COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. – The Ursinus College football team picked off three Johns Hopkins passes on Saturday, but the Blue Jays opened up a 21-0 lead in the first quarter and never let up in a 42-7 Centennial Conference final.
Jonathan Germano threw for career highs of 443 yards and six touchdowns for Johns Hopkins (8-0, 7-0), which racked up 598 yards of offense in extending its record CC winning streak to 35 games. Germano's touchdown passes covered 12, 32, 28, 75, 18, and 20 yards, two each going to Brett Caggiano and Quinn Donaldson, who caught a 75-yard bomb early in the second quarter.
Senior Timothy Rafter racked up a game-high 13 tackles, including a sack, and joined sophomore Brian Meilinger and freshman Mitchell Bradford with interceptions. Meilinger posted 11 tackles (two for loss), and freshman Jack Spingler tallied 2.5 tackles for loss among his nine total stops.
Freshman Stacey Gardner carried six times for 63 yards and the lone touchdown for Ursinus (1-7, 1-6). Junior Carmen Fortino caught a game-high seven passes worth 61 yards from freshman quarterback Thomas Garlick, who finished 18 of 29 for 143 yards and added 25 yards on the ground.
After the teams traded punts to open the contest, Hopkins got the scoring started on a 12-yard pass from Germano to Boone Lewis Jr. with 8:57 to play in the frame. After a Bear fumble on the next play, Germano found Donaldson from 32 yards out to double the advantage only 32 seconds later. Germano's 28-yard toss to Caggiano rolled up a 21-0 spread with another 2:30 remaining in the first frame.
Donaldson's long catch and run capped the first-half scoring with 12:31 to play in the second stanza.
The Bears got as close as the Blue Jays' 30 in the second quarter, but senior Corey Kelly was stuffed on 4th-and-1 as Hopkins took over on downs.
The Blue Jays went right to work after the break, marching on an 11-play, 85-yard drive polished off with an 18-yard strike to Bradley Munday in the corner of the end zone. Ursinus was forced to punt on its next possession, although senior Hunter Bednarczyk pinned Johns Hopkins at its own 1 with a perfectly placed punt, helped out by a diving play from junior Cody Richmond to keep the ball out of the end zone. But Germano went up top to Luke McFadden for gains of 35 and 39 yards on back-to-back plays, and Caggiano found a seam in the middle for a 20-yard touchdown catch that made it 42-0 midway through the third.
Gardner got the Bears on the board with 9:42 remaining, two plays after a highlight-reel 49-yard burst down the left sideline in which he dragged several Blue Jay tacklers with him all the way down to the 5-yard line. It was his fifth rushing score of the season.
Rafter's nine tackles moved him into ninth in program history (234), and the interception was the eighth of his career. Meilinger and Bradford each picked off their second career pass, Meilinger returning his 37 yards.
Sophomore Jacob Clifford caught two passes for 68 yards, including a 45-yarder early in the second quarter.
The football team returns to action on Saturday, November 5 at Muhlenberg before closing the season at home against Dickinson the following Saturday.
