Interesting difference between Division III football and basketball that occurred to me watching basketball playoffs in recent years and football this year. Patrick L. Coleman, any ideas? There appears to be far more intra-division difference within football than within basketball, but theres less difference between divisions (say, D3 vs. FCS). The former was very evident in the playoffs: there were some huge mismatches in early, and indeed not so early, rounds. Wesley, for example, clobbered its early round opponents (Hampden-Sydney and #MIT, and its quarterfinal game against Hobart wasnt very close either). These were all playoff teams, mind you. Wesley in turn got pounded arguably even worse by Mount Union (70-0 in the third quarter). There were other such examples in other brackets. I dont remember a lot of real mismatches of this kind in recent basketball tournaments. Blowouts, yes, but not a lot of 40 point wipeouts. I know that differences in football scores are magnified compared to basketball scores, but 59-0 or 70-21 are still huge differences. Also, there are a number of D3 players who have been in the NFL -- not a lot, but as best as I can tell, a lot more than in basketball even correcting for the difference in the number of teams (not correcting for difference in players per team, but thats not different between college and pro). At least one of those, Pierre Garcon, is an outright star in the NFL. Im not aware of any recent D3 players in the NBA. Meanwhile, it appears that D3 teams defeat at least FCS teams considerably more frequently in football than in basketball. Looking at football.kislanko/2013/intermat.html, it appears that D3 teams were 2-5 against FCS teams in 2013 (0-5 in 2014, 0-1 in 2012, 3-5 in 2011, 1-1 in 2010, 2-6 in 2009, 4-4 in 2008, 4-6 in 2007). Wesley played an FCS team (Carolina-Charlotte) to a standstill this year, and nobody batted an eye. In basketball, Albertus Magnus lost a very close game to Eastern Connecticut last year and it raised quite a few eyebrows. I dont have the comparable records handy for basketball, but Ive seen discussion on d3boards that suggests that D3 teams win somewhere around 2% of the time.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 23:30:56 +0000
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