The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 53

Sunday, November 6. 1994 THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER C17 COLLEGE FOOTBALL Cats crush West Chester, 3544 passer in West Chester history, with more than 8,000 yards was 17 of 36 for 170 yards and two touchdowns. He saw his 11-game streak of 200-yard passing games ended, while his in-terceptions-to-TD ratio ballooned to 17int vs. 30TD for the season. MacDonald's third errant pass of the game was returned by nickel back Brian Barajas 38 yards for a touchdown, giving the Wildcats a com-manding 28-0 lead near the half end.

West Chester 0 7 0 7 14 Villanov 21 7 7 0 35 Vil Cowsette 10 run (Kiefer kick) Vil Cowsette 6 run (Kiefer kick) Vil Cowsette 1 run (Kiefer kick) Vil Barajas 38 interception return (Kiefer kick) Wes Penecale 23 pass from MacDonald (Bean kick) Vil Finneran 16 pass from Marchese (Kiefer kick) Wes Penecale 3 pass from MacDonald (Bean kick) A 5,911. r-Y i 4 IK'). 'Y "jt i By Tim Panaccio INQUIRER STAFF WRITER After being upset by Connecticut, demoralized by James Madison, and air-roasted by William and Mary, all in the last five weeks, Villanova finally found someone to unleash its frustrations upon West Chester. The Wildcats fleeced the Golden Rams, 35-14, in a nonconference game that marked the final time the two schools will meet. Villanova will upgrade its schedule in future years with Division I-A opponents, beginning next season with Navy.

While the loss was devastating for West Chester (7-3), ending the Rams' Division II playoff chances, it rekindled Villanova's hopes of finishing with a winning record. At S-S, the Cats travel to New England on Saturday, where the New Hampshire Wildcats are 4-0 at home. Villanova, which was 3-8 in 1993, has never had back-to-back losing seasons under coach Andy Talley. "I'm happy for the seniors to leave this place on a good note," said Talley, who tied Harry Stuhldreher's all-time win record (65-25-9). Talley is now 65-37-1 in 10 years on the Main Line.

"Just getting to 5-5 has been a milestone. It's been harder than anyone realized it would be." Nothing seemed all that arduous against West Chester, however. The Cats physically pounded the Rams and their quarterback, Dave MacDonald, who threw five interceptions and was sacked four times in the worst game of his career. "They were giving us lots of pressure, and I was trying to make something happen," said MacDonald, who sported a shiner under his right eye after a violent sack by 'Nova linebacker Andy Cobaugh in the first half. "They were big and fast and coming all day." The Cats came hardest in the first quarter.

So much so that the scoreboard literally went on the blink, frantically flashing its orange lights as Villanova put up 21 points before the quarter ended. Coming into the game, the Wildcats had scored a combined 24 points all season in the first quarter. Two other noteworthy occurrences came that quarter. Sophomore running back Anthony Cow-sette scored a career-high three touchdowns, to go along with his 104 yards rushing, and receiver Brian Finneran's 23-yard reception broke Bob Brady's freshman record of 45 catches for 695 yards. Finneran finished the game with seven catches for 83 yards, giving him 51 receptions for 761 yards this season.

One of his receptions yesterday was a 16-yard touchdown from Tom Marche-se, giving Finneran a team-high six touchdowns this season. "None of my goals were to break a record," Finneran said. "People make it seem more important than it is. It's nice to break it. I hope to get more in the future." Cowsette, who became the first 'Nova player to score three touchdowns in a game this fall, broke kicker-punter Bill Hoffmann's record for sophomore points in a season with 74.

Hoffmann set the former record of 71 in 1991. "I expected to carry the ball a lot," Cowsette said. "We had a lot of good holes. They were a bit smaller and we anticipated running a lot on them." Overall, the Wildcats had their best offensive yardage performance of the season (412) and most rushing yards (254), while Marchese completed 14 of 20 passes for 158 yards and a touchdown as Villanova finished 3-3 at home. West Chester, which gave Delaware fits before losing, 58-55, never got into the game.

"Villanova's people up front were tough," said West Chester coach Rick Daniels. "They beat us up; they manhandled us." That was evident on Cobaugh's second sack, a running start from 15 yards away that gave MacDonald a black eye. "I came screaming up the field," Cobaugh said. "I thought Chrisl Curtis would get him, but MacDonald turned into me. It felt so good." MacDonald the most prolific W.C Vill.

