Harrisonburg, Va.
After scoring the most points in a playoff game in school history last week, the University of New Hampshire football team gave up the most points in a playoff game in school history on Saturday. The results, of course, were also polar opposites.
James Madison, the fourth-seeded team in the FCS tournament, ran off 31 unanswered points in the first half on its way to a 55-22 second-round win in front of an announced crowd of 13,231 fans at Bridgeforth Stadium. The previous school record for points allowed in a postseason game came in UNH’s 52-14 semifinal loss at North Dakota State in 2013.
“They’re a good football team, and when they got the wheels turning, we didn’t play as well as we should have to stop it,” UNH senior defensive end Cam Shorey said.
With No. 21 UNH (8-5) stacking the box to stop the run, No. 5 JMU (11-1) went to the air. Quarterback Bryan Schor was 30-for-37 for 371 yards and five touchdowns, Brandon Ravenel had eight catches for 155 yards and two touchdowns and Terrence Alls had seven grabs for 126 yards and two touchdowns. JMU finished with 567 yards and 31 first downs, while UNH had 268 yards and 14 first downs.
“They’ve run that type of defense the entire year, and they played the same way they did in Week 7 (when JMU won at UNH, 42-39), so I wasn’t really surprised,” Schor said of UNH’s run-focused defense. “They’re a really good defense, so they’re going to stick to their guns and that’s what they did. We were lucky to go out there and execute against them.”
Schor, the CAA Offensive Player of the Year, injured his collarbone on Nov. 12 against Villanova and missed the Dukes’ regular-season finale. But the junior showed no ill effects on Saturday.
“Pretty special day by Bryan Schor and our offense,” James Madison coach Mike Houston said. “I don’t think he looked like he missed a beat much in his couple of weeks off … probably a lot of guys would not have made it back to play in this game, but he’s not like most. I’m glad he plays for us.”
New Hampshire was also dealing with an injured quarterback in sophomore Trevor Knight, who had to leave the regular-season finale against Maine and didn’t play at all in last week’s 64-21 first-round win over Lehigh. It was Adam Riese who finished the comeback win over Maine and led the historic offensive performance against Lehigh, but it was Knight who got the start on Saturday.
Unlike Schor, Knight did show signs of rust and he finished just 8-for-21 for 69 yards. Knight’s running ability is what separated him from Riese this season, but Knight had just three carries for minus-1 yard before being lifted for Riese late in the third quarter. Riese, a senior captain, was 8-for-14 for 74 yards and ran for an 11-yard touchdown.
Things actually started well for UNH as Shorey tipped Schor’s fifth pass of the game and came down with the interception, giving UNH the ball on the JMU 16.
“I saw the tackle veer down and try to cut me and I saw the back flare, so I knew they were trying to throw the bubble (screen) out there,” Shorey said. “So I just went up field a little bit and got lucky and got in the way of that one.”
Three plays later, Dalton Crossan (15 carries, 92 yards, two touchdowns) ran in from a yard out and the Wildcats had a 7-0 lead with 7:59 to play in the first quarter.
After that, it was all JMU.
The Dukes kicked a field goal on the ensuing possession. Then they got a 25-yard touchdown catch from Alls. Then a trick-play option pass from Rashard Davis to Ravenel to make it 17-7. New Hampshire forced a punt on JMU’s next possession, but Casey DeAndrade fumbled the punt, the Dukes recovered and two plays later, Schor hit Jonathan Kloosterman for an 11-yard score. JMU finished the first half with a 19-yard scoring pass from Schor to Ravenel to take a 31-7 lead into the break.
“What they do offensively is spread you out and put you in one-on-one situations,” UNH coach Sean McDonnell said. “Your guys got to be as good as their guys, and their guys were better than us today.”
The Cats showed a spark to open the second half when they drove 67 yards in just 1:59 and got a 14-yard touchdown run from Crossan and a two-point conversion pass from Knight to Crossan to make it 31-15.
“The way we’re taught is to never give up and never give in, so we wanted to come out with a fast start,” Crossan said.
“We knew we were getting the ball and we punched it in. Unfortunately, the long kickoff return took the wind out of our sails a little bit.”
That would be the 86-yard kickoff return from, who else, Ravenel following Crossan’s touchdown. The Wildcats went three-and-out after that and JMU went on another touchdown drive to make it 45-15 with 8:26 left in the third.
UNH was down by 30 to JMU in the regular-season game and mounted a 27-point, fourth-quarter rally before falling just short, but there would be no rally this time. The Dukes, who lost their opening playoff games in 2014 and 2015, were simply too hungry.
“There was probably a lot of stuff in that game today for those kids,” Houston said.
“After two straight years of playoff exits early, after the fourth quarter in New Hampshire earlier in the year, I think there was a lot of extra edge, incentive, juice whatever you want to call it, that went into the intensity we played with today, because certainly the intensity level was pretty high.”