Tag: Greg Livingston

Middlebury, Vermont – Title Town?: Stock Report 10/9

Unless you live under a rock you probably heard something about the epic, double-overtime Middlebury-Amherst game on Saturday. Fortunately for those of you that do live under a rock, I’m going to talk a little bit more about it. This football game was an absolute classic. The Panthers raced out to a 21-0 lead before the end of the first quarter and when I saw that I thought it was going to get ugly in a hurry. Apparently I forgot that the Mammoths don’t fold because before I knew it Amherst held a 28-21 lead and had possession of the ball with 10 minutes left to play. This is when the game really started to live up to the hype (much of which was created by us). The Middlebury defense forced a 3 and out and just a few plays into the subsequent drive, Will Jernigan ’21 connected with Greg Livingston ’20 for a 54 yard touchdown to even things up with 6 minutes left.

After the Mammoths couldn’t get anything going on the other end, Jernigan orchestrated a 9-play, 2 and a half-minute drive to put the Panthers on the Amherst 10-yard line with 33 seconds left to play. You’d think that with the game tied at this point Middlebury would run the ball a few times and then kick a field goal as time expired – particularly because their running back, Alex Maldjian ’23, was having a career day. Instead, the Panthers went with the Pete Carroll strategy from Super Bowl XLIX and they passed the ball. Those up in Vermont must not have remembered how that worked out for the Seahawks, because Jernigan had his next pass picked off by John Ballard ’20 at the goal line to send it to overtime.

Middlebury received the ball first in overtime looking to redeem themselves and Jernigan was intercepted, again, on the second play of the drive. This put Amherst in essentially the same position that the Panthers were in at the very end of the game – you’re already in field goal range, so just be careful with the ball for a few plays then kick a field goal and go home. If only it were that easy. On a 3rd and 10 play, Eberth took a shot towards the end zone and was picked off by Finn Muldoon ’23, sending the game into double overtime. Absolutely bananas.

This time the Mammoths got the ball first and didn’t put much together, but they were finally able to kick that elusive field goal to take a 31-28 lead. On 3rd and 5 from the Amherst 20, Jernigan found Maxwell Rye ’20 for a 7-yard completion and a first down, avoiding kicking a field goal to force a third overtime. The Amherst defense stayed tough and forced another 3rd and long, but Jernigan made a big-time play and found Maxwell Rye ’20 again, this time in the end zone to secure the win (and potentially a NESCAC Championship) for the Panthers.

I know it’s easy to find out everything you just read by looking at the box scores and reading the recaps from each team’s website, but those don’t give you the human element. This was the type of game that every player on both of these teams will remember forever. This was historically two of the best teams in the NESCAC battling it out like great teams do for the right to take home a trophy. That’s the type of game this was; it felt like a championship game. NESCAC sports are special because of games like this one and, as you’ll read more about below, it likely will be the championship game barring an unexpected collapse by the Panthers.

Stock up

Middlebury’s Title Chances

No reason to wait around here – the Panthers have put themselves in the driver’s seat for the NESCAC Championship. They’ve now taken down Trinity, Williams, and Amherst who are three of the top four other teams in the league. This means that even if they lose a game they still hold the tiebreaker over each of these squads and that is absolutely huge. The most obvious challenger is undefeated Wesleyan, but keep in mind that Wesleyan’s four wins have come against Colby, Hamilton, Bates, and Bowdoin so they literally have to play the five best teams in the conference over their last five games. Now I’m not saying that the Cardinals aren’t going to win all five, but they ha– actually I am saying that they aren’t going to win all five. In fact, I’d be surprised if they even won three. The league is Middlebury’s to lose at this point so stay tuned to find out if they pull an ’04 Yankees on us.

League Entertainment Value

Looking at the slate of games heading into this weekend, it didn’t look like we were in for very much excitement. Aside from Amherst-Middlebury every game featured a team traditionally found at the top half of the league versus a team traditionally at the bottom. I’ll be honest, I was expecting several blowouts. I was very happy to find out that I was wrong, because every game besides Williams-Colby ended up as one-score games in the fourth quarter with the trailing team possessing the ball. Bates, Hamilton, and Bowdoin all had chances to lead game winning or game-tying drives against Tufts, Trinity, and Wesleyan, respectively. At the end of the day these games were all won by the favorites, but if we’re going to have such blatant imbalances in the standings then at least it’s nice to have that little bit of hope that the underdog might win, right? If nothing else it keeps fans in the stands until the end of the game… 

