Playoff Previews

Three more playoff games involving east region teams kick off this Saturday afternoon. Two of the three are intriguing matchups, while we see one as being lopsided:

• Hobart at Wesley
• Christopher Newport and Kean
• Western New England at Salisbury

Let's get the Western New England (WNEC) at Salisbury game out of the way first. I don't see WNEC having much of a chance in this game. There must be talent on their team to win the NEFC championship with a 10-1 record. But that talent is untested.

WNEC, like most of its NEFC conference foes, went out of its way to avoid strong competition out of conference. The one exception was Salve Regina, which challenged Montclair State and Union. WNEC opted to play two more NEFC teams, plus Norwich. Loading up on weak foes can win you a lot of games, but the downside is your players are totally unprepared for playoff competition.

Salisbury will run the option again and again until the WNEC defense breaks. And when it breaks, the game will get ugly. We like Salisbury to win going away.

Christopher Newport (CNU) at Kean is a much closer battle. It may be the best match up involving east teams of the first round. CNU is a south region team from the USAC. There aren't many ways to overlap the schedules of Kean (9-1) and CNU (8-2).

We know that CNU lost a close game to Salisbury, and that Salisbury lost a close game to Wesley, and Wesley lost a close game to Kean. Advantage Kean, right? Well yes, unless you consider the Kean win over Wesley to be one of the season's biggest upsets.

There may be more points scored than most people are expecting. CNU is averaging 9.0 yards per pass attempt behind quarterback Aaron Edwards. Edwards took over late in the season and has only three starts under his belt. But he has completed 72 percent of his pass attempts and thrown seven touchdowns to only one interception.

I expect Kean will give Edwards a lot of different looks, and force him into a few mistakes. QB Tom D'Ambrisi is coming off a poor performance for Kean against Montclair, and we expect the senior to rebound. We like Kean to win a close game at home against CNU.

Wesley (9-1) hosts the Hobart Statesmen (7-1) in our final opening round preview. Hobart played a short eight game schedule. Due to a down year in the Liberty League, the Statesmen did not benefit from playing a playoff caliber opponent in conference.

However Hobart put a 56-20 hurting on Pool C playoff bound St. John Fisher back in September. The final score looks fluky in retrospect. How do we come to terms with Hobart losing to a mediocre RPI squad, and destroying a strong Fisher team? We believe the true Statesmen are somewhere between those two very disparate outcomes.

Wesley is beating its opponents by an average of 31 points per game. If not for the early season Kean loss, Wesley would be considered a number one seed and a serious threat to Mount Union and Wisconsin Whitewater. Askia Jahad averages 6.8 yards per rushing attempt, and quarterback Shane McSweeny completes 64% of his pass attempts.

The Wesley defense is big and fast, compiling 36 sacks and 93 tackles behind the line of scrimmage. DL Devin Hardy has 7.5 sacks, while Chris Mayes leads the team in tackles for losses with 17.5.

I would give Hobart more of a fighting chance if they had filled out their schedule with a playoff caliber team in the second half of their season. I don't think the Statesmen have seen anything remotely like Wesley in years, and they haven't seen a playoff quality opponent since September. We like Wesley to win convincingly.

How Does Eastern Region Football Rank?

Eastern Region is looked upon as the weakest of the Division 3 football regions. No Eastern Region team has played for the NCAA championship this century. The last team to make it to Salem was Rowan University, which was pounded by Pacific Lutheran 42-13. The past few seasons, the NCAA has chosen to import Mount Union from the Northern Region to give the Eastern bracket a legitimate #1 seed.

Delaware Valley is undefeated through eight games in 2011, but its two toughest games are yet to be played. However, many believe that if Delaware Valley runs the table, they will be given the top spot in the East while Mount Union stays home in the North. Few believe Hobart would be afforded the #1 seed however, due to the perceived weakness of the Liberty League in 2011, and the short 8-game schedule played by the Statesmen.

Cross region games are rare due to the travel costs incurred. How much can we draw from a winless Husson team from Eastern Region losing 77-7 to a 7-1 Adrian team from Northern Region? Not much. But we do have one important data point: Kean 31-28 over Wesley, potentially the best team in Southern Region.

Let me get one thing straight. If Kean and Wesley played on a neutral field tomorrow, I would pick Wesley as the favorite. But that is just an opinion. The fact is, Kean beat Wesley in Union, New Jersey.

I don't think who won the game or where it was played is the most important thing to draw from this data point. Rather, I feel the most important point is that the two teams were pretty closely matched on both sides of the ball. Wesley is undefeated in Southern Region play, while Kean lost to TCNJ and may not even win the NJAC.

A common argument against Eastern Region is its (lack of) performance against Mount Union in the playoffs. Mount Union destroyed Eastern Region teams St Lawrence 49-0, Delaware Valley 31-3, and Alfred 37-7 last season. 

If we are going to judge Eastern Region teams by their playoff losses to Mount Union, then shouldn't we judge the Ohio Athletic Conference just as harshly? Mount Union has won 19 consecutive OAC championships. Nineteen consecutive! Who in Northern Region can say they have recently knocked Mount Union out of the playoffs? Indeed, Mount Union has won an astounding 85.2% of its NCAA playoff games.

Judging how strong Eastern Region is by its performance against Mount Union just isn't logical, when there aren't any Northern teams showing the ability to beat them either. What we need are some regional cross over games between teams like Wesley, North Central, Wittenberg, Cortland, and Lycoming so we can draw better conclusions. 

I for one would love to see Rowan play Heidelberg, or St John Fisher play Baldwin-Wallace. Wouldn't it have been much more interesting if Adrian had played Widener, instead of a winless team from the weakest conference in Eastern Region?

There are reasons why the East tends to see more parity than the other regions do, and I will touch on these in later blog posts. Recall that two decades ago, the East was considered rather beastly on the national scene with Ithaca winning multiple national championships.

In the meantime, I don't believe we can definitively say Eastern Region is the weakest of the four regions. We don't have many data points to utilize, and the most important data point we have in 2011 has Kean beating Wesley. Because cross over games are so rare among regions, computer power ratings aren't likely to help us either. Again, not enough data points.

Where do you think Eastern Region football ranks nationally outside of Whitewater and Mount Union?