Box Score LEXINGTON, Va. ? Junior running back Howard Abegesah rushed for 124 yards and three touchdowns and junior quarterback Tim Maypray gained 73 yards rushing and tossed a 74-yard touchdown pass to lead VMI to a 69-20 victory over Chowan Saturday afternoon at Foster Stadium.
In a game of big yardage plays, VMI produced 10 plays that netted over 20 or more yards, including five plays that moved the football 50 yards or more.
The Keydets rolled up a Big South single-game record 517 yards rushing and piled up 659 yards total offense, just five yards shy of the school record set against West Virginia Tech in 1992.
VMI moved to 2-1 on the season while Chowan fell to 1-3.
The Keydets held a 48-0 lead until the 12:07 mark of the fourth quarter when Chowan quarterback C.J. Westler connected for a 22-yard touchdown pass with wide receiver James Fox with 12:07 left in the fourth quarter for the first VMI opponent points allowed at Foster Stadium this year.
VMI set the tone on the first play of the game when Maypray fired a 74-yard scoring strike down the left sideline to red-shirt freshman Daud Semalulu to put VMI up, 6-0, 15 seconds into the contest. It would be the first of five straight touchdown drives for the Keydets.
Abegesah, who collected his sixth career 100-yard rushing game, added TD runs of 4 and 63 yards to extend VMI's lead to 20-0 after one quarter.
VMI scored on the opening play of the second quarter when Maypray converted a quarterback sneak on a 3rd and 1 from the VMI 40 into a 60-yard TD run. The jaunt capped a five-play, 80-yard drive that was set up by an interception in the end zone by junior defensive back Levi Swindell that halted Chowan's best scoring threat in the first half.
Another interception on the ensuing CU possession by redshirt freshman linebacker Eric Church led to an 11-play, 62-yard scoring possession that was capped by Abegesah's third rushing TD of the half ? a two-yard burst. Junior quarterback Kyle Hughes rushed three times for 43 yards on the drive including a 28-yard run to the Chowan 2 that set up Abegesah's score one play later.
The Keydets extended their 34-0 halftime lead with 3:07 left in the third quarter when Hughes threw a 34-yard touchdown strike to slotback Game Itoka. Three of VMI's final four tallies all came on career-first touchdowns -freshman back Bobby Epps (two-yard run), a Justin Hickman to Aaron Lewis 24-yard touchdown pass, and quarterback Cam Jones eight-yard touchdown run.
Chowan University closed out the game's scoring on the final play of the afternoon when Fox snagged a 29-yard Westler pass in the left corner of the endzone as time expired in regulation.
The Keydet defense generated nine tackles-for-loss for 29 yards and was led by junior linebacker Patrick McKinney who registered seven tackles including two for loss. Freshman linebacker A.J. Gross added six tackles while sophomore end Damiso Alexander logged three sacks for seven yards.
Chowan junior wide receiver Eddie Coard led the Hawks with nine catches for 129 yards and a touchdown while senior wideout James Fox caught four passes for 76 yards and two touchdowns. Junior quarterback C.J. Westler completed 19 of 32 passes for 289 yards and three touchdowns and was picked off twice during the game.
The 69 points matched the single game VMI school record for most points set on September 25, 1982 when the Keydets blanked Central Florida, 69-0.
Keydet freshman placekicker Greg Stevens also eclipsed the single game record for PAT's by converting all nine attempts and surpassed David Tyler's 8-for-8 mark against Central Florida in1982.
VMI travels to Athens, Ohio next Saturday afternoon to face the Bobcats at 2:00 PM. Chowan returns home to play Virginia Union at 6:00 PM.
HEAD COACH SPARKY WOODS- "I want to start out by commending Chowan and coach (Tim) Place. Their team showed a lot of spirit and fought the entire game, and scored there at the end when a lot of people might have surrendered. I credit them for playing hard. I was really proud of our football team, it was a great win for VMI. We played a lot of people, and a lot of different people made plays, which is good for your confidence when young guys get in there and make plays that hadn't made plays before. That's gotta build, for us, a better team. I thought we had the best week of practice that we've had. They worked hard, they really devoted themselves to fixing the things that we saw we needed to improve on from the week before. I thought that we made a lot of progress there. This early in the season, with a brand new coaching staff, we just tried to run our base offense and our base defense. You can't have a better opportunity to improve than playing against good competition like we had a chance to play against today. I thought that our coaches did a great job in preparing our team, and I thought that our seniors did a great of getting us back off of the loss from last week. We saw some good team effort, and this was a great team victory. Some individuals made some huge plays to start getting into bigger roles on our team."
On 74-yard touchdown pass from Tim Maypray to Daud Semalulu on the game's first offensive play:
"We thought that the play had a chance to make it. Daud is one of those guys that can find a spot here and make us better. He's a very explosive player that is learning how to play, he hasn't played football very long. I was happy for him. It was a really fine throw from Tim, we did a good job of getting it set up and protected, and Tim got it down the field, and then Daud did a great job of getting by him, making the catch, then finished the thing. That was a great start. As we continue to run this offense, (the defense) gets closer and closer to the line of scrimmage, so we've got to be able to do that some to make them be a little more responsible so they don't load up against the run so much.
On big plays all season:
"It's a big thing for us. We have seven points that we try to do as a team to win. One of those is to make explosive plays, which are something like 20 yards or more. Then defensively, we want to eliminate them. So we want to win the explosive-play battle. I thought that there were several of those today. We established the fullback, Howard (Abegesah) had a chance to make some big plays today. That's the thing that I do appreciate about our offense. If everybody executes, the fullback can get the ball, the slotbacks can get the ball and certainly the quarterback can get the ball, and as we have a chance to work it more and more, I think that we'll get better at it.
Howard Abegesah on three-touchdown game:
"How the game went was just according to plan. Tim (Maypray) made some great reads, I got the ball and just read the blocks in front of me, so I just kept going. Tim and I are getting to the point where we can know when I'm going to get the ball and when he's going to pull it. We don't have to think twice about the handoff, it's just like second nature. Our offensive line and blockers did a great job today. They were moving guys around and changing the line of scrimmage. That's where it starts, with the guys in the trenches."
