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Time of Poss.
LANCASTER, PA – The visiting Johns Hopkins football team built a 13-point halftime lead and held off a second-half rally by Franklin & Marshall as the Blue Jays topped the Diplomats, 43-26, at Shadek Stadium Saturday afternoon. The Blue Jays hit their bye week with a perfect 5-0 overall record and a 4-0 mark in the Centennial while the Diplomats fall to 2-3 overall and 1-3 in the Centennial.
The Blue Jays built a 20-7 halftime lead on the strength of two touchdowns and two John Krill field goals. A one-yard touchdown run by Danny Wolf and a touchdown reception for Josh Polce were matched only by a Tim Walters 12-yard touchdown reception for the Diplomats to account for the 20-7 halftime score.
The Diplomats made things interesting by outscoring the Blue Jays 10-0 in the third quarter to make it a 20-17 game entering the fourth quarter. A Laurence Miller field goal and an 87-yard Ty Tremba-to-Aaron Rascoe touchdown pass late in the third accounted for F&M's 10 points in the period.
Hopkins needed just 68 seconds to push the lead to 27-17 as Ryan Stevens hit Artie Collins on a screen pass and Collins raced 49 yards down the sideline to push the lead back to 10 early in the fourth quarter. Miller and Krill than traded field goals to make it 30-20 and the Blue Jay defense then forced a punt.
Six plays after the punt, Collins capped a six-play, 67-yard drive with an 11-yard touchdown reception with 6:41 to play that gave the Blue Jays some breathing room at 36-20.
That lead held for nearly four minutes before a Tremba-to-Jack O'Hearen one-yard touchdown pass sliced the deficit to 36-26; F&M's two-point attempt failed and Oliver Craddock recovered the ensuing onsides kick for the Blue Jays.
Wolf then capped his day with a 41-yard touchdown run to account for the 43-26 final score.
While the Blue Jays scored 43 points and rolled up more than 500 yards of total offense, the story of the game was the Johns Hopkins defensive line, especially junior defensive end Luke Schuermann. Schuermann set a Johns Hopkins single-game record with six sacks on the day; he accounted for six of the Blue Jays' 11 sacks in the win and had a career-high 13 tackles in the victory.
Stevens was 26-of-39 for 346 yards and three touchdowns. Wolf rushed for 163 yards and the two scores and Collins (11-176-2) and Polce (8-120-1) both topped 100 yards receiving.
Notes: Johns Hopkins extended its school-record streak of scoring 35 points to 11 games. JHU is now 35-3 in its last 38 games in the month of October and improved to 50-3 in games played before its bye week since 2011.
Johns Hopkins will return to action on Friday, October 14 when the Blue Jays welcome Muhlenberg to Homewood Field (7 pm).
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