21 season-opening win over Redlands, a late fumble recovery helped Whitworth put the game out of reach. It gave the offense the ball at the 9-yard line.

After light-up-the-scoreboard seasons, both Texas Lutheran and Hampden-Sydney acknowledge their reputations as offense-first teams. But it doesn’t mean they don’t want speed, talent and cohesiveness on defense.

“We’ve got a style that’s won us a lot of games the past few years,” says the Tigers’ Marty Favret. “We’ve jumped on top of a lot of teams early, and I talked to (Catholic coach) Tom Clark about this, and a lot of people I respect. You just don’t play defense with the same type of intensity when you’re up by four touchdowns.”

But a coach can’t ditch an offensive philosophy that nets big leads and 30 to 40 points per game, even if the drives are so short that it keeps the defense on the field.

Sandusky said he and his staff have given thought to making their offensive and defensive styles mesh. They have to consider whether playing “an ultra-aggressive” blitzing style puts their team in poor position by exposing them to possible big plays, or helps them by generating more turnovers.

Tully, who went with youth and athleticism over experience last year, never considered altering either unit’s approach. He wants his defense to be fast and create turnovers.

“We didn’t change the style of offense at all,” he said. “We’re a wide-open attack. We felt the more (the young defenders) played, the better they’d get. When we came in this year, we felt like we were two months ahead of where we were last year. This year it’s a matter of being able to fine-tune things, when last year we were busy installing them.”

Favret has no problems adjusting his offensive style to run the ball when his team is leading, in order to shorten the game. Hampden-Sydney “consciously slowed the game down” in a 56-40 win against Gettysburg last week, but for the most part he’s not a believer in giving up opportunities to score.

Chris Edwards had 144 all-purpose yards against Trinity (Texas).

Texas Lutheran coach Tom Mueller knows that the American Southwest Conference is full of teams who can rack up points and yardage. Five of the nation’s top 13 offenses in 2004 (No. 2 Hardin-Simmons, No. 3 Mary Hardin-Baylor, No. 10 Howard Payne, No. 11 Trinity (Texas) and No. 13 Louisiana College) were on the Bulldogs’ schedule and appear there again. TLU itself was 20th, at 439.7 yards per game.

Although some of the Bulldogs’ defensive struggles in ’04 can be attributed to the minds behind top offenses in the nation, Mueller says the game at all levels has simply evolved.

“The spread offense has turned football into a soccer game,” he says, adding that there are few defenses anymore who simply have dominant personnel. “It’s become a game of matchups.”

“It used to be when people would go to one-back, we’d freak out,” Mueller says. “Now, when they go to two-backs, we freak out trying to remember what we used to do against that. We’re all used to seeing one-back.”

Part of the beauty of college football, Mueller says, is that there are still teams who use run-heavy formations like the Wing-T and wishbone. Conference foe Mary Hardin-Baylor rushed for 342 yards per game last season, fourth-best in Division III.

Mueller, on the other hand, says he could run empty (no backs) for an entire game if he saw necessary. Last season, when tight end Matt Ross was a third-team All-American, the Bulldogs were able to use multiple formations without substituting. Defenses would keep their same personnel in the game, and Ross could line up as a back, end or receiver and get TLU the matchup it wanted.

“Kids on defense have a lot they’re thinking about before the ball is snapped,” Mueller said. “It’s tougher right now to play defense in college.”

It’s not easy to find players that want to either.

Favret says having a good defense starts with recruiting, and admits convincing high schoolers to bypass offensive glory can be a tough sell.

“We’ve tried everything,” he says, from giving the defense its own room with photos and goal boards, trying to establish an identity. The Tigers adopted “Be the Answer” as its theme for a defense often mentioned as the team’s biggest question.

Last season, Favret thought the unit might carry the team. This year, it has what he calls “a few cornerstones,” including linebacker Jeff Inman.

Still, he says, in trying to build a defense, “the hard thing in Division III is finding defensive backs and defensive linemen.”

Favret seems to find players in the linebacker and offensive lineman molds in abundance. And, he says “you can find a lot of quarterbacks out there, they just aren’t 6-(foot-)3. And there are a lot of players who can catch the ball.”

