College football in Rhode Island ends Saturday with mixed results for the season: two winners and two losers.
The University of Rhode Island is 6-4, 4-3 in the Colonial Athletic Association, and assured of its third winning record in the last four full seasons. A victory over Albany (3-7, 2-5) this week will match the 7-4 posted by the 2021 Rams.
Jim Fleming has restored respect to the URI program in his nine years as head coach. Going from 1-11 in 2014, his first season, to possible back-to-back 7-4 finishes merits a round of applause. Winning in Kingston is an expectation now, not an aspiration. Ranking in the Top 25 is no longer a surprise. All-Conference players are the rule, not the exception. Rams in the NFL? Yes.
A playoff appearance remains an elusive target. Rhody has not qualified for the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) tournament since 1985, when the Rams won the old Yankee Conference and lost to Furman in the quarterfinals. The Rams reached the semifinals in 1984, losing at Montana State. Each of those teams won 10 games.
A 7-4 finish this year is unlikely to attract a playoff invitation.
This season has been a wild ride. URI started fast with victories at Stony Brook – its first in four visits – and Bryant. Ninth-ranked Delaware led 35-7 at the half, and cruised to a 42-21 victory. No. 24 Pittsburgh, coached by URI alum Pat Narduzzi, rushed for 271 yards in a 45-24 beating.
The Rams rebounded with a 38-10 drubbing of Brown, a 17-10 escape from Elon, and a 48-46 seven-overtime thriller at Monmouth.
No. 10 William & Mary provided another stiff CAA test at Williamsburg, and the Rams fell a two-point conversion shy of a stunning upset. Trailing by seven points with 2:56 to play, URI covered 99 yards in 16 plays and scored on a seven-yard Kasim Hill-to-Caleb Warren pass with no time on the clock. Fleming chose to go for the victory, but Hill’s run for the two-point conversion failed.
URI snapped a 14-year losing streak against Maine with a 26-22 triumph. Hill rushed for two touchdowns and passed for one. In a playoff atmosphere last Saturday at Durham, N.H., the 22nd-ranked Rams took a 28-24 lead over the No. 21 Wildcats with 7:07 to play on Ed Lee’s 15-yard touchdown catch. The margin almost held. UNH rallied and delivered the knockout punch – a 26-yard TD pass from Max Brosmer to D.J. Linkins with 17 seconds left – for a 31-28 victory.
Salve Regina, Rhode Island’s Division III football school, finished its season 6-4, 3-3 in the Commonwealth Coast Conference, after beating Husson, 24-10, last Saturday.
The big news in Newport occurred on Oct. 16 when graduate student Joey Mauriello broke Jim Callahan’s 26-year-old record of 3,896 career rushing yards. Mauriello finished with 134 yards against Husson, for a total of 4,180 yards.
Brown, 3-6 – 1-5 in the Ivy League, after losing to Columbia, 31-24 in overtime – will finish with its eighth consecutive non-winning record, and its third consecutive losing season since James Perry succeeded Phil Estes as head coach. Brown is 10-39 in the last five seasons, and last won the Ivy League championship in 2005.
Perry’s Bears have teased their fans this season. They erased a 24-10 deficit in the fourth quarter of their opener against Bryant and defeated the Bulldogs, 44-38, in double overtime. A week later they fell behind Harvard, 28-0, rallied, and lost 35-28. They never recovered from a 38-3 hole at URI and lost, 38-10.
Brown led all the way in a 27-20 triumph at Central Connecticut and then lost to undefeated Princeton, 35-19, and Cornell, 24-21. They did not lead in either of those Ivy League contests. They rallied from a 21-0 deficit against Columbia, but five turnover stymied their effort.
The high point of this season will be the Halloween weekend 34-31 upset of previously undefeated Penn – Brown’s first Ivy League victory at Brown Stadium since 2016. Aidan Gilman, a senior playing his first meaningful minutes, threw a nine-yard touchdown pass to Allen Smith with 1:19 to play for the deciding points before 4,000 spectators. He completed 22 of 38 passes for 245 yards. Before relieving starter Jake Wilcox in the second quarter, he had completed three passes for 10 yards. His performance earned him Ivy League offensive player of the week recognition.
The low point will be without question the 69-17 humiliation at Yale the following week. The Bulldogs scored 35 points in the second quarter and led 52-3 at the half. They rushed for 340 yards and passed for 218 in the game. The 69 points allowed eclipsed the previous record of 65 set by Princeton in 2019.
“That was not Brown football,” Perry said after the rout. So what is Brown football? Perry, perhaps the best quarterback in Brown history, is 7-22 heading to Dartmouth for the 2022 finale. He had the best quarterback in the Ivy League, his nephew E.J. Perry, for two years and still won only four games. His teams can score, but opponents can score more – not a good combination for coaching longevity.
Bryant, 3-7, 1-3 in the Big South features one of the best quarterbacks around. Sophomore Zevi Eckhaus had another eye-popping game in a 48-40 loss at Gardner Webb on Oct. 29. He passed for 450 yards and rushed for 30 yards – Bryant single-game records for passing yardage and total yardage. He bruised his effort with three interceptions.
Eckhaus passed for four touchdowns in Bryant’s first Big South victory, 43-37 over Campbell, before a capacity crowd at Beirne Stadium Nov. 5, and rallied the Bulldogs in the second half last week before falling to undefeated and fifth-ranked Holy Cross, 36-29. Bryant trailed 22-0 at the half, but only by seven points with three minutes to play. The Crusaders ran out the clock. Eckhaus passed for 348 yards and three touchdowns, and rushed for 38 yards and a TD. He was intercepted twice.
The Bulldogs suffered three tough losses before Saturday: 38-37 at Florida International on Sept. 1, 44-38 at Brown on Sept. 17, and 24-23 to Charleston Southern on Oct. 15. Charleston Southern blocked a Bryant field goal attempt as time expired.
The Big South was the only viable football option when Bryant joined the America East Conference this year. The Bulldogs will wrap up 2022 at Robert Morris.
