Wow. Just plain wow.
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“He’s going to go into the end zone! He’s going into the end zone! Will it count? The Bears have scored, but the bands are out on the field!”
That’s the Cal/Stanford game from 1982. Now, let us compare to Saturday afternoon in Jackson:
“(Riley) Curry’s going to go to the end zone! He’s going to score! He scores! The game is over! Curry scores! Curry scores on the lateral! Curry scores! The Tigers win! The Tigers win! The Tigers lateral it, and keep lateraling it, and they score from the 39 yard line!”
14 laterals and 61 yards. If, by some remote chance, you’ve been doing some necessary upkeep in your underground bunker for the past few days and you haven’t seen the clip, you can see it here.
That play is keeping Trinity coach Steve Mohr a very busy man. He’s been overwhelmed with the media coverage and interview requests.
“I can’t even keep track. I started at 6:30 Monday morning and finished at 7:30 Monday night,” he said. “Some of the more important ones, obviously, were Dan Patrick, Rece Davis, and Tim Brando. I think CNN picked it up. We closed on the ABC and NBC news. I lost count. I really did.”
It has certainly been a busy couple of days in the Trinity athletic department. But there were 59 minutes, 58 seconds in this football game that nobody is talking about. The previous Millsaps series, they had third-and-2 at the Trinity 35-yard line. They had two downs to win it, and they couldn’t do it. I’m not sure the fourth-and-2 was ever intended to earn the first down, but maybe it should have, in hindsight.
Both teams turned it over four times. Trinity quarterback Blake Barmore threw two interceptions, while Millsaps quarterback Juan Joseph threw three. The Black Flag held the Millsaps offense to 316 yards, which is 130 yards under their season average.
“We played our best game on defense,” said Mohr. “We stopped them 4 times inside the red zone. With that offense, that’s saying a great deal. We held Joseph to 227 yards passing, which is way below his average.”
It felt like the two halves of this game were night and day. In the first half, Trinity went right down the field and scored on a Chris Baer 25 yard touchdown run. Millsaps found the end zone and TU tacked on a field goal to take a 10-7 lead into the half. But, Millsaps scored a touchdown on the first play from scrimmage in the second half and took control of the game.
“We come out for the second half and on the first play they score a touchdown. Any momentum we had at halftime was gone,” Mohr said. “Our defense kept giving us chances and our offense kept putting them in holes with turnovers. I was proud with how our kids played. I told them on Sunday that even if we hadn’t won the game, they wouldn’t hear anything from me about being unhappy with how they played.”
Trinity played from behind the entire second half until the final play of the game. Millsaps let this ballgame get away in more ways than just the final play. They were holding Trinity to field goals. They were forcing Trinity turnovers. But, Millsaps had four empty trips into the red zone. You certainly must give a call to The Black Flag for that.
Do keep in mind that Millsaps isn’t out of it quite yet. They are still tied with Trinity with one conference loss. The Texas Tigers still host Centre this weekend and then travel to Sherman to face Austin. I think the road trip will be a little more difficult than the home game with the Colonels. No SCAC team has won in San Antonio in this decade. Mohr says he’s trying to keep his players focused on the task ahead.
“I told the players to try to deal with it as best they can. Don’t let it be that much of a distraction,” he said. “If we go out and stumble against Centre, you’re going to feel as bad as you felt good after that play. Our focus is to win the final home game for the seniors. More importantly, it put us in position to control our own destiny, which is what we wanted all along”
I don’t think this went according to plan
UW-Whitewater put UMHB away fairly early on Saturday afternoon. By the end of the first quarter, the Crusaders were down 21-0. UMHB punted on their first drive, quarterback Josh Welch was intercepted on the second and third Crusader drives, with returns going inside the 10 and all the way into the end zone, respectively. The story in the second quarter wasn’t much better. A fumble in the red zone, a punt, and they had the football when the half expired. All the first 30 minutes brought the Crusaders were three turnovers, zero points, and a four score deficit. They did play better in the second half, but by that point, the game was well in hand.
Welch attempted 11 passes in the first half. That’s almost his average per game for the season. UMHB couldn’t run it nearly as well as they had any point this season. They rushed for less than 100 rushing yards at halftime, which is simply unheard of for them. While a majority of Welch’s passing attempts (18) came after the half when UMHB was well behind, I felt they went away from what they do well a little too early. The two interceptions in the first quarter in UMHB territory gave Whitewater 14 points and essentially took Mary Hardin-Baylor out of the game early. It’s very difficult to make up three scores against a great football team when you have to run it to be successful.
The Crusaders actually outgained UWW by a 275-247 count. However, they turned it over five times while Whitewater did not turn it over at all. The Purple Crush did the best it could. Only two Warhawk touchdowns came off of drives of more than 60 yards. That gives you some idea of how much that unit had their backs against the wall on Saturday. Those are very tough circumstances for your defense against any team, let alone the third best team in the country.
