Midwest league football title now in sight for St. Ambrose

by Tom Johnston
from: The Dispatch - Rock Island Argus

Sunday, October 21st, 2007

When Tyler Driscoll managed to haul in a tipped pass and turn it into a 44-yard touchdown early in the second quarter of St. Ambrose University's Saturday football showdown with Olivet Nazarene, it kick-started a sluggish Bee bunch.

SAU's critical 28-7 victory at Brady Street Stadium was capped by Kevin Linn's second sack of the day, finally taming the Tigers in the Mid-States Football Association Midwest League battle of the final Midwest unbeatens.

Pretty good bookends to a game in which SAU jumped out to a 28-0 lead and mostly dominated before the Bees (5-2, 4-0 and ranked No. 13 in the NAIA) slugged through a head-shaking fourth-quarter performance.

"We had too many penalties, missed assignments, dropped footballs, underthrown footballs," said first-year head coach Mike Magistrelli. "We did a little bit of everything to make this game close when we had opportunities to really make it a blowout almost."

Magistrelli called Saturday's game "a weird deal" with the way it played out. On ONU's first possession, SAU's defense allowed three first downs on a 45-yard drive that ended with a missed field goal.

SAU's defense then didn't allow a first down until ONU's second drive of the second half, which netted three more first downs and again ended on a missed field goal.

The defense allowed just 249 yards of offense and got the shutout with ONU (3-4, 3-1) getting its points on Justin Carmean's fourth-quarter, 18-yard interception return on a ball that bounced off receiver Mike Hayward's hands.

Meanwhile, SAU's offense was clicking -- well, at least part of it -- for a while. Senior quarterback Jim DuPage was forced to do most of the work in the air as the grounded running game was held to 63 yards. Through three quarters, he completed 27 of 37 passes for 366 yards and three TDs -- strikes to Driscoll, Hayward (nine yards) and Nick Smither (73 yards).

But then against ONU's all-out blitz, the Bees were bumbling. Of their 459 yards of offense, only 43 came on 17 fourth-quarter snaps in which the Bees' drives in the final 15 minutes ended with three punts and two picks.

DuPage finished with 396 yards passing, but completed just 1 of his last 11 passes for 30 yards.

Not being sharp for 60 minutes gave the Bees plenty to work on as they try to milk out their fifth Midwest League title since 2000.

"It concerns me in the fact that it's a matter of execution and at this point in the season we should be executing at a higher level than we did today at times," said Magistrelli.

"We thought we could come out and get a much better run game going," said Driscoll, who led SAU receivers with 147 yards in seven grabs. Hayward hauled in nine of DuPage's passes for 92 yards.

As it turned out, it all came down to the Bee D as the fourth quarter was almost all in SAU territory. It led to horrible flashbacks, Linn said, of his freshman year when ONU rallied for a 35-31 victory.

"Basically, it was a long, long fourth quarter -- it felt as long as the entire first half," said Linn, the Pleasant Valley prep whose eight tackles trailed only Chance Jenkins' 11. "I reached a new intensity level that half than I had all season. It came from their team talking, our guys getting riled up. ... The blood was flowing."

But it was a subdued celebration despite now controlling their own destiny the final three weeks with games -- at Iowa Wesleyan and at home vs. Quincy and Trinity International.

"It's huge," said Driscoll of the victory. "They were 3-0 in conference and we were 3-0. We needed to get this one under our belts."

No matter how they did it.