ANNAPOLIS, Md. - Navy fullback Kyle Eckel rushed for 129 yards on 17 carries and quarterback Craig Candeto scored two rushing touchdowns to lead Navy past VMI 37-10 in the season opener for both teams Saturday in Annapolis.
The Mids outgained VMI 598-296 and snapped a 14-game home losing streak dating back to the 1999 season. It was VMI's first game against a I-A opponent since the Keydets played Navy in 1997. The game was delayed for 58 minutes late in the third because of lightning.
The Keydets trailed 28-0 at halftime, but got on the board with 12:31 left in the third quarter when sophomore slotback Gary Price scored on a six-yard sweep around the left end. The Keydets moved the ball inside the Navy 20-yard line on the ensuing possession, but Price fumbled the ball at the Navy 11 and it was recovered by Mid defensive end Jeff Vanek.
The Keydet defense then forced Navy to punt and VMI took control at itsown 20 yard-line. The Keydets marched to the Navy 30-yard line before play was suspended for nearly an hour because of lightning. When action resumed at nearly 5:00 p.m. Eastern, the Keydets had to settle for a career-long 46 yard field goal by Matt Sharpe to slice the Navy lead to 28-10 with 14:40 left in regulation.
Navy countered with an eight-play, 70-yard drive capped by quarterback Craig Candeto's second touchdown of the day, a two-yard keeper with 12:16 to go. The drive was keyed by a 42-yard run By Eckel that gave Navy a first and goal at the VMI two-yard line.
Redshirt freshman quarterback Jonathan Wilson, playing in his first college game, completed 16 of 28 passes for 165 yards and one interception. His longest pass of the day was a 25-yard pass to Zohn Burden in the third quarter that set up VMI's lone touchdown.
Sophomore running back Sean Mizzer led VMI on the ground with 77 yards on 17 carries.
Freshman punter Adam Peters averaged 46.9 yards on eight punts and had a long of 62 yards.
VMI faces Davidson College next Saturday at 1:00 p.m.
HEAD COACH CAL MCCOMBS - I expected to to come up here and win the football game. We had a bunch of young guys - when you lose 18 seniors, you've got to come back and get some of those young guys experience. I thought the first half our kids didn't get into the speed of the game very well to start with. Asa result, Navy was able to score too many points against us and we weren't able to score enough points. Field position was a big thing in the first half because a lot of those points they scored on us was on a short field. A lot of that had to do with our special teams coverage. But we got a lot coming out of it. Jonathan Wilson did some good things as a freshman quarterback and he's not going to do anything else but get better. Gary Price did some good things. The offensive line got about every look at Navy, and we knew they were going to zone blitz us a bunch, and they did. They did a good job on Mizzer by getting penetration from the linebackers, but Miz had some good runs that we got to build, and our our punter Adam Peters, was able to get the ball off to where he wasn't in any jeopardy of getting blocked. First half - we just didn't play like we were capable of playing. It's hard to get the speed of the option when you are servicing each other, and defensively they were better than I'd thought they be up front and they got some pressure on the young quarterback with the zone blitzing and we had a hard time picking some of that up. At half we came back out and started getting something going and got better as the game went along, and that happens when you play against option football because you get used to the speed of the game. But we have a lot of work to do. There are a lot of promising young players on this team and I think this is a great game for us to play a team like this in a very exciting setting. Now we take from that and next week we'll get better and get ready to go to Davidson.
Media coverage of game on Sportspage Gleaner