But many of the players who end up on the defensive line or as corners and safeties are converted from offense, or recruited without a position in mind.

Tully says Whitworth just recruits the best athletes available. Mueller says Division III recruiting is about finding players in numbers.

“Every year you recruit 90, and hope you get 25-30 who will stick with you,” he says.

All of the coaches say they will offer freshmen an opportunity to play, but won’t promise them a spot. Some athletes realize they can help the team more and crack the lineup more quickly on defense. And a sign of a good program, said Sandusky, is one where few freshmen crack the lineup.

“Those teams that are really special, really good,” he says, “probably have juniors and seniors on both sides of the ball.”

But it’s not always possible to get the units to progress at the same speed. Sandusky says Albright had seven senior starters and a fourth-year junior quarterback on offense last season, experience its defense could not match. 

Inexperienced last season, Whitworth starts nine sophomores, a junior and a senior. There are high hopes for a group that could stay together for two more seasons after this one. They held Redlands scoreless in the first half of their opener, part of what Tully thinks is a group just scratching the surface.

Whether the defensive obstacles are style of offense, inexperience or lack of talent, all four coaches make one thing clear.

“We win as a team, we lose as a team,” says Mueller, who doesn’t even tolerate joking between the two groups, so any confidence-killers are nipped in the bud. “It’s only natural for one side of the ball to be happy when they score a lot of points and the other side to be down then they give up a lot. It’s human nature. But the bottom line is if we win, we all feel good.”

Getting defensive
All this talk about points, especially on the heels of last week’s 69-62 Manchester-Earlham game, brings back memories. In 1995, Randolph-Macon and Catholic tied 50-50. The NCAA added overtime in 1996, so that may stand forever as the highest scoring tie of all time.

Being a member of the defense that gave up 50, and helped blow a late 47-35 lead, was no fun at all. Technically I was the dime back for that game but never played, but I paid the price as many of us did. While the offense watched tape, patted itself on the back and headed to the dining hall early that Monday, the defense ran 100-yard sprints, one for each point we allowed. 

Up and back counted as one, by the way, so we really ran 100. Except we didn’t run. By the 20s, we were asked to duck walk, wheelbarrow and bear crawl. We got a water break around No. 26.

It stunk at the time, but it’s kind of cool now to realize I wanted to play so bad I did that and didn’t quit. Sure, stories like this are probably typical — we once did up-downs until dark after giving up only 24 points, and another time we did an Indian Run around the practice field perimeter for 45 minutes while our coach talked to someone at midfield, oblivious — and they probably sound like the type you embellish over time.

But honestly, they make the memories stand out. And giving up 50 points that day, even though we were something like 1-for-4 on field goals and missed several extra points, was embarrassing. We often heard ‘how can you score 50 and not win?”

That was a building block in a nice little rivalry R-MC had with Catholic, where Favret was offensive coordinator. The next year, we gave up 452 yards at their place, but intercepted five passes, won 30-28 and were treated like heroes. And the year after that, we hired a new coach but kept much of our defensive staff intact. We should have been able to carry the team while the new coach got the offensive familiar with his scheme. But Catholic adjusted, and while we were still defending the deep-passing offense they played the year before, they were throwing screens and mashing it up the middle. We lost 34-21.

In other words, the final score is everything, but sometimes tells you nothing. Holding Catholic to 28 (21 if you consider their last TD came with 0:01 left) in ’96 was probably more impressive than some of the teams we held to zero, three and 13 in ’96 or ’97.

When it comes to football, everything is relative. Albright’s Sandusky puts it better than I could.

“We still stress the team concept. We tell the offense you can’t rely on the defense to hold the other team to 200 yards and 10 points, and we tell the defense you can’t expect 30 points and 400 yards. You never know how a game is going to go. You can have two teams known for offense and all of a sudden it takes on a defensive tone.”

True. And when I played, we were sometimes coached harder after a allowing 10-yard TD drive following an offensive turnover than we were after a methodical 80-yard drive. Because football is so often a game of being opportune at the right times, one play can make or ruin the day, whether the final score is 3-0, 29-27 or 64-62.

