New faces hoist trophy
UW-Whitewater scored first in each of the previous two meetings against Mount Union in the Stagg Bowl. But in this instance, the Warhawks built a 17-0 lead and held on to win 31-21. The victory, the first for UW-Whitewater in Salem, meant the Warhawks showed Mount Union was not unbeatable, writes Ryan Tipps. And every time Mount Union loses, says Keith McMillan, it proves they're human, as does the Purple Raiders' emotions in defeat. Photo gallery. Mount Union cut the lead to three twice as Nate Kmic scored three touchdowns. But Justin Beaver and the 22 other Warhawks seniors would not be denied. Beaver rushed for 253 yards and a score against a Purple Raiders defense that gave up less than 25 yards per game all season. Danny Jones' second 1-yard touchdown plunge of the game put the game away, 31-21. D3football.com also announced its All-American teams on game day in Salem. Following the game, D3football.com announced its final awards: Justin Beaver was named Offensive Player of the Year, Mary Hardin-Baylor linebacker Jerrell Freeman was named Defensive Player of the Year and UW-Whitewater's Lance Leipold was named Coach of the Year. | ||
| Permalink | Dec 15, 2007 | ||
St. John Fisher asst. takes Utica job Utica athletic director Jim Spartano Friday named Blaise Faggiano head coach. Faggiano spent the past nine seasons as defensive coordinator and recruiting coordinator at St. John Fisher. He replaces Mike Kemp, who left the Pioneers in midseason with a 17-50 lifetime record. "Utica College is excited to welcome Blaise into our family, and we believe he is the great fit to guide our program into the future," says Spartano. "His success within the Empire 8 Conference speaks for itself, and his ties throughout New York state will surely help for a smooth transition to Utica College." Faggiano graduated from Ithaca, where he was a member of the football team and helped guide the Bombers to a Division III national championship in 1991. After earning his undergraduate degree in 1993, he accepted a graduate assistant coaching position at SUNY-Albany, where he earned a master's degree in liberal arts. Faggiano returned to Ithaca in 1995, and was part of a coaching staff that led the Bombers to postseason appearances in three out of four seasons. He has played a major role in St. John Fisher's recent success, guiding the Cardinals to the national quarterfinals of the NCAA Division III playoffs in each of the past two seasons. "I have always aspired to be a head coach at the Division III level, and I am eager to join the Utica College family," says Faggiano. "Through the interview process I was pleased to find that Utica College has similar goals and values to that of St. John Fisher. I am excited about the talent that we currently have in the football program at Utica, and I look forward to working with the local section III high school football coaches to continue to help this program grow in the years to come." UC closed out the 2007 season by posting a program-record 70 points and finishing with a 3-7 overall record. | ||
| Permalink | Dec 15, 2007 | ||
UWW gives Stagg a wow factor By Ryan Tipps D3football.com SALEM -- One of the first words out of Ryan Ogrizovich’s mouth was “wow.” That was his summation of UW-Whitewater’s 31-21 Stagg Bowl victory Saturday, as the rain taunted those in Salem Stadium, combining with a chill that lasted throughout the day and night. And, Ogrizovich said, it never even entered his team’s mind that Mount Union was unbeatable, as so many had been alluding to. “We were feeling really confident that we could play with them this year,” the defensive end and first-team All-American said. “We weren’t thinking blowout. … We just played the best ball we could.” And it was that kind of defensive play that held MUC’s stars in check. Pierre Garcon gained just 30 yards receiving. Nate Kmic averaged 4 yards per carry, down from almost 6.5 per carry during the rest of the year. UW-W also made a goal line stand that kept MUC scoreless through the first quarter. “To get a stop like that is definitely a confidence-builder,” coach Lance Leipold said after the game. “It was a great stand, and one (of the kinds) that we’ve been talking about to be physical. From then on, the Warhawk faithful – animated and boisterous – had few moments of silence. On both sides of the ball, UW-W zeroed in on MUC’s strengths, doing what was needed to neutralize the Purple Raider dynasty. “Our goal was to come out early and be physical, and I think we did that,” Leipold said. “We played aggressively. We thought we’d make it a four-quarter game. We needed to do that.” Liepold, a rookie head coach, said he