Patriot League preseason football report: Colgate

The last time Colgate University opened a football season with a Patriot League game, the Raiders blew a 14-point lead and trailed Georgetown 19-14 in the final minutes and, with 5.6 seconds left, won the game on a trick play – a 2-yard pass from wideout J.B. Gerald to DeWayne Long.

“We should have lost,” Colgate head coach Dan Hunt, said, remembering that game during the Patriot League’s media teleconference last week. “They were in a take-a-knee period and fumbled and we went on to run our two-point conversion play from two-yard line and won; but if you had said after week 1, ‘you’re about to go undefeated and play for the national title,’ I’d have said, ‘You’re crazy.’ Then the next week we go out and beat Buffalo.”

Colgate did go to the championship game, where it was routed 40-0 by K.C. Keeler’s Delaware Blue Hens. 

       

Hunt was trying to make a point about not taking anything for granted and about the fine line between winning and losing. He has to keep reminding his team about those things since the Raiders have been tagged as the preseason favorite to win the Patriot championship and the automatic FCS tournament bid that goes with it.

“Just because you had a good year the year before and a lot of people are back, that doesn’t mean anything,” Hunt said. "Everybody we play has (about) 90 players, too, and (Colgate players) know what it’s going to take, to not have that letup and to take nothing for granted. This group has been, from the day our season ended last year, focused on on being the best we can be and we are not going to let up. I feel pretty good. But we will be a different team.”

Some of that difference will be in a very positive way – Colgate has four fifth-year seniors (RB James Holland, OL Scott Hirshman and Max Hartzman and SS Alec Wisniewski) in camp and all of them figure to be in the starting lineup when the Raiders open Sept. 1 against Holy Cross, a team with a new coach and, if the early recruiting information is any indication, is ready to make its comeback in a hurry.

Colgate was 7-4 last season, tied Lehigh for the league title, but lost the playoff spot because the Brown and White won the head-to-head battle. Hunt said the Raiders’ summer program was the best he’s seen at the Hamilton, NY, university, which has no summer classes to attract the student-athletes.c

Asked what Colgate needed to make the 2018 team rank up with the 2003 national finalists or the 2015 quarterfinalists, didn’t do a lot of dodging. “on both sdides of the ball, to get x’s and o’s specific, we need to be a lot better on third downs. And offensively, I’d say we have to get our completion percentage up, too.” 

The Raiders converted 41.36 percent and allowed opponents to convert 36.54 percent on third downs; and the passing game completed 56 percent for a per-game average of 156 yards.

Last year, when Colgate shut out Lafayette 27-0 in a key game down the stretch, quarterback Grant Breneman, who wound up as the league’s rookie of the year, was just 5-for-17 passing for 94 yards and was intercepted twice. In a duel among freshman QBS. Lafayette’s Sean O’Malley was 29-for-48 for 195 yards and three interceptions.

Hunt calls Breneman "a football junky ... always learning ... wants to know the next step. We threw him against Richmond, Buffalo and Furman last year and he came out better for it. I didn't reaize he was going to take off so quickly. The sky's the limit for that kid."

But if one team can dominate defensively, its chances of winning the championship increase dramatically. Nick Wheeler, the preseason defensive player of the year is a sack machine, and the preseason all-league teams has three Raiders among the four members of the secondary.  That's impressive. 

Hunt says he thinks he has three of the best running backs in the league, led by fifth-year beast Holland, who had 722 yards last year. “Fortunately, they’re not big-ego kids,” Hunt said. He ranks Holland among the best anywhere. But Hunt, who in addition to head coach, also handles the running backs, and the Raiders seem to prefer a multi-back attack. That won't get anyone huge numbers, but it may go along way in keeping backs healthier for the entire season.

PRE-SEASON ALL-LEAGUE PICKS – Defensive PoY DL Nick Wheeler, RB James Holland, WR Thomas Ives, OL Max Hartzman and Jouan Woolford, DL Wheeler, LB T.J. Holl, DB Tylar Castillo, Abu Daramy-Swaray and Alec Wisniewski, PK Chris Puzzi.

PRESEASON LEAGUE FINISH PREDICTION – 1st.

2018 LAFAYETTE GAME: Home, Sept. 22, 1 p.m.