October 24th, 2000 12:00am
It's rug cuttin' time. Only three more regular season games remain for most teams. For some this is a time to begin a run toward the playoffs. For others it's merely the beginning of the end.
Take Catawba for instance. Perched at the top of the heap in the South Region the Indians' season depends upon how rudely they treat visiting Carson-Newman.
There was a feeling early this season that the surprise of Division II might be Catawba. A good season in 1999 that included a strong showing against Carson-Newman plus a lot of returnees suggested the Indians would do well this season and maybe unseat Carson-Newman as the South Atlantic Conference titleholder and playoff representative.
Since this is D2football.com's game of the week the details about the game will be left for that column, but there are some thoughts about this game worthy of note here.
First, Catawba is a solid team. It deserves its top spot in the region partly due to Carson-Newman's loss to Presbyterian - a loss that represents the best and worst thing that could have happened to Catawba.
The best part is easy to figure - it allowed the Indians to gain their first-place status in the South Region. The worst part is that it woke Carson-Newman's Eagles up.
If Presbyterian had wanted to help crown a new titleholder it should have quietly allowed the Eagles to run over it and reserve the wake up call for later in the season when it might have harmed the Eagles more. Instead the Eagles mauled Tusculum and Newberry the next two week and are ready to play out the season, which they think runs until December 9, not the end of the regular season (Carson-Newman by the way is one of the few D-II units that has only one more regular season game. In recent years the Eagles have left the final regular season weekend open to prepare for the tournament).
The Tusculum game was a message to the rest of its league and the playoff selection committee. The Eagles said they were awake and ready. Newberry found out last week just how ready the Eagles are when the birds stomped on Newberry 61-23.
Undoubtedly this will be an interesting contest made even more so since it is at Catawba and away from the visitor-unfriendly confines of Carson-Newman's home field. Catawba is probably the best-equipped team in the SAC to dethrone the Eagles. But they will not do it.
If there is anything that stands out most about the Eagles' coach, Ken Sparks, it is his focus. If you think he has let his players forget about the Presbyterian loss even for a millisecond you are wrong. This is the single-best motivator Sparks could have. Tusculum and Newberry got a taste of the end result of that focus, but the focus this week is Catawba. It's sort of like being in the crosshairs of a marksman's rifle.
A close loss to Carson-Newman hopefully will not kick Catawba out of the tournament field. The Indians deserved a shot at the playoffs this year.
But as important as this game could be to Catawba, it is more important to the Eagles which is another reason to suspect the Eagles will prevail. It is entirely conceivable that a Carson-Newman loss could boot the Eagles out of the tournament entirely, especially with several Gulf South teams hot in the chase for a tournament spot.
Experience is another ally of the Eagles. The only thing between the Eagles and a national title last year was one step out of bounds at the wrong time and one fumble at the worst time. Eagles' players who returned from that team have that memory to overcome. This game is the first "playoff" game the Eagles must win to have a chance to redeem themselves with a title run that is not stopped.
It's said there are only a few times in a season when a coach can psychologically really get his team pumped up for a game. This is one of those times for Carson-Newman.
Add it up. Catawba faces a resurgent team with talent, experience, focus and a goal. These big four items should be enough to assure the Eagles are back in the playoff field again this year. A close game it should be, but it should also be another Carson-Newman win.
Out of all the remaining games this weekend, two stand out as having significant implications.
The first is the UC-Davis visit to Sacramento State, a 5-3 I-AA team. CAL-Poly last weekend might not have been the quality I-AA team Davis needs to make everyone else in D-II shake and certainly Sac State is not the top of the heap in its division either. It is, however, a much better team than CAL-Poly.
A UC Davis win this weekend sends a message no one in the West Region wants to hear. It could signal that Davis is invincible.
It is, however, just another football game. If Davis loses, it still will be in the playoffs - at least so says a commonly held notion about this game.
Nope. Don't see it that way.
The Sac State game is the 47th renewal of the Causeway Classic. There are some local bragging rights involved. But this game also is a measure of the level of play Davis will bring to the tournament. This is not a game of, "so what if we lose." This is a game of confidence building coming just at the right time.
