OK, I was wrong. My semifinal picks were not exactly on the mark.

For what it is worth, I have always thought the semifinal round is the toughest to predict. There just is not much point of reference to predict how these teams from across the country will match up until they get on the field and play.

What this sets up is a very entertaining title match up. In fact, I feel this is the most intriguing championship game since I have been covering football for this website.

On one side is Winston-Salem State, a team that has caused many people to rethink everything they thought they knew about D2 football. The Rams are the first Super Region One team to win a semifinal game in nine years. They are the first CIAA team to ever reach the title game and just the second HBCU (historically black colleges and universities) team to make it.

On the other side is Valdosta State. The Blazers reached three national championship games from 2002-07 and won a pair of titles, including in 2007 which was David Deans rookie year as a head coach.

But from 2008-11 VSU won just a single playoff game and had two 6-4 seasons. When the Blazers started just 2-2 this season there were people calling for Deans job. Now he is one win from a second championship. And this time, no one can say he is doing it with someone elses players.

It should be a great game on Saturday, and I am guessing with warm weather in the forecast and both schools within reasonable driving distance, attendance should be solid as well. What a great way to close out what has been a very interesting 2012 season!

Semifinal Thoughts

-Huge props have to go to Valdosta State for traveling hundreds of miles north in cold weather and coming out on top. Lesser teams might have folded when they got down 10-0 early but the Blazers turned it on from there and took complete control of the game. I thought the biggest key was the play of VSU offensive tackles Mesh Wokomaty and Ryan Schraeder. They did a tremendous job one on one in pass protection and also dominated the edge on running plays which made it very difficult on the Maverick defense.

-I did not like the defensive strategy that Minnesota State employed. The Mavericks had match up issues with the Valdosta State receivers but too often they employed a three man rush on 3rd-and-long and the Blazers killed them in those situations. The few times that MSU did get pressure in the face of Cayden Cochran is when they did stop the passing game. I felt the Mavericks needed to take a few more chances defensively to get some pressure on Cochran.

-Last week I complimented West Texas A&M for turning the corner as a program and then the Buffaloes completely reverted to their old ways in the biggest game of the season. They committed nine penalties in the first half alone, including an unnecessary one that took points off the board. They also extended two scoring drives for WSSU with foolish penalties. And why was Khiry Robinson not more involved in the offensive game plan? He averaged 6.8 yards per carry but ran the ball just 20 times. He should have had 35 carries in a game like this.

-It is very difficult to determine how a defense will match up speed-wise with an opponent until the game is played. I vastly underestimated the speed in the back end of the WSSU defense as they completely stymied the WTAMU passing game. At times it looked like the Rams had 13 players on defense. Impressive.

National Championship Game
ESPN2 1PM EST

Valdosta State (11-2) versus Winston-Salem State (14-0)

If you like to see playmakers on the field you will enjoy watching the wide receivers in this game. Between WSSUs Jameze Massey and Jahuann Butler and VSUs Gerald Ford and Seantavious Jones, there is as much talent on the field at the receiver position as you are likely to see in a D2 game. Quarterbacks Cayden Cochran for VSU and Kameron Smith for WSSU are both very good at delivering the football to the open guy and are also mobile enough to run the ball effectively.

One spot the Blazers do have a slight advantage offensively is on the line. The Ram line is solid and played much better than I thought they would against West Texas A&M, but the VSU offensive line is the best in D2 this season. A slight advantage overall would have to go to the VSU offense, but it is close.

Where WSSU has an advantage is defensively. Both teams pass defense has been very good, but the Rams are much better against the run. In a game like this making a team one-dimensional offensively would be huge and I think the Rams stand a better chance of making that happen. The Rams, however, have made just two field goals this season and have missed eight extra points so VSU has the advantage in the kicking game.

Prediction: I have no doubt that the Rams are the better team defensively and defense wins championships. That said; the VSU offensive line and receivers are so good that I feel the Blazers are capable of moving the ball anyway. Throw in the fact that WSSU has no kicking game and this looks like a very even contest.

Winston-Salem State 26 Valdosta State 24

Mailbag

[Q] Now that you have gone 0-2 on your semi-final picks, do you think that your picks were conference-biased?

[A] No. As I mentioned earlier in the column, the semifinals are difficult because there is no point of reference for comparison with teams from across the country. Valdosta State did not even stream its first playoff game so the only playoff video to watch on them was from the Carson-Newman game, which was a tough to draw much from because C-N runs the veer and was undersized defensively.

It would only make sense that if there is very little to go on when comparing teams you would go with the team from the stronger league when making picks. The other good rule of thumb I have used over the years is if a team has to travel a great distance north and play in the cold, go with the northern team. All of the computer ranking systems that I looked at last week predicted WTAMU and MSU to win as well, so I do not feel as if I was making a major reach with my predictions last week.

[Q] Do you think the new Florida Tech program can have similar success to CSU-Pueblo?

Brad

[A] No. CSU-Pueblo moved into a perfect situation in the sense that the football commitment in the rest of the RMAC was fairly low. So with ample scholarship money, new facilities and a large coaching staff CSUP was able to shoot to the top of the RMAC rather quickly because they had more to offer than the rest of the schools in the league.

The situation is different at Florida Tech because they are moving into the GSC which has three of the nations best programs in Valdosta State, North Alabama and Delta State. I think that Florida Tech can eventually compete with those teams and being the lone D2 program in a talent-rich state like Florida is certainly going to help. But it will be very difficult for them to overtake the top teams in the GSC anytime soon.

[Q] Will D2 ever come to it senses and allow automatic playoff berths to conference champions?

Josh

[A] NCAA Division II has a rule that states that 75% of all the schools in the division must sponsor a sport for that sport to grant automatic playoff berths to conference champions. Only about 55% of all D2 schools play football so the only way we will see conference champions get autobids is if the rule is changed, which would require a favorable vote from the entire membership. I do not see that happening.

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