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| Alma shocked the D-III football world with a huge fourth quarter at Mount Union, and a last-minute TD catch by Cole Thomas. Alma athletics photo |
The second round of the 2023 Division III football playoffs contained a bunch of thrilling games, but perhaps none more than Alma scoring 24 in the fourth quarter at Mount Union and Cortland going for two, then surviving when a field goal went wide left.
Of Cortland, Alma, Johns Hopkins or Randolph-Macon, someone will be playing in the Stagg Bowl for the first time. All four advanced, and Johns Hopkins and Alma will be hosting quarterfinal games, along with UW-La Crosse and Wartburg.
Down 10-0 since halftime, Alma capped a 24 point fourth quarter with a 96-yard touchdown drive with 10 seconds left to stun Mount Union 24-20. Carter St. John found Cole Thomas with a 2-yard touchdown pass on the 11th play of the game winning drive to seal the win and a place in the quarterfinals. St. John sold it with a run, then threw the jump pass to Thomas, who was wide open.
Mount Union opened the scoring late in the first half on a DeAndre Parker 2-yard touchdown run. The Purple Raiders added a field goal to push their advantage to 10-0 at halftime. A Mount Union field goal with 5:02 left in the fourth quarter gave the Purple Raiders a 20-10 lead. Alma answered immediately with a 76 yard touchdown reception by Nate Webb. The Scots were then able to force a punt and give St. John and the Scot offense one last chance from their own 4-yard line.
St. John threw for 208 of his 303 yards in the fourth quarter. Braxton Plunk finished 33-45 for 261 yards and two interceptions without a touchdown. Wayne Ruby, Jr. collected 14 catches for 140 yards in his final game at Mount Union.
It is the second time in four brackets that Mount Union has lost at home in the second round.
Zac Boyes bounced back from a fourth-quarter interception as his team got the ball back one play later on a fumble recovery in Cortland's win against Grove City. Cortland converted two fourth-down situations on its winning drive. Boyes ran for 6 yards on fourth-and-5 from the Cortland 48-yard line. Three plays later Ben Bladel sacked Boyes, setting up a fourth-and-15 from the Cortland 49-yard line, but Boyes hit Cole Burgess for a 24-yard completion. Andrew Tarpey followed with a 19-yard catch to the 8-yard line and Jaden AlfanoStJohn had a 6-yard reception to the 2-yard line. Two plays later, on third-and-goal, AlfanoStJohn ran in for the touchdown. On the two-point conversion, Boyes rolled out right and found Kendrick just over the goal line to give the Red Dragons the lead.
The remaining 1:24 was almost too much time, as Grove City quarterback Logan Pfeuffer hit Ryan Heckathorn over the middle to get into Red Dragon territory, then Pfeuffer ran for 9 yards, and a short completion and a slant got Grove City to the Cortland 20 with 9 seconds left. From there, however, Caleb Kuechly's 37-yard field goal attempt went wide left and the celebration was on for Cortland.
UW-Whitewater outlasted Wheaton 49-42 in a seesaw game at Perkins Stadium. Egon Hein’s fourth quarter interception of Ben Thorson set up Tamir Thomas’s fourth touchdown of the day, a 20 yard run up the middle to give the Warhawks a 49-35 lead with seven minutes to play and enough distance to hold Wheaton off. Tommy Coates scored on touchdown receptions of 50 and 56 yards in the second half to help the Warhawks rally from a 28-14 halftime deficit. Thomas rushed for 228 yards and two touchdowns, while catching three passes for two more touchdowns. Coates caught 8 passes for 169 yards and two touchdowns. Thorson finished 26-41 passing for 402 yards, five touchdowns and one interception in the loss.
Randolph-Macon shook off a first-round battle and dominated in the second round, defeating Ithaca 46-0. The Yellow Jackets' Brandon Evans picked off Ithaca's Colin Schumm three times, all in the first half, as the Bombers were limited to 103 yards of total offense and held the ball for just 17:49. Meanwhile, Mitchell Johnson ran for 145 yards and a touchdown, Nick Hale ran for 102 and two scores and the Yellow Jackets won a second-round game for the first time. Randolph-Macon racked up 565 yards of total offense in the win.
