Elon’s Cheek rises up, leaves ’Nova behind
RADNOR » Mark Ferrante set three simple goals for his first year as the head football coach at Villanova.
The first objective was to have a winning season. Second on the agenda was to win the Colonial Athletic Association championship and No. 3 was to make the FCS playoffs.
Goals Nos. 1 and 3 are still attainable, but the chance to make the playoffs is on life support after Saturday’s 19-14 loss to 10th-ranked Elon at Villanova Stadium.
The No. 13 Wildcats will have to win out, and receive some help along the way, to have any shot at one of the 14 at-large bids to the 24team tournament. Two of the final three games are against ranked opponents (No. 19 Richmond and No. 23 Delaware).
That’s no easy task, even though the Spiders and Blue Hens lost Saturday.
“Our goal is to go 1-0 against Richmond,” Ferrante said. “We know there’s going to be another quarterback coming in here slinging the ball around because their quarterback (Downingtown East product Kyle Lauletta) is the leading passer in the league.”
Freshman quarterback Davis Cheek put the Wildcats in that must-run-thetable situation when he engineered a pair of scoring drives as the Phoenix (7-1 overall, 5-0 CAA) staged their fourth fourth-quarter comeback of the season to extend their winning streak to seven games and hand Villanova its second straight loss.
Cheek threw a 21-yard scoring pass to Tre Marsh to put Elon in front and then engineered a nineplay, 34-yard march that culminated in a 28-yard field goal by Owen Johnson, giving the Phoenix a five-point cushion it would not relinquish.
“This team doesn’t stop fighting until the clock hits zero,” Elon quarterback Davis Cheek said. “That’s the story of our team. No one gives up.”
Cheek continued to make a strong case for the Jerry Rice Award, given annually to the top freshman in the FCS. The 6-2, 200-pound rookie picked apart Villanova’s venerable defense. He completed 24 of 35 passes for a career-high 357 yards and two touchdowns.
Kortez Weeks was on the receiving end for 11 of those completions for 205 yards. The Phoenix also ran for 117 yards as a team to break Villanova’s streak of nine straight games without allowing a team to rush for 100 yards.
Cheek, though, man who made go.
“If there’s anybody better, I haven’t seen him,” Elon coach Curt Cignetti said.
As Cheek appeared to find open receivers on every throw, Villanova’s offense struggled again. The 14 points were the most the Wildcats (4-4, 2-3) scored in their last eight losses. Villanova punted seven times and had four three-andouts in its 12 possessions. It managed just 112 yards rushing and 137 yards through the air.
“We don’t play consistently enough on offense to sustain drives,” Ferrante said. “We hurt ourselves was that the offense even more with things like holding penalties. We are not consistent enough to overcome first-and-20 or second-and-16.”
A lot of Villanova’s inconsistency can be attributed to the rash of injuries the Wildcats have suffered on that side of the ball. Quarterback Zach Bednarczyk is out for the season, and so are running back Matt Gudzak, tight end Ryan Bell and receivers Changa Hodge and Alex Padovani, just to name a few.
“We’re playing a lot of young guys,” Ferrante said.
Of the 13 scholarship players Villanova brought in, 11 have played this season. Quarterback Kyle McCloskey became the latest true freshman to start when Ferrante turned to the rookie out of Germantown Academy following the injury to Zach Bednarczyk and the inconsistent play of redshirt sophomore Jack Schetelich.
McCloskey threw two touchdown passes, a 42yard strike to Aaron Forbes in the first quarter and a 24-yarder to Taurus Phillips to give the Wildcats the lead in the third quarter. He also amassed 202 yards of total offense (137 passing, 65 rushing) in his first career start.
Yet he did not give himself any pats on the back.
“It was good to get used to the speed of the game, but whether it was my first start or my 100th start there were definitely some plays that I needed to make. There were plays that were left on the field for sure. I’m happy I got to play, but there are no moral victories here. I wanted to win this game.”
That’s where the holding calls came into play. The Wildcats were flagged for holds three times and all three wiped out gains of at least eight yards. The last two erased what would have been a first down.
The biggest one came one play after Nowoola Awopetu returned a kickoff 65 yards following Johnson’s 28-yard field goal to give the Wildcats a first down at the Elon 35 with 4:34 to play in the game. Aaron Forbes gained 12 yards on first down, only to have the play erased by a holding call.
The drive stalled. Villanova punted and Elon was able to convert a pair of third-down situations into first downs and run out the clock and put the Wildcats in a must-win situation for the next three weeks to have any shot at playoffs.
“We’re just going to keep playing,” defensive lineman Ricky Young said. “Nothing is over yet.”