On Saturday afternoon, the Trinity men’s football team had their second defeat of the season in Belton, Texas, against the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor Crusaders, losing 49-7. The Crusaders have now won 39 consecutive regular season games, while this loss drops the Trinity men to a 3-2 standing this season.
Just thirteen seconds into the game, the Crusaders took the opening kickoff, bringing the score to 7-0 early on. The Crusaders followed up with another touchdown in the second quarter. The only score of the night from the Tigers was Stephen Smith’s 33-yard touchdown toss to Cody Sandman.
“Although the strong point of the game was the defensive success we had in the first half, we could have limited the turnovers in our offense” Smith said, “and we are definitely going to need to learn from this game and move on in order to try and finish out the year 5-0.”
Trinity was held to negative 5 rushing yards and 204 total yards, including three turnovers in the game. Mary Hardin-Baylor ran for 317 yards and rolled up 446 yards of total offense for the victory.
Smith led the team with 161 yards, one touchdown and one interception, while sophomore Garrett Swan followed Smith with 73 yards under his belt.
“There unfortunately weren’t very many highlights for our team this week. But with that said, our defense, for the first quarter and a half, were really good. They held their offense to just a touchdown. Unfortunately our offense couldn’t capitalize, resulting in our defense being on the field the majority of the time, and typically in bad field position. This, of course, led to fatigue, which then led to the opponents scoring,” Swan said. “We came in with a good scheme, but didn’t execute as well as we would have liked. We’ll look to improve upon that this weekend.”
While the program’s initial goal this season was to win the conference championships, the team felt as if they could have executed their attempt differently.
“We had an opportunity to match up with one of the best programs in the nation and show that we can compete at that level. We made too many mistakes to achieve that goal,” said assistant coach Brant McAdams.
Next weekend, the Trinity men’s football team will play their homecoming game against Millsaps College.
“We are excited to play at home again versus a familiar opponent. We are looking forward to alumni weekend and having an opportunity to compete with a good football team,” McAdams said.
During halftime of that game, the eight Trinity University Athletic Hall of Fame Class will be inducted at the football stadium with a postgame reception in the Bell Center. Inductees include the 2000 national champion men’s and women’s tennis teams, 2003 national champion women’s basketball and men’s soccer teams, 1997 ITA men’s singles and doubles champion James Broach “˜98 and former men’s basketball coach and athletic director Leslie Robinson.
