/notables/2021/03/week6-wrapup

Week 6: Berry comes away with SAA

Mar 13, 2021
Berry held on just long enough to make sure it could take the trophy home.
Photo by Pat Coleman, D3sports.com
 

Wilmington kept streaking, while the OAC got things clicking and Emory & Henry improved to 3-0 in Friday night action, while Berry survived a comeback attempt from Hendrix to win the SAA title and Salisbury held off Wesley in the final meeting of the Route 13 Rivalry in Division III football on March 12 and 13, 2021.

Wesley was playing short-handed the entire afternoon against Salisbury in the season opener for both teams. The Wolverines, in their final season as the school was acquired by neighboring Delaware State University, were without their kicker, Joe Delgado, who is also a member of the Wolverines' lacrosse team. Trailing by 10 with 2:19 left in the game, Wesley did drive the length of the field and scored a touchdown, including the two-point conversion, to cut the Sea Gulls' lead to 32-30. But the Wolverines could not cover the onside kick and Salisbury was able to kneel it out.

"That's been a hallmark of Wesley football is that we've always fought to the end, giving great effort all the time," Wolverines coach Chip Knapp told Sean Greene of WDEL radio after the game. "I'm really proud of our guys for fighting through all the adversity that we've had from the summer, going through the fall and into the spring. We had adversity this week and we have adversity all the time and we kept our heads up and kept moving forward."

Salisbury entered the fourth quarter trailing 22-14, but cut that deficit lead to five with a field goal on the second play of the fourth quarter and the Wolverines' special teams inexperience came back to bite them on their next possession. Brady Walters, doubling as punter and quarterback, took a low snap on his knee at his own 8-yard line and Salisbury took over on downs. On the next play, Marcus Wilson ran it in for a touchdown. The Sea Gulls put together a 92-yard drive in the latter half of the quarter to push that lead to 10.

Berry leapt out to a 21-7 lead just over three minutes into the second quarter and had to hold on for dear life, surviving only when Bennett Ellis hit the left upright with the extra point attempt which would have tied the game with 3:59 left. Hendrix turned the ball over six times, including a fumbled punt which led directly to a Berry touchdown, as well as a 58-yard Devin Grier interception return for a touchdown in the second quarter that capped the scoring for the Vikings (4-0).

Grier ended up with two more interceptions, both of them on back-to-back drives coming in the third quarter off of Hendrix backup quarterback Jacob Wood.

Wood recovered in the fourth quarter and led a 56-yard scoring drive, finishing it off with a 15-yard run to the end zone for a touchdown which cut the Berry lead to 21-14. Hendrix got the ball back when Brooks Parham picked off Gavin Gray, and Wood marched the team back down the field, with Tajae White scoring on a 9-yard run with 3:59 left. But even in the noise of stadium of primarily Hendrix fan, the clang of Bennett Ellis' extra point attempt off the left upright seemed defeaning, and Berry retained the slimmest of margins, 21-20.

In the opener of a four-game weekend of SAA crossover games at Little Rock, Arkansas, Trinity (Texas) hit big passes to Chris Stewart in the second half and the Tigers were able to put away Birmingham-Southern 38-15. The Panthers (2-2), playing without All-America running back Chris Shufford, managed just 46 yards on 33 carries. Meanwhile, Trinity (3-1) rolled up 283 yards of offense in the second half, including a 61-yard catch and run from Tucker Horn to Stewart which set up a short TD run by Charles Davis to open the fourth quarter.

Down by three scores late, Birmigham-Southern's DJ Albright stepped in front of a pass in the end zone and was seemingly off to the races up the near sideline, but Tigers receiver Ethan Boyer came all the way across the field to knock him down at the 15, and the Trinity defense forced a fumble to snuff out the Panthers' final hopes.

For the second consecutive week, Louisiana College found itself down by three scores in the fourth quarter and for the second straight week the Wildcats rallied to take the lead late, but this time the job was completed, as a fourth down stop secured the come-from-behind victory 34-31 over Southwestern.

