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MOREHEAD, Ky. – Next time, maybe Morehead State and Davidson football should just forgo the first three quarters.
Davidson scored a late touchdown and stopped the Eagles’ ensuing drive to outlast MSU in a hectic fourth quarter, 17-10, in Saturday afternoon’s Pioneer Football League game at Jayne Stadium.
“It’s very disappointing when you don’t secure a victory that could have been, I’m not going to say should have been, but could have been ours. Davidson made the plays they needed to make in order to pull out this victory,” Morehead State coach
Matt Ballard said.
The score was tied at three through an uneventful three quarters, but as MSU lined up for a field goal that would have given the Eagles the lead on the final play of the third quarter, Dan Casey broke through the line and blocked
Rainer Duzan’s kick. Davidson’s Harvey Kee chased the loose ball all the way to the Morehead State 43-yard line before falling on it.
But on the next play, which was the beginning of a frantic fourth quarter, Wildcat quarterback Jonathan Carkhuff was sacked and lost the ball. MSU defensive end
Jerome Raymond picked up the loose ball and rumbled 48 yards to the Davidson one-yard line, his end zone dive just short. One play later,
Blake Stanley punched the ball in and the Eagles took a 10-3 lead.
“[Raymond’s fumble recovery] was a tremendous change and boost of energy and confidence and momentum,” Ballard said. Jerome and company really did an outstanding job today getting pressure on the quarterback, harassing them, and I told them on the sidelines at the beginning of the half, we’ve come close to getting three turnovers earlier, you guys are going to get one this half before it’s over with.”
Facing a fourth and eight on their own 27-yard line two drives later, the Wildcats faked a punt and Andrew Wohler, the Davidson punter, ran the ball 30 yards for a first down in Morehead State territory. Three plays later, Carkhuff found Lanny Funsten on a 25-yard touchdown pass, but Ben Behrendt’s PAT kick sailed wide right and MSU held onto a slim 10-9 lead.
The Eagles went three and out on the next drive and Davidson took over on its own 17-yard line. Carkhuff moved the chains to the Wildcat 29, and then caught Funsten across the middle 20 yards downfield. Funsten ran East-West to find space and then broke for the end zone for a 71-yard touchdown reception. Carkhuff found Funsten again on the two-point conversion try and Davidson led by seven with 2:07 to play.
“We finally got going and went up on them and felt like we had a chance to put them away,” Ballard said. “When you have those opportunities you have to take advantage of it, meaning finish off first downs and run out that clock. We let them back in the ball game with a first down off of a special teams fake, and you can’t do that, and then we gave up a big play. But if you look at this thing overall from start to finish you’ve got to give credit where credit is due and that’s to Davidson.”
Funsten caught seven passes for 175 yards receiving, well over half of Carkhuff’s 270 passing yards on 15-of-33.
MSU’s two-minute drill moved the ball to the Davidson 41-yard line, but a penalty, a sack and fumble and a pair of incomplete passes ended the Eagles game-tying drive.
Morehead State fell to 2-4 overall and 1-2 in the PFL and the Wildcats improved to 2-4 and 2-2 in league play, winning for just the second time ever at Jayne Stadium.
Neither team scored in the first half, with only one trip into the red zone for either team. Davidson had a sustained drive that carried them to the Morehead State 20-yard line just after the start of the second quarter. The Wildcats elected to go for it on fourth and one from the 20 rather than kick the field goal.
Aaron Meadows and
Keaton May stopped the Marcus Johnson rush attempt and MSU took over on downs.
“If you wanted to classify or describe it, it was a defensive battle all day long. It was a game where both off really struggled all day long except at the very end,” Ballard said.
Linebacker
Tony Bachman led the Eagles with nine tackles, 2.5 of which were for a loss.
Mark Hall had three tackles for loss to contribute to MSU’s staggering total of 13 tackles for loss for 46 yards. MSU had seven pass break ups, a forced fumble and a fumble recorvery.
Davidson finally broke the 0-0 tie with a Ben Behrendt 28-yard field goal with just under six minutes left in the third quarter. But Morehead State promptly marched down the field with its first sustained drive of the game and re-tied the scored with a 32-yard Duzan field goal. Quarterback
Zach Lewis tallied 76 yards of passing in the drive, quickly surpassing his first-half total of 10 yards.
Lewis finished with 171 yards on 16-of-28 yards passing to nine different receivers.
Adam Slupski led that group with four catches for 35 yards. The Eagles finished with 218 yards of offense, most of which came in the second half and converted just one third down in 11 tries.
Morehead State travels to Indianapolis, Ind. to face PFL foe Butler next Saturday. Kick-off is set for 1:00 p.m.