had never seen Mount Union play firsthand prior to Saturday night. But he finessed his team, a team laden with 23 seniors, into a national championship, which occurred in the presence of retired head coach Bob Berezowitz. Berezowitz, whose team fell the past two years to Mount Union, paced the sidelines, sharing his team’s ups and downs. “If you look a little bit on last year’s game and this year’s game,” Leipold said, “we didn’t allow big plays. Yeah, we turned it over a little bit, but there weren’t the explosive plays by them.” The same success was shining through on offense, as well. Aside from three fumbles that put a kink in Whitewater’s offensive momentum, there were very few down moments for UWW – in part thanks to Stagg Bowl most valuable player Justin Beaver. Beaver, who gained 256 yards, found the end zone only once, but he was crucial in setting up at least two other scores. And after the Warhawks’ first seven points early in the first quarter, UWW never gave up the lead. His total is even more impressive after Leipold revealed that Beaver had played the past five or six weeks with a fractured rib. “That just shows once again the kind of competitor (Beaver is) and the heart and everything he gives to this football team,” Leipold said. Despite the praise from his coach, Beaver was quick to put the spotlight on those around him. “I’ve been saying that our O-line is the heart of our team, at least on offense,” the running back said. “Today they really stepped up.” The offensive line was crucial to breaking open a hole for transfer quarterback Danny Jones, leading him into the end zone in the closing minutes of the fourth quarter, essentially sealing the victory. As the touchdown was clear and rightfully unchallenged, Whitewater fans erupted in celebration. But the tone on the Mount Union side was punctuated by the actions of a young fan standing off the back of the end zone, repeatedly calling for “review, review, review.” Tears dripped down his cheeks, surprising visible amid the resurgent rain. Nearby, slumped shoulders dominated the far sidelines – a proud, typically dominating Mount Union team being handed its first defeat of the season. On the other side of the field, the Warhawks coop grew louder, swallowing the stadium in cheer and celebration. Leipold said just after the game that things really hadn’t sunk in, but he and his team overcame their growing pains together to reach the season pinnacle. The players “believed in themselves. They had a lot of confidence. As I’ve said all along, it was kind of a blending more than anything else. They had to get used to a new coach and a new offensive coordinator. A couple different things did change on how we do things, but you have the work ethic and the desire, and, of course, the athleticism was there all along.” | ||
| Permalink | Dec 15, 2007 | ||
Mount's reign washed out
By Keith McMillan D3football.com SALEM -- As the rain fell at Stagg Bowl XXXV Saturday, the reign fell. With a 164-4 record and eight national championships in nine Stagg Bowl appearances since the start of the 1996 season, and with a chance for their third three-peat in that span, Mount Union has firmly established itself as the standard by which other Division III teams are measured. Toss in the 1993 championship, and the Purple Raiders (14-1) were questing for their 10th win in Salem. Year after year, Mount Union is expected to win. It’s almost a ho-hum end to the season when they do. Although coach Larry Kehres and their players say, win or lose, they don’t take the Stagg Bowl experience for granted, and certainly don’t assume that they will win, that attitude is very much present outside the program. For those who forget that Mount Union builds its team much like other Division III programs do, with undersized but hard-working student-athletes, any loss comes as a shocker. But those inside both the Mount Union and UW-Whitewater programs felt the teams had been evenly matched the past two Stagg Bowls, with Mount Union seizing the opportunities and pulling away in the second half. Saturday, it was the Warhawks who seized opportunities, finished drives and came up with the big plays, particularly a first-quarter goal-line stand. “Statistically, they were close games,” Kehres said from the Purple Raiders’ locker room after the game. “All three of them were similar, but we were the team this time that didn’t take advantage of chances to score. With 212 yards in the first half, you’d like to have a touchdown there or some field goals.” Instead, UW-Whitewater (14-1) built a 10-0 halftime lead – the first time Mount Union was scoreless at the half of a game in at least the past 17 seasons – and went ahead 17-0 on its first drive of the third quarter. Mount Union responded by twice cutting the Warhawks’ lead to three points, at 17-14 and 24-21. Safety Matt Kostenik said he “thought the momentum swung back our way” at 17-14, following an eight-play, 19-yard drive with 3:53 left in the third quarter. Quarterback Greg Micheli echoed those thoughts, referring to then, and when Nate Kmic’s 4-yard touchdown run, his third of the game, brought the game to 24-21 with 3:34 left. “We knew we were in a good position, but you never think you are in a for-sure position," Micheli said. Instead, Justin Beaver and Whitewater’s offense put forth perhaps their best effort of the day, scoring once more with 1:33 left to provide the final 31-21 margin. “[Whitewater] played the best game tonight,” Kehres said. “They definitely deserved to be champions.” The Purple Raiders, who fumbled six times and lost three in the wet conditions, felt they let an opportunity get away, just as Whitewater felt after the past two Stagg Bowls. “We played very well in spots,” Kehres said, “but we made a few too many mistakes. There were a couple bounces of the football that got away from us and cost us the victory.” Micheli said the Warhawks did a great job disguising their defense so he couldn’t get a good read on what he was looking at, although he was still 19-for-32 for 245 yards and a late interception. Kehres credited Whitewater’s play covering Pierre Garcon, who’d gone over 100 yards receiving and scored two TDs in each of the past two Stagg Bowls. “They did a good job on Pierre, they rolled their coverages to him and played short with their corner with a safety over the top … We had to turn some other directions and look for plays from some of our other guys, and they made big plays.” Mount Union outgained the Warhawks 445-410. Kmic admitted the weather was a factor, but also acknowledged Whitewater’s efforts to strip the ball. In the end, though, the Purple Raiders accepted that they were outplayed. Given that seven seniors started on offense and eight more started on defense, and a 16th senior starter was on special teams, and it was a class that had an opportunity to go down as perhaps the best in school history. The loss hurts, but it hardly darkens the legacy of a senior class that won two championships, lost only three games and produced seven D3football.com All-Americans in 2007 alone. This season in particular was phenomenal, as Mount Union averaged a 54-5 win prior to the Stagg Bowl, and at one point posted seven shutouts in an eight-game stretch, with only a Heidelberg second-quarter field goal keeping it from being eight in a row. Moved into the East bracket for the playoffs, the Purple Raiders dominated the best that region had to offer. Still, it’ll be hard for the Mount Union seniors to find solace in all they accomplished anytime soon, while Saturday’s loss still stings. “It’ll be a long bus ride home,” safety Matt Kostelnik said. Though the Purple Raiders uncharacteristically lost their cool a couple of times, they were generally as classy in defeat as they often are in victory. “If you make football worthwhile,” Kehres said, “you have to use it for lessons. I think the challenge is 'Don’t pout, don’t mope.' Will it mean [the seniors] don’t come back and see me? Can we maintain a great relationship even though we lost your last game?” Though excitement ripples throughout the division each time Mount Union loses, those performances, and the emotions accompanying them, remind the rest of us that the Purple Raiders are human. | ||
| Permalink | Dec 15, 2007 | ||
Freeman, Beaver, Leipold take top honors Mary Hardin-Baylor running back Jerrell Freeman was named D3football.com Defensive Player of the Year, UW-Whitewater running back Justin Beaver was named the D3football.com 2007 Offensive Player of the Year and Lance Leipold of UW-Whitewater was named Coach of the Year as D3football.com announced its 2007 All-American team at the Stagg Bowl on Saturday, Dec. 15. One hundred slots were selected: 11 starters on offense and defense plus three special teamers on each of four teams. It's the ninth annual D3football.com All-American team. Freeman was selected as a first-team linebacker for the second consecutive year, while Beaver was a first-team running back for the third year in a row. Cornell, Middlebury, North Carolina Wesleyan, Olivet, St. Olaf, Tri-State and Waynesburg each had a player selected for the first time. That brings the number of schools to have a D3football.com All-American to 175 in the nine-year history of the awards. | ||
| Permalink | Dec 15, 2007 | ||
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