The Week that Was: Week 5

Five weeks down, five weeks to go. Every week is different in the UMAC and this week was no exception. There were more points scored this weekend than any one UMAC team scored in all of last season. Northwestern finally realized they have to play the fourth quarter with about two minutes left. And Crown misses their first extra point all season just when they need it most. So let's review what else happened in the week that was.

Obscure Conference

You may have seen a tweet about this from us, but this week in his weekly “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” article, ESPN writer Gregg Easterbrook listed the Martin Luther – Iowa Wesleyan final score of 68 to 51 as his weekly “Obscure College Score” (way down at the end of the article). Last season, the UMAC was also lucky enough to make it the same section of that article featuring the Minnesota-Morris at Crown final score of 30-29. If this trend continues, maybe he can just start referring to it instead as the “UMAC Football Score”.

Fun with Numbers

The Martin Luther Knights football team this week scored 68 points. The Knights men’s basketball team did not pass that mark in 10 games last season and the women’s team failed to score more than 68 in 20 contests.

Through 5 weeks, Westminster has accumulated 915 yards rushing. That is 3.75 times as many yards as the 243 rushing yards they had after the entire 2013 season.

Out of 30 Division III conferences, the UMAC is first in successful two-point conversions (17), second in touchdowns (179), third in total points (1,253), and last in field goals (6).

The two players in the UMAC with the most rushing TDs are both quarterbacks, Brendan Chambers (9) and Luke Rothe (7).

Kicking the Habit

This week, the Greenville Panthers defeated Crown College by a score of 21-20. The one point difference is due to a missed extra point by Crown towards the end of the fourth quarter. The Panthers also won earlier this season over the Eureka Red Devils 28-27 – also due in part to a missed extra point. And if you remember, after the regular season ended last year, the Panthers faced Northwestern in the NCCAA Victory Bowl and defeated them in overtime 28-27, thanks to, you guessed it, a missed extra point. That makes three of the last six games for the Panthers where they have avoided extra time (and a potential loss) by an opponent missing an extra point. I don’t know if this is dumb luck or if the Panthers have a secret tactic like shining laser pointers in the opposing kickers’ eyes. Whatever it is has clearly been in the Panthers favor and goes to show that every point matters in this game.

Silly Social Media

Last week in my weekly picks, I predicted St. Scholastica would beat MacMurray by a score of 38-6. The next day, before the game had started, we received a tweet from an individual informing me the Saints could not score that many points due to the weather and he stated it would be “CSS 20 Mac 6”. I decided I would let the game run its course before I replied. A few hours later the game ends with a score of… 41-6, the Saints actually scored a few more points than I had predicted. Excited and ready to go rub this in his twitter face, I log in to create my reply, only to see…. he had deleted the tweet! But lucky for all of us, we get emails about every twitter reply we get sent! I then decided I would wait until now so everyone can witness this:

I assume that may also be the last time you say that too. And while I appreciate you joining us in predicting the score each week, Dr. Miron, please don’t go quitting your day job for it. You should leave that to us, the professionals.