Bates Offense

Likely the biggest surprise of the weekend came from the Bobcat offense who came into the league last in most statistical categories. It also didn’t seem favorable that they were matched up against the Jumbo defense that had only allowed 8 points to the NESCAC’s top scoring offense. Apparently this didn’t faze the young Bates offense, because they came out firing. Brendan Costa ’21 was throwing the ball all over the field, connecting with 7 different receivers en route to his first 200-yard game of the season. Their goal line touches were dominated by fantasy vulture Christian Sanfilippo ’21, who had 6 carries for 11 yards and 3 touchdowns. Talk about getting your 19 fantasy points the hard way. This was the first time all year that Bates looked like they could really put solid drives together using both the run and the pass, which is a serious improvement. They had to go 88 yards in 90 seconds to cap off a 19-point comeback and were ultimately unsuccessful, but this looked like a completely different unit on Saturday. We’ll see if the improvements are enough to take down the Trinity Bantams for the first time since 1979.

Stock down

Bantam Dynasty

I’ll be honest I’ve been really excited to write this stock down for a while now, but I wanted to wait until it was the right time. Now feels like a good enough time for me. Trinity is still one of the best teams in the league, so this speaks more to how good they have been over the last three years than to their struggles this season. Prior to this season this year’s senior class had a 24-2 career record with three NESCAC Championships. That’s dominant. Through four games this season they already have two losses and really haven’t looked like the same team at all. They did what they should have done against Bowdoin, but their showing against a much weaker Hamilton team was not the Bantam football that we’re accustomed to seeing. Again, I don’t mean to say that we won’t see another NESCAC Championship trophy make its way to Hartford in the near future, but the time has come that we can officially say that Trinity is not the best team in the conference. They won’t win the conference championship this year and their ridiculous run, for now, is over. Finally it’s someone else’s turn.

Amherst Offense

If Middlebury had lost to Amherst, they probably would’ve found themselves in the stock down category as well. The Mammoths should have won that game for a number of different reasons, the most obvious of which is the fact that they had the ball on Middlebury’s 25-yard line in overtime, only needing a field goal to win it. Are you kidding me? Granted Middlebury blew it at the end of regulation, but shouldn’t that have taught them how to handle the exact same situation less than 20 minutes later? I don’t want to put the whole thing on QB Ollie Eberth ’20, but throwing 4 picks certainly isn’t the way I would go about winning a championship. Including overtime, the Mammoths possessed the ball for 50 minutes, compared to just 25 for Middlebury. Let that sink in. Amherst had the ball for twice as long as the Panthers and still lost. All the Mammoths can do now is focus on the next game and hope things fall their way. It’s an uphill battle from here. 

Volatility at its Finest: Middlebury Football Preview 2019

2018 Record: 5-4

Projected 2019 Record: 5-4

Projected Offensive Starters (*6 returning)

QB – Will Jernigan ‘21*

RB – Peter Scibilia ‘21*

WR – Maxim Bochman ‘20*

WR – Maxwell Rye ‘20*

WR – Aidan Power ‘20

TE – Frank Cosolito ‘20*

OL – Kevin Woodring ‘20*

OL – Jack Purcell ‘20

OL – Colin Paskewitz ‘21

OL – Ben Berry ‘21

OL – Charles Ferrell ‘22

Projected Defensive Starters (*6 returning)

CB – Coltrane Marcus ‘20

CB – Jourdon Delerme-Brown ‘20

S – Jonathan Hobart ‘21*

S – Gordon Pollock ‘22*

LB – Wyllis McKissick ‘20

LB – Pete Huggins ‘21*

LB – Jack Pistorius ‘21*

DL – Martin Williams ‘20*

DL – Charles Roselle ‘21*

DL – Elijah Thiam ‘22

DL – Nick Leone ‘22

Projected Specialists (*2 returning) 

PK – Carter Massengill ‘20*

P – Maxwell Rye ‘20*

KR/PR – Greg Livingston ‘22

Offensive MVP: QB Will Jernigan ‘21

I know it’s a cop out to continue selecting the quarterbacks of each respective team, but Middlebury REALLY (emphasis on really) needs Jernigan to take a step forward in 2019. As a sophomore, Jernigan played in all nine games, but did not replace the turnover-prone Jack Meservy ‘19 until the fourth game of the season. The Georgia product did some solid things with both his arm and his legs (1,143 passing yards, 321 rushing yards, 17 all-purpose touchdowns), but turnovers were (and still are) a concern; Jernigan threw an interception in every single one of those starts in addition to a handful of fumbles. The good news is that most of his core weapons return to Middlebury, including workhorse Peter Scibilia and freakish tight end Frank Cosolito. If Jernigan can severely cut down on the turnovers and find a way to get these guys the ball in space, the Panthers could be a dark horse in the NESCAC Championship race. 

