2019 Case Western Reserve University Football
Game #7 – #21/17 CWRU (6-0, 5-0 PAC) vs. Geneva College (3-4, 3-3 PAC)
Saturday, October 26, 2019 · 2:00 PM · Cleveland, Ohio (DiSanto Field)
Complete game notes (.PDF format): https://athletics.case.edu/sports/fball/2019-20/files/fb_Gen_game_notes19.pdf
Live stats: https://athletics.case.edu/sports/fball/2019-20/boxscores/20191026_0uvo.xml
Video: https://case.edu/livestream/athletics/
Andrew Luftglass (play-by-play), Andrew Rossman (color commentary)
Case Western Reserve University (6-0, 5-0 PAC), ranked 21st in the latest D3football.com Top-25 and 17th in the AFCA Poll, will return to DiSanto Field in Cleveland, Ohio to begin a stretch of back-to-back home games, when the team faces Geneva College (3-4, 3-3 PAC) on Saturday, October 26th at 2:00 p.m.
TALE OF THE TAPE
|
CWRU |
|
Geneva |
||||
|
AVG |
PAC |
NCAA |
|
NCAA |
PAC |
AVG |
|
36.0 |
2nd |
44th |
Scoring Offense |
133rd |
6th |
25.7 |
|
14.0 |
21st |
2nd |
Scoring Defense |
92nd |
5th |
22.0 |
|
131.2 |
7th |
143rd |
Rushing Offense |
11th |
1st |
282.0 |
|
81.0 |
2nd |
28th |
Rushing Defense |
17th |
1st |
71.7 |
|
289.3 |
1st |
35th |
Passing Offense |
243rd |
10th |
58.3 |
|
211.0 |
7th |
115th |
Passing Defense |
130th |
8th |
218.1 |
|
420.5 |
1st |
55th |
Total Offense |
147th |
5th |
340.3 |
|
292.0 |
5th |
42nd |
Total Defense |
37th |
3rd |
289.9 |
|
16.81 |
10th |
183rd |
KO Return Average |
77th |
4th |
20.75 |
|
10.14 |
4th |
76th |
Punt Return Average |
177th |
9th |
5.62 |
|
28.86 |
7th |
196th |
Punting Average |
198th |
8th |
28.72 |
|
0.468 |
1st |
35th |
3rd Down Conversion |
67th |
4th |
0.430 |
|
37.33 |
1st |
20th |
Penalty Yards/ Game |
107th |
7th |
57.00 |
|
4.33 |
1st |
6th |
Sacks/ Game |
115th |
6th |
2.00 |
|
31:36 |
2nd |
57th |
Time of Possession |
7th |
1st |
34:37 |
SCOUTING THE SPARTANS
Case Western Reserve is one of 19 remaining undefeated teams in Division III, and will enter Saturday's game with an overall record of 6-0, including a 3-0 mark in home games. The Spartans are coming off a 34-26 win at Saint Vincent College last Saturday, during which sophomore quarterback Drew Saxton threw for 420 yards and four touchdowns, and three receivers – senior Mario Robaina and juniors Colt Morgan and Chase Witte – each eclipsed the 100-yard receiving mark in the game. CWRU also registered three interceptions in the game.
Saxton has led the CWRU offense this year, completing 62.4% of his passes for 1,721 yards and 16 touchdowns with four interceptions. Morgan leads all receivers with 39 catches for 582 yards and nine touchdowns, Robaina has caught 36 passes for 406 yards and a score, and Witte has 13 grabs for 298 yards and three TDs. Junior running back Zach Hall leads the team with 413 rushing yards, and sophomore running back Donald Day III has a team-leading four rushing TDs.
Defensively, senior safety Patrick Crossey has a team-leading 43 tackles and an interception, and junior linebacker Travis Johnston has 37 tackles during the year. The Spartans' pass rush has been led by senior defensive end Cameron Brown (8.5 sacks) and junior linebacker Joshua Smith (7.5 sacks), who are the top-two players in Division III in sacks per game. Brown has also forced four fumbles this year to lead all NCAA Division III players, and senior cornerback Luke Bedell has a team-best three interceptions.
The Spartans are under the leadership of Head Coach Greg Debeljak, who is in his 16th season with the team. He ranks as the winningest coach in the program's history, tallying a 116-45 career record with the squad, good for a .720 winning percentage. The 1988 graduate of John Carroll University has helped lead the Spartans to six UAA Championships, four NCAA playoff appearances and the 2017 PAC Championship. Debeljak was named the PAC Coach of the Year in 2017.
SCOUTING THE GOLDEN TORNADOES
Geneva will enter the weekend with a 3-4 overall record, including a 3-3 mark in the PAC, good for a tie for sixth-place in the league. The Golden Tornadoes have gone 1-2 in road games so far this campaign. Last Saturday at home, the team suffered a 28-3 setback to Washington and Jefferson, marking the squad's second-straight loss after a three-game winning streak. Geneva ran for 252 yards in the game, including a team-high 111 for first-year running back Isaac Gibbs.
