WALTHAM – From being named head coach in June to being one win away from a Northeast 10 title in November, it’s been a wild five months for Saj Thakkar.

Thakkar was hired as Bentley’s OC in the spring, promoted to interim coach in April when Alvin Reynolds stepped down and was then named head coach on June 16th. Fast forward to a beautiful fall afternoon on Saturday and thanks to a 31-6 blowout of Assumption on Senior Day, Thakkar and the Falcons are a win away next week against New Haven from the NE10 title.

“We have a really special group,” Thakkar said after the win when asked if he expected to be in this spot in Year 1 after leaving Harvard following a five-year stint as running backs coach. “This is a really special group. This team was already a special team. This was a talented team that’s won a lot of games here. There’s a lot of fourth and fifth year seniors. It just speaks volumes to the kids and our staff, the coaches. Being able to kind of put this together and instill new schemes, new culture, all essentially since mid-July once we got hired. So, it’s really good. This team is ready and this team is built to win now.”

The senior ceremonies took a while pregame, as Thakkar and his staff helped honor 20 guys. A huge part of the transition being so seamless was because of that upperclass leadership.

“They made it so, so much easier,” he said. “This group has been through so much that they’ve just really developed this culture of sticking together. There’s great peer-to-peer leadership. You’re talking about a group that’s gone through three head coaches legitimately in a year, year-and-a-half. It’s so telling that there’s 30-plus guys that stuck together and stayed out here when that could have easily not been the case. I’m so proud of them.”

First impressions are everything. Thakkar was open and honest with the team when he first took over and they’ve bought into everything he’s had to say since his first team meeting.

“I just said ‘there’s nothing we can do, we can’t control what happened,’ Thakkar said when asked about his initial message once he took over. “We really can’t control what happened. All we can really do is put our heads down and get to work. I asked them for a little bit of blind faith in me, but it all started with bringing in a great staff and starting to coach with love and connection as opposed to scheme. Everything we do here is fun, it’s competitive. We’ve got a great locker room, a great culture, these guys love football. That’s the other thing. We just built off of that. Things have worked out – we had some tough losses early – but we learned from them and bounced back and now we’re in a position where we control our own destiny and there’s no other position you’d rather be in.”

While Thakkar may have asked for some blind faith from his new players, he’s had immense support from his wife Bobbi-Jo and children Caiden and Ensley.

“They’ve been awesome, my wife’s amazing,” he said. “My kids are so much fun. They’ve been tremendous through this whole transition. Obviously, there’s been some long nights and some frustration, but they’ve been amazing and I can’t thank them enough.”

Thakkar’s previous family at Harvard has also been a huge support system and sounding board as he’s learned on the fly as well.

“Those guys are my…I’m friends with them for life now,” Thakkar said with a huge smile. “Being there for five years, a lot of those guys are some of my closest friends. Not just in the profession, just really close friends in general. They text me. We call every week, ‘good luck,’ ‘how’d it go?’ type of stuff. They’ve been awesome. It’s been great. I’ve had a ton of support from them.”

The transition from the Ivy League to D2 football is obviously much different, but recruiting a certain type of athlete to play for the Crimson was actually helpful when switching over to working with the athletes at a school like Bentley.

“I kind of knew what to expect,” he added. “Being from the area and being familiar with Bentley, it’s a very similar type of kid you’re recruiting as far as a highly-motivated students, high achievers in the classroom, but also a really serious football player. A lot of guys on our team now were on our recruiting board when I was at Harvard, so it’s a very similar type of kid and they’re just really excited for the future here.”

As for the game on Saturday, it was pretty much over at halftime as Thakkar’s team came out flying and never looked back.

The Falcons led 7-0 after one on a 24-yard touchdown pass from Mark Waid to Abel Lopes Jr. A six-yard TD catch from Rashon Bradford, an 87-yard TD catch and run for Lopes Jr. and a 42-yard field goal from Mason Campbell made it 24-0 at the half. Leading 24-6 in the fourth, Waid capped the scoring with a three-yard TD run.

Now at 6-3 overall and 5-1 in the conference – as is New Haven – Thakkar and the Falcons will head to Connecticut for a Northeast 10 winner-take-all showdown.

Not bad for a guy who’s only been a head coach for a handful of months.

“It’s a lot like the Ivy League. You’ve got to bring it every week,” Thakkar said of his experience so far in the NE10. “That’s the thing. You have one bad game, you’re going to get beat, it doesn’t matter what the other team’s record is. There’s a lot of really good athletes, a lot of really good coaches who work hard and recruit really well. You’ve got to bring it every week and our guys have fought that challenge.

“It’s been amazing. Our guys get it and they know what’s in front of us.”