Leopards bounce Bucknell in Troxell’s 100th career win
Due to a quirk in the schedule, Lafayette College won’t have a home football game in the month of October.
The Leopards are on the road for three games this month in addition their bye week and don’t have another game at Fisher Stadium until Colgate comes to Easton on Nov. 4.
Perhaps since many of their fans, alumni and fellow students won’t be seeing them for a while, Lafayette put on quite a show late Saturday afternoon for everyone to remember.
Sophomore quarterback Dean DeNobile threw four touchdown passes; sophomore Jamar Curtis ran for 106 yards and two touchdowns; and three freshmen — Carson Persing, Kente Edwards and Ethan Weber — got their first career scores as Lafayette routed Bucknell 56-22 in its Patriot League opener.
The Leopards won their third straight game, all at home, and improved to 4-1 for the first time since 2009.
It was Lafayette’s most points in a game since a 56-49 win over Colgate in 2009 and its most decisive victory since a 48-13 rout of Fordham in 2009.
It was also second-year coach John Troxell’s 100th career win. The Phillipsburg High graduate is 8-8 at Lafayette after going 92-67 in 16 seasons at Franklin & Marshall.
In typical Troxell fashion, he downplayed the milestone.
“It takes a village; I said that when I took this job,” he said. “I’m not the guy who’s going to turn this thing around. We’ve got a lot of kids who will, a lot of staff who will and we have an administration that will. Today’s about Lafayette College; it’s not about me.”
Lafayette, whose only loss was to FBS member and top-25 ranked Duke, outgained Bucknell 545-309.
DeNobile was 16 of 23 passing for 229 yards and found eight receivers. Elijah Steward, Chris
Carasia, Persing and Curtis had TD receptions.
“I loved every moment of it,” DeNobile said. “Coach [T.J.] DiMuzio [Lafayette’s offensive coordinator] put us in great position and it doesn’t get better than putting up that many points. We’re clicking, but there’s always room to improve. We’ve got to keep going.”
DeNobile said he loves the freshmen on the team, several of whom reached the scoring column.
“I love those kids and they’ve been doing great,” he said. “It just shows how much they’ve been putting in at practice. That shows up on the field.”
DeNobile said he’ll miss Fisher Stadium for the next month, but says the great teams win on the road.
“That’s what we plan on doing,” he said. “Hopefully, nothing changes. We’ll keep preparing like we have been.”
On a day in which eight touchdowns were scored by the Leopards, it be easy to overlook the defense and special teams. But both also played a role in pleasing the homecoming crowd of more than 4,000.
The defense had 14 tackles for losses and seven sacks.
No one was more active than fifth-year senior Billy Shaeffer, who had nine tackles including 5 ½ for negative yardage and 3 ½ sacks.
“The defense was good, but there’s obviously a lot of things we can still clean up,” the Archbishop Wood product said. “Overall, it was a good effort, but there’s a lot of things we can improve on.”
Shaeffer returned for his final year of eligibility because he was determined to get the program turned around. The Leopards haven’t had a winning season since going 8-3 in 2009, but they have already matched last season’s win total with at least six more games to play.
“I knew something special was going on here,” Schaeffer said. “obviously you can see we have a great team with a bunch of young guys who come in every day ready to work. We’re just ready to keep rolling and keep it going.”
Shaeffer tries to be a leader for the young players in the program.
“I try to lead by example and bring the younger guys along,” he said. “You can see their talent, there’s a ton of talent throughout the group with our freshmen and sophomores. I just try to keep them on the right path so we can get more wins like this.”
Lafayette will head to Princeton next week in its final nonleague game of the season.
“We have a couple of tough games coming up with Princeton, which is always good, next week and then our bye week and then we go to [league champion] Holy Cross, which is one we have circled,” Shaeffer said. “We’re going to be ready for that one, too.”