If you don’t score, you can’t win. Last Saturday afternoon in the heart of the Hilltop, Georgetown’s young defense took this simple rule to heart. The Hoyas (1-1, 0-1 PL) held the Stony Brook Seawolves (0-2, 0-0) scoreless the entire 60 minutes of play, standing strong in their first shutout of the year and gaining rookie Head Coach Kevin Kelly his first win, 7-0.
“Any time you get a shutout you’re awful happy,” Kelly said. “I told them, ‘Give it all you got, leave it on the field, and if they don’t score, we win.’”
That was with about 11-and-a-half minutes left in the game. The Hoyas had shut down the Seawolves’ offense for three full quarters before that and had no trouble keeping them in check until the final horn. The Hoya stonewall defense was rock solid, stuffing Stony Brook on three fourth down attempts and sacking the quarterback four times. The squad from Long Island, NY could only muster three third down conversions all game against a defense featuring a total of seven new starters from a season ago.
“We really kept our composure as a young defense,” senior defensive end and captain Alex Buzbee said. “I was really surprised. We stayed calm, and when they made big plays, we stuck with it.”
Their defense had the Stony Brook offense as confused as Joe Hoya trying to figure out what a seawolf is. Broken plays for big losses and momentum-killing penalties highlighted the day for the young Stony Brook squad.
On the first drive of the game, junior quarterback Josh Dudash commanded his team down to the Georgetown 28-yard line after completing his first three passes for 34 yards. Then the penalty flags started to rain down after an offensive pass interference and an illegal substitution call on Stony Brook. Dudash and company were forced to retreat back to mid-field and then to punt.
“You’re not going to win football games when you move the ball and then shoot yourself in the foot,” Stony Brook Head Coach Chuck Priore said, also in his first year with a new team.
The Seawolves did manage to drive the long field and threaten the seemingly impenetrable Georgetown defense with about four minutes left in the game. But now Dudash was out with a thumb injury, and the Seawolves called on senior backup Andrew Garrett. After completing his first three passes of the drive, Garrett botched the snap from center and was forced into an intentional grounding penalty with junior defensive tackle Nnamdi Obiako in his face. Stony Brook was eventually faced with a fourth down try, but with Hoya Blue’s pots and pans and the 1,950 Hoya faithful in attendance behind them, the Hoya defense forced an incomplete pass as Buzbee brought the pressure this time around.
“The crowd was a big thing. When its third and fourth down and you got everybody on their feet and getting hyped, it’s a great feeling,” the defensive captain said. “When it comes down to a fourth quarter game like this and you’re up 7-0, you have to hold them. That’s what we work for, and we came out victorious.”
Of course to come out victorious, the Hoyas needed to put some points on the Multi-Sport Field scoreboard themselves. A sack by junior rover Darren Craft helped force a punt, which the Hoyas took at mid-field to start their drive. Sophomore starting quarterback Ben Hostetler still didn’t look totally comfortable throughout the afternoon, but he showed flashes of brilliance with three-and-a-half minutes left in the first half. The bandana-wearing gunslinger fired a 40-yard dart to junior receiver Jasper Ahezie that got the G-Men down inside the 10-yard line. Then, after nearly throwing an interception in the Stony Brook end zone, Hostetler kept his cool and lofted a pass to sophomore receiver Sidney Baker who made a leaping catch in the corner of the end zone to put his team ahead.
The Seawolves had one more opportunity in the waning seconds of the game. But on fourth down with 15 seconds left, Stony Brook quarterback Garrett tripped pulling away from the center and fell on his backside, saving the relentless Hoya defense some work.
Georgetown knows they will have to continue to work with fanatical effort if they want a similar result this coming Saturday when they travel to Providence, RI to face Brown University.
“We got the defending Ivy League champs we’re facing next week,” Kelly said. “But we’re going to go there. The score is 0-0 now, and we’re going to beat them.”
