SAN DIEGO – For the second straight year the University of New Hampshire football team traveled to California for a season-opener, and for the second straight year the Wildcats came home with a lopsided loss.
Saturday it was 31-0 against San Diego State. Last fall it was 43-13 against San Jose State. Despite the nearly identical margin of victory, the ’Cats felt worse traveling home from the west coast last year.
“Let me tell you, I feel a lot better walking out of this locker room tonight than I did walking out of San Jose,” UNH Coach Sean McDonnell said in the bowels of Qualcomm Stadium after his team’s shutout loss to the Aztecs on Saturday.
The main reason the coach felt better was because his team stood toe-to-toe with San Diego State and didn’t flinch. The Wildcats did not look physically overmatched by an Aztecs team that won the Mountain West Conference last year with an 11-3 record and was picked to win it again this year.
“We shot ourselves in the foot a lot. We had a lot of penalties and a lot of missed opportunities,” said senior running back Dalton Crossan, who was held to 38 yards on 11 carries. “We had a lot of young guys out there and a lot of first-time starters, but I think we competed.”
The place where that competitiveness, and the improvement from last year’s opener, felt most apparent was with UNH’s run defense. The Wildcats gave up 285 rushing yards on 53 carries at San Jose (a 5.4 yards per rush average), and for the season wound up allowing 199.3 rushing yards per game, the worst mark in the CAA. Against San Diego State, however, UNH allowed 170 rushing yards on 41 carries, a 4.1 yards per carry average.
The ’Cats did this even though they were playing with a pair of two new starting defensive tackles, junior Rick Holt and sophomore Ryan Sosnak, and six new defensive starters in total. They did it by switching from their normal 4-2-5 scheme to a 4-3 for much of the game, and they did it with a group of swarming and sure-tackling defenders.
“We prepared to stop it and our kids bought in and did it, so you feel better,” McDonnell said, “but it ain’t good enough.”
Still, it was pretty good considering the competition.
San Diego State is known for its ground attack and running back Donnell Pumphrey, the reigning MWC Offensive Player of the Year. Pumphrey is about to break Marshall Faulk’s SDSU career rushing record, he’s the active career leader in rushing yards in the NCAA with 4,377 and he’s going to be playing on Sundays next fall.
Sure, Pumphrey gained 105 yards on 21 carries against UNH, but he didn’t control the game. The Wildcats kept him to 55 yards on 12 carries in the first half, dropped him for a loss on four occasions and allowed him just four runs over 10 yards, with the longest a 20-yard gain.
“The coaches really put us in a great position to be successful,” UNH senior captain and linebacker Ryan Farrell said. “They’re a run-oriented team and (Pumphrey) is a really, really good player. So obviously we have stuff to clean up, but as a defense I thought we took a lot of steps today. I know the score doesn’t show it, but I think we took a lot of steps in the right direction and we can build on that going forward.”
One of the players most responsible for the team’s progress, and someone who made a major individual leap, was sophomore linebacker Jared Kuehl from Plymouth. Last year Kuehl finished with 14 tackles for the season. On Saturday, in his first career start, Kuehl tied for the team lead with 10 tackles, including eight solo tackles, which was twice as many solo stops as the next best New Hampshire player.
“A kid who hasn’t played a lot of football for us had a hell of a game tonight, Jared Kuehl,” McDonnell said.
Kuehl was all over the field, lining up as an outside linebacker both on and off the line of scrimmage. He also manned the middle and dropped into pass coverage.
“I can’t say enough about (Kuehl),” Farrell said. “He’s always been a great player and I literally saw him grow up in front of my eyes this camp, and tonight he put it on display. I can’t wait to see what he does going forward.”
And Kuehl wasn’t the only young Wildcat defender who showed up in San Diego. Redshirt freshmen safety Rick Ellison, playing just 77 miles from his hometown of Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., also finished with 10 tackles in his first career start. True freshman cornerback Prince Smith (four tackles) and true freshman safety Pop Lacey (two tackles) impressed in their collegiate debuts, as did redshirt freshman linebacker Quinlan Dean (four tackles), redshirt freshman corner Isiah Perkins (four tackles) and redshirt freshman safety Michael Balsamo (two tackles).
The first start for sophomore quarterback Trevor Knight was a bit rockier. Knight missed a wide-open Neil O’Connor in the first quarter on a play that should have given UNH a 7-0 lead. And Knight finished 4-for-16 for 37 yards.
It wasn’t the start he wanted, but it’s important to remember he was playing against a defense that ranked in the top 10 in nine defensive categories last year, including total defense (287.3 yards per game allowed, fifth best in the FBS) and scoring defense (16.4 points per game allowed, seventh best in the FBS). And the Aztecs are expected to be just as good this season.
“They were very good schematically, they were always in the right place, and they were very athletic,” Crossan said of the San Diego State defense. “They’re a great team. Holy Cross is a very good team, but it’s definitely going to be different and very different for all the young guys. So it’s good getting this game under our belt and getting ready to go.”
Holy Cross will be visiting the brand new Wildcat Stadium this Saturday for UNH’s home opener. The Crusaders recorded an impressive win in their season opener, a 51-24 win at Morgan State, but they’re no San Diego State.
“We showed up and battled with them tonight,” McDonnell said, “now we’ve got to go back and get ready for Holy Cross.”
(Tim O’Sullivan can be reached at 369-3341, tosullivan@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @tosullivan20.)