Merchant Marine had two 100-yard rushers and added a highlight-level fourth quarter touchdown as the Mariners won the Secretaries Cup for the 16th time in 21 outings, defeating archrival Coast Guard 24-14.
- Final score: Merchant Marine 24, Coast Guard 14
- Saturday's broadcast
It was one of five Division III football games played this fall, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Mariners' lead between Division III's two federal service academies 34-15, including a 27-13 advantage since the Cup was first introduced into the rivalry.
Merchant Marine pounded the ball to the tune of 343 yards on the ground, as quarterback Ian Blankenship ran for 151 yards and a touchdown and Ceaser Gonzalez added 103 yards and a score. And when Coast Guard cut the lead to three midway through the fourth quarter, Merchant Marine went back to the ground game. The Mariners got big chunks from Blankenship, who went for 16 on a second-and-10 at midfield, for 10 on a second-and-7 and for 10 on a third-and-5 in the red zone. And after that final Blankenship run, the ball went to Matt Restifo, who took it the final 4 yards, including a hurdling leap over the head of a Coast Guard defender into the end zone, giving Merchant Marine a 24-14 lead with 4:48 to play.
"It was a great feeling. The hard work we put in for the last three months, it showed today," Restifo said on In the Huddle following the game. "We scouted them for about three months and we've been practicing for three months ... whatever my role is, it doesn't matter as long as we get the W."
It was only a matter of time before @USMMA_Athletics FB SR Matt Restifo would be heard from in this game — he would not be denied this TD, giving the Mariners a 24-14 lead over the @CoastGuardBears (4:48 4th). @D3FBHuddle #d3fb pic.twitter.com/Fe0rZUtS4L
— Frank Rossi (@FrankRossi) November 14, 2020
It is the only game of the season for the two schools. Because of the obligations associated with attending a service academy, neither school will be able to participate in football in the spring. After the game, the sophomores and juniors for Merchant Marine head directly out to sea for their assignments, some of them on the night of the game.
"We had no chance to play in the spring because all my sophomores and juniors tonight are going to be heading out to sea," Merchant Marine coach Mike Toop said on In the Huddle after the game. "So we weren't going to have a team in the spring. ... If we were going to play, we had to get one game in the fall."
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| Matt Restifo had just six carries, but they were big ones, including a touchdown that put the game out of reach in the fourth quarter. Merchant Marine Academy athletics photo |
The teams traded first-quarter touchdowns, as Kings Point held the ball for 14 plays and Blankenship put the ball in the end zone to give the Mariners a 7-0 lead. Coast Guard responded with an 11-play drive of its own as John Barbera went 8-for-8 passing before Jared Colletti finished with a 2-yard touchdown, evening the game up at 7-7.
But after that, the Mariners defense got the job done, limiting Barbera to 4-for-15 passing over the second and third quarter. Meanwhile, the Mariners put up 11-play drives in the second quarter and the third quarter to edge out to a 17-7 lead.
Coast Guard entered the fourth quarter with the ball on its own 14-yard line, and Barbera and the Bears' offense went to work. Barbera finally found Justin Moffatt, who had caught 66 passes last year but was held to just one on Saturday. But it was an incomplete pass that was the key play of the game, as Barbera's ball to Damaso Jaime was incomplete, but Dylan Brown was flagged for pass interference. That gave Coast Guard (0-1) the ball in Merchant Marine territory, and four plays later, his little swing pass to Colletti connected. Colletti made a move to make two defenders miss and ended up in the end zone 24 yards later, cutting the lead to 17-14 with 9:09 left in the game.
After Restifo's touchdown, Coast Guard went three-and-out and punted with 3:56 left, trailing 24-14.
The Bears never got the ball back. Blankenship scampered 12 yards on a third-and-13 and, after a timeout, Restifo got the ball on a toss and took it 6 yards to move the chains. Blankenship had another big run, a 7-yard run on third-and-2 to get into Coast Guard territory and the Mariners were able to kneel it out from there.
"These kids and what they have been through and kids having COVID and not practicing for a couple of weeks and coming back, its tough for me to say i'm upset with them," said Coast Guard coach C.C. Grant, in his first game as head coach after decades as an assistant for the Bears. "Yeah, I wish the score had been different, but I told them after the game how proud of them I was and it was alot of fun to be able to be out there today and its hard to find fault with the effort they gave today."
Barbera finished 18-for-24 passing for 181 yards and the touchdown toss to Colletti, who finished with 88 yards receiving and tied for the team high with 24 yards on the ground.
Dylan Brown, interference call aside, had a huge day at cornerback for the Mariners, breaking up three passes as well as notching a pair of tackles. Noah Newburgh added one gut-wrenching breakup in the third quarter, as Moffatt seemed to have a catch along the sideline on a fourth-down play that would've extended the drive, but Newburgh came in hard and created enough body contact to force Moffatt to drop the ball without possession.
Ethan Brady had seven tackles, including half a tackle for loss and a forced fumble. On the Coast Guard side, Eugene Bizer led all comers with 20 tackles, 14 of them solo stops, as the Bears defense was on the field for 36:05 in the loss.
In the Huddle postgame coverage: