Seniors lead the way as Braves top Frostburg State

PEMBROKE — Jo Hayes finds the end zone for UNC Pembroke seemingly every game — so much so that last week teammate JaQuan Albright referred to him as a “box baby.” Jayden Smith had only been there once since early September.

On senior day for both, the pair of pass-catching Braves each made a pair of visits to the football promised land as the highlights of another strong performance by the UNCP offense in a 58-17 win over visiting Frostburg State.

“The only way we were going to beat a good Frostburg State team was to have our seniors play extremely well, and I think off the top of my head almost all of them did, from Jamae Blank to Colin Johnson to Jo Hayes,” UNCP coach Mark Hall said. “Jacob Perry actually moved to right tackle, hadn’t played right tackle all year and ended up starting for us there because of an injury, went against the best pass rusher in the league and didn’t give up a single sack. So the seniors, hats off to those guys, they played well.”

Hayes caught seven passes for 157 yards for UNCP (5-5, 5-3 Mountain East Conference). Hayes has six touchdowns in the Braves’ three-game homestand and 13 touchdowns in the team’s last six games, with at least one in each contest. His 16 touchdown receptions this season place him second nationally in Division II, trailing only Emporia State’s Tyler Kahmann.

“We knew all week they were going to run man-to-man coverage, so the emphasis was winning your one-on-ones every time, it didn’t matter where we were at on the field. So my whole mentality this week was just making sure I was locked in, reading the coverage they were in and just taking advantage of that,” Hayes said. “I have the mentality that I like me versus anybody. It doesn’t matter if I’m going against Jalen Ramsey or if I’m going against a middle schooler, I’m trying to dominate every single rep. From the first play all the way on, it’s like, win my one-on-ones and just dominate from there.”

Smith caught two passes for 22 yards, with both his receptions resulting in six points.

“There was obviously a lot of emotions and stuff with all the seniors, and it was big to be able to have my family be able to fly out from California to come watch, so I just felt like in order for this team to play good I had to put on my best performance, and I felt like that goes for everyone else too, so I was just trying to do my job,” Smith said. “It felt really good to get in the box, because sometimes I’ve had trouble getting to the end zone, but I found the end zone today and put some points up for the team.”

“He does a lot of stuff that we need to do that helps us do what we want to do,” Hall said. “He’s good in the blocking game, he’s a great weapon in the passing game. It allows us to stay out there with a tight end most of the game, and he’s been a guy all year that’s taken advantage of his opportunities. (He’s got five) touchdowns on the season, which for our tight end position is a lot.

Johnson, the Braves’ senior quarterback, was 20-for-32 passing for 288 yards and four touchdowns, while also rushing for 64 yards and one touchdown. Albright caught five passes for 46 yards and one touchdown, while Sincere Baines ran for 96 yards and a touchdown for UNCP.

The Braves totaled 567 yards as a team. UNCP has now scored 266 points in its last four home games, 66.5 per contest.

Not to be outdone, the Braves defense held Frostburg State (6-4, 4-4 MEC) to 125 total yards on the afternoon and forced four Bobcats turnovers.

“When you’re able to score touchdowns on defense and get four turnovers and when you hold a team to 125 yards, you’re flying around,” Hall said. “Truthfully, I don’t know if they actually drove the ball and scored; obviously we set them up on the one touchdown on the kickoff return, which is an issue in itself, but I thought our defense from start to finish was lights out.”

It takes everybody on defense playing fast for us to have success,” said Evan VanMeter, who led the Braves with five tackles including one tackle for loss. “We’ve got to come out and have play-to-play focus and rely on each other. If the D-line in front of me is getting their job done, it makes it easier on me to go out and make plays and do what I have to do, and it makes it easier on the secondary to be able to get tip balls or whatever may happen.”

The signature defensive play came with the Braves leading by 20 in the fourth quarter. VanMeter pressured Bobcats quarterback Myles Fulton, whose passes was deflected by Marquis Rasberry into the hands of Jamae Blank, who returned the interception 50 yards for a Braves touchdown.

This one counted for Blank, who returned an interception for a would-be touchdown last week that negated by a penalty.

