A Quarter Million Thanks

I've always enjoyed writing as a way to relax, and after bugging friends and fellow alums with my Hobart Football related emails and "analysis" in the early 2000s, taking it to a blog seemed like a logical next step (my classmate Michael Mills '96 made the suggestion, if memory serves).

To be fair I had some (a lot? of) practice blogging / opining on the Statesmen on the D3football.com "Post Patterns" fan boards but it wasn't until August of 2009 I finally decided to try out this "blogging" thing thru the medium you're reading now.

Here we are, less than 10 years later and this little site has eclipsed 250,000 views!

While I don't know if that's a lot or a big deal in the scheme of websites, it feels like a milestone enough to step back and reflect a little.

I am so grateful to all the Hobart coaches, players, families and others that this extra-curricular activity has put me in contact with over the past (almost) decade. Based on my math, this site has previewed and covered:

- 629 posts
- 104 games
- 80 wins
- 48 National Football Foundation (NFF) recipients
- 10 winning seasons
- 9 Recruiting and graduating classes
- 8 Straight Centennial Cup wins (we've beaten SLU 8 straight too ;) 
- 7 Conference player of the year recipients 
- 6 League Championships
- 5 NCAA tournament berths & wins 
- 4 First team All-American players
- 3 Undefeated regular seasons
- 2 Elite 8 / National Quarterfinals appearances
- 1 Brand new dome practice facility 

Over this same time period I've also covered coaching and conference makeup changes, provided opinions, promoted ITH appearances of multiple HFB players and coaches, told a few jokes, enjoyed post-season celebrations, ranked all-time great games, even saw one of our own get drafted into the NFL. About eight years ago I came up with the 2000's All-Decade team and will likely have to do so again after the 2020 season. In April of 2011 you can find several commits to the Class of 2015 that went on to have historic Statesmen careers. This was a definite bright spot in what was an up and down, eight game regular season, but one that produced some of Hobart's most impressive all-time wins like the 56-20 crushing of SJFC.

Some other random trivia:

2016 was the most popular year for this blog as most of the Top 10 most viewed posts, including the current and reigning #1, came from that year. The peak was in November/December when the site had over 9,100 visits.

The long standing most viewed post a few of these jumped was on Andrew Klindera 13's pro football career in Germany That reminds me I'm overdue for another "email interview" post sometime in the near future.

The high point from last season was over 4,400 views in the month of October. Google is how this site is usually found, with Facebook and D3boards.com the other two providing the most "referrals."

Otherwise, while I don't plan on stopping anytime soon, I may look into other more modern blog websites or other / better ways to keep delivering this type of content (like did you know In the D3FB Huddle has it's own YouTube channel now? The 2017 and 2018 episodes are still downloading over to it, but it should be done in the next couple of weeks. Pre-2017 audio episodes and interviews can be found on Podbean).

Thank you, the readers, for your continued support.

We're onto 500K. Go 'Bart!

Best regards,

JB H96

Prospect Day A Big Success For Statesmen

Last Sunday nearly a full squad of future Statesmen descended upon Geneva to participate in the 2019 HFB Prospect Day events. The coaching staff and the campus have been getting kudos this week from a number of different student athletes such as Peter Graham from Darien, CT; Adam Mendes from Tabor Academy (MA); and other prospects from New England to PA, NY and elsewhere (even FL!).

Given these players could join the team in the fall of 2020, the coaching staff has deftly marketed to these students the concept of being part of "H20", which is very clever in my opinion. I really am enjoying the tie into Seneca Lake with the new coaching regime.

For you alums, friends and family - here's a good shot of HC Kevin DeWall '00 talking to the group in the brand new dome facility (I heard there was wet weather - no matter anymore thanks to the generous donations from you all):

Courtesy of Thomas McCoy, Jr. P' 22 @ThomasM74748924

Speaking of alumni, friends and family - please reach out to Asst Coach Art Garvey '13 (who was recently married - congratulations!) if you'd like to participate in the upcoming golf tournament / team fundraiser. You'll see an ad for this blog out there if you do.

That's all the news I have for now. Thanks as always for reading and go 'Bart!

More All-American Honors for Hobart's Kyle Hackett

Last week I mentioned Hobart got some preseason Top 25 recognition from Lindy's CFB Magazine. Well part of the reason apparently is the sure foot of JR PK Kyle Hackett, who's mentioned in the article as going 19-19 on FGs and 80-82 on PATs in the first two years of his incredible career.

Those stats apparently have earned Hackett a spot on the Lindy's Preseason Division III All-American second team. This is now the third time Hackett has been recognized in the All-American category, having earned two honors at the end of the 2018 season.



