By Allen Lessels
NEFJ Staff
DURHAM, N.H. — The University of New Hampshire football team put together its most complete game of the year to knock off Monmouth, 33-20, on Saturday in Wildcat Stadium in front of 5,108 fans to keep its FCS tournament hopes alive.
The Wildcats improved to 6-4 overall and 4-2 in the Coastal Athletic Association. They have two games remaining in the regular season and know they must win out to get into the conversation to be considered for the 24-team field for the FCS tournament.
Monmouth fell to 4-6 overall and 2-4 in the league.
UNH’s faces a major test next Saturday at home at 1 p.m. against Stony Brook, the surprise team of the league and one of the surprises in the country.
The Seawolves beat UAlbany, 24-6, Saturday at home and are now 8-2 overall and 5-1 in the CAA under first-year head coach Billy Cosh. Last year, they went 0-10 overall and 0-8 in the league and they were picked in the league’s pre-season poll to finish last again this year.
The Wildcats will look to serve up more of what they dished out against Monmouth.
“I was really happy with the performance all around and I thought that was the cleanest game we’ve played in all three phases,” said head coach Rick Santos. “We’ve shown flashes throughout the year of how good a team we can be and I thought we finally put it together.”
Monmouth came in leading the CAA in scoring at 39.2 points per game.
The kicking game was a key.
Nick Mazzie, a junior out of Boxford and Central Catholic, was four-for-four on field goals for a career-best day with makes or 42, 35, 35 and 31 yards in windy conditions and made all three of his conversion attempts.
Senior Sean Lehane of Milford, Mass. averaged 51.3 yards on his three punts. His long of 55 sent the returner back and was muffed with UNH recovering the ball on the Monmouth 5-yard line. He has made 14 of his 17 field goal attempts this season.
Two plays later senior quarterback Seth Morgan hit grad transfer Logan Tomlinson for a 5-yard score.
The game-plan called for maintaining possession of the ball as long as possible to keep the Monmouth offense off the field and it worked to perfection.
UNH held the ball for 41 minutes 37 seconds to Monmouth’s 18:23.
Morgan completed 25 of his 40 passes for 205 yards and a pair of touchdowns, the other was another 5-yarder to sophomore Colby Ramshaw.
Redshirt freshman Denzell Gibson, who had 37 carries in limited time through the first eight games, carried 16 times for a game-best 88 yards and scored UNH’s last TD on an 11-yard run with 12:12 to go in the fourth period.
Safety Wande Owens, a grad transfer from Yale, again led the Wildcats in tackles with eight and forced a fumble and also recovered one forced by senior safety Brendan Tighe of Lowell.
There were no interceptions in the game and UNH recovered three fumbles and Monmouth came up with one.
The Wildcats were losing the turnover battle early in the season: the defense had four takeaways through the first five games. They have had nine in the last five games, seven in the last three.
“I think our recent success in getting the ball out is a direct reflection of our practice habits,” Owens said. “We have made a big emphasis on punching the ball out in scout and when we go good on good. We keep practicing those habits and they’re starting to show up in the games.”
Tighe had seven tackles and senior linebacker Ryan Toscano had six, including a sack.
Sone Ntoh, a grad transfer from Harvard, scored his nation’s best 21st rushing touchdown on an 18-yard run in the second quarter.
Monmouth senior Derek Robertson threw a pair of touchdown passes to give him a CAA-best 25 for the year. But he completed only 17 of his 34 passes for 198 yards, well under his league- leading average of 316 yards a game.