Army tries to extend home winning streak
The Black Knights will try to win their 13th straight home game when they host undefeated Colgate.
Colgate coach Dan Hunt says he really didn’t see this coming, and that’s easy to understand.
Heading into the season finale at Michie Stadium on Saturday against Army (8-2), Colgate is undefeated in nine games this season and has rekindled memories of the school’s famed 1932 team. Coach Andy Kerr guided those Raiders to a 9-0 record and had one overwhelming statistic — they shut out every team.
Hunt’s squad has done its best imitation, posting five shutouts to match the Championship Subdivision record set in 1978 by South Carolina State and easily win the Patriot League title. Lehigh’s second-quarter touchdown last Saturday in a 48-6 loss to the Raiders snapped a 70day, 29-quarter streak of zero touchdowns allowed dating to the fourth quarter of Colgate’s season opener against Holy Cross.
“We knew we were going
to have a good team,” said Hunt, whose Raiders are on a 14-game winning streak. “We set goals. I don’t think anybody set the goal of being undefeated, and I certainly don’t think anybody set the goal of giving up 29 points on the season. If they had, I would have had to tell them to check themselves a little bit.”
Some numbers: Colgate has outscored its nine opponents by an average of 31.9-3.2 and the Raiders have taken the notion of getting an early jump to the extreme— they’ve outscored teams 67-0 in the first quarter and 195-9 in the first half.
“I’m surprised by the staggering numbers,” Hunt said. “I’ve been coaching a long time. I’ve never seen a team put up numbers like that. Somebody asked me the other day why we weren’t more aggressive on kick returns. I said, ‘Well, we’re only returning one kick a game.’ It’s just crazy. You never expect to do that. Here we are going into our last game of the season and there hasn’t been one second that we’ve been behind all year.”
Army represents a step up in class for Colgate, ranked sixth in the FCS, and the Black Knights have been dominant at Michie Stadium the past two seasons, winning 12 straight. A victory would give them their second straight unbeaten season at home, something the team hasn’t accomplished since the mid-1980s when it won 13 in a row over two seasons.
“It’s going to be a challenge for us to play our very best,” Army coach Jeff Monken said. “I’ve watched them play.”