15 24 39-170 49-259 170 158 17-36-5 14-20-1 5-158 4-145 0-0 0-0 4-40 6-65 25:37 34:23 -fa First downs Rushes-yards Passing Comp-Att-Int Punts Fumbles-Lost Penalties-Yards Time of Possession INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS Rushing: West Chester, Lindsay 21-107, Pender-grass 6-12, Freeman 3-7, MacDonald 9-(Minus); Villanova, Cowsett 18-104, Dennis 11-73, Shep-ard 10-51, Marrchese 3-7, Kingsbury 1-2, Sifford 5-17, Keifer 1-0. Passing: West Chester, MacDonald 17-36-2, 170. Villanova, 14-20-1, 158. Receiving: West Chester, Penecale 6-10, Rydel 3-21, Weiser 7-20, Carpenter 2-5, Neal 2-17. Villanova, Bn.

Finnegan 7-83, Bd. Finnegan 2-20, Shephard 2-19, Hunt 1-10, Dolbin 1-7, McCracken 1-19. For The Inquirer BRAD BOWER West Chester wide receiver Rich Neal (foreground) can't come up with a first-half reception against the defense of Villanova's DeVian Logan. The Wildcats picked off five passes in improving to 5-5. Temple collapses before half, and Rutgers rolls to The Owls had things going their way for 2 quarters.

After a blocked field goal, though, they fell flat. 38 21 win to settle for a field goal that time, but a personal foul on the Owls on a third-down play gave Rutgers a first and goal at the 1-yard line, virtually i ensuring a score. But Temple, with a varied offensive scheme that showed a lot of motion and featured tailback Juan Gaddy (22 carries, 74 yards) came back. Burris i completed short passes to tight end P.J. Cook and wide receiver Van Johnson for touchdowns that gave the Owls a i 14-7 lead with 11 minutes, 16 seconds left in the first half.

The breaks even seemed to be going the way of the Owls. After Tem-J pie scored its first touchdown, Rutgers moved right back into Owls territory, except Temple safety Corey Green forced a fumble that was destined to bounce out of bounds until it bounced off the back of an official's legs, and into the hands of Owls linebacker Lance Johnstone. The Owls couldn't be blamed Ifj they started thinking that maybe' this was the day they would win their first Big East football game. Instead, they found a novel way to lose another one. Temple Rutgers 7 7 0 721 7 14 10 7-38 Curry 1 pass from Lucas (Duborg kick) Cook 5 pass from Burris (Maston kick) V.

Johnson 4 pass from Burris (Maston kick) Willis 1 run (Duborg kick) Tribbitt 80 run on blocked field goal (Du- borg kick) Duborg 32 FG Gibbs 5 pass from Lucas (Duborg kick) Willis 19 run (Duborg kick) Cook 31 pass from Burris (Maston kick) A 26,468. i Tern Rut First downs 20 25 1 Rushes-yards 33-156 47-287 Passing 252 107 Return Yards 00 12 Comp-Att-Int 21-33-0 12-18-0 Punts 3-41 1-28 Fumbles-Lost 0-0 2-1 Penalties-Yards 8-65 3-15 Time of Possession 28:48 31:12 INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS Rushing: Temple, Gaddy 22-74, Culbreath 4-25, Carter 4-24, Burris 2-11, Morse 1-(-1); Rutgers, Willis 35-232, Hamlin 6-28, Lucas 5-16, Bridges 1-2, Kennedy 6. Passing: Temple, Burris 20-32-0-245, Walding 1- 1-0-7; Rutgers, Lucas 12-18-0-107. Receiving: Temple, Cook 5-73, V. Johnson 5-70, Morse 5-28, Baxter 3-54, Canzater 1-10, Culbreath 1-10, McWilliams 1-7; Rutgers, Battaglia 4-44, Gibbs 3-36, Harper 2-12, Willis 1-9, Hutton 1-5, Curry 1-1.

"i- yjlJiflp ls 71 Sf yYy Y-- jv y) I 1 time Shay could start moving. "At halftime, we were hollering at each other," said Rutgers guard Kar-eem Williams, who graduated from Roxborough High. "They were almost in control." It was never like that again. Temple took the second-half kickoff and went three plays and out. The next time the Owls got the ball, they kept it for 26 seconds, including the punt.

