Welcome back to Monday everybody! After the long weekend that was filled with too much food, plenty of friends and family, and just the right amount of football, I’m back and looking towards next weekend’s playoffs.
Before I continue on I have to apologize though to two people, the first would be my readers. For those of you who read the Division II Round 2 preview piece you saw that I went an ugly 0-8 last week after having gone 7-1 the week before. I take that responsibility on fully and blame only myself for over-analyzing the matchups. Which leads me to my second apology and that’s to QB Willy Korn. I’ve been on this kid’s bandwagon since my friend (who is a huge Clemson fan) texted me and said ‘Korn committed to Clemson! CHAMPIONSHIP!’ Ever since then I’ve followed his career and last weekend I got off the band wagon. Willy, I promise I will never let that happen again.
Alright now that we have that all behind us let’s do a quick review, overall I went 4-0 in the FCS, 0-8 in Division II, and 5-3 in Division III. Overall I’m 29-15 in these playoffs and I’ll take that for the moment. I’d also like to add that I’m never trusting another Lone Star Conference team in Division II again, and yes I’m looking at you Midwestern State after you blew the lead you had v. Northwest Missouri. Before that however there was the loss of my preseason National Champion pick (California) at the hands of Winston-Salem State and then there was the shock of seeing Wayne State wipe the floor with Nebraska-Kearney. I know one thing, it’s back to the drawing board in Division II with the quarterfinals preview coming this week. I promise to do better.
Let’s move on to the FCS where I was perfect on the weekend and that was literally my only saving grace. The only heart palpitation here was Eastern Kentucky giving James Madison all it could possibly want and then some as a last second FG sent JMU into the second round. The second round is where the fun begins as matchups like Appalachian State v. Maine, Northern Iowa v. Wofford, and Georgia Southern v. Old Dominion will take place. We’ll be back later this week with previews of every FCS game.
In Division III we are finally at the point in the bracket where I’m beginning to see how or when UW-Whitewater and/or Mount Union could lose. While we won’t share the teams we think each could lose to quite yet we do think one of the two teams has a very good chance to lose this round and both could fall in the semis. This could finally be the year that we don’t have purple in the finals, and who would have ever thought that?
This review is short and that’s in part because of the long holiday weekend and that I don’t want to give away to much info that will be in this week’s previews. As always we will be previewing every game in every division with a full write up. We appreciate you all reading them so far and hope you’ll stick with us through the FCS Championship game in early January.
For Full Results from this weekend’s actions go here:
Matt Elder is covering the FCS, Division II and Division III playoffs all fall long for Crystal Ball Run.
Follow him on Twitter @MatthewCElder.
