DURHAM – It took a last-second win in the regular-season finale for the University of New Hampshire to squeak into the FCS playoffs. But once the Wildcats got to the postseason, they knew exactly what to do.
The offense had its most productive day of the season by far, the defense came up with four turnovers and No. 22/21 UNH (8-4) rolled to a 64-21 first-round playoff win over No. 18/15 Lehigh (9-3) on Saturday at Wildcat Stadium. UNH will now travel to fourth-seeded James Madison (10-1) for a second-round game Saturday at 2 p.m.
“We watched as much tape as you possibly can and the team we played today looked a whole lot better today than it did on any of the tape I watched,” Lehigh Coach Andy Coen said of New Hampshire.
The Wildcats scored the game’s first 22 points and found the end zone on five of their first six possessions. They finished with season-high totals in points, yards (637) and rushing yards (364).
“Once we got rolling, we didn’t stop,” said Dalton Crossan, who had two touchdowns and 184 yards on 24 carries, a staggering 7.7 yards per carry average.
Crossan now has 1,189 yards for the year, which is the sixth-best season total in UNH history. But he had plenty of play-making company on Saturday.
Trevon Bryant finished with 113 yards and two touchdowns on just 11 rushes. Neil O’Connor had seven catches for 171 yards and a touchdown. And Adam Riese threw for 273 yards and three touchdowns (18-for-30) and ran for 26 yards and a score.
“I thought we fired on a lot of cylinders today,” UNH Coach Sean McDonnell said.
The Wildcats fired on all those cylinders despite playing without their starting quarterback, Trevor Knight, who was injured early in last week’s 24-21 win at Maine. Riese, a senior captain, came off the bench to lead the Wildcats to that comeback win and he more than got the job done as the starter on Saturday.
“Same situation as last week when Trevor went down. Like we’ve been saying all year, we don’t flinch at all. We know Adam can come in and get the job done,” Crossan said. “He’s a great player, a great leader. He’s been our best leader this year on the field and off the field, and we love playing for him and we love going out and making plays for him.”
It was the defense that made the first big play for UNH, but not against the quarterback it was expecting to see. Nick Shafnisky had led Lehigh to nine straight wins, the Patriot League title and earned the league’s Offensive Player of the Year award along the way. But he sat out most of Saturday’s game because he was, “sick,” which is what Coen said, or because he was dealing with, “personal issues,” which is what backup quarterback Brad Mayes said.
Mayes had started two games this year for the Mountain Hawks and played extremely well (80-for-111, 1,113 yards, 12 touchdowns, two interceptions), but the Wildcats got to him right away. On just the sixth play of the game, UNH linebacker Ryan Farrell tipped a pass and Casey DeAndrade (team-high nine tackles) plucked the spinning ball out of the air and returned it 27 yards. Six plays after that, Crossan scored from five yards out to make it 7-0.
New Hampshire also got interceptions from Pop Lacey and Quinlen Dean and a fumble recovery from Josh Kania. Four turnovers in any game is excellent, but the ’Cats did this against a Lehigh team that had just eight giveaways all year, the best mark in the FCS.
“That’s the thing we pride ourselves on, winning the turnover battle,” DeAndrade said.
On their next possession, the Wildcats went 80 yards in eight plays, the big one a 43-yard run from Crossan and the last one a 9-yard scoring pass from Riese to Crossan.
Riese threw one of his three interceptions on UNH’s third possession, but the New Hampshire defense came up with a stop on fourth-and-1 thanks to a tackle for a loss from Ryan Sosnak. After that, the offense went back to work and scored on its next three possessions – a pretty 35-yard connection between Riese and O’Connor, a 16-yard scramble from Riese and a 1-yard run from Crossan.
The Mountain Hawks squeezed a touchdown of their own in there with a 37-yard run from Dom Bragalone (team-high 65 yards on 13 carries). They also scored late in the second quarter to pull within 20 points by halftime. And Lehigh scored again with 12:35 left in the third to cut UNH’s lead to 36-21 and make things interesting, but the Wildcats quickly took care of that on the ensuing possession as they drove 61 yards and pushed the lead to 43-21 on a 10-yard scoring run from Bryant.
“We knew that next possession was going to be huge,” Crossan said. “We didn’t want to have a three-and-out or turn the ball over or give them any more momentum, so we just stayed the course and wound up scoring.”
That course led to three more touchdowns on their next three possessions – a 4-yard pass from Riese to Kieran Presely, a 48-yard run from Bryant and a 25-yard run from Evan Gray.
“They just beat us up up front, they really did,” Coen said.
After losing at home in the first round of the last year’s FCS tournament, the ’Cats viewed Saturday’s game as a chance at redemption. Now they have another redemption opportunity against a James Madison team that beat them on Oct. 15, 42-39.
“Now we’ve got another chance, another do-over coming up,” McDonnell said. “And we’re just going to have to go play. And that’s the great thing about this (FCS tournament), you can win it on the field or lose it on the field.”
(Tim O’Sullivan can be reached at 369-3341, tosullivan@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @timosullivan20.)