Statesmen Comeback Falls Short, #17 Ithaca Keeps Butterfield Curse Alive, winning 28-21

With the upcoming bye week we unfortunately will have a lot of time to mull this loss over. JR QB David Krewson had his moments, but poor protection from his OL which lost the LOS for most of the game forced him into some tough situations.

The Statesmen rallied down 14-0 to score 21 unanswered points, but ultimately the defense couldn't stop the Ithaca WR combo of Michael Anderson and Andrew Vito. The young Hobart secondary was exposed on a few long pass plays and SO QB AJ Wingfield was simply the better player at QB Saturday.

SO RBs Rayshawn Boswell and Tim Denham, Jr. scored the three Hobart TDs but it was the overthrow to a wide open Boswell that ultimately ended the game for the Statesmen for all intents and purposes. 

Sure, Hobart had a couple of other chances, but the game ended in typical Butterfield fashion with a strange fumble / broken play that ended up not getting to the sideline as time expired.

While ending up 4-1, 0-1 at the halfway point of the regular season isn't a death sentence, it's certainly disappointing. The Statesmen will have an upward battle to go from here, but as Frank and I have said on "In the D3FB Huddle" the best candidate for a Region 1 or 2 Pool C playoff bid is probably to the runner up of the Liberty League. It's also possible the LL title could end up being decided via tiebreakers due to multiple teams going 9-1. Still five more games to go, but the RPI one is the most important for now.

We will see if that pans out, in the meantime, the Statesmen will likely be pulled from the Top 25 and replaced by RPI (5-0, 1-0). #12 Union (5-0, 1-0) definitely looks beatable after struggling a bit with Buffalo State (0-4, 0-1) today.

Biggest game of the season is always the next one. The Engineers get Buff State in Week 6, so at least the Statesmen will have an extra week to prep for this important LL showdown.

More on this game in a bit. Go 'Bart.