A minute that turned the Patriot League on its head
William & Mary trailed Villanova 32-22 with under a minute to play. They won 35-32.
The sequence ran like this: a Max Lipinski field goal, an onside kick recovered by Brendan Robinson, a 37-yard touchdown catch by Kai Austin from Winston Watkins, Lipinski’s tying extra point, a third interception thrown by Pat McQuaide, then Lipinski again from 45 yards to end it.
Both teams were playing their first game as Patriot League members. Villanova arrived ranked eighth in the country. McQuaide’s participation had been settled in court the day before, when the quarterback obtained an injunction allowing him to play this season.
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The Big Sky made its case
Week 0 ran to 69 games and the tightest of them clustered in one conference. The average winning margin across the first five Big Sky games was 5.2 points.
Cal Poly beat Idaho 38-34 on a 34-yard touchdown pass from Anthony Grigsby Jr. to Tayvion McCoy with nine seconds left. Weber State survived Northern Colorado 30-29 after Zach Smith blocked a tying extra point with three seconds on the clock. No. 6 UC Davis trailed Portland State by 21 at half-time and won 31-24. No. 25 Northern Arizona also came back from 21 down, beating Eastern Washington 34-27 behind two fourth-quarter touchdown passes from Ty Pennington. No. 2 Montana held off Southern Utah 28-21.
The Big Sky has spent this preseason trying to displace the Missouri Valley as the strongest conference in the FCS. It has at least claimed the most watchable.
Montana State and the shutouts
Six teams posted shutouts. South Carolina State’s 87-0 win over Savannah State was the fifth-largest shutout by an FCS team in the past 30 years. Illinois State beat St. Francis (IL) 76-0, Norfolk State beat Winston-Salem 56-0, Hampton won 45-0 and UTRGV 44-0.
The sixth belonged to No. 1 Montana State, who closed the weekend with a 54-0 win at Utah Tech. That makes 15 straight victories, the longest active run in the FCS, and it points toward back-to-back national titles rather than the chaos playing out elsewhere.
The HBCU programs also drew a crowd. Howard beat Alabama A&M 31-24 in the MEAC-SWAC Challenge behind 364 total yards from Ja’Shawn Scroggins, while West Florida, a recent Division II arrival, took down No. 16 Southern Illinois 34-31 in front of a record 6,124 in Pensacola.
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