Rutgers (5-3-1, 2-2-1) kept giving the ball to Willis, the sophomore tailback who had run for 191 yards on just 13 carries last season against Temple. Willis said he was embarrassed watching films of himself from earlier games. He just wanted to run straight ahead. He carried 29 times for 232 yards. He had been taken out of the game when someone told Rutgers coach Doug Graber that Willis was just a few yards away from the school record, so Graber put him back in.

Willis surpassed the record (230 yards by J.J. Jennings against Massachusetts in 1973) on the final play of the game. "lie ran north and south every play," Rutgers quarterback Ray Lucas said of Willis. "I could see handing off to him, some of the holes were so big he could have rolled through them." As they have for most of the season, the Owls moved the ball. Quarterback Henry Burris completed 20 of 32 passes for 245 yards, and he set a Temple single-season passing record of 2,241 yards, moving him past John Waller, who threw for 2,049 yards in 1968.

It looked as if Temple was going to self-destruct as soon as the game started. The Owls kicked off and appeared to have Rutgers pinned back at the 14-yard line, since Marco Bat-taglia inexplicably fair-catched the kickoff. But the Owls one-upped him. They were off-side on the kick. Rutgers returned the re-kick to the 44-yard line.

Rutgers probably would have had By Mike Jensen INQUIRER STAFF WRITER PISCATAWAY, N.J. It was one of those Temple moments. The Owls were going Into halftime ahead of Rutgers. All they needed was a little chip shot of a field goal and 20 seconds of defense, and the lead was theirs. But not so fast.

The little chippie field goal, a 28-yarder, was knocked to the turf. A Scarlet Knights player picked up the blocked kick and raced 80 yards untouched the other way. Actually, Curtis Tribbitt ran right through the end zone at Rutgers Stadium and past the goal posts and about 25 yards more. He kept going right up a grassy hill, where he finally fell down. He went down, and the spark went right out of Temple.

Instead of being behind by a field goal, Rutgers was ahead by a touchdown. The Owls gave up 31 straight points, watched Rutgers tailback Terrell Willis gain a school-record 232 yards, and lost their sixth straight, 38-21. "Last week, it bothered me so much. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with this football team," said Owls coach Ron Dickerson, whose team dropped to 2-7 overall and 0-5 in the Big East. "What's happening to our team right now is they're physically and mentally beaten up.

They had plenty of adrenalin until the block. There was no predicting that one. The Owls hadn't had a field goal or extra point blocked all season. Kicker Rich Maston had made all four of his field-goal attempts of less than 30 yards. But this time, Mark Washington, a starting strong safety for the Scarlet Knights, rushed in from Maston's left side completely untouched and knocked the kick.

Tribbitt picked it up on the bounce and was 10 yards past Temple holder John Shay by the Syracuse offense was a disaster. Quarterback Kevin Mason, who played adequately in the first half, and tailback Kirby Dar Dar, who had 80 yards on 19 carries for the game, were all but nullified by the Miami defense. "I was surprised we went flat," Syracuse guard Cy Ellsworth said. "I don't know the reasons. We were moving the ball in the first half.

But just coming up with six points instead of 14 was unfortunate." Miami, whose defense has given up only 38 points since the Hurricanes lost to Washington, 38-20, on Sept. 24, allowed Syracuse just 223 yards, in-eluding a scant 34 through the air. Miami Syracuse 0 0 14 13-27 0 6 0 06 Syr FG Mare 35 Syr FG Mare 29 Mia Stewart 3 run (Prewitt kick) Mia Stewart 27 run (Prewitt kick) Mia Green 12 pass from Costa (kick failed) Mia Harris 1 run (Prewitt kick) A 49,565. First down9 Rushes-yards Passing Return Yards Comp-Att-Int Punts Fumbles-Lost Penalties-Yard9 Time of Possession Mia Syr 23 19 48-228 49-189 118 34 28 94 10-22-2 4-9-1 2-42 5-45 0-0 0-0 6-65 11-74 30:08 29:52 Rutgers running back Terrell Willis gets taken down by Temple safety linebacker Andrew Brown, Willis rushed for a school-record 232 yards wake up and whack Syracuse ft t-j Big East Conference AH Games Miami 4 0 0 7 1 0 Syracuse 4 1 0 6 2 0 Va. Tech 4 2 0 7 2 0 Boston Col.