Poor Pioneering
Not that D3football.com has ever supported teams pulling out of agreements or dropping programs, but Lewis and Clark’s move late last week just plain stinks.

I know it’s been done before, at Mount Ida and elsewhere, but canceling games once the season has begun is about the lamest move an athletic department can pull, unless there are tragic (Lawrence-Illinois College) or overwhelming circumstances that make playing not wise.

The official word from Lewis and Clark was that “having too few players on the Pioneer football team may put our players at undue risk for injury.”

In the Pioneers case, having 34 rostered players isn’t ideal, but it isn’t insurmountable. (After I wrote this, I saw that D3football.com staffer Adam Johnson, who went through something similar as a player, wrote as much in our blog, the Daily Dose) I bet hundreds of high school and a handful of college teams across the country will take the field with this a similar number of players. Only 22 are needed to keep any particular player from going both ways, and 27 would allow for specialists, including kick returners and long snappers. Assuming the remaining players are far enough along to get into a game, it doesn’t leave much for substitution, but exactly how many players are needed to avoid injury? Eleven players are on the field at a time, and many play the majority of the game. Maybe 22 Lewis and Clark players wouldn’t be as effective as 22 from a school with a 100-player pool or a JV team to choose from, but I’m not sure they are any more likely to be injured either. Am I missing something?

From the outside, it looks like a lame excuse. But even if we bought that, what of the timing? Maybe Lewis and Clark was hoping it could make it through a season. But if they were going to wait so long to make the announcement, they might as well have tried to play out the season like Mount Ida in 2000, and call a game or two off at the last minute if need be. More than likely, a team that could get through four games could get through nine.

Think of the problems they just caused for the schools and teams they play and the families that planned to see the games. The Salem Statesman-Journal reported that Linfield could lose $20,000 in gate receipts from its cancelled Hall of Fame game against Lewis and Clark. Puget Sound’s season now ends Oct. 29. Willamette will have consecutive bye weeks, while three opponents get a bye before their game with the Bearcats.

A college football player’s career spans 40 games if he’s lucky. By waiting too long to decide, Lewis and Clark robbed their own players of five of them, and their opponents of one.

Lewis and Clark now plays its schedule on four consecutive weeks, beginning Saturday. Presumably, the non-conference games were kept and conference games dropped because home contests against Occidental and Colorado College, and road games at Claremont-Mudd-Scripps and Chapman involved non-refundable air travel. Saving money while giving longtime Northwest Conference rivals a raw deal apparently appeared to be a better alternative than playing nine games.

It might help the strength of schedule for NWC teams hoping to make the playoffs, but it certainly doesn’t help a conference which recently added Menlo in hopes of securing an automatic qualifier. The NCAA requires seven active teams before it will set aside a playoff berth. Whether the Pioneers will rebound and save the NWC AQ, or whether the conference would look elsewhere (Colorado College? A conference school adding football?) remains to be seen.

Nobody liked it when Macalester pulled out of the MIAC. But to their credit, both the program — for now — and the conference have survived, if not thrived. Maybe Lewis and Clark knows what is best for its program. And at least they didn’t drop football cold turkey, like Swarthmore, New Jersey City and other programs over the years.

Streak watch
We last checked in on the nation’s longest streaks before Week 1. Since Framingham State, which hadn’t won since Oct. 5, 2002, took its opener, and since Manchester also won (in Week 1 before this week’s high-scoring defeat), only four schools are riding losing streaks of longer than one season. They are:

-> Heidelberg (17 consecutive losses, last win against Marietta on Oct. 4, 2003, 0-1 in 2005)
-> Catholic (13 consecutive losses, last win against Guilford on Nov. 8, 2003, 0-2 in 2005) 
-> Concordia (Ill.) (12 consecutive losses, last win against Eureka on Nov. 8, 2003, 0-2 in 2005) 
-> Hiram (15 consecutive losses, last win against Kenyon on Oct. 25, 2003)

The longest streaks among teams that won a game in 2004?
Mississippi College has lost eight straight since beating Sul Ross State last Sept. 18, but has a new coach, Norman Joseph. Kalamazoo also has a new coach in Terrance Brooks, but has lost eight straight and travels to Mt. St. Joseph this week.

