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The announcement blasted over the sound system at DellaCamera Stadium with just over two minutes to play and on a stressful day for the University of New Haven football team, there was a chance to smile and revel in the fact that the Northeast-10 championship is in the hands of the Chargers once again.
New Haven dug itself an early hole due to mistakes on special teams and offense before two touchdowns in the final four minutes lifted the host Chargers to the hard-earned 25-14 win over Assumption. While New Haven rallied for its six win of the season, Saint Anselm was falling to Pace at home.
Saint Anselm would have been declared the NE10 champion if the Hawks won the rest of their games. With Saturday's loss, New Haven is now in that position.
Regardless of what else happens, if New Haven wins at Pace and against Bentley in the regular-season opener, the Chargers will be the conference champions.
"We approached this game that it doesn't matter what happens anywhere else, we have to attack each week one at a time," said senior linebacker Devin O'Malley (Pawtucket, R.I./St. Rafael Academy), who had a game-high 12 tackles and one of the Chargers' three interceptions. "Hearing that news, it brightened our day knowing that we have another chance to win the title."
Trailing since the first quarter, the Chargers saw one go-ahead score taken off the board as an apparent punt return for a touchdown by Dev Holmes (Troy, N.Y./Troy) was negated by a penalty.
O'Malley made back-to-back tackles to force a punt after a no call on what could have been whistled as pass interference on the Greyhounds ended up with Assumption's third interception of the game.
When New Haven (6-2, 4-1 in the Northeast-100 got the ball back, Daelen Menard (Fort Lauderdale, Fla./Chaminade Madonna) connected with Matt Chandler (Oviedo, Fla./East Coast Prep) on a 3rd-and-6 play to keep the next drive alive. On another third-down play, Holmes took a pass from Menard and scampered in for the 21-yard touchdown with 3:45 left to put the Chargers up 18-14.
Assumption had a chance to drive down for the winning score. However, Hunter Cobb (Sandy Hook, Conn./Newtown) jarred the ball free and Musa Hemby (Trenton, N.J./Hunterdon Central) recovered the fumble.
"We just took the lead and we wanted to make a play," Cobb said. "Everybody did their job and I did mine too and made the play."
It took three attempts by Menard to score from inside the 1 before his TD run iced the game.
It didn't look good as the Chargers trailed by more than 10 points for just the second time this season.
New Haven appeared to escape with any damage on Assumption's first drive when O'Malley corraled a pass that bounced off the hands of Assumption's James Henderson for the Chargers' Northeast-10 leading 14th interception of the season.
However, a bad snap when New Haven's drive went nowhere resulted in the first punt blocked against the Chargers this season.
Three plays later, Chris Donohue connected with Nick Ofodie for the 9-yard touchdown.
The led grew to 14-0 for the visiting Greyhounds when Jaron Wilson intercepted a Daelen Menard (Fort Lauderdale, Fla./Chaminade Madonna) pass and returned it 62 yards for a touchdown early in the second quarter.
New Haven got on the board when Elijah Jeffreys (Somerville, Mass./Somerville) took a pass from Menard, eluded one tackle and beat three Assumption defenders to the end zone for the 71-yard touchdown. A bad snap on the extra point kept the score at 14-6.
"We needed something to happen, it wasn't going how we wanted it to go," said Jeffreys, who finished with 103 yards on four receptions. "Once I made that play, it gave up some emotion and energy.
"The last game I had a big drop versus Saint Anselm and that play runs through my head all the time, I still think about it. I felt like I had to come back to do something better than I did in the last game."
Chris Ais carried the ball five times for 59 yards on New Haven's final possession of the first half. His 2-yard TD around right end cut the lead to 14-12 with 31 seconds to play in the second quarter. Once again, an issue with the snap resulted in a missed extra point as Assumption took a 14-12 lead into the locker room at halftime.
New Haven turned to senior tight end Zoltan Panyi (Old Orchard Beach, Maine/Scarborough) to handle the long snapping for most of the second half. He did get pressed into duty as a long snapper in a 2022 win over Southern Connecticut State and came through again.
"Coach asked me to step up, go in there and help out and I did whatever I can to help the team win because I care about the team a lot and I want to do whatever I can to help the team."
The Chargers trailed for more than 47 1/2 minutes in the game. Only countless stops by the defense kept the Chargers in a game when they turned the ball over four times and made many other mistakes as well.
"We really challenged them this week and last night just to play hard, not care about the wins and losses and play hard," New Haven coach Chris Pincince said. "We knew we were up against it in the league thing and we knew we had given one away against [Saint Anselm] and we tried to give it away again but the kids stepped up."
Assumption was one of 10 teams listed in the first Super Region One Rankings of the 2023 season. New Haven has a chance to replace the Greyhounds when the new regional rankings come out.
Frostburg State and Shepherd, who were also among the 10 teams in the regional rankings, also lost on Saturday. Frostburg State did beat New Haven in the 2023 season opener and that could factor into the new rankings.
There is still work to do since only seven teams will make the NCAA Division II playoffs out of Super Region One.
The Northeast-10 champion does not receive an automatic spot in the NCAA Division II playoffs so all New Haven can do it control what it can control and hope that is enough to secure a postseason bid.
"It is our job to take care of what we need to," Pincince said. "Obviously that [being in control of the NE10 race] is great for the future and great for our main goal of winning our conference but we have so much work to do to get ready for Pace. Whether Pace won or lost, we would be putting our head down and going to work."
Ais finished with 74 rushing yards. Hemby and Giye Jenkins (West Orange, N.J./Seton Hall Prep) also had interceptions while Jalen Fisher (Pasadena, Calif./Chaminade College Prep), Davon Colon (Cromwell, Conn./Xavier) and Lorenzo Feliciano (Bethlehem, Pa./Freedom) combined for 5.5 tackles for loss.
