Oct 13, 2018 4 min read

The last place Washington & Jefferson College’s football team expected to be on this cold, raw Saturday afternoon was battling for its standing in the Presidents’ Athletic Conference against a determined Geneva team.

Tied 43-43 in a wild, up-and-down, no-defense-allowed game, W&J had the football at the Geneva 12-yard line with 36 seconds to go in the game. The play sent in was fresh from the W&J playbook, stolen from the previous week’s game against Case Western Reserve.

But it worked.

Quarterback Jake Adams fired an out pass to Andrew Wolf, who dodged his way to the goal line, landing just over it for the game-winning score. W&J had a hard-fought 50-43 victory over upset-minded Geneva and sent a chilled Homecoming crowd home happy.

W&J moved its record to 7-0 overall, 6-0 in the conference. Geneva fell to 2-4 and 2-3.

“They all aren’t going to be blowouts,” said W&J head coach Mike Sirianni. “We didn’t score every time we got in the red zone, we made a couple mistakes, and we missed some easy kicks. But we’ll take it, we’re still undefeated.”

The lead changed hands seven times and W&J even trailed at halftime, 28-26, for the first time this season. Geneva tied the score, 43-43, on a halfback option pass to Harrison Kozlow that covered 74 yards against a sucked-in W&J secondary with 3:38 to play.

W&J ran Jordan West seven times on the first 10 plays of the game-winning drive and the Washington High School graduate got the ball to the Geneva 12 with 36 seconds remaining. That’s when Sirianni sent in the secret play. Quarterback Jake Adams faked the handoff to West going right, avoided a tackler, then turned and hit Wolf with the pass.

“We stole that from Case. It’s a Case Western Reserve play,” said Sirianni. “Tell Coach (Gregg Debeljak) thank you. It was a 100 percent steal.”

Wolf scored twice on that same play. The first one went 74 yards and gave the Presidents a 19-13 lead in the second quarter. The second one won the game. Wolf finished with nine catches for 139 yards and three TDs.

“Coach Sirianni said right before the play that we’re going to score here and we’re going to win the game,” said Wolf. “And that’s what happened. It was a great play call. He trusted me and I went out and did what I could do.”

West had another outstanding game, rushing for 196 yards on 39 carries and scoring two touchdowns. He also caught four passes for 70 yards and another TD.

“They were overplaying the stretch play because we were running it so well late in the game,” said West. “We had a feeling we would catch them off guard and the play opened up for Wolf.”

Geneva would get one last drive and made it to the W&J 44 before quarterback Luke Lloyd was intercepted by Zac Quattrone at the 15. Lloyd, a graduate of Avella High School, had a strong game, completing 7 of 9 passes for 144 yards and two touchdowns. He also ran for 35 yards and punted five times for a 37.4-yard average.

“It (stinks). It really (stinks),” said Lloyd of the loss. “We knew we were going to give them a good run. We thought we were going to win. We go out and play our hardest. They are ranked eighth in the country and this shows we can go against anybody.”

Trewon Marshall rushed for 143 yards on 35 carries and scored three touchdowns. His last score was the first of four TDs the teams combined for in the fourth quarter and tied the score, 36-36.

“Our kids know how to fight,” said Geneva head coach Geno DeMarco. “We’re building something here. What we did today is what the future is offensively.”

W&J’s special teams struggled again. The Presidents gave up a 93-yard kickoff return that set up a Marshall TD run, mishandled two squib kicks, kicked off out of bounds, missed an extra-point attempt and had a field goal attempt blocked.

The two teams combined for 1,057 total yards. W&J had 630 on 92 plays and Geneva 427 on 59.