It’ll still be one more week before Trinty (Conn.) puts its division-best 22-game win streak on the line. Meantime, Linfield has won 14 straight, longest streak by a school which participates in the NCAA playoffs.

Without looking, I’d guess that Monmouth (nine wins and no playoff appearance since a 55-19 home loss to St. Norbert last Sept. 18) holds the next longest streak.

Week 3 quick hits
-> Several teams have delayed opening weekend this season. Millsaps, which moved its game with Huntingdon from Sept. 3 to Oct. 1, kicks off this weekend against provisional NAIA member Concordia-Selma. Mississippi College, which also postponed a Sept. 3 game against NAIA Belhaven to Nov. 19, travels to Sul Ross State Saturday to begin its season. 

-> Salve Regina takes on its first officially recognized Division III opponent when it visits Worcester State on Friday night. Last week, the Seahawks played SUNY-Maritime, which is playing as a club this year and will begin varsity play in 2006.

-> It’s still one week before the NESCAC season begins, which means it’s the conference’s annual scrimmage weekend. But it’s with a twist. Williams will play an exhibition against rival Amherst. Since 1881, the two teams have met 119 times, but will do it once more unofficially because the Ephs balked at scrimmaging Bowdoin, because they felt the Polar Bears weren’t competitive enough.

-> Of the 18 independents, only three (Huntingdon, Maranatha Baptist and Rockford) are still undefeated, and only one other has a victory (1-1 Plymouth State)

-> Catholic visits McDaniel (nee Western Maryland) and Lycoming heads to Widener on Saturday. Those games used to be worth getting excited about. This year, we’ll opt to wait and see.

-> The ODAC has fallen behind the other conferences in the Mid-Atlantic. Four of its seven teams are 0-2.

-> The IIAC appears to be back. Only one of its nine teams is winless, while at least one of its three undefeateds will fall this weekend when 2-0 Coe visits 2-0 Central .

-> Upstate New York is the home for this weekend’s revenge games: Utica at RPI and Franklin and Marshall at Hobart

-> The three As in the MIAA — Adrian, Albion and Alma — already sit atop the league’s apex, as the only unbeaten teams in the conference.

-> Coast Guard and Norwich battle for “The Mug” for the 71st and possibly final time, as the Bears leave the Liberty League for the NEFC next season, and keep their lone non-conference date open for rival Kings Point. Coast Guard leads the series 37-32-1 and has won nine of the past 16.

Road trip of the week
Mississippi College at Sul Ross State makes up what we believe to be the longest in-conference road trip in Division III. MapQuest says it takes 14 hours to drive the 895 miles from Clinton, Miss. to Alpine, Texas. Luckily, the Choctaws plan to fly.

And if you haven’t been to the Around the Nation thread on Post Patterns, check out Wildcat11’s road trip horror story. We promise not to spoil the happy ending. (Oops.)

Recommended road trips of the week
One could see two of the top four teams in the country with just 201 miles of driving, from Abilene, Texas to Belton. And if Texas Lutheran is any good, you might catch a third Top 25 teams. Louisiana College at Hardin-Simmons kicks off at 2 p.m. local time (Central) and allows enough time to make it to TLU’s 7 p.m. kickoff at Mary Hardin-Baylor.

There are some very doable Pennsylvania doubleheaders. Try either Moravian at King’s or Lycoming at Widener early, and take in Albright at Susquehanna at 7 p.m. It’s 75 miles to Selinsgrove from Wilkes-Barre (1 hour, 30 minutes), and 130 miles (2:20) from West Chester. And FDU-Florham at New Jersey the night before is either 130 (2:15 from Wilkes-Barre) or 59 (1:10 to West Chester) miles from your early games.

Five games to watch
UW-Stevens Point at No. 1 Linfield: The Wildcats used a 21-point fourth quarter to overtake the Pointers in a 46-35 win. The eventual champions never looked back. UW-SP, however, has had two weeks to correct mistakes from a 38-12 home loss in their opener. They could throw another scare into the No. 1 team.

Texas Lutheran at No. 2 Mary Hardin-Baylor: Okay, so we’re not off the Bulldogs’ bandwagon yet. They looked good against Trinity, but still haven’t beaten anyone that would raise our eyebrows. But they get another chance this week against the 2004 runners-up, who led 38-10 at the half in last week’s win at Willamette.

