RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -A big check and a victory.
Three Colonial Athletic Association teams padded their coffers and their records against major college teams on the opening weekend of the football season.
Mary upended Virginia 26-14 in Charlottesville.
“It was a pretty good week for CAA football,” Spiders coach Mike London said Sunday.
Especially for the CAA’s South Division, which produced all three upsets and went 4-1 for the weekend. The only team that didn’t play, James Madison, opens at Maryland on Saturday, and will be facing a Terrapins team trying to rebound from a 52-13 waxing by No. 12 California.
Mary, the Atlantic Coast Conference had a brutal first week; other ACC teams were 0-4 against fellow Football Bowl Subdivision opponents.
rom a 21-3 deficit to get within 21-17 at Kansas State, but the Minutemen couldn’t get the ball back at the end.
The results are not typical of so many early season games that are all about giving the big school a chance to work out kinks – see Florida 62, Charleston Southern 3 – while the lower division school gets an `experience’ and a few hundred thousand dollars for the trouble.
Still, in CAA circles, the results were hardly surprising. The league, after all, has had three different teams win the national championship in the last six years, and has matched its own record the last two seasons by sending five of its 12 teams to the NCAA playoffs.
“Those are the teams that we have to go against every week,” London said.
The Blue Devils, who were blanked 13-0 by the Spiders to open the 2006 season, are probably grateful they don’t have to do the same thing after being manhandled on the lines.
Duke managed 19 rushing yards, allowed Richmond to go ahead to stay with a blocked punt for the touchdown in the first quarter and trailed 24-9 with 3 minutes to play.
“They played harder than us tonight,” Blue Devils quarterback Thaddeus Lewis said. Lewis was one of seven Duke players who also played in the 2006 loss and was hoping to avenge it.
On Sunday, Duke coach David Cutcliffe did nothing to mask his disgust.
he said. “In sports, there’s never a shame in getting beat, but in anything in life you do, there’s a shame in not being as good as you could possibly be.”
At Virginia, the Tribe forced seven turnovers and salted the game away when B.W. Webb intercepted Jameel Sewell with 2:39 left and returned it 50 yards for a touchdown. It was Webb’s third interception of Sewell and Virginia’s first lost to an FCS school in 23 years.
Mary also turned the trick then, winning 41-37 in 1986.
“There will be a lot of negativity out there, some of it well deserved,” Virginia coach Al Groh said. His team had never before opened the season against a lower rung team.
The game was particularly exciting for R.J. Archer, who began his first – and final – season as the No. 1 quarterback in the stadium where he grew up watching the Cavaliers play.
“I was a little worried about the emotional factor,” Laycock said of the senior, who was told he could walk on at Virginia if things didn’t work out elsewhere. “R.J. is pretty cool and almost nonchalant. Tonight he was very poised. I was extremely impressed.”
Archer tried to deflect much of the credit to his defense, which limited Virginia’s new spread offense to 269 yards, and said people are sure to notice what the Tribe achieved.
e thought we had a good chance, and we just put it all together.”
CAA commissioner Tom Yeager wasn’t at either game, choosing instead to help future league football member Old Dominion mark the return of its program after 69 years. He said the league pride was already flowing at Foreman Field in Norfolk, where ODU beat Chowan 36-21.
“People were coming up to me giving me the William and Mary-UVa score with great glee on their face,” Yeager said Sunday. “These are kids that were told they could be a recruited walk-on or whatever, and when they get their day in the sun, it can be very fulfilling.”
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