Sports

Panthers maul Black Bears

UMaine falls in first round of playoffs, Session scores 2 TDs

By Adam Clark

Posted on Nov. 24, 2008, at 12:00 a.m.

CEDAR FALLS, Iowa — The state of Iowa has been unkind to the University of Maine football team.

On Aug. 30, the Black Bears opened their season in Iowa City against FBS opponent, the University of Iowa. The Big 10 school beat UMaine easily, 46-3.

Three months later, Jack Cosgrove’s squad earned an at-large berth in the FCS Playoffs and a first-round matchup with the University of Northern Iowa just 75 miles up the road in Cedar Falls.

The Black Bears’ season ended in the same state it started on Saturday evening.

Junior quarterback Pat Grace threw two long touchdown passes to freshman wide receiver Jarred Herring as the No. 3 Panthers built a 23-7 halftime lead and never looked back, dispatching UMaine 40-15 in front of 8,477 fans at the UNI-Dome.

After UMaine (8-5) blocked a punt for the second straight week late midway through the second quarter, the momentum appeared to shift. When redshirt freshman tailback Derek Session scored a 2-yard touchdown to tie the game at seven to cap off, the momentum clearly shifted.

On a third-and-5 on the next UNI (11-2) drive though, Grace found the speedy freshman Herring who got behind the UMaine secondary for a 42-yard touchdown.

A UMaine safety and a 55-yard touchdown pass to Herring on third-and-10 turned a 7-7 tie into a 23-7 UNI advantage in just less than six minutes.

“I think that’s where the game kind of got away from us,” said Cosgrove, whose team lost at UNI in the 2001 playoffs. “I think you got to credit the quarterback for making the plays. They were mostly off scrambles, but he made good decisions. Real good throws.”

Facing a large deficit at the half, UMaine was forced to abandon its running game and go to a passing game that has average under 136 yards per game this season. The running game, which averaged nearly 200 yards per game, was a key catalyst in the Black Bears six-game winning streak that pushed them into the playoffs.

“It’s tough especially getting down two or more scores,” said junior quarterback Michael Brusko. “One score and we’re fine. We still feel like we can do our thing. But once you get down two or three scores and it gets into the second half, it was getting away from us and we had to start throwing. Once we were forced to throw some dropback pass, it was tough.”

UNI added a field goal to begin the third quarter and two potential Black Bear scoring drives were thwarted when the Panthers defense picked off Brusko.

Brusko was 15-for-23 for 180 yards, but finished with four interceptions and was constantly hounded by the UNI defense resulting in three sacks.

The Black Bears only mustered 84 yards on the ground, with the leading rusher being junior wide receiver Landis Williams. He had only one carry, a reverse in the fourth quarter that went for 31 yards.

“I think we knew they were going to be a great team especially up front,” Brusko said. The defensive line is probably the best we’ve faced all year and I would say that includes Iowa.”

“Man for man, they probably got us,” added senior center Ryan Canary. “They didn’t do anything scheme-wise. But man for man they were physically probably better and that really showed.”

The raucous UNI crowd appeared to make it difficult for the UMaine offensive line, but Canary believes the crowd was not a factor.

“We’ve played in some very hostile environments–Delaware and Iowa,” he said. “I think that our focus was bad. If you just focus in it should be no problem with our style which is running the ball. We just lost focus for the three or four offsides we had.”

UNI put the game away in the fourth when senior running back Corey Lewis scored on a 2-yard touchdown to make it 33-7.

UMaine made the score 33-15 when Session caught a 10-yard pass from Brusko for the score and Brusko hooked up with senior wide receiver Kenneth Fersner for the two-point conversion.

Junior running back Derrick Law finished off the scoring with 1:32 left in the fourth, scoring on a 10-yard run to make it 40-15.

The Panther offense amassed 442 yards of total offense, 229 through the air and 193 on the ground.

The Black Bears 2008 season comes to a close with the loss. They made the playoffs for the first time since 2002. UNI, the No. 1 seed in the playoffs last season, advances to the quarterfinals where they will take on UMaine’s CAA rival, the University of New Hampshire. UNH defeated Southern Illinois University 29-20 on the road Saturday.