March 28, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Tardif, MMA `D’ cruise past UMass-Dartmouth

CASTINE – Steve Tardif put in another prototypical working-class Steve Tardif day (39 ho-hum carries and 219 predictably gritty yards) and the Maine Maritime Academy offense was potent enough to score 20 points at Ritchie Field on Saturday.

Still, UMass-Dartmouth coach William Kavanaugh left Castine knowing the MMA All-American wasn’t the reason his team lost 20-3.

It was much more simple than that, he said. And it had nothing at all to do with Tardif’s varied scampers, scoots, smashes and crashes. Nothing to do with his three touchdowns (a pair of three-yard rushes and an 11-yarder).

It had to do with his own offense.

And it had to do with this: “They kicked the living crap out of us. It’s quite simple. They just beat us. They beat us off the ball. They beat us in every way.”

The Mariners allowed very few offensive opportunities after the Corsairs scored a field goal on their first possession of the game and posted their first win after two tough defeats. UMass-Dartmouth, which entered the game with the New England Football Conference’s second-leading offense, dropped to 2-2.

To steal a page from Kavanaugh’s book, the leading crap-kickers for MMA were its bookend defensive ends, Clarence Young and David Gross.

Young made eight tackles, including three for losses, and Gross added eight more, four for losses, and deflected a ball that teammate Nick Buck picked off.

Young, a vocal, versatile graduate student who serves as de facto leader of a group he constantly refers to as “my dogs,” – as in “Where’s my dogs at?” – said he and Gross had to send a message after two straight losses.

“In past games teams haven’t run to the outside because me and Gross are there,” Young explained.

“They tried it. Their primary offense is to run to the outside. And me and Gross decided, hey, this is our game. Our game. No matter what happens, we contain, and they will not run the ball.”

They didn’t.

Young and Gross either made tackles themselves or funneled plays back toward their hungry linebackers, Alger Yanush, Matt DeGrasse and Nick Buck. DeGrasse made 11 stops, Yanush had eight and Buck made six to go with his interception.

UMass-Dartmouth finished with 83 yards rushing and only 174 yards of total offense.

“We lost both of the last games by six points and we should have won both of them,” Gross said, pointing out that a pair of losses wasn’t acceptable for a team that had penciled in “undefeated” as a reachable preseason team goal.

“We came out fired up,” Gross said. “This is how we play. This is our team. If we play like that, we’re gonna be tough to beat.”

Gross helped his own cause by consistently pinning the Corsairs deep in his other role as MMA’s punter. He averaged a whopping 45.8 yards per boot, and his afternoon included a 70-yard missile as well as punts of 61 and 54 yards.

And then there was Tardif.

While the MMA passing game sputtered – Cameron Giroux completed only three of 16 attempts for 24 yards – Tardif was running all on cylinders.

Brian West staked the Corsairs to a 3-0 lead less than five minutes into the game, but Tardif and the Mariners quickly answered.

When MMA got the ball back, Tardif got the call on nine plays of an 11-play scoring drive. The march spanned 81 yards, and Tardif accounted for 76 of them. He bolted in untouched from the three to give MMA the lead for good.

And early in the third quarter he struck again, taking a pitch from Giroux and bashing his way for another three-yard score.

“I thought we stopped Tardif pretty well in the first half,” Kavanaugh said. “We gave them all kinds of field position and they only got six points. But our offense was our problem.”

Mariners 20, Corsairs 3

UMass-Dartmouth (2-2) 3 0 0 0 – 3 Maine Maritime (1-2) 6 0 14 0 – 20

UMD – West 38 field goal

MMA – Tardif 3 run (kick failed)

MMA – Tardif 3 run (Higginbotham kick)

MMA – Tardif 11 run (Higginbotham kick)

UMass-Dartmouth Maine Maritime

First downs 12 15 Rushing att. – yds 35-85 50-232 Passing cmp. – att. 12-26 3-16 Yards passing 91 24 Total yards 176 256 Intercepted by 0 1 Punts – avg. 8-37.3 7-45.8 Fumbles – lost 2-2 1-0 Penalties – yds 5-23 3-20

INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS

RUSHING – UMass-Dartmouth: Meranda 28-75, Wozniak 2-3, Antonio 1-6, McLaughlin 4-1; Maine Maritime: Tardif 39-219, Baker 5-8, Nicholson 2-8, Giroux 1-(-3)

PASSING – UMass-Dartmouth: McLaughlin 12-26-1-91; Maine Maritime: Giroux 3-16-0-24

RECEIVING – UMass-Dartmouth: Armandi 4-39, Meranda 1-14, Sabina 2-8, Antonio 3-12, Harris 1-9, Mota 1-9; Maine Maritime: Rushmore 1-16, Weigart 1-

8, Tardif 1-0


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