So, what did we learn? First, UMHB isn’t invincible. They still have to play good football to win against good football teams. Second, they may be one dimensional to an extent. Welch struggled mightily on Saturday. That could potentially be a problem. Is that really that surprising, though? I’m not sure I would be going out on much of a limb if I were to say that UMHB has to run the football to win. Thirdly, the WIAC is probably a pretty good football conference. UWW has not had near as many blowouts as UMHB. In fact, they’ve played quite a few close games, beating La Crosse by 7 and Oshkosh by 12. That tells me how good everybody in that conference is. Add in what La Crosse did to Hardin-Simmons, the UMHB result seems to fit in with that concept.
In conclusion, assuming everything holds to form, it’s looking pretty favorable for a UMHB/Trinity match-up in the first round of the playoffs in a few weeks.
Games worthy of that extra Live Stat/Video/Audio Feed
There are only a couple of games this week that have playoff implications. Do not fret, for there are still some ball games that I expect to be very good matchups.
1:00 CT: DePauw at Rhodes. The enigma that is Rhodes continues. Big win over Trinity a couple of weeks ago, and then they get knocked all over Danville last week, losing 27-0. Also, DePauw better not be peeking ahead at that opponent on the schedule for next week. Some kind of rivalry game or something.
1:30 CT: Centre at Trinity. TU has to win them both to go dancing.
2:00 CT: Millsaps at Colorado College. The Majors need to win to keep their hopes alive. How well will they play at altitude? If Trinity were to stumble again, Millsaps would be right back in the driver’s seat in the SCAC.
2:00 CT: East Texas Baptist at Mary Hardin-Baylor. Technically, this game is between the first and second place teams in the ASC. It may not play like one, though. I’d say there’s a fairly large chance that UMHB will be pretty angry.
Best of the week
There were lots of big numbers on the scoreboard this week. We’ve got plenty of impressive statistics from QB-WR tandems.
DePauw’s Spud Dick was the first DePauw quarterback in a decade to throw five touchdown passes. He snapped that off on a very efficient 14-for-17 passing for 322 yards in the 35-6 win against Austin. That’s QB rating of almost 340, if you are scoring at home. In that same game, DePauw receiver Chris Gasbarra caught three of those TD passes. He added one more reception for a total of 92 yards on the day.
Out west, Colorado College quarterback Jon McDonald went 36-for-50 through the air for 398 yards and 4 TD’s. His favorite target was Nolan Swett, who tallied 184 receiving yards and two scores on 13 catches.
Since we’re aboard the quarterback train, Hardin-Simmons Justin Feaster may have had the best day of anybody, tallying 500 yards on 21-for-34 passing with five touchdowns and an interception. Mychal Carillo caught 12 for 168 and three scores.
Misssissippi College receivers had a big day catching balls from Adam Shaffer. Shaffer threw for three touchdowns and 482 yards on 28-for-43 passing. Jake Allen caught 11 balls for 214 yards. Marcus Terry caught eight balls for 149 yards and caught all three Shaffer TD passes.
Defensively, we give a call to Austin linebacker Scooter Means, who had 13 tackles, a sack, a forced fumble, and a fumble recovery in the loss at DePauw.
My ATR Top 5
1. No. 6 Mary Hardin-Baylor (7-1, 6-0) vs. East Texas Baptist
2. No. 14 Trinity (7-1, 4-1) vs. Centre
3. Millsaps (6-2, 5-1) at Colorado College
4. Mississippi College (6-2, 4-2) vs. Howard Payne
5. DePauw (6-2, 4-2) @ Rhodes
This ought to make some people angry. Follow along before you hit “Compose Message,” please.
I think we all agree UMHB is still the best team in either conference. Trinity is the only team in either conference with one loss overall. They seem to be my (and should be everybody else’s) clear cut No. 2. Mississippi and Millsaps both have two losses. I went back and forth with each team at No. 3 about three times. MC did beat Millsaps, but I don’t know if they’d do it again. The head-to-head result tells me to put MC at 3. The last draft of this column had them tied at 3. But, I think Millsaps is the better football team right now. I changed my mind and put them at 3. The pollsters seem to agree with me.
I put DePauw at five (again) because the only two losses they have came to teams ranked in this poll. They and ETBU are the only teams with two losses left, and ETBU has UMHB this weekend. At the same time, DPU is still staring at what will likely be 9-0 Wabash next week. It’s plausible they could both be 3 loss teams before it’s over.
Medium for Submitting Response
Contact me at wes.anderson@d3football.com with feedback of any nature including, but not limited to: queries (I bet you watched that Trinity clip like 11,000 times, didn’t you?), suggestions, recommendations, compliments, criticisms, disagreements, conflicts, quarrels, sticking points, differences of opinion, incongruities, or factual inaccuracies.