BALTIMORE — Zachary Wilkinson put it into words best on Saturday afternoon. All of the work, the preparation, the grueling days of boot camp in August, the challenges of playing a double round-robin conference schedule, brought UMHB to this moment. A point, where, under blue skies in Baltimore, Maryland, the Crusader offense reached the red zone, trailing by seven.
“I was just trying to keep everybody calm,” Wilkinson, UMHB’s starting center, said later. “Trying to remind everybody where we came from this season. 5-3 in the regular season, you don’t tend to make the quarterfinals. Nobody expected us to be here but us.”
The magnititude of UMHB’s last drive cannot be overstated. In a national quarterfinal that opened with Johns Hopkins’ high-flying passing game—not a phrase spoken often this season for a squad that came in averaging just 216.3 passing yards per game—-both defenses had dug their heels in. Getting past midfield was hard enough. Red zone opportunities were rare. The Cru had already punted eight times entering this final drive, struggling to run the ball against JHU’s stalwart defensive front, which in turn made passing windows just a little tighter for UMHB quarterback Jake Wright. Finding an ample amount of time to look downfield and complete passes was a challenge all afternoon as JHU’s defensive line applied constant pressure. But with their backs against the wall, UMHB’s offense did what was seen throughout the entirety of the playoff run: they made plays.
Needing a touchdown to tie it, The Cru faced its first third down just three plays into the drive. But Wright found Kamerin Ferguson out of the backfield for a short completion, as Ferguson initially bobbled the pass before diving ahead for an eight-yard gain. The yardage needed for a first down? Eight yards. Ferguson gained five on a run the next play, then drew contact as Wright lofted a pass to the junior running back downfield, resulting in a pass interference penalty that pushed UMHB up to its own 42-yard line. On the sidelines, there was a sense of confidence that this drive would end in the end zone.
The poise from the offense was certainly evident, giving a clear example to Harmon’s comments earlier in the week when he talked about his squad’s performance in those high-pressure, make-or-break playoff situations The Cru had found themselves in over each of the previous three weeks. “We feel like we’re pretty battle-tested,” Harmon noted, “so close games, momentum swings, tough game situations aren’t bothering us.”
They kept the drive going with an 11-yard catch by Asa Osbourn, yet another reception out of the backfield as Osbourn ran hard-nosed through contact up the left sideline. The big play came on the next snap. Wright dropped back and with JHU’s pass rush bearing down, found Christopher Gacayan in the flat. Gacayan pulled in the ball, set his feet, and turned up field. He made a defender miss as he cut left, then bounced off three tacklers and stayed on his feet, before being brought down on the JHU 26. A pickup of 21 yards.
“With two minutes left, I told Durand [Hill], ‘We’re kicking the extra point and taking it to overtime’,” Harmon said. “We weren’t going to go for the win. Durand said, ‘I got you.’ That’s how confident I was [that we were going to score].”
Back-to-back receptions by T.J. Rone and Jerry Day Jr., Wright’s fourth and fifth consecutive completions of the drive, put UMHB within sight of the goal line on JHU’s 12. But on first down, Wright was left with no decision but to throw it away on first down, pressured from his left. Second down had a similar result, as he managed to stay on his feet, avoiding a near-sack, but threw it out of bounds. Then came third down. Wright dropped back and JHU’s four-man front rushed into the backfield, hitting him within three seconds of the snap. He was sacked for a loss of nine, bringing up a game-deciding fourth down.
There was a chance they could get the ball back, still holding all three timeouts. But it was fairly clear that this drive would be the best chance at a touchdown, the clock having ticked below two minutes. 4th & 19, however, ended with the same result. Wright never saw Will Seibert chasing him down from his blindside, but he saw the pocket collapsing and ran right, still looking downfield. But Seibert brought him down before he could escape, and with it went UMHB’s promising drive. “
“We knew they were very talented on the D-Line, and that pass protection was going to be an issue,” Harmon said. “We knew we’d have to get the ball out a little bit quicker and you didn’t want to be in third & long against them.”
“I just had to get the ball out quicker,” Wright added, when asked about facing the pass rush.
