Photo by Luke Zayas/True To The Cru/Backwards Hat Media
BELTON — There is a game set for Saturday in Brownwood. A rematch between UMHB and Howard Payne after the first meeting three weeks ago saw the two in a four-point battle through three quarters before The Cru pulled away late.
And yet most of the conversations from the outside regarding UMHB this week aren’t so much asking the question of, ‘Will The Cru win?’ as they are, ‘Will this be The Cru’s last chance to win?’
Make no mistake, Howard Payne—on its senior day at home, no less—will put everything left in the tank into a four-quarter effort. But the uncertainty of whether this will be UMHB’s last game of 2025 seems to weigh heavier. How could it not? This is a team that just snapped Hardin-Simmons’ bid for a second-straight undefeated season with its 21-17 win over the fifth-ranked Cowboys last Saturday in Belton. The Crusaders proved that, with the defense fully healthy and the offense in rhythm, they are indeed the playoff-caliber team many expected to see when UMHB opened the fall ranked No. 8 in the d3football.com Preseason Top 25. Like every other team currently sitting on the playoff bubble, they want a chance to see how far this season might go.
But it’s entirely out of their hands. It’s why head coach Larry Harmon addressed it with the team’s unity council on Sunday, less than 24 hours after knocking off HSU to move into a tie for first place in the American Southwest Conference.
“I met with the unity council yesterday,” Harmon said at his weekly press conference. “Their job is to not get caught up in all this distraction and white noise. We’ve got a great opponent in Howard Payne. Coach Gipson has done a great job in his short time being there. If they want a chance to be conference co-champions, they’ve got to go to Howard Payne on their senior day and beat a really good football team at Gordon Wood Stadium. That’s where their focus needs to be.”
A win would end UMHB’s regular season at 7-3 overall, and 5-2 against Division III competition, the latter being identical to the record The Cru took into last year’s playoffs, getting in as the second-to-last at-large team. Of course, UMHB made good on that bid with a run to the national quarterfinals, knocking off Trinity (TX), No. 2 overall seed Hardin-Simmons, and No. 18 Linfield in road games along the way.
That team peaked late in the season, and a year later, Harmon feels the same about the group he is currently leading. It’s why he made such a strong statement at Monday’s presser, expressing his desire to see the 2025 Crusaders get the same chance the 2024 team did.
“I truly believe we are a Top 10 team in the country and deserve a chance to be in the playoffs,” Harmon said. “Last year, we got in and played a 9-1, a 10-0, a 9-1, and a 10-0, and were on the last possession of the Elite Eight with a chance to score and win that game as well.
“We’ve proven that we’re a program that keeps developing and getting better each week. I think our kids showed it Saturday. They’re getting better every single week. We’re designed and geared up to be a team that’s playing our best at the end of the year. I sure hope these kids get a chance to do that, because our players are working hard and doing a nice job of getting better every day.”
Division III is unlike the Division I FBS College Football Playoff system, in which a committee selects the at-large teams for the tournament, and can use factors such as recent performance trajectory to make those selections. Instead, for the second year, D3 is utilizing the NCAA Power Index (NPI) to both seed the tournament and select the 13 at-large teams, having moved away from the human committee aspect of the selection process prior to last fall. The national committee in D3 now handles only the bracketing aspect of the playoffs, and while it also makes sure that NPI is running properly with the right inputs (correct home/away designation of games, correct scores), the committee members have nothing to do with where teams end up ranked.
Additionally, there is no benefit given to recent performance, meaning a Week 1 result is valued the same as one in Week 10. UMHB is a different team at this point in early November than it was in late September, but that is not something that NPI, a computer-based formula system, takes into account.
(For a better understanding of the NPI calculation, check out the NCAA’s NPI report here. For a more visual explanation, check out this video.)
The Crusaders currently sit at No. 43 overall in the NPI, and No. 20 amongst teams in the running for at-large bids, meaning several results of other games nationally must fall their way for UMHB to gain the necessary ground for an at-large bid. The Cru’s only path to winning the ASC’s automatic bid would be an ETBU upset of Hardin-Simmons and a UMHB win over Howard Payne on Saturday.
“At the end of the day, you would think a team that has a chance to be the co-champion of the American Southwest Conference, which has won national championships in Division III, would have a chance to get two teams in,” Harmon said. “It can still happen, but the way the media is right now, they’re saying the probability of that right now is really small. We’re gelling at the right time, I’m proud of how our kids played Saturday, and I definitely believe we’re tracking to be a Top 10 team in the country.”
UMHB’s two losses are to a pair of Top 20 teams in the NPI: No. 10 Hardin-Simmons and No. 18 UW-Whitewater. The Cru are also one of only four teams in the country with a win over a current Top 10 team in NPI, joined by UW-Oshkosh, Carnegie Mellon, and Johns Hopkins. But UMHB is also the only team in the Top 100 of the NPI that has played fewer than eight D3 opponents to this point.