Congratulations to Kyle on this achievement (and more to come)!

Thanks for reading and go 'Bart!

Lindy's Preseason Top 25 Poll Hyping Hobart (?!?)

This is the time of year when CFB publications offer (way too early) preseason polls to generate magazine and/or subscription sales at the supermarket and online. At least one of these magazines, Street & Smith, managed to get D3football.com's Keith McMillan to do their preseason preview and poll.

He actually reached out to me to get my two cents on East Region teams, but he ended up leaving at least one team I would have had on my list - Brockport - out his preseason rankings. That could be because the Golden Eagles graduated a lot of the talented defensive players that helped them go 24-2 over the past couple of seasons. There was also the well publicized departure of SR QB Joe Germiniero (which we covered in our off-season "In The D3FB Huddle" show back in April) which could have affected his decision too. In the end, "K-Mac" opted to go with Wesley at 11, Ithaca at 15, Alfred at 17, RPI at 19, DelVal at 20 and Trinity College (of the NESCAC) at 23 in his Top 25.

Lindy's CFB Magazine followed his lead for the top five teams in their preseason Top 25 poll, listing defending National Champions UMHB at 1, Mount Union at 2, St. John's at 3, UW-Whitewater at 4 and Johns Hopkins at 5. After that, there wasn't much similarity between the two.

Interestingly enough, Lindy's put Hobart in at 16 which I found pretty surprising, especially after the Statesmen came off their worst regular season record since 2010 (and most of these preseason polls are based on how things finished up the year prior). While there's a lot to be optimistic about in Geneva, I believe this preseason recognition isn't warranted at this time. By point of comparison, back in 2008 Hobart finished 10-2, losing to Mount Union in the second round of the playoffs and came into the 2009 season as the 15th ranked team in D3. I know HC Kevin DeWall '00 doesn't put much stock in these polls, but I suppose some people could look at this as a positive.

The Statesmen do return a large number of offensive players that led the Liberty League in most key statistical categories. The WR corps is SR-laden with a lot of game experience. The OL is young, but has a year of work under it's belt. The RB group is solid and two QBs who know the offense are coming back also.

The defense improved by leaps and bounds over the second half of the 2018 season and returns a number of players across the board and have some talented players coming off of injuries to go with an impressive recruiting class.

I don't want to downplay these polls too much, but I am more inclined to see where the D3football.com Top 25 preseason poll (which I expect to come out in July) has teams ranked. I think this will be a better guess as to which teams will be expected as front-runners, at least early on, in the 2019 season.

For now I'm fine with Hobart being viewed as "behind" Ithaca and RPI in the the rankings. The Statesmen played both very tough and lost closely contested games to them last season. That said, if Hobart can start off in impressive fashion, the national pollsters will have a legitimate reason to recognize them then.

First things first however. It's 92 days until the 2019 home and season opener vs. Brockport, which is the only game that matters at the moment.

Thanks for reading and go 'Bart!

100 Days 'Til Kickoff / Hansen (Not So) High on Hobart?

Today officially marks that we are 100 days away from when the Hobart College Statesmen kickoff their 126th season of college football. As we know, Team 126 has some high expectations in what's become one of the most competitive conferences in the East Region.

While the Statesmen faithful are very bullish on this season's prospects, some prognosticators are a little skeptical of Hobart's chances. One of these is a former D3FB player (Wabash College), HSFB coach and structural engineer Logan Hansen.

Hansen, who's based in Iowa and occasionally collaborates with D3football.com, has developed an interesting ranking and predictive model over the last couple of years using historical data and regression analysis to predict future results.

In the current model, Hobart is ranked 48th out of 237 teams, given the NESCAC and a couple of other teams are not included because of their inability / lack of participation in OOC games and the NCAA playoffs. According to the stats, the Statesmen are predicted to finish the 2019 season with a 6-4, 4-2 record (technically a 6.4-3.6 record, which basically allows the possibility of the Statesmen winning a close one and ending up 7-3 with a certain level of probability), with at least two of those losses coming in LL play. While being considered in the Top 20% of all D3FB teams and a winning season is certainly not a bad thing, I think most Hobart fans would view a 6-4 finish, even with one of the toughest schedules in the East Region, as disappointing.

Looking more closely, you can infer that these are the predicted results for Hobart:

Statesmen Opponent (Hansen Ranking):
vs. Brockport (17) L
vs. SUNY-M (94) W
vs. Rowan (124) W
vs. Montclair St. (70) model leans towards a W for Hobart
vs. Union (52) leans towards a L for Hobart (more on this below)
vs. RPI (37) L
vs. IC (39) L
vs. SLU (109) W
vs. Buff St (148) W
vs. UofR (199) W

What's interesting about the above is that the model values Union higher than Montclair State, the latter of which will be returning 18 starters from last year's 8-2 campaign in the NJAC (one of those losses being a 24-17 decision to Frostburg State which has left the conference and is now a D2 program) - which in my opinion, is the strongest East Region conference overall.

