On Saturday, September 29, Colgate football defeated the Yale Bulldogs at the Yale Bowl in New Haven by a score of 47-24. The Raiders recovered from a difficult defeat at the hands of Stony Brook when they lost 32-31 the previous week.

The Saturday game began with an offen-sive explosion, as both the Bulldogs and the Raiders converted touchdowns on their first two drives. Junior Gavin McCarney started off the scoring for the Raiders running it in from five-yards-out to even up the score at seven.

After the Raiders defense gave up another touchdown, McCarney needed only one play to even back up the score, hitting senior Chris Looney for a 79-yard touchdown pass. After holding the Bulldogs to a field goal on the next drive, McCarney and the Raiders of-fense continued their success, with a 10-play drive that spanned 76 yards and was capped off with McCarney’s second rushing touch-down of the game. The strong Raider rushing attack, with senior Jordan McCord rushing for 34 yards, heavily dominated this drive.

Soon after making a defensive stop, the Raiders offense went back to work and got a touchdown for their fourth straight drive, with McCarney throwing a 31-yard touchdown pass to sophomore tight end C. J. Stempeck. Another defen-sive stop later, the Raiders were in the end zone again with McCarney running from 8 yards out. As the Raiders entered the locker room for halftime, they found themselves in a 35-17 lead with conversions on all offensive drives in the game.

“We finally executed. We had always had little mistakes in the previous games, but Sat-urday we were able to eliminate them for the most part. We really seemed to click because of that,” Looney said.

“We were able to keep the chains moving and stay on the field. I was proud of our offensive performance,” McCarney said.

Entering the second half, the Raiders knew that if they had anywhere close to as good a first half as they did, they would come out of New Haven with a victory. It was at this point that the defense stepped up and took on a big responsibility. Sophomore Kris Kent com-mented on the change after the first part of the game.

“It all comes down to tackling. In the first quarter we had guys in the right spots, we just weren’t getting the running back on the ground. After the first quarter we picked up our focus and everyone was running to the ball and our tackling improved,” Kent said.

After allowing an opening drive touch-down, the defense took a stand the rest of the game and did not allow any more scores. First-year Josh Ford intercepted a pass early in the fourth quarter and from there, McCa-rney took two rushes and scored, capitalizing on the great field position.

After a missed Bulldogs field goal, the Raid-ers got the ball back and McCord and McCa-rney ran all over the Bulldogs, with McCord finishing the drive with a rushing touchdown from eight yards out. With the Bulldogs down big, the offense moved quickly into Raid-ers territory, but senior Chris Horner ended their drive and hopes of a comeback with an interception, ending the game.

Statistically, the Raiders had another very strong game. McCord continued his domi-nance on the ground, pounding out 138 yards on 24 carries while also catching four passes for 322 yards. Looney continued his role as the deep threat, catching four passes that went for a total of 138 yards.

The big winner of the day, however, was McCarney, who garnered the Patriot League Offensive Player of the Week award. Mc-Carney went 17-22 with 275 yards and two touchdowns while also rushing for 85 yards on 14 carries and getting four touchdowns. Senior Patrick Friel led the Raiders with 10 tackles while junior Andrew Nairin led the team with two sacks.

With this game and the non-conference schedule out of the way, the Raiders are looking ahead to the season’s Patriot League contest.

“We just need to take it one game at a time and focus on the little things,” McCar-ney said. Colgate plays Holy Cross at home for the Homecoming game on Saturday October 13 at 1:00 p.m.

Contact Spencer Serling at [email protected].