Asa Osbourn's fourth-quarter touchdown put the Crusaders on a positive path. Photo by Caleb Marek for Mary Hardin-Baylor athletics

By Riley Zayas
for D3sports.com

BELTON, Texas — Mary Hardin-Baylor’s offense made its way onto the field with 6:56 to go, trailing by a point to a team the Crusaders had beaten in each of their two most recent playoff runs. 

This was the time for a scoring drive. Getting the ball back after this possession was not guaranteed, not against Trinity, whose offense had just scored on consecutive drives, putting the Tigers in front, 22-21, for the first time that afternoon. 

“The coaches knew, the O-Line knew, the defense knew, everybody on the team knew that this was going to be the drive to separate us from what happens next week versus if we go home,” running back Asa Osbourn said, looking back. 

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Osbourn was a workhorse out of the backfield on that 11-play drive, carrying the ball five times for 39 yards. And that included the go-ahead touchdown from one yard out, the play that seemingly invigorated the entire UMHB sideline and the section of visiting fans just behind them. The Crusaders took back the lead and never gave it up, sealing their 29-22 victory on Dorien Hill’s interception with Trinity just inside UMHB territory. 

“I was so confident [we were going to score], we were on the 1-yard line, and Trinity had called a timeout,” UMHB head coach Larry Harmon said Monday. “I almost took a knee, just so they’d have to burn another timeout, because they were trying to stop the clock to give them enough time to go down and counter the score that we were fixing to get. 

“Obviously it was great to see our offense go out there, move the ball, and get a touchdown and two-point conversion after that to make it a seven-point game. And then for us to go out on defense and get a stop to end the game with an interception was great. 

“We feel really good with where we are as a team right now. The guys are bought in.”

Indeed they are. The Crusaders are also Abilene-bound, again. The trip to West Texas, spanning 187 miles on two-lane highways through small towns such as Hamilton, Rising Star, and Cross Plains, will take them to Shelton Stadium soon enough. Saturday’s second round meeting in Abilene is one headlined by the familiarity of the two opponents in a way never before seen in Division III football history, potentially college football history. By getting past Trinity in the opening round, UMHB will face Hardin-Simmons for a third time this season, and the second time in four weeks. 

“We’re excited to get one more shot at them,” starting quarterback Jake Wright said of the impending matchup. “Coming off the Trinity game, we feel like we put together four quarters of football. We’re starting to play our best football. We all walked off that field at Hardin-Simmons the last time we played them, in a tight game, and we all felt the devastation and frustration of how that game ended.”

That was four weeks ago. The Cru found itself trailing, 27-3, through three quarters in what was a must-win game for the American Southwest Conference title. Playing in Abilene, Wright and the offense slowly found traction with the clock steadily ticking away, and managed to score on back-to-back drives, converting on a two-point conversion after both touchdowns. That put UMHB within one possession of knotting the score, and when the defense, true to program tradition with its play-making ability, forced a third consecutive HSU punt, the offense found itself with a chance. But they ended up turning it over on downs, coming up just short of a victory they desperately needed. 

“I feel like every time we’ve played Hardin-Simmons, we haven’t played our complete game,” senior linebacker Durand Hill said. “We’ve had splashes of the offense playing well, splashes of the defense playing well, splashes of special teams, but we haven’t played our complete game yet.” 

The Trinity performance was a step in that direction, Harmon said. The special teams unit blocked a Trinity PAT just before halftime, the defense intercepted Tigers quarterback Ryan Back late in addition to a pair of fumble recoveries, and the offense ran for 133 yards while throwing for 188. 

“Obviously on both sides of the ball, we had a series or two where we didn’t execute as well as we should have or had a mental lapse, and that’s what made the game closer than what it should’ve been,” he noted. “But overall, the kids played really hard. They played three-and-a-half quarters really well.”

It’s odd how history tends to repeat itself. How things seem to line up almost identically, decades apart. In 2004, UMHB, then in just its sixth year in existence as a football program, dropped a regular season game at Hardin-Simmons. Away went any chance of an ASC title. But the Crusaders regrouped, won their next three, and waited until their name was called as one of the few Pool C teams selected to the last year of the 28-team playoff field. 

There was a fair amount of doubt from the outside, considering the furthest The Cru had ever gone in the tournament was a trip to San Antonio in the first round. They were coming off a 2003 campaign in which they missed the postseason entirely, and were sent on the road to Trinity once again. But this time, they won, 32-13, setting up a rematch with Hardin-SImmons in Abilene. A game they also won, 42-28. Upsets over Washington & Jefferson and Mount Union in the two weeks that followed sent UMHB to its first-ever Stagg Bowl, and while Linfield won the final contest, 28-21, it was a playoff run that can be pointed to, showing it’s possible, with the right group and the right mentality. 

Harmon was UMHB’s defensive coordinator for that run, and remembers it well. He sees some of the same things with this team, who has gone through peaks and valleys over the course of the last 12 weeks. They missed the tournament last season, lost to Hardin-Simmons twice in this regular season, earned an at-large bid two weeks ago, and are now in the second round, ready to face Hardin-Simmons after beating Trinity. 

“There’s a tremendous similarity with the ’04 [playoff run], not only with our opponents, but with where our team is now compared to where the ’04 team was at that point in time,” Harmon said a day after UMHB’s selection to the playoff field. 

UMHB players, while obviously not around for that memorable season, have seemingly embraced the same mentality. They have battled through the losses to Hardin-Simmons, and understand those losses have produced doubt outside of the program in a reverse effect to the way the 35-17 win at UW-Whitewater in Week 3 resulted in nationwide attention. 

“We’re really starting to come together as a team,” said Wright, who was pressed into action against Hardin-Simmons on Oct. 12 and has started the five games since. “Going into the playoffs, we feel like we’re the underdog. We were one of the last teams to get in. We lost to Hardin-Simmons twice, and now we have a chance to go play them a third time and knock them off.”

Wright was at the forefront of three drives spanning at least 70 yards last Saturday, two of which came in 11 plays or more. The Cru wore down Trinity’s defensive front with a steady dose of running, but were quick to put the ball in the air when they saw an advantage. UMHB ran for a pair of touchdowns in addition to throwing for two, marking The Cru’s third performance of the season with multiple scores in both the run game and pass game. 

“To be able to pass the ball effectively, you have to be able to run the ball,” Wright said. “It all balances out. We have the guys to carry the ball, and we have some weapons out wide. Most importantly, it was the offensive line on Saturday for us, to be able to move them up front in the run game and to be able to pass protect well to allow me time to get the ball to those weapons.”

Hill, along with his brother, Dorien, headlined a defensive effort that saw each of the Hill brothers tally 10 tackles. The defense held Trinity to fewer than 100 yards on the ground, doing so for the sixth time in the last 10 games, and while Trinity’s passing game accounted for 292 yards, it took 39 attempts to do so. Once Osbourn and the offense gave the lead back to UMHB in the final minutes, the defense answered the call. 

Hill is well aware that UMHB’s playoff run will come entirely on the road for as long as it goes. And that’s okay. The Cru is well-prepared, having won in front of nearly 13,000 at Whitewater, and now with a playoff win at Trinity. The next item on the agenda is a victory in Abilene, and the Crusaders come in knowing they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. 

“Going to play in another atmosphere is always fun to me,” Hill, who has 72 tackles, said. “It gives our team another chance to bond with each other. But also knowing the circumstances of playing on the road, it brings us together even more.”