Jordan Hartman took back the second half kickoff for a touchdown to help Bridgewater put away Hampden-Sydney. Bridgewater athletics file photo

I love surprises, and this week, we got plenty of them.

By this point in the season, our expectations for each team are pretty solidly grounded. Upsets will continue to happen, of course, and that’s why everyone everywhere should continue paying close attention. Some teams are vying for playoff spots; others are hoping to wrap up their season with a win that will stay with them for years.

The latter happened a few times against Top 25 teams. While in Friday’s Triple Take, we were looking out for likely upsets in the St. Thomas/Concordia-Moorhead and UW-Oshkosh/UW-Stevens Point games, the upsets against No. 5 Linfield and No. 22 Hampden-Sydney are particularly stunning.

Voters have felt pretty good about the Top 5 since the beginning of the season. UW-Whitewater, Mary Hardin-Baylor, Mount Union, Wesley and Linfield all have been deservedly in those spots since the preseason. There was every indication that these were the teams to beat for 2014. Wartburg was also promoted into that top pack. While the Knights may not have been an automatic pick at the beginning of the year, they quickly rose to prominence beating Bethel in Week 2 and haven’t looked back since.

Because of the confidence that Top 25 voters, myself included, put into this group, Linfield’s loss is rather jarring and will make the No. 6 through No. 15 spots even harder to sort through come ballot time. It’s been stated in several places this year that some teams, like Johns Hopkins and Hobart, have crept higher on the poll mostly because teams ahead of them are losing. Yes, the Blue Jays and Statesmen are taking care of business week in and week out, but the strength of their schedules raise red flags about whether they’re being slotted a few places too high on the poll. Now that Linfield’s going to drop down, take note of where JHU and Hobart float to.

Linfield’s loss adds to the deepening well of high-quality one-loss teams -- Bethel, St. John Fisher and St. John’s among them. Bethel at least lost to one of the year’s top-tier teams, the aforementioned Wartburg. Fisher, as profiled in last week’s Around the Nation column, is in the conference that remains the poster child of parity, the Empire 8. Anything can happen; and most anything does between the E8 squads. Linfield didn’t lose to a bad team, either, but after seeing Willamette get hung out to dry twice already this season, this matchup marks the week’s biggest surprise.

But certainly not the only surprise.

Hampden-Sydney’s loss on the road to Bridgewater creates a mess at the top of the ODAC. Bridgewater already has two losses, but the Eagles can’t get complacent – not the way that Old Dominion teams have been playing this year.

Sydney is joined by Guilford and Emory and Henry at the top of the conference ladder. H-SC has beaten E&H already this year and plays GC next week and archrival Randolph-Macon at the end of the season. Guilford not only plays H-SC next week but then follows that up with E&H in Week 11. The Quakers’ only loss this season was a bit of a baffling one to Shenandoah in early October. E&H is finishing the season with apparent spoiler team Shenandoah and then GC.

I would tell the ODAC front office to dust off their conference handbooks and be ready to wade through the multiple tie-breaker scenarios, but this kind of thing isn’t new for the wacky ODAC-y. I’m sure the folks there have the rules memorized by now.

For the two other Top 25 teams that lost on Saturday (the ones we predicted in Triple Take), it seems unlikely that either will remain in the Top 25 once the poll comes out Sunday evening. UW-SP has pretty much been hanging on based on the (admittedly huge) early season win over North Central, but that welcome probably has been worn out. Same for Concordia-Moorhead, which was still riding the coattails of the September win at St. John’s. Both teams are very good squads in two of the toughest conferences in the nation, but the spotlight is now shifting elsewhere.

Before moving past the Top 25, it’s worth noting some midgame scores: Hardin-Simmons led Mary Hardin-Baylor 14-10 at halftime before the Cru tore out of the half on a 28-point scoring binge; Bethel was down 16-7 in the third quarter before going unanswered for 23 points in the win against Gustavus Adolphus, a team with an almost-famously backloaded 2014 schedule; and Widener was up by only five points midway through the fourth quarter against 5-3 Stevenson.

Other surprises and shakers around the country:

• MIT fended off a 27-point second half against Endicott to win control of the NEFC. The Engineers are strongly positioned for a postseason bid, needing to win just one of their next two games to seal to deal.
• An Averett team that has struggled for much of the season stunned Methodist 31-21 by capitalizing on five turnovers and consistently putting points on the board. Much like the ODAC, there’s no flawless teams left in the USA South, and some crucial games wedged in the final two weeks. There’s no clear vision for how this could shake out, and a tiebreaker scenario of teams with two conference losses isn’t out of the question.
• Macalester stands alone in the MWC’s North Division as undefeated in conference play. The Scots took down one of their biggest threats in Carroll and but still face one-loss St. Norbert next week. Not until then can the division’s champ be crowned and the representative for the conference title tilt be determined.

Tweets, et al.: There will be a handful of opportunities each week for me to showcase what’s going on nationally in Division III. On:

• Sundays, look for my reaction and recap of Saturday’s games in Snap Judgments;
• Thursdays, see my centerpiece feature story of the week;
• Fridays, read our Triple Take prediction column, where Pat, Keith and I give you some things to look out for in the following day’s games, including the top matchups and upset possibilities.

Between all that will be D3football.com’s regional columns, the ATN podcast, and the team of the week, among other things. Don’t go too far!

(Also, if you are tweeting about Division III football, don't forget to use the #d3fb hashtag.)