Courtesy: UAlbany Sports InformationAlbany, N.Y. – Quarterback Vinny Esposito passed for two touchdowns and ran for another score as UAlbany opened its Northeast Conference schedule with a 38-7 victory over Sacred Heart on Saturday, Oct. 13 at University Field. A homecoming crowd of 6,417 was the fifth-largest in the program’s history.
Sacred Heart (2-5, NEC 0-3) closed within 14-7 with 55 seconds left in the first half when quarterback Dale Fink hit Steve Tedesco with a seven-yard scoring pass. Senior tailback Jason Payne, who rushed 16 times for 82 yards, had three runs of 10 or more yards during the series that came after a blocked field goal.
UAlbany (3-3, NEC 1-0) then broke the Pioneers’ back with a 70-yard touchdown drive just before intermission. Justin Gannon’s 17-yard run on third-and-15 from the Great Danes’ 39 kept the sequence alive. Esposito, who completed 17 of 27 attempts for 236 yards, then delivered a 44-yard strike to Jason Smith for a 21-7 lead with two seconds remaining. Smith slid behind two Sacred Heart defensive backs and hauled in the throw in the back of the end zone.
“Vinny threw a good ball and they left me by myself,” explained Smith, a 6-foot-2 sophomore. “I thought I had a chance to catch it and I was confident that it was going to get there. They focused on Jason Poore coming underneath and I just got behind them.”
The Great Danes, who have won seven of nine conference openers since joining the league in 1999, put the game away in the third quarter with a pair of 11-play drives. Esposito reached paydirt untouched on a four-yard option run around left end. Omar Johnson’s six-yard blast through the middle handed his team a 35-7 lead with 1:48 left in the period. Tim Bush keyed that offensive series with a 13-yard reverse and a 17-yard reception on back-to-back plays.
“I thought that we were soft on defense and didn’t control the line of scrimmage on offense in the first half,” said UAlbany coach Bob Ford, whose team has reached the win column in 24 of 35 homecoming games. “We were trying to get the ball down the field and then bang, it’s 21-7. That’s just a horrible sensation for a team and coaching staff. In the second half, we looked much better and played tougher defense.”
UAlbany built a 14-0 lead early in the second quarter. The Great Danes scored on their first possession of the game, as David McCarty scored on a seven-yard run when he cut back to the left. The sophomore tailback finished with 97 yards on the ground, while Gannon ran for 62 on 13 carries. Esposito fired a 24-yard touchdown pass to Bush to cap a 93-yard march. Bush, who had four receptions for 66 yards, caught the ball in the middle of the field and sprinted to his right across the goal line.
Fink connected on 17 of 24 passes for 107 yards, but was sacked six times. UAlbany’s Jason Fralicker booted a 39-yard field goal in the final quarter to become the school’s all-time leader in that category with 23. The Great Danes balanced the run and pass for a season-high 524 total yards.
“It’s good to start out with a win in conference play,” said Esposito, who passed for more than 200 yards for the second time this season. “We had some miscues early and didn’t exactly send the message we wanted. We were looking to hit a dig (route) on that last play of the half, but I saw him open deep.”
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