To be fair, the model will be updated with this type of returning player data, including the fact Hobart will be returning a lot of starters as well, later this summer. I'd recommend checking back in August to see how these ratings and predictions change based on this information (which will be included in the annual D3football.com "Kickoff 2019" online magazine).

Given the prediction for Union to end up 4-2 in the LL, you can also infer that the model sees a number of ways LL teams will "beat each other up" (neither Ithaca nor RPI are predicted to be undefeated in the LL either) and/or the Hobart-Union game being the one that will decide whether Hobart or Union ends up 7-3 or 6-4, basically. The model also has Montclair getting the majority (2.5) of it's predicted 3.5 losses from NJAC play, insinuating that the Red Hawks could win all of their three OCC games (or potentially lose to Hobart).

While there are certain flaws to the model, it does provide some interesting musings and conversation points in the slow off-season, summer days.

Let the countdown to kickoff officially begin! I'll have some other updates throughout the summer months as we get closer to preseason camp (and creep towards and eventually pass having 250K views of this blog site - thank you!).

Thanks again for reading and go 'Bart!

2019 Recruiting Recap

Welcome to May!

Only 130 days until the Week 1 regular season home opener against Brockport.🕔

The Class of 2023 announcements by HC Kevin DeWall '00 wrapped up last week giving us some time to get to know the newest Statesmen on the team. While it's possible one or two players may "melt" (an admissions term for someone who changes their minds last minute, even after putting down a deposit) out or in (getting in off the wait list for example), we can expect most, if not all, of these student athletes heading to Hobart in the fall.

Given it's a relatively smaller recruiting class than we've seen in recent years, I thought it might be interesting to break it down and "analyze it". I'll couch this by saying this really isn't analysis, but my opinion based on watching a little film, knowledge of certain HS programs and reviewing basic statistics. Ultimately it's up to the coaches to find out who can play and mold these kids to their best potential. Injuries can also come into play - see FY LB CJ Calero who looked like an absolute stud coming out of HS but unfortunately had a non-contact ACL tear in the preseason that preempted what might have been an outstanding rookie campaign. Hopefully we'll have a chance to see him and what he can contribute in 2019, along with some of these other players below.

At a high level, this is pretty diverse class from a geographic perspective:

NY - 10
CT, MA & NJ - 12 (4 each)
FL & VA - 4 (2 each)
GA, NH & TX - 3 (1 each)

Here's a breakdown by position (another caveat - these could change during camp as it's not unusual to see a DB become a WR or vice versa, for example, so keep that in mind as far as position designation goes), starting with the defense (13):

Defensive Line (DL) - 5
Gunn, Norris, O'Grady, Powers, and Williams

Last season the DL was not a strength of the team until later in the season. Hobart's rushing D finished fourth in the conference allowing over 130 YPG and allowed the third most rushing TDs with 13 (which is actually not bad, but also not as good as Ithaca and Union who only allowed five). They also had the second worst sack total in the LL, tallying 18 over nine games (basically two per game), so hopefully that will improve in 2019.

Norris and Powers appear to be the strongest in this group, but time will tell. A lot can happen during preseason camp and how players look "on paper" and in HS highlight film doesn't always transfer to the college game.

Linebacker (LB) - 3
Duckett, Hanley, and Visconti

LB is a key position group given Hobart's traditional 4x4 scheme (although they did go away from that last season and it's looking like we can expect to see more of a base 3x4 / package philosophy going forward). All three of these players come from strong HS programs, Hanley in particular. While he's more of an OLB, I could see Duckett and Visconti getting looks at ILB.

Secondary (FS/SS/CB) - 5
Barnosky, Diallo, Hansen, Harps-Zhu, and Inwood

Like the DL, the DBs struggled early in the season and Hobart ended the 2018 campaign with a second to worst 247.6 YPG allowed and a LL high 21 passing TDs completed against them. Although there are some bright spots in JR CB Jared Leake, JR FS Cal Sullivan, and SO FS Jay McCoy, the Hobart secondary needs to play better against what's become a very pass heavy LL.

From this group I like the looks of Diallo and "JHZ" as cover corners, while Hansen is a pro-typical strong safety. Inwood played CB and S so I'm sure he'll be given looks in both spots. Barnosky is more of "center fielder" / traditional FS based on what I saw. Another thing I like about this group of recruits is that most are over 6'-6'1" tall. No more "itty bitty committee" like Coach Cragg used to joke around about a decade or so ago.