From a general sense, NPI rewards teams with more wins on their resume, as the system allows for teams to begin dropping its lowest-ranked wins (wins over the worst-ranked teams on their schedule) once that win total reaches six. In other words, the more wins a team has, the more opportunities it has to drop its wins over bad teams and keep only the five best on its resume, thus increasing its NPI number and national rank within the system.
UMHB never got that opportunity this season. With only seven D3 games on the 2025 slate—six in the ASC, one against UW-Whitewater in non-conference—every win will have to count. And yes, that includes if UMHB wins in Brownwood on Saturday, as it would only be The Cru’s fifth D3 win of the season. NPI does not take non-D3 results into account, so UMHB’s two wins over nationally-ranked NAIA programs Bethel and Texas Wesleyan, are not included in the formula.
While The Cru found its way into the playoffs last season at 5-2, the odds are slim of that scenario unfolding again. Next to actually playing the games on the field, scheduling has the second-biggest role in a team’s playoff viability. And the struggles UMHB has had in picking up D3 non-conference games, while also currently playing in the smallest conference in the country, has plenty to do with the situation The Cru finds itself in heading into the last weekend of the season.
“The scheduling issue is a horrible thing for us,” Harmon said, speaking candidly when asked about the difficulties in getting D3 games. “I kind of feel like it’s the same thing that happened to St. Thomas (MN). You feel like people are forcing you out of Division III because of your success.
“Just our particular team right now, we had to play three scholarship schools—2 NAIAs, 1 Division II. A bunch of people got hurt early. We lost four starters in the D2 game which definitely affected us against Hardin-Simmons in the first round [of the double round-robin ASC schedule]. You could tell the difference on Saturday compared to the first time we played them, and that was because we finally had our people back. I don’t think there’s anyone in the country who’d rather not play a 9-1 team and take a 7-3 Mary Hardin-Baylor instead. I think they’d pick the 9-1 team every time.
“One of the things that they talked about—and when I say “they”, I mean the NCAA—when they started bringing this NPI system to us, they felt like it would promote cross-country type games, and get big games going in Division III. It’s done absolutely the opposite.
“There’s no reward for playing anybody good in Division III. If you feel like you’re going to play a Division III school and you don’t feel like you have a chance to win, it’s better to play an NAIA or a noncountable game than to take on that game, because it’s just going to hurt you.”
UMHB currently has the fifth-toughest schedule in the country per NCAA Stats, behind Centre, UW-River Falls, UW-Platteville, and UW-Whitewater. The quality win bonus that comes from beating a team with an NPI above 54.00 (HSU is at 68.884) helps tremendously, but on its own isn’t enough to overcome two losses and line up UMHB for one of the 13 at-large bids.
“It’s a frustrating thing that we’re going through,” Harmon added.
All they can do is keep their attention on Howard Payne and wait to see how the rest of Saturday’s results shake out. While UMHB heads west aiming at its first share of the ASC title since 2022, HPU is in the midst of a resurgence under first-year head coach Coby Gipson. One season removed from going winless in conference action and just 2-8 overall, the Yellow Jackets have doubled that win total and will finish third in the ASC standings. HPU won at ETBU in overtime last week, 34-27, and now returns home—where they are 2-3—to close their 2025 campaign.
HPU’s offense is averaging 25.0 points per game in ASC play, and has found a spark in the passing game with freshman quarterback Bryce Still (5 GP, 850 pass yds, 6 TD, 4 INT). But the Yellow Jackets will have to overcome a UMHB defense that ranks No. 1 in the ASC (conference-only stats) in red zone defense, fumbles recovered, sacks, and is tied for the lead in interceptions.
“I’m going to chalk it up to Coach [Mark] Carey and the defensive staff,” Harmon said, when asked about the secondary coming up with interceptions in each of UMHB’s last four games, playing a role in The Cru’s four-game win streak. “Coach [Jordan] Wilson is one of the best young secondary coaches in the country.
“I think they’re doing a great job of paying attention to the small details and getting those kinds of things taught to our kids. With pre-snap reads, we’re not shocked by what’s happening out there and we’re able to react faster than if you’re seeing it for the first time. I think it all has to do with the prep work, and the progression of teaching that’s going on right now.
“And then I think our kids have made the decision that they want to go do this and they believe they can do it. There was a commitment made four weeks ago to go make a run like this and be a team of destiny, and I just believe it’s starting to come around.”
UMHB kicks off in Brownwood at 1 p.m. CT on Nov. 15. The regular season finale will be broadcast on hpusports.com, and can be heard locally on KMIL 105.1 FM.
