GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — Interceptions on three consecutive series turned into third-quarter touchdowns Saturday, propelling the Colorado Mesa football team to a 38-22 victory over Chadron State in the Mavericks' final home game of the season.
And although there are some plays the Mavericks would like to have a do-over on, they sent their 18 seniors out the right way.
"There's a lot of distractions with senior day, you want to honor those guys and be able to get a win for them, but they've got a lot of emotions going through their heads, they're playing their last football game here in Grand Junction, so you want to go out the right way, but you don't want those distractions to leak into the team (preparation during the week)," CMU coach Miles Kochevar said. "I thought we did a good job coming out and didn't try to press it early in the game."
Coming out of halftime holding a 17-0 lead, the defense took over in the third quarter, creating turnovers on four consecutive series to take what appeared to be a commanding 38-0 lead.
"At halftime, we talked about not winning the game, maybe I should have added a bigger focus than that, but let's win the third quarter, come out one quarter at a time," Kochevar said. "We got some opportunities, some breaks that came our way, JaCari (Williams) was able to capitalize and get some momentum get a short field for the offense."
JaCari Williams picked off Chadron State quarterback Preston Pearson on the second play of the third quarter, and his 23-yard return set the offense u p at the Chadron State 25-yard line.
Gavin Herberg found Keenan Brown in the corner of the end zone three plays later, with Brown gathering in a pass that was tipped and nearly intercepted.
Williams intercepted his second pass of the quarter, again on the second play of the Eagles' ensuing drive, and this time, weaved his way from the far side to the near side of the field, made a couple of cuts and found the end zone after a 40-yard return for a 31-0 lead.
"On both of the interceptions, I want to credit my defense because they did a phenomenal job blocking," Williams said. "But once you get your hands on the ball, as a defensive back, it's exciting. There's no other feeling, we want to get the ball every play, the ball is the mission, so when you get your hands on the ball, you just want to run and get to the end zone.That's what I felt like, like the Energizer bunny, I wanted to get to the end zone."
Not to be outdone, Colin Stuhr made a leaping interception on the next series to give the offense another short field. On first down, Herberg ran 23 yards for the touchdown, and CMU was cruising.
As it turned out, the Mavericks put it in cruise control a little too much, Herberg said, and Chadron State came back behind backup quarterback Mason Hamilton as the CMU offense went stagnant.
"As a whole unit, we've got to learn to finish better," the junior quarterback said. "I think we got a little conceited with where we were, being up 38 points or whatever it was, we just kind of let that get to our heads and we fell asleep."
A disputed fumble after CMU's Jack Horsford caught a pass at Chadron's 21 — Aaron Ramirez had forced a fumble, which was recovered by Hayden Steffens at the 32 to give the Mavericks the ball again — seemed to spark the Eagles.
They got on the board when Joey Geil returned the fumble 65 yards to CMU's 15, with Herberg preventing a touchdown by pushing him out of bounds at the 15.
The Eagles scored 21 unanswered points and with 12:59 to play had pulled within two touchdowns.
Again, the defense came through, with Williams breaking up a pass on fourth down with just more than six minutes to play, then Hudson Metcalf, who consistently put pressure on the quarterback, chased Hamilton out of bounds on fourth-and-10 after a 4-yard gain with 1:33 remaining, sealing the victory.
Keyshawn Ashford opened the scoring with a 2-yard run on the final play of the first quarter, Henry Katelman added a 27-yard field goal in the second and Ashford wrapped up his final home game with a 1-yard TD with six seconds left in the half.
After building the big lead, the Mavs' offense bogged down trying to run the ball to work the clock, but couldn't generate first downs to sustain drives and gave the Eagles chances to rally.
Herberg led CMU's running game with 46 yards on 10 carries. Ashford had a dozen carries for 34 yards. Herberg completed 15 of 23 passes for 192 yards with one interception. David O'Connell was his favorite target, with five catches for 94 yards in his final home game.
Mesa finished with 333 yards of total offense, Chadron State 281 yards, 201 of those coming from the short passing game.
Metcalf and Levi Krebs had nine tackles each, and CMU broke up eight passes, three by Williams.
The Mavericks, 5-5 overall, 4-4 in RMAC play, can finish above .500 with a win in the season finale at New Mexico Highlands on Nov. 11.
Kochevar said the Mavericks answered some questions after their disappointing loss last week to CSU Pueblo, mainly in how they didn't splinter or point fingers and got back to work. They've got one more week to finish the season with some momentum going into the winter conditioning program and recruiting season.
"Now we've got to continue to build off the momentum," Kochevar said. "We're gonna go down to a place where it's really tough to play, and how are we going to respond to that and get ourselves ready?"