Now let's take a look at the offense (15):

The Hobart offense finished first in most LL statistical categories and return a good bulk (literally and figuratively) of starters from last season. That said, these recruits are about building depth across every position which I know is a priority of Coach DeWall's.

Offensive Line (OL) - 6
Cecere, Cremers, Fowler, Frank, Trowbridge, and Wright  

The OL is the number one priority and it looks like the Statesmen added some nice players to build out depth in this critical unit. Cremers was once a UMass commit so in theory he could be the best of the lot, and while some of this group is undersized (for now), players like Wright (6'3" 270) aren't far off from what the Statesmen like to see on the OL. With a young group of starters in spring camp, this recruiting class should help in building out more depth in the OL which is a key element of a DeWall coached team.

Tight End (TE) - 1
Pierce

Most FY players don't see a lot of action, but Pierce could be an exception given his size (6'2" 245 lbs) and good hands. The Statesmen could benefit from a strong, blocking TE for certain formations, and Pierce fits the bill, at least on paper.

Running Back (RB) - 2
Denham and Walsh

Not a big need, but both of these runners have good size and speed. With only five to six RBs on the roster (sounds like the FB role is going away so players like JR FB Shane White will play RB going forward) these players add depth to this position.

Wide Receiver (WR) - 3
Bartosic, Schicke and Surra

The Statesmen are loaded at WR for 2019, but will graduate off a lot of talent after this season. Bartosic is a smaller guy (5'11" 170), but is very athletic. Schicke and Surra are both big targets (6'5" and 6'3") which can create match up problems for opposing defenses.

Quarterback (QB) - 3
Roberts, Robles and Pelletier

Each one of these QBs are fairly pro-typical in that they are tall (Roberts is 6'1" while Robles and Pelletier are both listed at 6'4") with strong arms. Which player comes out of this group as a potential future starter will depend on a number of factors. Hobart only has two QBs on the roster, so this is a plan for the future also.

Special Teams (ST) - 1 
Amaral

I have to say I was a little surprised by this add given JR PK Kyle Hackett is set to rewrite the Hobart record book and has two more years of eligibility. He also has an understudy in SO PK Rob DiGregorio. Still, competition and depth is always a good thing, and this could be a move to alleviate the punting duties taken on by SR WR John DelliSanti after the Brockport game last season. To his credit however, Hobart ended up leading the LL in net punts, so maybe that won't change in 2019 and this is more of a longer term play for the kicking game.

That gets you to 29 and brings the overall roster count to 97, which is pretty typical for a D3FB squad.

That wraps up all the news on the Class of 2023. I will try and get to a recap of the Block H awards dinner, which occurred on Monday night, April 29th, later this week.

Thanks for stopping by the blog and go 'Bart!

Coach DeWall Announces Class of 2023 - Part Five

The final group (last but certainly not least) of commitments to the Hobart College Class of 2023 were announced this week by HC Kevin DeWall '00.

All in all, the Statesmen should have 29 FY players slated to for preseason camp. It's a smaller class than in past years, but the quality is high and with a large number of rising SO and JRs on the team there will be plenty of competition across the board.

Let's meet the "Final Four" student athletes that'll make up the Class of 2023:

Another "Strong Islander", GCHS DL Connor Gunn will be heading Upstate in the fall. At 6'3" 220 lbs Gunn will likely be looked at as a DE. His highlight reel shows his athleticism as an OL/DL. On defense he lined up both on the interior and the edge, and shows his potential as a pass rusher.

Making a much shorter drive to Geneva is PMHS WR Braydon Surra. His highlight reel shows he can line up wide or in the slot, runs good routes and uses his height (6'3" 175 lbs) to his advantage.

From the "Peach State" is a rare recruit in SFHS DB Josh Harps-Zhu (Alpharetta, GA which is just north of Atlanta). A rangy (6'2" 155 lbs) cover corner, JHZ's highlight reel can handle press coverage or lower the boom as a tackler. I'm trying to think, but don't recall Hobart ever enrolling a player from GA, so this could be a first.

Last but definitely not least is another recruit from my neck of the woods - Orlando! WHS QB Sean Robles is a tall (6'4" 200 lbs) and strong armed thrower. I noted in his highlight reel his completing passes against our local HS team (Winter Park). He'll join Cade Cecere as the second Orlando area player on this year's Statesmen squad.

That's it for recruiting updates. I'll post news as it comes up over the summer.

Thanks for reading and go 'Bart!