Aurora went up 14-0 early, but things started to go sideways for the Spartans when Keyser Helterbrand hit Ryan Bartol over the middle for a 55-yard touchdown catch late in the third. The Spartans then fumbled the ensuing kickoff and La Crosse recovered on the 27. Helterbrand found Bartol again for another TD pass to tie the game at 14. The teams traded touchdowns in the second quarter, but Helterbrand ran for a TD with 20 seconds left in the half to give UWL a 28-21 lead going into the half.
Helterbrand added a fourth TD pass on the first drive of the third quarter, and a fifth in the final stanza as the Eagles made sure there was no Aurora-vs.-the-WIAC-champ magic in 2023. La Crosse won 56-35. Helterbrand completed 11 of 15 passes for 317 yards and ran for 82 yards. Gabe Lynch put up 175 yards and a score on the ground for UW-La Crosse, which awaits North Central in the national quarterfinals.
Wartburg advances to play UW-Whitewater in the quarterfinals, as the Knights shut down Whitworth 42-20. The Bucs never led in the game, but ended the first quarter trailing only 7-6. Hunter Clasen scored the game's first touchdown with a 1-yard run on third down to cap drive set up when the Pirates were unable to convert on fourth-and-3 at the Wartburg 40-yard line. Whitworth responded with its only scoring possession of the half, going 76 yards in ten plays. Austin Ewing threw a two-yard pass to Dillon Kuk for the score, but the PAT hit the upright. Ewing completed a 44-yard pass to Evan Liggett and an 18-yard toss to Kuk during the drive.
The Knights began to pull away with three second quarter touchdowns. Clasen ran for his second score of the game from eight yards out with 8:28 to go. Quarterback Nile McLaughlin tossed touchdown passes of seven yards to Thomas Butters and 3 yards to Drake George over the final five minutes. The touchdown pass to George came on the final play of the half. Meanwhile, the Wartburg defense tightened down on the Pirate offense in the second quarter, limiting Whitworth to 25 yards on 17 plays, including minus-7 yards on the ground. Whitworth did not get a first down in the second and went 0-5 on third downs.
Johns Hopkins scored 17 fourth-quarter points to put the game away as the Blue Jays defeated Union 39-17. Spencer Uggla ran for 68 yards and three touchdowns in the win. Bay Harvey threw for a TD and ran for one as Johns Hopkins improved to 12-0. It's the third trip to the quarterfinals for Johns Hopkins, but the first time the Blue Jays are 12-0. Johns Hopkins led early by scores of 13-0 and 16-7, but carried just a 22-17 lead into the fourth quarter after a 24-yard field goal by Union's Max Gluck with just under three minutes remaining in the third quarter made it a five-point game. The Blue Jays answered Gluck's field goal with an eight-play, 70-yard drive that ate just over four minutes off the clock and was capped by a 1-yard touchdown run by senior Spencer Uggla that extended the lead to 29-17. Uggla's touchdown run was set up by a 20-yard Bay Harvey-to-Burke Griffin completion that converted a fourth-and-4 one play before the touchdown. The JHU defense then created turnovers on back-to-back Union possessions to help put the game away as senior Luca Lutzel and sophomore Jack Schondelmayer came up with interceptions that led to 10 Blue Jay points in a span of less than two minutes.
Like UW-La Crosse, Trinity (Texas) battled from an early 14-0 deficit to tie the game at North Central, but the Cardinals scored the next four touchdowns and nine of the next 10 to win going away from Trinity, 71-28. Luke Lehnen threw four touchdowns and just three incomplete passes as he completed 11 of 14 passes for 245 yards. Lehnen also ran for 94 yards on the afternoon. The North Central defense got to Tucker Horn for his first three interceptions on the season after Horn started off 9-for-13 for 96 yards in the first quarter.