Rowan lost yet another game this past Saturday against Montclair State University.

The Profs are now 2-6 this season, which many did not expect to happen. Rowan was ranked fifth in the New Jersey Athletic Conference preseason rankings but now sit at the bottom of the standings at sixth place with The College of New Jersey and Christopher Newport University.

Rowan controlled the first half against Montclair.

Defense played strong by stopping the run and forcing Montclair’s quarterback Ja’Quill Burch to throw the ball.

Montclair had two turnovers, one fumble and one interception, giving the Profs opportunities to score.

The Brown and Gold put up 17 points in the second quarter and had a 17-10 lead going into halftime.

But the second half was all Montclair, who opened up the run game.

Burch had a total of 281 passing yards and three touchdowns in the game.

“I don’t know if guys let up a little bit,” sophomore linebacker Mike Mascioli said. “Montclair came out more prepared than us in the second half. I’m not too sure on why things turned out that way. I’m not gonna point fingers anywhere specifically but as a team we gave up more points.”

“Their quarterback is really good,” Head Coach Jay Accorsi said. “We were in man coverage and they beat us. We got a lot of sacks, got a lot of pressure but we got beat on big plays.” 

The Profs had nothing going on the offensive side of the ball in the second half.

They scored zero points, punted four times and had a big interception in the fourth quarter that lead to Montclair taking a 24-17 lead. 

“They did a great job of adjusting to what we were doing and we just didn’t come out and execute what we had to do,” quarterback Mike Husni said. 

Montclair drove the ball down the field and were able to cause a turnover in an important spot in the game in the second half.

The Profs had a shot to tie the game late in the fourth quarter. The drive started on their own 36 yard line.

Husni hit a huge pass to Nick Grosso for 28 yards to get it started and they would march all the way to the Montclair four yard line.

This could’ve ended in a score but their redzone troubles continued.

Messiah Divine fumbled a toss out to the left for a loss and Husni overthrew a wide open Nick Grosso who could’ve walked into the endzone.

Husni got sacked on fourth down and the game was over. 

“The four plays didn’t work,” Accorsi said. “We drove all the way down there but we simply didn’t score. You have to do all of the little things. You can’t drop the ball on the toss, you can’t run and not see what the defense is doing and you can’t overthrow an open receiver. You have to do those basic little things when you get down there. We were also talking about going for the win. We were gonna go for two.”

Rowan has two games left, and quarterback Husni is staying positive going into these last two weeks.

“We just got to try to go 1-0 each week,” Husni said. “Try to finish off strong and send the seniors off on a high note. We’re still a young team and have a lot of players coming back next year. We want to let people know Rowan football took a dip this year but we’ll be back next year.”

While the season is mathematically over, Husni’s optimism about the future of this program is something that Profs can look to for hope.

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