Covering UMHB Athletics and the stories behind the score
BELTON- You have to go back to 2018 to find the last time UMHB played consecutive road games during the regular season. In those mid-October contests against Howard Payne and Belhaven, the Cru outscored its opponents 104-0. Now, three seasons and two national titles later, UMHB will be looking for consecutive road victories once again.
BELTON- The regular season is halfway over for the fourth-ranked UMHB football team. Of course, if the Crusaders have it their way, this past Saturday’s 38-7 victory over Austin College will mark the first third of a 15-game journey in 2022, and for the most part, UMHB has looked every bit of a national title contender, entering its Week 6 matchup at ETBU with a 3-0 ASC record.
BELTON- After being embedded in the hype of the Top 10 matchup against Hardin-Simmons a week ago, getting set for a contest the following week against a winless Austin College team had the potential to be a challenge for the UMHB on Saturday afternoon.
BELTON- No longer are there questions as to “if” UMHB will beat Hardin-Simmons in this year’s annual meeting. The Crusaders already did.
BELTON- Rivalry week has arrived.
It is a matchup, whether admitted or not, that is circled on the calendars of both Hardin-Simmons and UMHB well before fall camp even gets underway.
BELTON- Before Saturday night’s game against Southwestern even got underway, there were loud cheers from the crowd. Pete Fredenburg, the architect of the nationally-dominant UMHB football program, was recognized for his legendary role in the program’s history, with the field named “Fredenburg Field” in his honor.
BELTON- How do you push forward after losing a national championship-caliber game? By simply moving on.
That was one of UMHB head coach Larry Harmon’s main points in the early minutes of his weekly press conference on Monday morning, as he fielded questions, almost all of which were related to Saturday’s road loss to now-No. 4 Wisconsin-Whitewater.
WHITEWATER, Wis.- With just over three minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, the UMHB offense set up from the Wisconsin-Whitewater one-yard line. The UW-Whitewater faithful had been quiet for much of the fourth quarter, and it was easy to see why. The Crusaders of UMHB had backed up their ranking as the top team in the land, and were knocking on the door to a 10-point lead, already up 24-21 against the No. 6 team in the country.
BELTON- UMHB retained its spot atop the D3football.com Top 25 poll on Sunday afternoon, and rightfully so. The Crusaders handily defeated an exceptional Muhlenberg team that entered the matchup ranked No. 11 in the nation, 62-13.
That was only the beginning of a tough September for the Cru, however, who are now tasked with…
BELTON- On the Sunday prior to top-ranked UMHB’s season-opener against No. 11 Muhlenberg, head coach Larry Harmon gathered his unity council, which consisted of some of the team’s most veteran leaders.
And he asked them a question. A simple question.