UNH football visits Dartmouth on Saturday for state bragging rights

DURHAM – Let the running of the gauntlet begin.

The University of New Hampshire football team pushed its overall record to 4-2 and its mark in the Colonial Athletic Association to 4-0 with last Saturday’s 24-14 Homecoming win over Stony Brook.

Now comes the fun stuff.

The Wildcats face a tough road ahead in their five-pack of games to close out the regular season.

A pair of rivalry games that award hardware to the winner – starting with Saturday’s 1:30 game at Dartmouth College and finishing with a Border Battle test at Maine on Saturday, Nov. 19 – bookend the stretch run.

In between, UNH takes on three of the six teams from the CAA that were ranked in this week’s FCS STATS Perform Top 25.

The Wildcats play No. 14 Elon on Saturday, Oct. 22 at 1 p.m. on Family Weekend; they are at No. 22 Richmond on Saturday, Nov. 5 at 3:30 p.m.; and have No. 25 Rhode Island at home on Saturday, Nov. 12 for Senior Day. They close out at Maine on Saturday, Nov. 19 at noon with the Brice-Cowell Musket on the line.

This week is all about the cross-state game against Dartmouth.

“This is a huge game, for sure,” said junior linebacker Bryce Shaw in UNH’s weekly press conference. “It’s not a conference game, but it’s a state game. They kicked our butts last year. It would be nice to get a little revenge.”

The Big Green caused the Wildcats all kinds of problems on the way to a 38-21 win in Durham and now have captured two straight games in this on-again, off-again, oddly streaky series that started with a 51-0 Dartmouth victory on Oct. 2, 1901.

The teams have met 40 times since that first encounter six score and one year ago and are exactly even at 19 wins apiece with a pair of ties and will play again for the Granite Bowl, a piece of stone carved in the shape of the state of New Hampshire.

Dartmouth owned roughly the first half of the series with the first 16 wins, UNH the second with an 18-0-2 run through the last 20 before the Big Green grabbed the last two.

Last year, Dartmouth rolled up 604 yards of total offense, 263 yards rushing and 341 yards passing in its efficient two-quarterback system.

Quarterback Nick Howard rushed for 96 yards and three scores and shared the job with Derek Kyler, who passed for 325 yards and three TDs.

Howard started Dartmouth’s first three games this year and the Big Green focused on rushing the ball.

He missed last week’s game against Yale with an injury and Dylan Cadwallader took his place and completed 28 of 45 passes for 248 yards and two scores with one interception. In the first three games, Howard had completed 28 of his 48 passes for 283 yards with two interceptions and one TD pass.

UNH coach Rick Santos and his staff prepared this week for the chance that Howard will be back and that Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens will return to using two quarterbacks, one likely to run, the other to pass.

“I think last year (on defense) we tried to do a little too much,” Shaw said. “Going back to basics and playing hardnosed football is going to be huge for us. . . . On defense we’ve got to be a little more patient, which is tough to do.”

Santos likes the way the UNBH defense is coming along and praised its performance against Stony Brook.

Dartmouth comes in at 1-3 overall and 0-2 in the Ivy League.

The Big Green beat Valparaiso 35-13 in their opener and then lost a pair of overtime games – 38-31 at Sacred Heart and 23-17 in two overtimes at home to Penn – before last week’s 24-21 loss at Yale.

UNH’s win over Stony Brook followed a loss at Western Michigan in the team’s FBS game and the Wildcats have rebounded from both of their losses this year with a league win.

The way junior tight end Kyle Lepkowski looks at it, the team has been rebounding all year.

“I think everybody’s just hungry,” he said. “Last season left a terrible taste in everybody’s mouth. We didn’t want to go back there. I think we showed as we bounced back from these losses that we’re a completely different team.”

Last year, the Wildcats won their first three games and then lost their FBS game at Pittsburgh badly, came up short against powerhouse James Madison and then fell to Dartmouth. They didn’t win another game.

Lepkowski was third on the team in receptions with 25 for 297 yards and one touchdown last year.

He’s third again this year with 18 catches for 262 yards with the season just past the halfway point.

Redshirt freshman Joey Corcoran leads the team with 27 catches for 300 yards and junior running back Dylan Laube has 23 catches for 219 yards.

Freshman D. J. Linkins has three catches and each one was good for a TD. Corcoran, senior Brian Espanet and grad student Heron Maurisseau each have a pair of TD catches. Laube and senior Sean Coyne each have one TD catch.

Sophomore quarterback Max Brosmer has completed 117 of his 187 passes (62.6 percent) for 1,287 yards with 11 touchdowns and four interceptions.

“I think we have been more dynamic as an offense and we have a lot of good options,” Lepkowski said. “Max has been spreading the ball around a lot and that poses a lot of problems for defenses when they can’t just guard two or three people.”

Santos said Lepkowski, along with other receivers, has been committed to blocking in the running game, which in turn has helped open up the passing attack.

“The more we block and run well, the more it brings defenses up into the box and the more ways we can get behind them and get open,” Lepkowski said. “There’s been times when I find myself in the seam open and Max has put the ball on me every single time. I think Max has been doing a great job finding the open guy.”

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: UNH football visits Dartmouth College Saturday in Granite Bowl