Pool C -- 2013

Started by Ralph Turner, October 18, 2013, 10:39:56 PM

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USee

Wartburg's loss to Bethel was far from respectable. They were down 30-0 when Bethel called off the dogs. Final was 30-17. Wartburg also beat Luther by 3 after trailing in the 4th quarter. Wheaton beat Luther 38-12. All this to say IWU stunk up the place w 7 turnovers. They weren't prepared to play and must have thought Wartburg wouldn't bring any game. Wartburg was much, much better than many teams I have seen this year and IWU didn't play anywhere near where they have been playing. This should have been closer, but Wartburg was still better. I think Act II in Arden Hills won't be the same blowout from earlier this season. Wartburg can play.

Is the CCIW down? I think so, that score seems to say so. I'll be interested to see NCC's performance the next couple weeks. Prior to yesterday I had a group of teams in the North stacked pretty tightly (Witt, IWU, Heidleberg, Franklin, Wabash, Wheaton) together and fairly interchangeable. Not sure one game changes my opinion. I would give more credit to Wartburg for stepping up their game. Impressive performance on the road.

ExTartanPlayer

Quote from: ExTartanPlayer on November 24, 2013, 08:05:53 AM
Soooo, Jonny, how did our Pool C contestants do?

UW-Platteville 54, Concordia 20: UWP was never really in question as a slam-dunk Pool C choice, but this game doesn't really tell us much as it came against one of the lesser Pool A entrants.  Nonetheless, they won handily.  Well done UWP.

Linfield 42, Pacific Lutheran 21: The one team in the field that I can feel "bad" for, as much as I can feel "bad" for any playoff team, is PLU just because we don't get to see how they would have done against a few other teams.  Nonetheless, I think we all would agree that PLU was a deserving Pool C choice and it's their bad fortune to get stuck with a Linfield rematch.

Wartburg 41, Illinois Wesleyan 7: the "WTF happened here?" award goes to Illinois Wesleyan!  Is Wartburg a fine team?  Of course!  They played Bethel quite respectably in their OOC loss and the only in-conference blemish came against a decent Coe squad that made last year's playoffs and defeated 2013 playoff team WashU as well as Wartburg.  But Illinois Wesleyan was, on paper, one of the strongest Pool C teams if not THE strongest, and I really expected them to win this one.  Perhaps I should heed the comments from the CCIW folks that the conference as a whole is a notch down from its peak strength.

St. John Fisher 25, John Carroll 16: annnnnd two of our Pool C entrants played one another!  (I didn't even really notice this quirk until now, but that seems a bit awkward to me; I know we're already discussing the vagaries of bracketology and the fact that we would prefer to avoid first-round rematches, but I also wonder if perhaps we should in theory match all of the Pool C selections against Pool A teams in the first round?  Something doesn't strike me as quite right that AQ teams have to play against/eliminate one another while one at-large team is guaranteed to get into the sweet 16; this might be an unpopular opinion among those who argue that the Pool C teams are stronger than many of the Pool A teams in the field, but that's fine, even that is an argument to split the five Pool C teams and distribute them against Pool A's as much as possible).  This was also a surprising result to me.  The E8 always handles itself well in the playoffs but I had the feeling that the conference's top teams were not quite as good as in years past and that JCU was a legit title contender.

Two of the five Pool C teams advance, although one was eliminated by another.  IWU is definitely the biggest disappointment in Pool C, IMO, and PLU did about what could be expected.  UWP vs. North Central next week might be one of the best second-round games!

Our final Pool C update:

Round II:

North Central 52, UW-Platteville 24

St. John Fisher 27, Hobart 6

Quarterfinals:

UMHB 45, St. John Fisher 23

Final tallies from our five Pool C contestants:

2-3 first round (one head-to-head loss; 1-2 against Pool A teams)
1-1 second round
0-1 quarterfinals

St. John Fisher gets a gold star for making the quarterfinals as a Pool C entrant (likely the last one in), although part of that is certainly due to the draw; no disrespect intended to Fisher since they beat one of the other Pool C's and a very good Hobart team, but it is at least vaguely possible that PLU, UWP, JCU might - repeat: might - have advanced to the quarters as well with a different draw (this is NOT to say any of them would beat SJF, but merely pointing out that the draw influences how far a given team advances).  They also played a respectable game against a real UMHB juggernaut.  Well done to SJF and a hat tip to the Empire 8.

UWP gets a nice check-mark for doing about what expected.  Big win over lackluster round 1 opponent and competitive-for-30-minutes loss against semifinalist North Central.

Lumps of coal to John Carroll and Illinois Wesleyan for being presumed contenders to advance a few rounds and instead bowing out early. 

(Don't get all worked up, anybody, that's a joke)

PLU gets the hard-luck award.
I was small but made up for it by being slow...

http://athletics.cmu.edu/sports/fball/2011-12/releases/20120629a4jaxa

Craft_Beermeister

I guess you can say "everyone out of the poll"

Ralph Turner

A big +1! to ExTartanPlayer for the updates that he gave on Pool C. They will make a nice archive for our review when we want to compare Pool C's in the future.

K-Mack

Agreed. That was good.

Also
QuoteThey will make a nice archive for our review when we want to compare Pool C's in the future, like when a columnist has to write a year-in-review thingamabob.
Former author, Around the Nation ('01-'13)
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and one of the two voices behind the sonic #d3fb nerdery that is the ATN Podcast.