Sacred Heart Erases a 9-0 Deficit and Beats Maine 24-16
Maine led 9-0 and had not scored a touchdown. That is the detail worth sitting on. Three Samuel Tremblay field goals (42, 45 and 37 yards) built the lead, and then Sacred Heart scored 21 straight points on its way to a 24-16 win.
The turn came in the second quarter. Dean Hangey ran in from 3 yards out at 6:05 to make it 9-7, and Jack Snyder found Jason Palmieri from 11 yards with 19 seconds left in the half for a 14-9 lead that Sacred Heart never gave back. Snyder hit Brendan Errity from 6 yards early in the third to make it 21-9. Maine got within five on Nick Laughlin's 2-yard run with 12:03 left in the fourth, and Ryan Bocklet answered with a 40-yard field goal at 6:48 that made it an eight-point game. Nobody scored after that.
The box score is a quiet one. Neither team threw an interception or lost a fumble, so the story is just yardage. Sacred Heart ran 45 times for 176 yards and passed for 207, 383 in all. Maine finished with 259 (154 passing, 105 rushing on 25 carries) and found the end zone exactly once. Three field goals and a touchdown is a fine afternoon for a kicker and a rough one for everyone else.
Sacred Heart moves to 2-2 and Maine drops to 1-3. Swap two of those first-half field goals for touchdowns and I would be writing about the Black Bears instead, but they did not, so I am not.
For fantasy, this was Snyder's game: 21 of 27, two touchdowns and 73 rushing yards on 15 carries. Palmieri also quietly turned in his best game of the year.