Defensive MVP: DL Martin Williams ‘20

Middlebury finished with a mere 11 sacks as a team last season; while this is surprisingly good enough for fifth in the ‘CAC, it’s merely half of the next highest number (Trinity had 22 sacks) on the list. If Middlebury is going to improve upon some disappointing defensive statistics from 2018 (allowed 28.3 ppg, including the third-worst pass defense), it needs to start with creating havoc behind the line of scrimmage. Here is where Martin Williams steps in, ready to improve upon last season’s performance. In 2018, Williams led the defensive line in tackles and finished tied for the lead in sacks, which was good enough for a selection on the 2018 All-Conference Second Team Defense. Williams and his partner-in-crime Charles Roselle ‘21 are more than capable of changing the momentum of a ballgame at any given moment, and the Panthers will undoubtedly need Williams (and the rest of the D-line) to step up in a major way this season in order for the Panthers to have a shot at dethroning the likes of Trinity, Amherst, Williams, etc. 

Team Slogan for 2019: #MiddKickoffCountdown19 #GoMidd #PantherNation

Middlebury might win the award for most generic team slogan of 2019. The supposedly seventh-ranked liberal arts school by US News decided to leave their wits in the classroom and play it way too safely with their selection(s). Do better, Panthers. Rating: -2.36/10

On the bright side (literally), this picture courtesy of Middlebury athletics is absolutely breathtaking and was an absolute must-add to the article. Middlebury photography skills: 1000/10

Everything else:

While I’m on the subject of artistic skills, shoutout to the Middlebury graphic design team. These images of players are absolutely D1 caliber. Exhibit A and B: 

Back to the real football talk: Middlebury’s major concerns come on the defensive side of the ball, but there is room for optimism as they return key contributors at nearly every position. Despite losing All-Conference Second Team linebacker Kevin Maxwell ‘19, the Panthers return Pete Huggins ‘21 (who finished tied for second with Maxwell in tackles) as well as starter Jack Pistorius ‘21 (34 tackles, 5.5 TFL) and key contributor Wyllis McKissick ‘20 (24 tackles, a sack, and a fumble recovery). Along with Williams and Roselle, sophomores Elijah Thiam ‘22 and Nick Leone ‘22 will most likely round out the defensive line. Both underclassmen contributed greatly as freshmen last season, combining for 33 tackles and 3 TFL. Alex Norton ‘20 (11 tackles 5 TFL) and Emo Schiappa ‘22 (11 tackles) will likely play a significant role as role players, although it would not surprise me if Norton ends up starting based on his high tackle for loss numbers. 

The real question mark for this Panther defense is at defensive back. For a team that had the third-worst pass defense in the NESCAC a season ago, I’m not sure if losing both starting corners is a good or bad thing; nevertheless, Coltrane Marcus ‘20 and Jourdon Delerme-Brown ‘20 will attempt to keep opposing receivers in check, with reserves Nate Stewart ‘22 and Kevin Hartley ‘20 ready to go on a moment’s notice. 

Offensively, the Panthers have weapons all over the field. Cosolito is the best tight end in the league and will be salivating at the opportunity to be matched up with an opposing linebacker. Wide receivers Maxim Bochman ‘20 and Maxwell Rye ‘20 are more than capable of making up for Conrado Banky’s production (26 catches for 376 yards and 4 touchdowns) and Scibilia is one of the top five running backs entering the 2019 season. In my eyes, the Panthers’ season comes down to the offensive line. Losing four starters is absolutely brutal, and although three of the four newly projected starters are upperclassmen, we’ve seen time and time again that offensive linemen need time to gel and work together. Not only are they tasked with creating holes for Scibilia to run through, but they have to protect Jernigan and allow him to get comfortable throwing the ball. If defenders collapse the pocket time and time again, Jernigan will get happy feet and either make errant throws on the run, or not trust his offensive line and look to scramble. If the O-line can neutralize the defensive pass rush, Jernigan should have no excuses getting the ball to his talented playmakers, and the Panthers should be in a position to win 6+ games. If not, this could be a long season.