It’s Denison’s first victory over Wittenberg since Nov. 11, 1989. In Wittenberg’s first season in the NCAC, it lost its regular-season finale at Denison. It took Denison 27 years to avenge that loss. Wittenberg had won 22 straight games against Denison, all but one of those by double digits.
“I want to congratulate Denison, Jack and his team,” Wittenberg coach Joe Fincham said. “They clearly outplayed us, outcoached us. Probably the biggest thing was their quarterback just went off on us, and secondly after the first possession of the game offensively we generated nothing the rest of the night.”
Denison sophomore quarterback Canaan Gebele completed 33 of 47 passes for 375 yards with one touchdown and an interception. He also rushed 18 times for 81 yards.
“He’s a phenomenal student athlete,” Hatem said. “He can run and can throw. He’s just a really good player.”
Gebele drove Denison 56 yards in 11 plays to set up the winning field goal. For Hatem, the victory comes in his seventh season. He has turned the program around. He started with three straight losing seasons, but Denison clinched a fourth straight winning season with this victory.
Wittenberg hadn’t lost to a team in the NCAC other than its biggest rival, Wabash, since 2008 when it lost the regular-season finale at Wooster.
“I don’t even know what to say,” Hatem said. “For us, we’ve been working really hard like everybody does. A game like this makes us believe that maybe we’ve taken the next step. For the first time this week, we really felt like we believed we could win this game.
Denison (6-0, 5-0) takes over first place in the conference and leads Wittenberg, Wabash and DePauw (all 5-1, 4-1) by one game with four games to play.
Denison still has to play two of the three teams tied for second. It plays at DePauw on Oct. 29 and then hosts Wabash on Nov. 5.
A Wittenberg victory would have almost sealed Fincham’s 12th NCAC championship in 21 seasons and a sixth 10-0 regular season because the Tigers play Hiram, Oberlin, Kenyon and Allegheny in their final four games. Those are the bottom four teams in the NCAC standings, and they have four wins between them.
Wittenberg took a 7-0 lead 94 seconds into the game on a 3-yard touchdown run by Jake Kennedy. The offense struggled the rest of the night.
Kennedy completed 15 of 24 passes for 194 yards with one touchdown pass and two interceptions. DeShawn Sarley rushed 11 times for 60 yards. Luke Landis led the receivers with four catches for 80 yards.
The Tigers trailed 14-7 at halftime but tied the game on an 11-yard touchdown catch by Luke Bowling. Denison regained the lead with 7:11 left on a 2-yard rush by Cody Farley. Kennedy scored on a 4-yard run with 5:00 to play to tie the game at 21-21.
Wittenberg had a chance to drive for the go-ahead score in the final minutes, but Kennedy threw a deep pass down the right sideline and was intercepted with 2:25 to play. Denison turned that turnover into the winning field goal.
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