Pre Season Predictions - Not So Accurate

In my preseason post regarding the finishing order of the USA South, I can look back now and realize that as far as finishing order goes, I was pretty far off. You may remember that I predicted the following:

8th place-Greensboro (Record 1-9, 0-7)
7th place- Methodist (Record 2-8, 1-6)
6th place- Maryville (Record 2-8, 2-5)
5th place- Averett (Record 5-5, 3-4)
4th place- Shenandoah (5-5, 4-3)
Tied for 1st- Ferrum, CNU, and NCW (all with a 6-1 conference record) Overall I predicted CNU, and NCW to finish 7-3, and I thought Ferrum would finish 9-1.

After seeing the season schedule on the USA South website, I went through and predicted each game, well before the season started. The weekly predictions that I post,  are directly reflective of those preseason picks. So where did I go wrong?

Starting with Ferrum, I had no way of knowing that there would be many players that coaches and fans expected to return, but in the end would not. Among those were Marcus Mayo QB, Zach Brown, DB, William Kenny, DB, T.J. Price, QB, Quinn Tibbs, WR and Clint Slappey K. So in essence, Ferrum fielded a younger, less experienced team than I anticipated.

Greensboro- The biggest surprise of the season. This team has gelled into a strong team, and I did not see it coming. I knew their coaching staff was new, but I really did not see them being competitive this season. I could not have been more wrong. They have done a complete 180, and I look for their coach to be the Coach of the Year in the USA South.

Shenandoah is a team that never got their program on the right track. I am really not sure why. Other than the NCW game where they lost by 18, their largest defeat was 6 points. This team I feel was close to competing, and while I picked them to finish 4th, in the end they were short of that mark.

Averett is a strong team, but I felt that roster vacancies may be too much to overcome. I looked for them to finish at 5-5, but did say that with some upsets they might just contend...Looking back, I would say they did that well.

Christopher Newport- An unusual amount of injuries to this team has kept it from contending for the conference crown. This is a strong team, but have had to rely on their bench far more than they would have liked. They will be back.

So as the season has now ended, and with my overall predictions being not so hot, I will paste in a quote I made in the opening paragraph leading to those original predictions...

"I have said that there will be a great deal of parity in the league, and I expect this to be a year that almost anything can happen. With that in mind, I post my predictions knowing that on any given Saturday any team can beat any other team."

Well maybe I got that part right....Can't wait till next year!

Final Predictions-
Week 11:  3-1
Overall:  31-21