Unstoppable

Slippery Rock played a near flawless game in defeating New Haven 59-20 last Saturday. With the win, the Rock advances to the regional final as the season comes to a close for the Chargers.
It was a tale of one team doing everything right and the other having no answer. Slippery Rock accumulated 526 yards of total offense and it was split evenly between passing and rushing (263 each).

They converted 10 of their first 12 third down tries and when they faced a fourth down, they converted those two tries. They scored touchdowns in their first seven drives and made it look easy.

"We came out with great energy," Slippery Rock running back Wes Hills said. "We did a great job up front. I felt that we were playing on all cylinders and playing a full game. You can see how well we play when we are playing our best."

The Rock sealed the game late in the second quarter. After holding New Haven to a three and out, they returned a punt to the 29-yard line. It took four plays to score to take a 35-10 halftime advantage. They deferred to the second half and then scored on their opening possession. It was the final nail in the coffin for New Haven and it took a mere five minutes of game time.

"We did play a complete game at all three levels," Slippery Rock head coach Shawn Lutz said. "We could not be stopped today. I did not expect that."

Slippery Rock will travel to face top seeded Notre Dame College for a spot in the national semifinals next Saturday.

What Might Have Been

Slippery Rock running back Wes Hills left Delaware in 2017 and was looking for a new home to finish out his eligibility. One of his stops along the way was to New Haven.

"He is a big kid," New Haven head coach Chris Pincince said. "We had watched him for a year and a half. We had him on campus and thought he might be coming here. He chose to go out there."

Hills just ran over and past the New Haven defense last Saturday to the tune of 188 yards and three scores. He also had 167 yards on the ground in the previous playoff win over LIU Post.

"When this guy gets going, he is hard to stop,": Lutz said of Hills. "He punishes people. He lowers his shoulder. He has good agility and balance. It is an honor to have him in this program."

Hills is also drawing interest from the NFL as there was a scout in the press box on Saturday. He has the size and ability to play at the next level.

New Haven might have been the team to beat in the region if Hills had donned the New Haven uniform in 2018.

High Praise

New Haven head coach Chris Pincince made a classy move at the end of the game to get his seniors some recognition from the fans that hung around to the end of the game. He subbed them out of the game and one of them caused him to become emotional.

"I cried," Pincince said with a lump in his throat as quarterback Ajee Patterson came off the field and hugged his coach on the sideline for the final time in a New Haven uniform.

Patterson rewrote the record book at New Haven. He will have all of the top categories as a quarterback except for passing touchdowns. He will reside second all-time behind Ryan Osiecki who graduated just a year before his arrival on campus.

Pincince also did not mince words when he described the impact that Patterson had at New Haven and through his own coaching career.

"Physically speaking, Ajee Patterson is the best quarterback I have ever been around in my 25 years of coaching," Pincince said. "The throws that he can make. The strength that he shows when he is running the ball. I have been around a bunch of good ones. The one thing that you can not measure of Ajee is his competitiveness and his maturity since he got here. We are going to miss him."

Patterson became just the third quarterback in the history of the NE-10 to pass for over 10,000 yards in his career.

"He is the most complete quarterback we played this year," Lutz said. "The way that he can throw it and run it, he is really dangerous."

Patterson has left the bar high in the New Haven football program.

Looking Ahead

New Haven is consistently at the top of the NE-10 and very competitive in the region. And to make fellow coaches start their sleepless nights now, the Chargers are only losing eight players off of a second round playoff team.

Of course, some of those shoes are going to be tough to fill. Several graduate students who have had a lasting impact on the success of the Chargers the past several years.

New Haven just seems to reload on a yearly basis.

Playoff Success

For the fourth consecutive year, the NE-10 played a game after Thanksgiving and in the second round of the playoffs. It is a far cry from when the league was not able to get a single team into the playoffs.

Assumption started the trend in 2015 when they defeated Bowie State in the first round and lost to Slippery Rock in the second round.

LIU Post defeated Winston Salem in 2016 in the first round before falling to Shepherd in the second round. Last year, Assumption defeated California in the first round and Findlay in the second round before falling to IUP in the regional final.

New Haven started the second round trend in 2011 and 2012 as they had a bye in the first round and hosted a second round playoff game. They are now 1-2 in the second round of the playoffs at home since they restarted the football program in 2008. All three of those game have come against the PSAC.

"I think that the NE-10 is a very good conference," Lutz said. "It is different than the PSAC but it is quality opponents against quality opponents. We have some teams that don't do as well just like the NE-10."

It is nice to see football played late in November in the NE-10. It is becoming a tradition to gather for a game after the big meal on Thanksgiving.

The next tradition will be a consistent stop in the regional final.