Saturday, October 20, 2012

Navy With a Dramatic Win on Homecoming

Freshman Keenan Reynolds made just his second career start at quarterback for Navy as the Midshipmen hosted Indiana on Homecoming on a warm and sunny afternoon in Annapolis.

Even though the Plebe is inexperienced, Navy put the game on his shoulders in the final twelve minutes of the fourth quarter.

Trailing 30-21, Navy started on their own 25 yard line.  Reynolds led the Mids on a nearly seven minute drive to the Indiana one yard line.  The freshman QB threw for 46 yards and ran for nine more on the drive.  Coach Ken Niumatalolo called on another freshman, Nick Sloan to kick the 18-yard field goal to cut Indiana's lead to six with 5:30 left in the game.

The Navy defense held the Hoosiers to a three-and-out and forced a punt with 4:48 remaining in the game.

Reynolds took over again on what would be the game winning drive.  The offense drove to the Indiana four yard line behind two huge plays by senior slot back Gee Gee Greene.  Greene caught a 21 yard pass from Reynolds and then two plays later rambled 22 yards to the Hoosier 21.  A heavy dose of fullback Noah Copeland forced Indiana to use all three of their timeouts on the Navy drive.

With a third-and-three from the IU four yard line, Reynolds faked a pitch to Green and found Matt Aiken wide open in the end zone to tie the game.  Sloan kicked the PAT to give the Mids the lead with 2:02 remaining.

After an incomplete pass on first down, Parrish Gaines picked off Cameron Coffman to seal the win for Navy in front of 33,341 at Navy Marine Corps Memorial Stadium.

Navy came into their Homecoming game against Indiana riding a two-game winning streak.  Indiana, on the other hand, entered the game with four straight losses.  Those four losses, however were by a combined 24 points to teams like Ohio State and Michigan State.

Indiana jumped out to a quick 10-0 lead on their first two possessions and it looked like the Hoosiers were going to be able to get back into the win column.  Navy is never a team that will quit and scored a TD of their own on their second possession.

Reynolds capped off a 12 play, 69 yard drive with a 2-yard TD run to cut the lead to three.

Indiana cam right back with 16-play, 72 yard drive of their own to get the lead back to 10.  De'Angelo Roberts found the end zone from three yards out to give the momentum back to the Hoosiers

Navy grad, David Robinson spoke to the Mids following the game.
Indiana held Navy on their next drive and after forcing a punt, took over on their own 16 yard line.

On the drive's second play, Navy OLB Jordan Drake picked off an IU pass and returned it untouched for a Navy TD.  The pick six was Drake's first career INT.

The Mids took their first lead in the game on the third quarter.  After starting the drive on their own 21, Darius Staten scored his first career TD when he scored from 17 yards out giving Navy the lead 21-20

The Hoosiers were able to kick a field goal on their next possession to regain the lead, 23-21.

Navy was unable to score on their next drive and Indiana punched in another TD, a three yard run from Tevin Coleman to complete the scoring for Indiana.

Greene led the Mids in both rushing (15-88) and receiving (2-35) yardage.  Jordan Drake and Keegan Wetzel led the Midshipmen defense with eight tackles each.

Navy improves to 4-3 on the season and travels to East Carolina next Saturday.  Indiana falls to 2-5 will travel to Illinois next weekend.