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Witt completes perfect regular season
SPRINGFIELD — The trophy changed hands more often in a few minutes than a football at the bottom of the pile. Everyone wanted to touch it. More wanted to kiss it.
Homecoming queens don’t get the attention the North Coast Athletic Conference championship trophy received after Wittenberg beat Wooster 42-6 on Saturday, Nov. 14. The still-undefeated Tigers claimed sole possession of the trophy for the first time since 2001, likely securing home-field advantage in the NCAA Division III playoffs for one round or two.
“Where’s that trophy?” senior wide receiver Patrick Williams asked.
“It’s mine,” said senior cornerback Keenan Freeman later, clasping it to his chest.
Yet no one showed better trophy possession skill than senior linebacker Kyle Lohrman. He made it his personal mission to escort the trophy from Edwards-Maurer Field to the coaches’ offices.
“I’m so excited. I can’t believe this happened,” Lohrman said. “We’ve been working four years for this, all the seniors, and finally all our hard work’s paid off.”
That work resulted in the fourth 10-0 regular season, and the first since 2000, for coach Joe Fincham. Two brave players, obviously secure with their spots on the team, doused him with a bucket of ice water in the closing seconds. Fincham said he had no idea it was coming.
Outside Wittenberg, few saw this 10-0 season coming, either. This team wasn’t ranked until beating Wabash in its sixth game. NCAC coaches picked the Tigers to finish third.
“Going 10-0 is really hard,” Fincham said. “You’re not going to have your ‘A’ game‚ every Saturday, and you’ve got to be talented enough that when you don’t have your ‘A’ game, you can still win.”
The Tigers had their best game Saturday. Aaron Huffman completed 24 of 31 passes for 277 yards and rushed for two touchdowns. All three running backs — Corey Weber, Conner Warye and Jeff Wilbur — had TD runs of more than 16 yards.
And the defense, led by Brad McKinley’s six tackles, cemented its status as one of the most dominant in Wittenberg history. The Tigers gave up just 53 points this season, the best mark in the nation in all divisions of NCAA football and the best total by a Wittenberg defense since 1998.
“Three hundred and 64 days ago,” Fincham said, “we had a team meeting where we talked about the commitment that was needed and the sacrifice and all the things you need to do to have a championship-caliber football team, and guys like Taylor Scherer and Pat Williams and Lance Phillips, and they took it and really did a great job with it.”
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