End of the Road

Linfield found the road to Salem was a little too long especially when it winds through Dover, Delaware.

The Wildcats' season ended over 2500 miles away from where it started in September after the Wesley Wolverines rode a series of uncharacteristic mistakes and lapses by Linfield to eradicate a 20-point Linfield halftime lead. Wesley scored 42 unanswered points in the second half to continue on to the Quarterfinals in the DIII playoffs.

Brent's football career also ended this weekend about 5000 miles away from where it started back in his eighth grade year at St. Louis. It was a very memorable ride for Juliet and me. And I know Brent feels very fortunate for the opportunities and experiences he had.

It will be a lot different for all of us now that both of the boys are done playing organized sports but we'll look forward to whatever is down that road.

Stacking the deck

The official brackets for the Division III playoffs were released on Sunday afternoon.

http://www.d3football.com/playoffs/2011/bracket.pdf

d3football.com's #5 ranked Linfield will be matched against #8 Cal Lutheran in the First Round for the third consecutive year. This will be the 5th time that they are playing each other in the past 3 seasons.

CalLu fans must be frustrated at not being tabbed for a home game in the opening round especially since SCIAC (Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference) runner-up, #14 Redlands, was also included in the tournament and sent on the road to face the top seed in the bracket, #4 Mary Hardin-Baylor in Texas.

This was one of many perplexing things that seem to occur with yearly regularity in the NCAA Selection Committee's decisions. There seems to be a heavy bias against the West-coast teams in terms of seeding and travel:

• Four of the eight teams in the bracket with Linfield finished in the d3football.com Top Ten
• Seven of the eight finished in the Top 20
• #3 St. Thomas (St. Paul, MN) is a #1 seed in a bracket that has NO other teams ranked higher than #11 Delaware Valley
• #1 Wisconsin-Whitewater, also a #1 seed has only #10 Salisbury in its bracket and 3 other teams in the Top 20.
• The final top seed, #2 Mount Union has two Top Ten teams in its bracket but also includes teams ranked #22, #25, #38, #39 and one unranked automatic qualifier.

Another oddity comes in the second round where the winner of the Linfield-CalLu game, barring an upset by #31 Hobart, would likely face #7 Wesley in Delaware! d3football.com feels that Wesley may have been the best team to not make the DivIII finals in the past 2-3 seasons.

Finally, besides the tough draw in the bracket looking forward should Linfield be fortunate enough to keep winning the travel schedule would likely criss-cross the nation and add to the difficulty. If form holds according to rankings the Wildcats would play at home the first week; Wesley in Dover, DE; Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton, TX; Mount Union in Alliance, OH then finally to Salem, VA for the Stagg Bowl.

That's a lot of frequent flyer miles!

GO 'CATS!