D'Mario Weathersby picked off a third-and-10 pass and returned it inside the 20 to set up LC in prime position. Three plays later, quarterback Sal Palermo did it himself, rushing in from 3 yards out to give LC the lead. Palermo then found Ganote in the back of the end zone to convert the two-point try for the game's final points with 1:40 left.

Brevard avenged its one loss on the season, as Eli Carr, who took over the quarterback role mid-game last week against Averett, got the start and three four touchdowns in a 27-3 win against Huntingdon. His TD passes were 26, 38, 31 and 20 yards as he completed 12 of 20 passes for 194 yards on the afternoon. Joc Pledger, a member of the D3football.com Team of the Week for February for his performance against Huntingdon the first time around, intercepted two passes and Dante Anderson picked off another to go with his 13 tackles. The Tornadoes improved to 2-1.

Carsen Johnson set school records for receiving yards and yards per catch finishing with five for 212 yards and a touchdown as Montclair State rolled to a 41-12 win at Kean. It took just 12 seconds for Montclair to put the first points on the board as Zahir Wilder took the opening kickoff and raced 93 yards for the touchdown.

Montez Archer had another great day as a freshman cornerback for Bluffton, as he intercepted three passes and had a punt return for a touchdown in the Beavers' 35-27 win against Anderson. Bluffton picked off Anderson quarterback Tyson Harley four times, while Darian Greeley led the Beavers offnsively with 171 yards and two touchdowns on 19 carries.

Whitworth finished the home-and-home sweep and proved beyond a doubt that it is the best Division III football team in the state of Washington, rolling past Pacific Lutheran, 56-23. Jaedyn Prewitt threw four first half touchdown passes to lead Whitworth to a 35-3 halftime lead and finished 23-for-38 for 458 yards in the win. Whitworth swept two games from PLU by an average score of 37-16 and took two games from Puget Sound by an average score of 41-9.

Bo Hering got things off to a good start for Maryville in a 13-7 win at North Carolina Wesleyan with a pair of interceptions, including a 30-yard interception return for a touchdown which gave the Scots the lead for good with 6:38 left in the game. The defense helped salvage a day in which Maryville (1-0) managed just 149 yards of total offense.

Sunday in Little Rock saw tempers flare as Austin College's tenure in the conference for football came to an end. With the players on both sides already hot because of chippiness in the closing seconds, AC went for it on fourth down and failed to convert, giving Centre the ball at midfield, up by 24 with 40 seconds left. But instead of running the ball, as coach Andy Frye said he told his players to do, Centre called an audible and senior Clark Payne threw a fade for Sam Murray to the end zone. Murray caught the ball and was stripped of it right before the end zone. As Sam Verdun attempted to return the ball, he and Murray got into a tussle on the sideline, the field judge separated them, and the benches emptied.

Frye came all the way across the field to talk with Roos coach Loren Dawson and, from the looks of it, apologize for his player taking matters into his own hands.

After the game, which Centre won 44-20, there was no postgame handshake as tempers remained high, but eventually Frye and Dawson met again. "I have never been so humiliated," Frye said.

Meanwhile, it was a big day for Centre quarterback Trentin Dupper, who threw two touchdown passes and caught another in relief of Payne, a senior who started the game and played the first series.

The final game of the night and the weekend in Little Rock was a race against the clock, and against the radar, as the seventh-place contest between Millsaps and Rhodes was pushed up in start time by 15 minutes and played with just a 10-minute halftime to try to avoid severe thunderstorms that were advancing on War Memorial Stadium. And although it rained in the fourth quarter, the game got done in just 2 hours, 14 minutes, with Millsaps winning 27-13.