No. 13 Salisbury at No. 20 Christopher Newport: Both have already been tested, but this is another chance for Mid-Atlantic pre-conference slate playoff-position jockeying. These have been two of the fast rising programs in the Eastern half of the country over the past few years, and their head-to-head meeting should be a joy. The Captains, with a loss to Rowan already in the books, need to slow the Sea Gulls’ 348-yard per game ground attack to avoid dropping to 1-2.

Monmouth at St. Norbert: Monmouth is the forgotten team in a sometimes-forgotten conference, but can make a big statement by beating the team that owns the MWC. The Scots are 17-3 over the past two seasons, with two losses to the Green Knights by a combined score of 93-34.

Union at Muhlenberg: The first of three road games for the Dutchmen is a chance to avenge one of three losses in 2004. The Mules won in Schenectady 23-18 last season, a host this season on 15 days’ rest. Their 30-13 win over TCNJ on Sept. 2 was an eye-opener, but so was Union’s 35-7 win over Springfield on Saturday.

Also keep an eye on: No. 3 Mount Union at John Carroll, Baldwin-Wallace at No. 5 Ohio Northern, No. 11 Trinity (Texas) at Redlands, St. Thomas at No. 17 Concordia-Moorhead, UW-Stout at Springfield, Bethel at St. Olaf, Wittenberg at Alma, Wabash at Washington U. , Coe at Central, Simpson at Wartburg, Loras at Buena Vista, DePauw at Hope, Buffalo State at Wesley, Wilkes at No. 10 Delaware Valley, UW-Whitewater at Lakeland.

Who are those guys? 
As tracked by our friend Ralph Turner on our message board, Post Patterns, here’s what Division III teams did while playing out-of-division in Week 2, and which Week 3 games feature unfamiliar teams on the opposite sideline. Ralph lists the game-by-game breakdown on the board, in separate threads under the General Football category.

Against Division I-AA: 0-2 in Week 2, 2-5 for the season.
Week 3 opponents:
Ursinus at La Salle
Drake at UW-Platteville

Against Division II: 1-2 in Week 2, 3-7 for the season.
Week 3 opponents:
Bemidji State at UW-River Falls
Ferrum at Chowan

Against NAIA: 5-4 in Week 2, 7-8 for the season.
Week 3 opponents:
Tabor at Colorado College
Willamette at Azusa Pacific

Mark my words (or eat ’em) 
Okay, we can just throw my first crack at that out. It was a warm-up. Yeah.
What I think we’ll witness in Week 3:

-> A much better performance for UW-Stevens Point against top-ranked Linfield than we saw two weeks ago in a 38-12 loss to No. 4 Hardin-Simmons. 

-> Lakeland will find the going much tougher against No. 15 UW-Whitewater than it did last week against then-No. 15 Carthage.

-> I expect a clear leader to emerge from the IIAC picture after the weekend, as the league shows itself to be stronger than the jumbled (albeit competitive) mess that last season represented.

-> Likewise, it’s hard not to expect Mount Union and Ohio Northern to win big this weekend, and leaving us with just three teams (Capital being the other) jockeying for what we figure to be two OAC playoff spots. Apologies to John Carroll, Baldwin-Wallace and Marietta.

-> Expect little movement in the upper half of the top 25 for the second week in a row. The top 11 remained the same between Weeks 1 and 2, and eight of those teams are at home this week. 

-> And here’s one more promise: Around the Nation gets written and posted by Wednesday the rest of the season. (What can I say? I thrive on pressure). You heard it here first!

Feedback
Readers have always been a big part of Around the Nation, and this year we’ve added another way for you to talk back. We’ve always listened to what you had to say — good, bad or indifferent — with our feedback form or via e-mail to keith@d3football.com. Now, we’re adding a thread on the new Post Patterns board to discuss issues raised in Around the Nation.

Housekeeping/Attention SIDs
As always, Around the Nation requests media guides and any other aids in helping us cover your school this season. For the first time, we are open to reviewing game tapes if schools are interested in sending them.