“It was such a good feeling,” Blank said. “Once you touch that box, it’s kind of contagious; unfortunately last week it got taken away, petty penalty, it’s all good, but I got blessed enough to touch paydirt again.”

That offensive and defensive performance combined to produce the Braves’ fifth win in its last six games, pulling to an even record after starting the season 0-4.

UNCP took the opening kickoff and Hayes got in the end zone quickly, scoring on a 32-yard pass from Johnson just over three minutes into the game.

“Senior day, it meant a lot, especially because all my family came down,” Hayes said. “I met my nephew for the first time today, so that was really exciting. My brother told me my nephew was coming, and I was like ‘oh yeah, I’ve got to ball out for him.’ I got two touchdowns for him, and potentially it could be my last game at Grace P. so I was just in the mind state of I’ve got to go all out and leave it on the field.”

Frostburg State’s Jordan Marcucci ran back the kickoff 92 yards for a Bobcats touchdown to even the score at 7-7, the first of three big returns by Marcucci in the game.

“We knew, and this is the frustrating part to me, the last two games Frostburg has lost and they haven’t scored a lot of points on offense, but they were getting energy and getting ignited from (Marcucci),” Hall said. “He had a kickoff return to open the game against Wheeling, he had a kickoff last week against West Virginia State early, so it’s not like we didn’t talk about it and we knew the kid was good. Unfortunately, our kickoff team, from the kicker to the 10 guys covering, it was abysmal today, so we’ll get back to work on that and try to get that figured out so we can finish strong. Truthfully, without that unit and giving up those touchdowns and the field position and the opportunity to score, we might have pitched a shutout today.”

Jackson Hills kicked a 25-yard field goal to give UNCP a 10-7 lead, which the Braves retained through the rest of the first quarter.

Smith’s first trip to the end zone came on the Braves’ next drive, with a 15-yard touchdown pass from Johnson extending the UNCP lead to 17-7 with 13:57 left in the half. Hayes found the box again on a 2-yard score with a shovel pass from Jaquan Albright; the PAT missed, but UNCP led 23-7 with 8:19 until halftime.

Each team punted and had a turnover on downs before Frostburg State’s Brandon Keen kicked a 40-yard field goal as the first half expired; UNCP carried a 23-10 lead into the locker room.

Smith returned to the end zone for his first-career two-touchdown game by catching a 7-yard shovel pass from Johnson early in the third.

“He’s always been one of those guys that we can rely on to make a play,” Johnson said of Smith. “He’s got good hands, good feet, he knows what he’s doing, so always just trusting the guys really, just trusting everybody on the field.”

Marcucci returned the kickoff inside the 5-yard line to set up Frostburg State for a 1-yard touchdown pass from Fulton to Trashaun Timmons, making it a 30-17 game with 8:21 left in the third.

The Braves answered with a 9-yard touchdown run by Johnson, stretching the Braves’ lead back to 20 at 37-17 with 3:36 remaining in the third.

UNCP scored three touchdowns in quick succession in the fourth quarter, with one by the defense and the other two resulting from turnovers. After Blank’s pick-six, a Fredrick Sellars interception led to a 1-yard Sincere Baines touchdown run, then an Evan Powell recovery of a fumble forced by Laden Ford resulted in a 2-yard scoring pass from Johnson to Albright, increasing the lead to 58-17 with 4:06 to play.

“Our thing is the jungle, that’s kind of what it’s bled into for the offense, but the jungle is brutal competitiveness, bewildering complexity, and that’s what you guys see out on the field,” Blank said. “It don’t really matter who the team is, it really just begins with us. If we’re locked in, we’ve got that right mindset, the sky is the limit.”

The Braves finish their 2024 season with a 1 p.m. kickoff Saturday against Concord in Athens, West Virginia. UNCP can post a winning record this season, even after starting 0-4, with a win in its finale.

“We’ve got to finish the right way, we’ve got to finish what we started,” VanMeter said. “It’s not the season we wanted, but we’re here now and we’ve got to see it through. It’s an away game, back on the road, and that’s a challenge for us to be able to go out and handle the adversity, and I feel confident we can.”