Towards the end of the press conference, Wilkinson, a senior and The Cru’s starting center, was asked for his perspective on what ended up being UMHB’s last offensive possession of the season. His full response described it all best. It wasn’t just a drive or just a game for this UMHB team. It was the culmination of a lot that can’t be desrcibed with numbers or metrics.
“I was just trying to keep everybody calm. Trying to remind everybody where we came from this season. 5-3 in the regular season, you don’t tend to make the quarterfinals. Nobody expected us to be here but us. I was really just talking to my guys; ‘We went through boot camp for this, we did early morning weights for this, everything we have is [12] yards away. At the end of the day, we didn’t score.”
No, they didn’t. And JHU’s offense, the one who raced out to a 17-0 lead behind well-run routes, a few broken coverages, and a stellar passing day for quarterback James Rinello, managed to convert a first down on the ensuing possession, thus sealing the Blue Jays’ victory.
But it would be difficult to look, at least from an outsider’s perspective, at the disappointment of the quarterfinal loss without acknowledging the immense importance of simply getting there. UMHB, the second-to-last team to receive an at-large bid, the ones who needed multiple results to go their way on the final day of the regular season to just get into the postseason, were one of eight teams still standing out of a field of 40.
As Wilkinson said, 5-3 in the regular season doesn’t usually translate into deep playoff runs. And especially not when your first three postseason opponents are a team that beat you 35-16 a season ago, another seeded No. 2 overall with two wins against you already, and a third ranked No. 14 nationally. Not to mention the fact that they won all three on the road, a tall task for any team, and yet one that The Cru proved it was capable of. UMHB was the Cinderella of this year’s playoffs, a squad that defied the odds week after week as the 35th overall seed in the tournament. And as they did so, they turned heads across the nation, in similar fashion to the way the Week 3 win at UW-Whitewater garnered national attention. But unlike that monumental regular season win at UWW, it wasn’t just one game; it was three.
The entire playoff run, Saturday included, was representative of a team that refused to quit when it seemed they could have. Trinity took a 22-21 lead with just 6:56 to play in the first round, having scored 10 unanswered points. But UMHB answered with a 71-yard touchdown drive, capped by Asa Osbourn’s go-ahead score, and pulled the momentum in San Antonio back in their favor. Hardin-Simmons essentially ran them out of Crusader Stadium in the highly-anticipated Top 15 matchup on Oct. 12, going up 44-0 through three quarters, and added another win on Nov. 9 in Abilene, 27-19. Yet UMHB used those two games as motivation in the second-round rematch with the Cowboys, and it was The Cru who caught the breaks in a 17-13 victory that sent a clear message to the rest of Division III, saying ‘we deserve to be in this playoff field.’ Linfield too, made a second-half comeback in the third round. The Wildcats, backed by their home crowd, cut UMHB’s comfortable 21-3 lead to 21-18 in the opening seconds of the fourth quarter. But the defense forced a punt, back-to-back interceptions, and a turnover on downs, while the offense found the end zone once more.
And there was a point when they could’ve thrown in the towel on Saturday, down 17-0 by the 7:21 mark of the second quarter in a game that was supposed to be a defensive battle. JHU had 208 passing yards and 11 completions by that point, including a strike from Rinello to a wide-open Robby Enright that went for 36 yards and a score. But rather than back away, UMHB responded, shutting out the Blue Jays for the remainder of the game, holding Rinello to just 104 more passing yards, and forcing a pair of turnovers on consecutive JHU possessions. They gave themselves a chance, and in the playoffs, especially against a team of JHU’s caliber, that’s all you can really ask for.
There are no moral victories in the playoffs, and even more so at UMHB. Belton is a place where national championship contention is an expectation, not a distant hope, and as Harmon said after The Cru’s win at Trinity, it’s that high standard that draws talented players to the program year after year. Saturday’s loss hurts because of how close victory was, and the early struggles that left UMHB facing a sizable deficit.
But the team that struggled for most of that 44-21 loss to Hardin-Simmons back on Oct. 12 was far from the same team that battled to the wire Johns Hopkins on Dec. 14. The turnaround is what should be remembered when this 2024 season is looked back upon. The re-direction of a team that stayed committed to each other and their coaching staff. They made a seemingly improable postseason run a reality.
Awesome season for truly committed players and coaches!