Wabash announces coaching hires. Coach Fendley is a great guy, don't know the others. Welcome!

https://sports.wabash.edu/news/2026/1/20/wabash-adds-three-to-football-coaching-staff.aspx

Congrats to Coach Gillin!

Little Giants will be looking for a new OC...

https://x.com/MHSBeMOORE/status/2001778105384411492

Well, I feel like I largely got what I wanted! Happy day!

In all honesty though, a very solid season for the team from down south. Hard to deny the kind of run they are on in recent years, even if the words make me want to throw up.

Congrats to the Blue Streaks! Keep making the NCAC proud!

Pat and friends agree that it will be a close game, but going the other way.  Really rooting for the Blue Streaks.  They also see DPU going under 6-2, all picking one score games.  Conference affiliation or not, I don't think I can bring myself to even type "really rooting for the Tig..."

https://d3football.com/notables/2025/12/quick-hits-playoffs-week14

The NCAC is going to look completely indistinguishable from 20 years ago which is obviously a big improvement. It is going to be odd to no longer think in terms of the W powers (Wooster, Witt, and Wabash) and that be it, but very, very welcome. Iron sharpens iron!

Any highlights of the Wabash game anywhere? I tried to look on YouTube and only saw a short 10 second clip of 4 random plays. Would love to see the final drive!

Quote from: Whitecarrera on November 15, 2025, 06:35:39 PMI'll be very curious to go back and watch the replay. A lot of questions, but I'll hold my tongue for now.

I just watched the replay, the endzone angle makes that call egregiously bad... Does it change the ultimate outcome? Likely not, but still, it was really, really bad.  A great play from Wabash's #42, I don't have a roster handy, but a great punch out.

For the second year in a row, Wabash will play in a post-season bowl game, which is still hard to wrap my mind around.  Ohio Northern in the Forever Lawn Bowl.

Hmm... interesting. That play could have been massive, but alas, 90-something yards later...

Some additional context to add a bit to what WLG Old Historian said: I cant speak about anyone else, but I was on that 1st team of Raeburn's tenure. We had just come off the Havercamp game and chief among the things that ER emphasized all year was his philosophy that you have to win your rivalry games... and we got absolutely rolled at home. The next year, we started a streak of 7 straight. Also, with a new head coach comes a new staff. Gilbert was a first time coordinator under that first Raeburn year and even with a couple years experience at this level as a position coach, it's different when you're in that seat. There were definitely times today (and other weeks where I've been able to plug in and watch) where I scratched my head and went "huh," but that happens every time I turn any game on.

Secondly, as to the idea that Wabash has somehow "given up" on football: not only the roster numbers, which are insane, but the transformation that the Armory has undergone has been beyond comprehension. Additionally, some of the upgrades that have been made to the weight room are fantastic.

Today, and the last 3 years, have been a tough watch at times for sure, but I think it's hard to look at what is going on behind the scenes and not be encouraged.

Observations from today's game:

-first half of the first quarter was everything a Wabash fan could want. Long drive that took a ton of time off the clock, score a touchdown, force a 3 and our defensively... then the pick. Which it wasn't even a terrible call per se: just a little under thrown and the DPU kid got a good jump on it and under cut it.

-For the most part, and I know how this sounds when you give up 41 point, I honestly think the defense held up their end of the bargain. 3rd downs, especially 3rd and longs, were a bit of an Achilles heel, but not a ton of big big plays, force them to drive, and they executed.

-Offensively, it honestly doesn't seem to complicated. When we had success on 1st down, we moved the sticks, when we didn't, we didn't.

I hate it for this group of Seniors, but I trust Gilbert moving forward 100%, absolutely no doubt there.

A couple of odds and ends, especially for those who watched from home. Not that any of these changes the outcome:

-WTH was with the 10ish minute delay in the 1st quarter? Seemed like something with DPU headsets? It seemed like their coach was looking down at his comm box a lot during the conversation.

-Just how bad was the fumble recovery that wasn't on the opening kickoff? Looked really bad from the grandstand.

Either way, WAF!

Nervous energy?

Saturday should be a great game... but did I see correctly somewhere that DePauw gives up an average of 10 yards on the ground?  If true, that's a crazy good stat, and I hate giving the Dannies any kind of credit...

Quote from: HCAlum86 on November 03, 2025, 09:13:31 AMWhen was the last time the NCAC had 3 ranked teams?

Don't quote me on this as I only had time to do a quick dive, but I looked at week 11 of all the Top 25 polls available on D3football.com and the only instance I saw of three NCAC teams even being listed was 2016.  In that poll, Witt was #17, and DePauw and Wabash both received votes, though Wabash was listed as having dropped out of the Top 25 (was previously #25).  That was the year DPU won the Bell back in Crawfordsville in a game that saw a wild, and incredibly frustrating, final couple of minutes if memory serves correctly.

I forgot about the expanded field!

This is getting ahead of ourselves quite a bit, but I found myself thinking about this in the wake of the Wabash/JCU result.  It is not unfathomable that the top three in the conference each end up with one loss and a tie (DePauw beats JCU, Wabash beats DePauw): if that happens, I assume the NCAC tie break rule is still "tie goes the team that hasn't been to the playoffs most recently," so would that be automatically JCU even though they are a new member?  Or has the tie-break rule changed to something a little more practical? This also rules out the possibility of the NCAC getting two teams in, which hasn't happened in some time.