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Mount Union rolls to easy win
By Greg Gulas
ALLIANCE
In two-years as Mount Union’s starting quarterback, Kevin Burke has yet to taste defeat.
After Saturday’s 56-21 thumping of tenth-ranked Wittenberg, he ensured that first-year head coach Vince Kehres remained undefeated as well.
Burke threw for 326 yards and five touchdowns, two each to Luc Meacham and Jack Nicholls. He also rushed for another score and helped the top-ranked Purple Raiders rack up 601 yards of offense to advance to Division III quarterfinal play for the 22nd consecutive year.
The win, their 12th this season without a defeat, was their 27th in a row and gives the defending national champions a Dec. 7 date with Wesley College after the Wolverines’ 23-15 win over Ithaca College.
“We did a great job on both sides of the football,” Burke said. “Both teams exchanged touchdowns on the games’ first four possessions and then things settled down a bit,.
“Scoring a touchdown right before halftime and then coming out and scoring on our first possession of the second half was big,” Burke said.
Kehres has been a part of 10 of Mount Union’s 11 national championships as either a player or assistant coach.
“After their first two drives resulted in touchdown,s we settled into the game,” Kehres said. “Making a few adjustments with our third down sets was big as well.”
Tigers (10-2) quarterback Reed Florence got the scoring started on the game’s opening drive when he found Brandon Cunningham from 23 yards out for the early 7-0 advantage.
On Mount Union’s first offensive series, Burke found Nicholls from 7 yards away, knotting the game a 7-7.
Florence found Cunningham again, this time from 40 yards away for a 14-7 margin.
But a 32-yard run by Burke tied the game.
Burke added a second strike to Nicholls, this time from 5 yards out with 27 seconds remaining in the opening half,
“With the game tied at 14, we felt like we had them where we wanted them ,but they scored right before the half and then again at the outset of the third quarter and that hurt,” Tigers coach Joe Fincham said. “In the second half, we had some opportunities to move the sticks but penalties cost us on consecutive trips inside their 35-yard line.”
The win was the Purple Raiders’ 193rd in their last 200 games dating to the 2000 season for a .965 winning percentage.