The best of the rest – The Villanova Wildcats

by Joseph Birmingham

Friday December 18, 2009 

The best of the rest – The Villanova Wildcats thumbnail

With all the attention being focused on the Division I-A and BCS approved lineup over the next three weeks, a local team came to the forefront and took home the highest honor in I-AA, the football championship subdivision title, much to the surprise of the Montana Grizzlies who may have entered tonight’s game assuming they would come out the victors.  The Colonial Athletic Conference is arguably the toughest conference in Division I-AA and after tonight, the best team in the CAA is also the owner of the FCS title.

The Villanova Wildcats football squad made it to the game against Montana with a record of 13-1.  Montana led the Big Sky going undefeated at 14-0 before running into the Philly team that kept a much lower national profile during their 2009 campaign but proved to have enough talent to pull off the victory.

At the start of the game, Montana was the only undefeated team in Division I-AA, but the Wildcats were able to hand the Big Sky conference 12 time champions their first loss and prevent their second undefeated season in the past three years.  Winning this game gives some credibility to the East Coast school’s program.

This final game was a close one but the bottom line was the Wildcats dominated the line of scrimmage and were virtually unstoppable on the ground chewing up almost 34 minutes of possession as they rushed for 352 yards and had nearly 500 total yards of offense en route to the 23-21 victory.

Villanova was a strong team all year, scoring 449 points and allowing 190 while going 7-1 in the CAA and 13-1 overall.   Their only loss came at New Hampshire, in a game they should have won, but lost 28-24; but they later made up for the loss with a shellacking of the more northern Wildcats 46-7 on December 5th when they played in Philadelphia.

These Villanova Wildcats have shown steady improvement since their low in 2005 when they went 4-7, with records of  6-5, 7-4, 10-3 until this years near perfect 13-1 campaign.

The win came in an unconventional way, with the bulk of the rushing yards being contributed by players that are not even running backs as WR Matt Szczur and QB Chris Whitney both had over 100 yards rushing for the Wildcats.    Szczur had 14 rushes for 159 yards and 2 touchdowns and Whitney added 103 yards on 14 rushes to complement his solid passing statistics of 10-13 for 142 yards, with a touchdown and an interception.   Junior Tight End Chris Farmer caught his first career touchdown pass in the third quarter to put Villanova ahead 16-14 for their first lead since an early 3-0 score in the first.

After falling behind 14-3 before the half, the Wildcats came roaring back to score 20 consecutive points before Montana managed a touchdown in the final minute when the game was a two score contest and the score meant little to the new champion Villanova Wildcats.  The first half was dominated by Montana, but the second half was entirely Villanova’s show, the final score making it seem closer than it was, but this game could have easiliy been 30-14 or more but for a key play or two.

Congratulations to the Villanova Wildcats, they have come a long way from being a sub .500 team and totally deserve the national spotlight and all the recognition this win should bring.  It is a shame that tomorrow the early division I-A bowl games start and focus will be on them and the BCS high profile lineups, but those of us local sports enthusiasts know these guys played one hell of a game and look to be good enough to make a run again at it next year !

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Filed Under College Football

Comments

One Response to “The best of the rest – The Villanova Wildcats”

  1. rick on December 19th, 2009 1:29 am

    Heck of a win for Nova! They will always be a basketball school, but what a great day for the football team.

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