Team has ‘family, family, family feast’
UNM weathers storm delay as McQuarley ties record with 5 touchdowns
ALBUQUERQUE — Stop us if you’ve heard this before.
The University of New Mexico football team comes into the season with a certain level of expectations, destroys a cupcake, loses to the Aggies, falls below .500 and somehow wins a game it wasn’t expected to while turning it around.
The Lobos did that a year ago en route to winning nine games and a share of the division title in the Mountain West Conference. They’re following the same script again this fall.
The latest step came in a 56-38 win over Air Force on a rainy, weatherdelayed Saturday night at Dreamstyle Stadium.
The Lobos (3-2 overall, 1-1 in the Mountain West) finally found their groove in the ground game as run-
ning back Richard McQuarley tied a school record with five rushing touchdowns with a career-high 179 yards, and the offense generated a season-high 363 yards in that category.
“If we can get the dive going a little bit, we’re tough to stop,” said UNM head coach Bob Davie. “It was good to see just kind of an old-school New Mexico offense making some plays up in there on the inside running game.”
It was the Lobos’ second straight win. They got it by dominating the second half with nearly 300 yards on the ground. They didn’t gain a single yard throwing the ball after quarterback Lamar Jordan completed a 49-yard touchdown pass to Delane Hart-Johnson at the 11:25 mark of the third quarter.
Everything else was done on the ground without a single turnover from start to finish.
Davie said it was like beating Air Force at its own game by not making mistakes and sticking to the game plan.
That game plan was nearly scrapped when a strong storm system blew over the stadium in the second quarter. A series of lightning strikes forced a delay of about 40 minutes.
UNM officials decided to cut halftime to five minutes, essentially making both teams play three straight quarters without a break.
Air Force took advantage of the delay by making a series of adjustments that led to a 21-point second quarter. The Falcons (1-3, 0-2) scored the final 14 points of the half and led 21-14 at the midway point.
After Jordan’s long pass to Hart-Johnson tied it at 21, it was McQuarley doing anything and everything he wanted. He scored four times in the second half, finishing the game with touchdown runs of 3,6, 5, 63 and 65 yards.
“We got this thing called family, family, family feast,” he said. “It’s like, you get stopped, you get stopped and all of a sudden you break one. I felt like it was due time for it.”
The Lobos scored 42 points in the second half and had over 500 yards in total offense. The defense did its part, forcing two turnovers and sacking Falcons quarterback Arion Worthman four times.
Worthman had 296 of his team’s 396 total yards.
Davie said the Lobos had a hard time adjusting to the lightning delay. He said it reminded him of last year’s home game against Nevada, one that didn’t end until well after midnight before a nearly empty stadium after a similar storm knocked out the stadium’s power.
He said the Lobos spent much of the time in the locker room listening to music and having fun. While they did that, Air Force cobbled together a few wrinkles and got its offense going against a UNM defense that had been allowing just 97 rushing yards a game in the first month of the season.
The Falcons finished with 238 yards, including 138 from Worthman and 80 from running back Tim McVey.
“You had not chance to really come back,” Davie said of the abbreviated halftime. “You’re kind of adjusting on the run, so it was different.”
The fact that the Lobos weathered the storm — both literally and figuratively — is what makes him feel good about his club’s resurgence since its loss to New Mexico State on Sept. 9.
“This football team has proven it’s been able to adapt to different things that happen,” Davie said. “That’s what I’m most excited about.”
GAME NOTES
Coming up: The Lobos are off next week, their only bye of the season. They head to Fresno State on Oct. 14 and do not play at home again until Oct. 20 against Colorado State.
QB numbers: Jordan finished with 146 yards passing with two touchdowns on just four completed passes. He also had 75 rushing yards but had a 70-yard touchdown run in the first quarter called back because of an illegal block in the back.
Homecoming: St. Michael’s graduate Santo Coppola started at defensive end for the Falcons and registered three tackles. They all came before the weather delay in the first half. He was frequently lined up against UNM offensive left tackle Avery Jordan, a 6-foot-5, 265-pound lineman whose older brother plays in the NBA.
The two had one exchange in the opening quarter where Jordan kept pushing Coppola down the field on a block well after the whistle. No flags were thrown.