Rhodes, which had entered the game scoring only six points all year in going 0-3 in its SAA West Division schedule, got two touchdown passes from Luke Macias as part of a 25-for-33 night passing for 255 yards. Rhodes picked off Majors quarterbacks twice in the red zone as well. But it was not enough as Millsaps (1-3) got a 51-yard interception return for a touchdown from Ryan Taix in the first quarter and then had three drives of 60 or more yards for touchdowns in the win.

Friday night: Quakers on a roll

For the second game in a row, Kyle Barrett led a last-minute scoring drive and found Itika Wynn for a game-winning touchdown.

On Friday night, with his team buried on its own 1-yard line after a 55-yard punt, Barrett went to work. And by the time he was done, 16 plays later, Barrett found Wynn for a 6-yard touchdown catch on the far sideline in the end zone, capping a 99-yard drive with the game-winning score with 39 seconds left. Capital got to midfield, but a Hail Mary pass was battled down.

And Wilmington has a legitimate winning streak, having won three games in a row, even if those games were spread over the last 489 days. Wilmington has not won three games in a row since Nov. 4, 2000-Sept. 8, 2001.

Barrett finished with 379 yards passing, 271 of them in the second half.

"Kyle [Barrett] didn't have his best game, but when we needed him most, he stepped up," Wilmington coach Bryan Moore said of the final drive. "That's why having seniors is huge. They didn't flinch. There was no panic." 

The win spoiled the Capital coaching debut of Brian Foos, who was hired in the fall. 

It was definitely the game of the night on Friday in a week in which the Ohio Athletic Conference schedule started. Jake Floriea was an efficient 17-for-21 passing for John Carroll in helping lead the Blue Streaks past Baldwin Wallace 28-17. It's the eighth consecutive win for JCU in the series between Cleveland-area rivals.

Braxton Plunk got the start at quarterback for Mount Union in the first Purple Raiders football game of the post-Kehres era, and it was kind of hard to tell the difference. Geoff Dartt's team rolled to a 51-15 win against Muskingum, as Plunk hit Wayne Ruby Jr. for a 60-yard touchdown pass on the Purple Raiders' second drive of the game, then threw five more touchdown passes in the win. Josh Petruccelli ran for a game-high 108 yards on just 11 carries, which KJ Redmon added 103 yards on nine carries and Jaden Manley caught three touchdown passes in the win.

Ivan Phillips returned a blocked extra point 98 yards for a defensive two-point conversion and Emory & Henry scored the last 37 points of the game as the Wasps handed Guilford its second blowout loss in two games, defeating the Quakers 47-6. Teddy Gassert had found Kamari Norman for a 24-yard touchdown early in the second quarter, giving Guilford its first score of the season and cutting E&H's lead to 10-6, but the momentum was short-lived. Guilford managed just 14 yards of total offense after that. Emory & Henry outgained Guilford 644-79, with 109 of those yards coming from Grayson Overstreet with two touchdowns on 19 carries.

Bridgewater opened up its lead on Ferrum in part due to a pair of special teams plays early in the third quarter. The Panthers punted on their first possession of the second half and a good Chad Jones return plus a 15-yard flag set BC up in Panther territory. Noah Beckley hit Derrick Jenkins for a touchdown on the first play. The Eagles forced another 3-and-out, and this time blocked the punt for a touchdown and a 26-10 advantage en route to a 26-16 win. Viante Tucker also returned the game's opening kickoff 82 yards to set up an early Bridgewater score. Shawn Harris had a monster game on defense with 14 tackles, three tackles for loss, a forced fumble, fumble recovery and a pass breakup. Brett Tharp filled the box score for a third straight game with 12 tackles, two pass breakups and a blocked kick.

Dec. 15: All times Eastern
Final
Cortland 38, at North Central (Ill.) 37
@ Salem, Virginia
Video Box Score Recap Photos
Dec. 9: All times Eastern
Final
North Central (Ill.) 34, at Wartburg 27
Box Score Recap
Final
Cortland 49, at Randolph-Macon 14
Box Score Recap Recap Recap Photos
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