2 114 2 1 Rutgers 2 2 1 5 3 1 W.Virginia 1 3 0 4 5 0 Pittsburgh 1 4 0 2 7 0 Temple 0 5 0 2 7 0 if'' If Jx ir Associated Press DANIEL HULSHIZER Corey Green (right) and in yesterday's game. Bowl, on their home field, against the Cornhuskers, who will probably enter the game with an 11-0 slate. "We're right where we want to be right now," Sapp said. The Orangemen (6-2, 4-1) reached their high-water mark when Olindo Mare kicked field goals of 35 and 29 yards in the first half to give Syracuse a 6-0 lead. "To shut them out in the first half and then give up 27 is brutal," Syracuse linebacker Dan Conley said.

Miami went 68 yards in 10 plays to take the lead, 7-6, with 8:44 left in the third period. Stewart crashed in the end zone from 3 yards out to score Miami's first TD. Costa had made a crucial throw on the eighth play of the drive when he completed a 15-yard pass to wideout A.C. Tellison on a third-and-10 situation. The next touchdown was vintage Miami.

Stewart broke into the secondary off left tackle and went 27 yards to score, pointing his finger in the face of safety Tony Jones, who was giving futile chase, over the last 10 yards. Dane Prewitt's kick with 6:20 left in the quarter gave Miami a 14-6 lead. The next time the Hurricanes got the ball, they went 88 yards in 14 plays. Costa hit wideout Yatil Creen with a 12-yard strike to make the score 20-6. Miami closed out the scoring with 3:49 left when Derrick Harris scored on a 1-yard run.

Throughout the second half, the I Tvs. Hurricanes By Mike Brulon INQUIRER STAFF WRITER SYRACUSE, N.Y. The Miami Hur-ricanes got their noses bloodied by Washington early this season, and the naysayers surfaced. The Canes rebounded to whip Florida State, and still critics said they had lost their swagger. Where were those national-title-grubbing Hurricanes? "We really never left," Miami's prodigious Warren Sapp said yesterday, his T-shirt soaked with sweat from the 27-6 victory the Hurricanes scored over Syracuse.

Sapp, a 6-foot-3, 284-pound defensive tackle, found nobody in a post-game gathering who disagreed with his assessment. At halftime, the Plymouth, Fla. native, had an equally persuasive effect on his teammates. The fifth-ranked Hurricanes, their offense wobbly, were trailing the lOth-ranked Orangemen, 6-0, at the half. And they knew that the winner of this game would likely face top-ranked Nebraska in the Orange Bowl.

There were no pep talks, Sapp said. "I just looked in my teammates' eyes," he said, "and I said, 'Let's We got to take them down." Armed with that bit of inspiration, the Hurricanes took the field tn the third quarter and scored the first three times they had the ball. The Syracuse defense that had been so heroic in the first half gave way. Miami fullback James Stewart AJ -K (100 yards, 20 carries, 2 TDs) steam-rolled the Orange while quarterback Frank Costa, who was dreadful in the first half with two interceptions and only five completions on 14 attempts, found his rhythm. With just 11 minutes, 39 seconds left, what had been a tooth-and-nail rumble in a very noisy building had turned into a 20-6 Miami romp.

"Nobody had their heads down," Costa said of his teammates at half-time. "Everybody was mad because we were getting beat." At 7-1, with a league-leading 4-0 record in the Big East, the Hurricanes have only Pittsburgh, Boston College and Temple left on their schedule. It is not a leap of faith to project that Miami would end up io-l and the bowl coalition's highest-raiAed contender. That would put them in the Orange 1 a. INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS Rushing: Miami, Stewart 20-100, Ferguson 8-47, L.Jones 10-41, Costa 6-32, J.Harris 2-6, D.Harris 2-2, Syracuse, Dar Dar 19-80, Mason 15-54, Thomas 11-40, Harris 1-12, Robinson 3-3.

Passing: Miami, Costa 10-22-2118. Syracuse, Mason 4-9-1 M. Receiving: Miami, Tellison 4-53, Y.Green 2-19, Daphms 1-19 1-14, Stewart 1-7, J.Harris 1-6. Syracuse, Harrison 2-19, Wilson 1-9, Dar Dar 1-6, Miami lineman Kenny Holmes levels Syracuse quarterback Kevin Mason just after Mason got rid of the ball. Mason completed jut 4 of 9 passes for 34 yards, with one interception..