I Bleed Blue and White

Here is the recap and box score for anyone who missed the game.

Chris Whitney came up big and delivered one of the best performances of his career, finishing with 277 yards and 3 touchdowns through the air. He was backed by a Villanova defense that continued to stand on its head throughout the game and deny the Spiders the endzone.

Brandyn Harvey will go down as the hero in this one for his game-winning TD grab with 59 seconds left. On 4th an 10, Andy Talley drew up a play for the senior WR, and Harvey delivered with a one-handed catch. But there was still plenty of game left to be played after that.

Richmond was able to drive back down the field and get into field-goal range. It wasn’t meant to be for the Spiders though, as the kick went wide left. The moment will be remembered in Villanova football history forever.

Some quotes:

“The play was designed to go to me. [Whitney] saw me and I was open,” Harvey said. “I should probably have caught the pass with two hands but you can’t put your arms as far out as with one hand. Once I made the catch, I knew someone was behind me but I just wanted to make sure I scored.” -- Brandyn Harvey

“Like Brandyn said, the play was designed to go to him,” Whitney added. “On fourth-and-10 I didn’t have much choice but to go to him. We have counted on Brandyn all year. He is 6-4 and a big target. I thought I might have overthrown it at first but I am glad that it worked.” -- Chris Whitney

“The game pretty much went accordingly to what we expected coming in.” “I thought both teams were very evenly matched and we were comfortable playing here because we thought we had a chance to get after [Richmond] if we could shut down their running game. We maybe had an opportunity to close it out earlier but Richmond is a very good team and they were everything we thought they would be. We have a lot of respect for them. They did a great job and the game could have gone either way.” -- Andy Talley

Here’s a bonus, dug up by Brian of VUHoops. One less person is employed today.

LB Osayi Osunde

I’m getting bored waiting for basketball season. It’s a long time until October when things really start moving on that front. So I decided that from now on we’re going to at the very least update you on the other ‘Nova sports teams as their seasons progress. We won’t be going nearly as in-depth as we do for basketball, but being a graduate, I have come to realize that I’m going to end up pulling for more than just the basketball team.

So, we’ll do our best to get some more sports into the rotation. To start off, let’s talk about the football team, which just had their annual Media Day last week. Head Coach Andy Talley and several players were on hand to talk to the media about the upcoming season, which kicks off when the Wildcats play Temple at The Linc on September 3rd at 7:00 p.m.

Villanova is returning an obscene amount of talent on offense, headlined by a couple of juniors; RB Aaron Ball and WR/RB Matt Szczur. The Wildcats were picked as pre-season CAA co-champions with Richmond, and are expected to be among the best teams in the country.

Four players were selected as pre-season 1st team All-CAA; Szczur, LB Osayi Osunde, OT Ben Ijalana, and DE Tim Kukucka. Osunde was also given pre-season All-American honors by the FCS. Osunde has led the team in tackles for the last two seasons.

Lastly, check out this article by Mike Kern of the Philadelphia Daily News, in which he talks with Osunde and others about the bad taste that was left from last season.

…I’m really glad the football team has big aspirations…Villanova has been primarily known for the basketball team, but it’d be great if another team could consistently be on the national radar…who knows, maybe in a few years they’ll even make the jump to the FBS if the Big East looks to expand…