No. 25 Hawks fall to No. 12 Wheaton in Rd. 1 of NCAA playoffs

WHEATON, Ill. – The Huntingdon football team's season ended with a 45-10 loss to 12th-ranked Wheaton College in the opening round of the NCAA Division III playoffs on Saturday.

The 25th-ranked Hawks end the season with a 9-2 record. This was Huntingdon's second straight playoff appearance and the third playoff appearance in program history.

Wheaton (10-1), which improved to 10-0 in first-round playoff games, advances to the second round for the third straight season and the fourth time in seven seasons.

"First of all, hats off to Wheaton. They have a fine football team and are a really good program," Huntingdon head coach Mike Turk said. "They're a lot of what we want to be. We're still new at this and we're trying to establish ourselves. They're a first-class group and they played the game the way it is supposed to be played."

Wheaton carried a 7-0 lead into the second quarter and the Hawks only trailed 7-3 after a 28-yard field goal by Chase Young with 13:18 left in the first half. But the Thunder pulled away, scoring four touchdowns in a little more than five minutes.

Beginning with 12:14 left in the half, Wheaton scored on a 66-yard touchdown pass. The Thunder then blocked a punt for a touchdown, returned an interception 54 yards for a touchdown and blocked a second punt to set up a 24-yard touchdown strike. With 7:12 left in the second quarter, the Thunder led 35-3.

"We're tremendously disappointed with the outcome. We didn't play very well, and obviously, they had a lot to do with that," Turk said. "That was about as bad a first half as we've played since I've been the coach here. That second quarter was long. I didn't think it would ever end.

"But I'm proud of the way we continued to fight in the second half. I appreciate that our guys came out and continued to play hard."

Huntingdon's lone touchdown of the day came midway through the third quarter. Still trailing 35-3, quarterback Luke Bailey connected with Jamichael Bibb for a 7-yard touchdown. Young added the extra point.

Wheaton closed the scoring with a third-quarter field goal and a touchdown in the fourth quarter.

"Our mindset coming in was to focus on us and play our best game. I don't feel like we did that today," Bailey said. "They have a really good defense, definitely one of the best defenses we've played all year, but there were a lot of things on the offensive side that we left out there today."

Bailey finished with 178 yards, one touchdown and an interception on 19-of-39 passing. Bailey was the Hawks' second-leading rusher with 28 yards on nine carries. In addition to setting Huntingdon's single-season record for touchdown passes (32), the senior ends his career as the Hawks career-leader in passing yards (7,635), passing touchdowns (83), passing completions (508), touchdowns responsible for (104) and total offensive yards (9,285). He also closes his career as the Hawks' fourth all-time leading rusher (1,650 yards on 294 attempts) and is third with 21 rushing touchdowns.

Senior John Iwaniec led the ground game with 99 yards on 23 carries. Iwaniec ends the season with 1,047 yards rushing and is just the second Hawk to rush for more than 1,000 yards in a season. He ends his career as Huntingdon's second all-time leading rusher with 2,976 yards and 37 rushing touchdowns.

Senior receiver Nick Haas, with five receptions on Saturday, ends his career with 147 career receptions to tie former receiver Cody Pearcy for first in the Huntingdon record books. Hass closed his career ranked third in Huntingdon history for receiving yards (2,346) and receiving touchdowns (20).

Bibb's six receptions on Saturday put him at 104 for his career. He is just the fifth Hawk to finish with more than 100 career receptions. His 19 career touchdown receptions are tied for fourth in Huntingdon history.

Defensive back Demetrius Brown led the Hawks with 10 tackles and linebacker Brandon Williams added six tackles and a sack. Demetrius Beverly recorded a sack and forced one fumble and Trey Hayes recovered one fumble.

As a team, Huntingdon finished the season with school records in scoring (498 points), total offensive yards (5,983), rushing yards (2,960), rushing touchdowns (35) and passing touchdowns (33). The defense set the team's season record for fumble recoveries (15) and tied the season record for sacks (33).

Huntingdon's senior class closes its four seasons with a 33-10 record, the best mark in Huntingdon history, and back-to-back USA South Athletic Conference championships.

"These guys have had a pretty good four-year run. Two conference championships the past two years and they blew away the class record for wins in a four-year period," Turk said. "Thirty of those guys have stuck together and won a lot of football games. It's a special group of young men."