Big fourth quarter sends Marquette over Ridgewood, 30-14

OTTAWA – The ability to overcome adversity with perseverance and grace is a life lesson many take away from playing football.

If that is the case, the Marquette Crusaders passed that lesson with flying colors here at Gould Stadium on Friday night.

Down 8-6 to the Ridgewood club that last week rolled to a 41-14 over the same Annawan-Wethersfield team that topped MA by two scores in their opener, the Crusaders shook off having three TDs of their own called back due to penalties and simply scored more.

A two-yard TD run by sophomore quarterback Alex Graham and a Shane Reynolds run gave the hosts the lead in the third quarter.

But after Ridgewood tied the game 14-14 with just over five minutes left in the fourth, Marquette fullback Hunter O’Dell bulled his way up the middle to give Graham the chance to hit tight end Vic Mullen for a 7-yard score and Jake Thomas for the conversion and a 22-14 Cru lead.

Thomas, who also scored the game’s first touchdown on a 13-yard pass from Graham, then put not one, but two exclamation points on the win, getting his second pass interception of the night and returning it 37 yards for the clinching TD. The senior then intercepting his third Spartans pass of the night at the Cru 14 in the final 35 seconds to close out a wild 30-14 Marquette victory.

“They had been burning me all night with outs, and I finally saw one coming and just jumped it. When I looked upfield and didn’t see anyone between me and the end zone, best feeling ever.”

—  Marquette's Jake Thomas

“They had been burning me all night with outs and I finally saw one coming and just jumped it,” Thomas said of the pick-6, smiling as his teammates chided him for talking to a reporter. “When I looked upfield and didn’t see anyone between me and the end zone, best feeling ever.

“With all the stuff we’ve gone through this season and even tonight, getting this win against the team that beat Annawan means everything. We’ve worked our butts off all year and we deserve this. We all played great.”

Shane Reynolds led the winners with 12 carries for 80 yards and three catches for 44, while Graham finished 7-for-10 passing for 85 yards and no picks for the first time this season. Marquette moves to 2-2 and will likely be a more mature, more savvy club when it faces Monmouth United at home next Friday at 7 p.m.

“I think we really grew up this week,” said Marquette coach Tom Jobst. “We made a couple little tweaks in the way we’re doing some things, but the biggest tweak by far was the kids, coming out and playing hard the entire time. We had some adversity and they didn’t let it get them down. They kept playing through it and I couldn’t be prouder of these guys, win or lose, but to win is pretty nice.

“Jake was on his game tonight. He did a great job out there. They all did.”

The Crusaders marched the game’s opening possession 67-yards to that Graham-to-Thomas 13-yard fade route that also opened the scoring at the 5:29 mark. But it stayed that way almost to the half as a penalty wiped out a long Graham-to-Thomas gain inside the Spartans 10 and another flag negated a TD pass from the QB to Mullen on the very next play. Then in the waning seconds of the half, a 6-yard TD pass from Ridgewood quarterback Coltin Stahl to end Lucas Kessinger and a PAT pass to Lucas Althaus gave the visitors an 8-6 edge.

A pair of 14-yard passes from Graham to Shane Reynolds and Thomas set up Graham’s go-ahead TD and Reynolds conversion run with 20.2 seconds left in the third and a 14-8 MA advantage.

A 9-yard score by Stahl tied it at 14, but the Cru held on the PAT run. That turned the momentum to the home club. Using O’Dell five straight times up the middle set the stage for the winning TD pass from Graham to Mullen and PAT pass to Thomas with 1:21 remaining.

On the second play of the ensuing series, Thomas stepped in front of Kessinger on a curl and snared it, racing 37 yards to paydirt. He later outjumped Althaus for the final pick with just 34.2 seconds to play.

“(Ridgewood, 2-2) was doing a good job of flying to the ball, so I just went back to geometry class and remembered what I saw about the shortest distance between two points was,” laughed Jobst.”