Geneva runs the ground-game heavy triple option offense, and leads the PAC (and is 11th in Division III) with 282.0 rushing yards per game. The team's leading runners are sophomore quarterback Amos Luptak (462 yards, 6 TDs), senior running back Justin Loughrie (391 yards, 3 TDs), Gibbs (361 yards, 3 TDs) and senior running back Nick Monteleone (263 yards, 3 TDs). Luptak has also completed 44.8% of his passed for 300 yards and two TDs with one interception, and Monteleone leads the squad with nine catches for 251 yards and a touchdown.
Defensively, senior linebacker Tyler Cann leads the team with 61 tackles and 7.5 tackles for a loss, and sophomore linebacker Dakota Allen has 47 tackles with 7.5 for a loss. Both senior linebacker Torrin Sallis and junior linebacker Kendrick Wells have a team-best three sacks this year, and first-year cornerback O'Neal Cotton has paced the squad with three interceptions.
The Golden Tornadoes are under the leadership of Geno DeMarco, who is in his 27th season at the team's helm. DeMarco, a 1984 graduate of the school, has coached the team to a 149-128 record during his tenure.
LAST MEETING/ MATCHUP HISTORY
Last year in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, the Spartans claimed a 27-14 win over Geneva. CWRU finished the game with a 385-272 edge in total yards, and Drew Saxton threw for 232 yards and three touchdowns, including seven passes for 106 yards and two touchdowns to Colt Morgan. Defensively, Joshua Smith registered a team-leading 13 tackles and intercepted a pass, and Cameron Brown tallied a pair of sacks.
Case Western Reserve is 6-1 all-time against Geneva, including wins in each of the five meetings since rejoining the PAC as a football affiliate member in 2014. The Spartans are also 3-0 all-time in games played in Cleveland, including a 16-14 win in 2016, the last time the Spartans and the Golden Tornadoes faced off at DiSanto Field.
RACE FOR THE PAC CHAMPIONSHIP
The Spartans will begin the weekend with a two-game lead in the loss column PAC standings (CWRU has played one less game than the four two-loss teams). The team can clinch at least a share of the PAC title with two wins in its final four games of the season, and can secure the title outright (along with the league's automatic bid to the NCAA Championships) with victories in three of its final four games. CWRU also holds head-to-head tiebreakers over three of the four two-loss teams in the league (Grove City, Westminster and Washington & Jefferson). Case Western Reserve is looking to win the PAC Championship for the second time in the last three years, and claim the first outright title in program history.
IN THE POLLS
The Spartans climbed two spots in this week's D3football.com Top-25, and are now ranked 21st in Division III, the team's highest ranking of the season. Case Western Reserve was also ranked 17th in this week's American Football Coaches Association poll, also marking a two-spot climb from the previous week.
HOME SWEET HOME
The Spartans will enter Saturday's game with a 3-0 record in home games this season, and are 20-3 at DiSanto Field over their last 23 home games, dating back to the start of the 2015 season. Case Western Reserve holds a 56-20 record all-time at DiSanto Field (good for a .737 winning percentage), and have already secured their seventh-consecutive winning season on their home turf.
WHAT CAN BROWN DO FOR YOU?
Cameron Brown is among the NCAA leaders in a number of categories. He currently leads Division III in both forced fumbles per game (0.67) and sacks per game (1.0). In addition, he is seventh in the country in tackles for a loss per game with 2.2. Brown will enter Saturday's game with 32.5 career sacks, and is just half-a-sack shy of matching the program record, currently held by former Spartan Dale English (2008-11). He is third among all active NCAA players and leads all Division III players in career sacks.
MORGAN CLOSES IN ON TD RECORD
With two more touchdown receptions against Saint Vincent last Saturday, Colt Morgan is now just three away from matching the program's career record of 31, currently held by both David Kallevig (2001-04) and Shaun Nicely (2007-10). His nine touchdown catches this season lead the PAC and are 17th among all NCAA Division III players, while he is also 57th in DIII in receiving yards and 44th in receptions per game (6.5). Morgan is also 10th in program history in career receptions (125) and ninth in receiving yards (1,727).
SAXTON ON FIRE
Drew Saxton has thrown for at least 300 yards in each of the team's last three games, including a career-high 420-yard effort against Saint Vincent, the fourth-most passing yards in a single game in program history. He is currently 23rd in Division III in passing yards and 28th in passing touchdowns in 2019. Saxton is fifth in program history with 4,754 career passing yards, and is just 246 yards away from becoming the fifth quarterback in program history with 5,000 passing yards. In addition, his 50 career passing touchdowns rank as the fourth-most all-time by a Spartan.
ALBRECHT ADDS TO HIS POINT TOTAL
Sophomore kicker Robertson Albrecht has continued to rise in the CWRU record books, after connecting on a pair of field goal tries and four extra points against Saint Vincent. He now has 40 points this season and 115 for his career, the fourth-most ever by a Spartan kicker. He is four-for-six (67%) on field goal attempts and 28-for-28 on extra point kicks in 2019, and for his career, has connected on 87% (13-of-15) of his field goal tries and 99% (76-of-77) of his point-after attempts.