The hottest team in the OUA
Jeff Schouela

The 4-2 McMaster Mauraders rolled into town last Saturday, bringing their potent passing attack with them. Widly expected to be Laurier's toughest opponent in a month, the Hawks rose to the challenge, crushing Mac by a 56-29 final score to clinch third place in the OUA standings.

"We played with a lot of heart and guts. We were hungrier today." commented an ecstatic Rick Zmich.

The offensive line was the story of the game as they controlled the tempo of the game, gave holes for the Justin combination, Dillon and Praamsma, and most importantly gave time for QB Kevin Taylor to throw the ball. The offense put up a total of 487 yards.

On WLU's first possession, Scott O'Hara smoked through a 32 yard field goal, set up by a 13 yard run by Praamsma, and a 14 yard connection to Corey Grant.

After a strong defensive stand, Laurier started their drive at the Mac 49. Penalties would prove to be costly to the Marauders as Laurier got early field position. Taylor threw to Ahmad and also scrambled to the McMaster four yard line setting up Dillon's end zone scamper.

A big turnover came on the kickoff return after Jeff Pettican recovered a fumble on Mac's 18. However the Marauder defense stood up and just held the Hawks to an O'Hara field goal.

With a Kevin Johnson interception quickly killing the Mauraders next drive, the Laurier offense again took the field with Taylor hooking up with Henry Stables, Anthony Ahmad and André Talbot to bring the Hawks within inside the 25 yard line. Justin Praamsma then took the ball and ran 23 yards for another Laurier touchdown, giving the Hawks a commanding 20-0 lead, playing in front of 1,876 pumped up Golden Hawk supporters.

The Hawks seemed to be ready for Chapdelaine's passing attack. What the Hawks defense did most importantly was to not allow any running after the catch. Mac receivers were immediately tackled after catching anything.

"The real MVP's of this game are the coaches. Coach Gary Jefferies did an awesome job in preparing our defense. Thanks to him we were ready for anything," noted Johnson.

Mac battled back crept back to within 11 points when runnning back Chris Dorrigton broke loose for a 10 yard TD run at 12:23 of the second quarter. However, the Hawks gave themselves some insurance and truly shut the door on the marauders as WLU quickly marched down the field and used Dillon and Praamsma to set up a 25 yard touchdown pass from Taylor to Stables with only 28 seconds left in the half, giving the Hawks a 28-10 lead.

The slaughter would continue into the second half Kevin Taylor continued to ochestrate scoring drives using the multiple weapons at his disposal. The large crowd at the stadium would go home happy as Laurier ended up winning the game by 27 points. "I was very proud of our overall intensity today. We were extremely focused and we all refused to lose. It ended up to truly be our day." noted Zmich.

"We really used the wind factor effectively. This was the ultimate team victory. We needed everyone today and we all came up big." commented Johnson, who returned a punt for a 65 yard TD.

"We all came together and put in a massive effort. We're back in the playoffs and it feels great." said Grant, who caught four balls for 36 yards and scored the last touchdown of the game on a 55 yard kickoff return.

"Our defense was pretty good considering Mac had so many weapons. We had a few mental breakdowns today but we'll work on being consistent. We'll sharpen our defense at York next week," promised DE Kojo Millington, who came up with a sack and made big plays.

The win for the Hawks means that they will face the Waterloo Warriors in the first round of the playoffs, a battle to be waged right here at University Stadium.

Before this post-season edition of the Battle of Waterloo, the Hawks close out their season at York on Saturday at 1:00pm.

They should use this game to finish strong, stay healthy and build momentum for the post-season.