Sep 13, 2014 3 min read

NEW WILMINGTON – It might have seemed a bit odd for Mike Sirianni to break into a diatribe about an upcoming game against Westminster with the first week’s game barely completed.

That was what the Washington & Jefferson College head football coach did after last week’s rout of Wooster in the season-opener.

It seems Sirianni was upset over comments flying across social media and, well, any bit of locker room fodder is normally appreciated by most coaches.

Whether that had any effect on the outcome of Saturday night’s game at Harold Burry Stadium in New Wilmington is debatable. Talent seemed to sway this game.

W&J posted a 56-21 victory over the Titans and first-year coach Scott Benzel in a chippy game.

“They have a lot of new players and they wanted to strut their stuff a little bit,” said Sirianni. “They wanted to talk, but we didn’t get involved with that.”

It was the 14th consecutive victory for the Presidents in this series and the 699th in W&J history. No. 700 could come next week in a home game against Carnegie-Mellon.

Ryan Ruffing continued his assault on the NCAA Division III scoring race, getting five more touchdowns to give him 10 for the season. He scored on four runs and a pass against the Titans’ defense.

Ruffing rushed for 172 yards on 36 carries and scored on runs of 2, 1, 1 and 5 yards and caught a 26-yard screen pass to open the scoring. He finished the game 239 total yards.

“It’s just a part of our offense,” said Sirianni of the plays Ruffing scored on. “Those are the plays we run. We ran the same plays – the same pass plays, the same run plays – the last 20 times we had the ball. They just couldn’t stop us.”

Quarterback Pete Coughlin caught 24 of 35 passes for 281 yards and the one TD pass to Ruffing.

Max Creighan caught seven passes for 104 yards and Daniel Lis eight for 66 yards.

Westminster (0-2) scored back-to-back touchdowns to make it 28-14 in the third quarter. Jametrius Bentley returned a kickoff 88 yards for a touchdown and Dominique McKinley had a 53-yard run. Bentley would also catch a 74-yard pass from Brandon Heeter.

“They made three plays against us,” Sirianni said. “Other than that, it was absolutely nothing.”

W&J is 2-0 for the first time since 2009.

W&J took advantage of a mistake-prone Westminster to grab a 21-0 lead at halftime. One drive was kept alive when the Titans Todd Jeter touched a rolling punt by W&J. Another began when Billy Kelley intercepted Columbo, one of five freshman starters for the Titans, in the end zone to stop a Westminster drive.

Ruffing scored all three of the first half touchdowns, giving him eight in six quarters.

The first capped a 65-yard drive and gave W&J a 7-0 lead on its first possesion. Ruffing took screen pass 26 yards for a score.

His second score came on an 80-yard drive, aided by the muffed punt by Jeter. It ended 14 plays later with a two-yard dive up the middle 11:24 before halftime.

Max Creighan set up Ruffing’s third score when he took a pass from Coughlin and twisted his way first to the right, then back left for a 47-yard completion. Four plays later, Ruffing went over from the one.