Buffalo rumbles past Waynesburg, 59-36
WAYNESBURG — After a thrilling victory over Washington & Jefferson College in its regular-season finale, the Waynesburg University football team couldn’t keep up with Buffalo State University’s offense and suffered a 59-36 defeat in the ECAC Southwest Bowl on Saturday, Nov. 22, at John F. Wiley Stadium.
“I don’t think we had any letdown this week,” Waynesburg coach Rick Shepas said. “We had some guys injured from W&J and took a couple of days off this week, but we had a good practice week and came in with the right attitude. You got to give Buffalo State a lot of credit. They are a good football team and they exploited some of the match-ups.”
Both offenses were clicking on the afternoon, combining for 905 total yards and 49 first downs.
With the loss, Waynesburg is now 1-4 in its last five ECAC Bowl games, while Buffalo State improves to 4-0 in postseason bowl games.
Buffalo State, who got into the Waynesburg area late after battling snowy conditions in western New York, had an unusual week of practice thanks to Mother Nature.
“It’s an amazing story for us this week,” Bengals coach Jerry Boyles said. “It took us around 11 hours to get down here and we didn’t practice outside all week because of the weather. We had a couple of our starters and coaches not make it on campus until Thursday morning. It was a unique circumstance and you can’t control the weather.”
After the Bengals (8-3) fumbled on their opening play, the Yellow Jackets (8-3) took advantage of the short field when quarterback Carter Hill hooked up with wideout Tim Cooper for a 15-yard touchdown 18 seconds into the contest.
BSU responded on their next drive when quarterback Kyle Hoppy connected with wide receiver Ryan Carney for a 51-yard scoring toss to make it a 7-7 deadlock.
Hoppy found Carney again for a score midway through the first quarter, this one an 18-yard passing play as the visitors grabbed its first lead of the day.
After the Bengals stretched their lead to 21-7 with a 23-yard touchdown pass to wideout Mike Doherty, the Yellow Jackets responded with a score of their own via a 26-yard scoring strike to wide receiver Bernie Thompson from Hill with 4:48 left in the second quarter.
BSU ended the first half with a one-yard plunge into the end zone by Hoppy and a 52-yard field goal by Marc Montana with triple zeros on the scoreboard.
“Tackling and blocking will win you football games,” Boyles said. “Being so late in the season, you sometimes don’t practice as hard and stay away from being too physical. We executed our game plan and all 11 guys on the field were on the same page.”
After the teams only scored 15 points in the third quarter, both squads exploded in the final 15 minutes with 35 points.
The Bengals scored the first two touchdowns of the quarter, but Waynesburg attempted the comeback with a pair of touchdown passes from Hill to tailback Willie Leavell.
Despite the two quick scores, BSU officially put the game away with a 4-yard touchdown toss to Doherty from Hoppy with 2:17 left in the game.
Hoppy threw for 335 yards and five touchdowns, while Doherty caught a game-high 15 receptions for 201 yards and was named the ECAC Southwest Bowl MVP.
“They are very dynamic on offense,” Shepas said. “They can run the ball up the middle and they have a couple of big wideouts on the outside. They are just hard to match-up against and I think this is the fourth time this season that they have scored over 50 points in a game.”
Hill finished his illustrious career with the Yellow Jackets with 282 yards on 19-of-35 passing with five touchdowns.
Hill sets the single-season touchdown pass record with 34 and is the career leader in scoring tosses with 72. Hill is also second in career passing yards at Waynesburg.