WASHINGTON, Pa. – In what has seemingly become an annual tradition on Homecoming at Washington & Jefferson, the Presidents gave the fans all they could handle in a high-scoring, one-score victory as the No. 8-ranked W&J football team downed Geneva, 50-43, at Cameron Stadium.
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Junior quarterback Jacobs Adams (Louisville, Ohio/Louisville) threw for a career-high 432 yards and five touchdowns, while sophomore wide receiver
Andrew Wolf (Ashland, Ohio/Hillsdale) posted his sixth 100-yard game and scored three times. Junior running back
Jordan West (Washington, Pa./Washington) rushed for 196 yards and two scores on 39 carries, plus caught four passes for 70 yards to pace the offense in the victory.
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The scoring opened up at the 9:24-mark of the first quarter. On fourth down from the three-yard line, Adams rolled to the left and hit senior tight end
Jake Cullen (Orchard Park, N.Y./Orchard Park) right inside the pylon for the opening score, 7-0.
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After Geneva answered with a 33-yard scoring pass, the Presidents went 10 plays and 67 yards, capped off by a one-yard rush by West to give W&J the lead back at 13-7 with 1:08 left in the first quarter. It only took 1:14 for Geneva to take its first lead of the game when the Golden Tornadoes answered back six seconds into the second period, 14-13.
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The first play from scrimmage after a Geneva punt saw Adams hit Wolf on a screen at the Presidents' 26-yard line, and the receiver did the rest as he zigged and zagged through the defense for a 74-yard score, his national-leading 14th of the season. The two-point conversion failed and the Presidents' advantage was 19-14.
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Geneva took the ensuing kickoff 93 yards to the W&J three-yard line where sophomore wide receiver
Josh Burns (Coraopolis, Pa./Moon) chased down the returner, but the first play resulted in a rushing touchdown and a 21-19 lead for the GTs. Wolf brought the kickoff 65 yards to the Geneva 18-yard line and then snuck inside the pylon on the right front corner of the end zone on the fifth play, a 10-yard pass from Adams, his 15th score of the year, tied for the fifth most in a season in program history. At the 6:14-mark of the second period, W&J led by a 26-21 spread.
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A long pass by Geneva put the Golden Tornadoes ahead, 28-26. W&J had a 26-yard field goal blocked as time expired for the first half, and the Presidents trailed at halftime for the first time in 2018.
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Junior kicker
Adam Napotnik (Gibsonia, Pa./Pine-Richland) gave W&J the lead back, 29-28, at the 9:55-mark of the third quarter from 22 yards out. A three-and-out followed by the defense and West ran in from two yards out after receptions of 11 and 34 yards by senior wide receivers
Brandon Barnes (Hagerstown, Md./St. Johns) and
Tim Swoope (Venetia, Pa./Peters Township), respectively, to stretch the lead out to 36-28, with 6:48 to go in the third period.
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Geneva tied the game, 36-36, 1:09 into the fourth quarter when they completed an eight-yard pass and succeeded on the two-point conversion. That would be all of the scoring until 3:56 remaining. West corralled a 16-yard pass from Adams and raced in, but the Golden Tornadoes tied the game on the very next play from scrimmage on a 74-yard halfback pass, 43-43.
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Adams and West orchestrated an 11-play drive that ran the clock down to 30 seconds remaining with the final play coming on a 12-yard pass to just inside the front pylon to Wolf for his third score of the afternoon. An interception by senior safety
Zac Quattrone (White Oak, Pa./Serra Catholic) with no time left sealed the final score and another close Homecoming game.
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Wolf went over 1,000 yards on the season in the win. He now has 16 receiving touchdowns this season, which is already the fourth-largest single-season total in W&J history. In addition to Wolf's 100-yard effort through the air, Barnes posted his second career 100-yard game as he pulled in a season-best eight passes for 102 yards. Swoope also notched career highs of six receptions and 91 yards.
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Defensively, junior defensive tackle
Jeffrey Oxner (Silver Spring, Md./Bullis School) made a career- and team-best 13 tackles and led all players with 3.0 tackles for loss. Sophomore linebacker
Cole Weston (Louisville, Ohio/Louisville) reached double digits for the first time in his career as he made 11 stops. Sophomore linebacker
Max Garda (Lower Burrell, Pa./Burrell) and senior linebacker
Cody Milsom (Butler, Pa./Knoch) each tallied nine stops, with Garda accounting for the lone W&J sack.
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Overall, W&J rolled up 630 yards of total offense on 92 plays. The victory was the final regular-season home game for the Red & Black, as the Presidents ran their regular-season home winning streak to 34 straight, dating back to 2012.
W&J will travel to Westminster on Saturday, Oct. 20 for a 1 p.m. kickoff with a 7-0 record, including a 6-0 mark in the Presidents' Athletic Conference.
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Highlights
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