Mount Union produced the final three scores of a road playoff game for the second Saturday in a row, as the Purple Raiders rallied from a 21-7 first-half deficit to beat Johns Hopkins, 28-21, and advance to the national quarterfinals for the 25th consecutive season.
The Purple Raiders trailed 21-14 at half but didn't allow a point for the final 34:34, and the defense tallied five sacks of Jonathan Germano, all in the second half. Dom Davis threw the game-winning 30-yard touchdown pass -- a perfect strike to the corner of the end zone -- to Jared Ruth with 12:11 left in the fourth quarter.
"Outstanding," said Mount Union coach Vince Kehres when asked to characterize how his defense played in the last 35 minutes of the game. "I thought we really regrouped and kept playing. Had more pressure on the quarterback, made more plays on the back end. I'm very very proud of our resiliency."
In a game with just four total penalties and no points off turnovers, the Purple Raiders used four ballcarriers to outrush Johns Hopkins, 222-26. Mount Union quarterback Dom Davis was 15-of-26 passing for 159 yards and two touchdowns to Ruth, but it was mostly a balanced, firework-free day for the offense.
Germano was 30 of 49 for 355 yards and three touchdowns. Bradley Munday and Ryan Cary each had 10 receptions for more than 120 yards. But Mount Union's relentless pass rush, and the wind at Homewood Field, made things difficult for the Blue Jays in the second half.
Johns Hopkins gained only 142 of its 410 yards after the break.
"We went in at halftime, and Coach Kappas kind of just tested us," said defensive end Mike Vidal, who had three sacks in the second half. "[He] told us that the plays were there, we just have to go make them. And we came out with a mentality of not letting them score. So that's what we did, and we tried executing that each drive. Each drive felt like it didn't matter what we did the previous drive, we tried to focus on that drive, and play by play, and we came out with the W."
"We really zoned in after halftime," said safety Brian Groves. "We knew what they were doing. Like Coach said, we really didn't change much. Whether we lost that play or won that play, we just forgot about it and came out to play the next play."
The loss is the fourth close shave in the playoffs for the Blue Jays' senior class, which lost 42-37 at Homewood against Wesley in Round 2 last year, 24-21 at Hobart in 2014 in the second round and 29-24 to Wesley as freshmen in the first round.
"Obviously we had four pretty hard games to lose," said Munday, whose catches included a fourth-down one-handed stab. "The last four years, since we've been here. It's fun to play in those games definitely, we dream of this, we work for this and it's exactly what we wanted. It's hard to be on the losing side of things, but you couldn't ask for a better way to go out."
Mount Union is expected to be away from home for as long as it advances, next week against Alfred, and possibly the following week against the Wheaton at Mary Hardin-Baylor winner. But given how resilient the Purple Raiders have been in the playoffs so far, they might be up to the task.
"I think this team's pretty battle-tested right now," Kehres said. "We've played three weeks in a row, we've been in a dogfight and had our backs against the wall. You know, right now, we're a one-week season mentality. Trying to win the week, and that's what we're going to do."
-- Keith McMillan