Davis could lose this game and not do itself much harm, but a win would likely assure it of homefield advantage throughout the playoffs, including the semifinal game.
What relevance is there in talking about home field advantage three weeks before the tournament even starts? So Davis wins. So what. It still has to maneuver through the playoff field before any semifinal location is an issue.
This might appear to be right, but instead of maneuver, the correct word might be rumble, cruise or smash, particularly the way the rest of the West tournament field is shaping up.
A Davis loss this weekend might raise some questions about its national position when the semifinal site selections are made. A win and there is no doubt where the East Region finalist will be for the semifinal game.
Everyone in the East should be praying Davis loses this weekend. A loss here might take the edge off the game against Western Washington and further muddy the issue about who gets home field advantage for the semifinals.
However, if the East Region playoff selection committee representatives have nothing to do they could start booking West Coast accommodations now for whichever team from their region makes it to the semifinal game.
The other biggee this weekend is in Bloomsburg Pennsylvania when Millersville comes to town with more risk than any other team mentioned so far - but not as much risk as its host has.
Millersville tops the East Region rankings. Bloom is on the outside looking in. It stays there with a loss. A win changes everything.
A casual observer looking at the two teams might conclude that despite the fact that Millersville is on the road, it should be the favorite in this one. If this is your view, look again.
Millersville has the clear passing edge, but Bloomsburg combines respectable passing with good running to rack up points - enough points to give it the PSAC league-leading scoring offense averaging nearly 35 points a game. It has outscored the opposition by a three-to-one margin. Bloom's defense tops the league in scoring. Millersville is the PSAC's top passing unit, but Bloom is second. The Huskies have the third best rushing offense in the league. The Huskie's Marques Glaze is the PSAC number two rusher averaging more than 128 yards a game while Bloom's quarterback, Eric Miller, tops the league in passing efficiency, three slots higher than more widely known Drew Folmar at Millersville. Bloomsburg's only notable slip was an early season and now unimaginable loss to Shippensburg although it also lost its opener to Carson-Newman. Bloom, however now is a much different team than when the season began. Millersville's only loss was to I-AA Villanova.
This will be a good contest with neither team able to rout the other, but in my view the one issue that throws the favorite nod to Bloom is coaching.
Bloom's coach, Danny Hale, manages to throw together a respectable team when he has less than respectable talent. He has much more than that this year. He has a seasoned signal caller and a first rate running back to go along with some serious muscle on both lines.
It's been some time since Bloom played a game with this much on the line, but don't think Hale will come into this game without making sure his troops understand what's at stake.
As will be true in the Carson-Newman game with Catawba, our chosen underdog will not get blown out. Far from it. But some intangibles will have a lot to do with both games. In the Bloom-Millersville contest we think this edge belongs to the Bloomsburg Huskies.
Should the Huskies win, the East Region will undergo another ratings shakeup. Millersville will vacate the top slot. It IUP beats Clarion this weekend it will take the 'Villes' place. Slippery Rock should have no problem coasting over Lock Haven, so it too should move up a notch. The wildcard is the Northwood visit to Ashland. If Northwood wins, it has a claim on a one-notch higher slot since it would have a better record than either Millersville or Slippery Rock. Bloomsburg will claim it should be ahead of Millersville based on head to head competition and comparable overall records.
So where do you put Millersville? Does it fall from one to five?
But even if Millersville edges out the Huskies, it has to face Slippery Rock and IUP in consecutive weekends to close out the season. Bloom has to travel to the Rock for its season finale but a loss to Millersville likely would remove any chance for a tournament slot.
And by the way, what does the committee do with New Haven if it wins two of its next three games, losing only to a formidable Jackson State?
The final three weeks of the PSAC season promise to be interesting.
But this is the time of the year when it things get very interesting everywhere. For a number of teams other than the ones mentioned here, the next three weeks represent a make-it-or-break-it period. The teams that really deserve to be in the tournament will find a way to win. It's just about that simple.
But then, as often stated here before, this is only our opinion. We could be wrong.