Photo by Kristi Camara
By: Jackson Wolek / Staff Writer
The Golden Panthers lost 31-27 in a game that saw both offenses get off to a fast start and then eventually cooled down afterwards.
Quarterback Wesley Carroll had a season-high 25 completions on 39 attempts with 348 passing yards and three touchdowns, but it wasn’t enough for FIU on this night.
“We didn’t play well enough to win. We made too many errors especially in the redzone,” said Carroll. “Penalties hurt us, they killed momentum, but all in all we got better at some things, we still made mistakes and hats off to Duke. They’re a great ball club.”
The loss brings the Golden Panthers to 3-2 on the season and has shown once again they still need to work on their pass defense.
“They are a good passing offense and we wanted to mix it up on them,” head coach Mario Cristobal said. “I don’t think it was up until the end of the first half we finally forced them into a punt.”
Penalties were a disadvantage for FIU, as they got flagged eight times for a total of 85 yards compared to Duke being called on just two penalties for 25 yards.
“It hurt us a lot moving the ball then being hit with a penalty and then moving the ball again and being hit with another penalty,” Hilton said. “The refs did their job when they saw something they called holding. Whatever they called, it was a great job by them and we just got to do better blocking downfield.”
It was an exciting start to the game in the first quarter of play as both teams went back and forth scoring and providing very little defense. The Blue Devils opened up with a 27-yard field goal by Will Snyderwine on their first drive to make it 3-0. It was all touchdowns for the quarter after that.
On the very next possession, the Golden Panthers found the key to their offense that has been missing over the past two weeks: the Wesley Carroll to T.Y. Hilton connection.The first play of the drive, Carroll found Hilton deep for a 63-yard touchdown pass that left him wide open after safety Matt Daniels went for the play action fake.
However, their defense could not contain Duke’s passing offense, and quarterback Sean Renfree, who threw for 335 yards on 28 of 43 completions and two touchdowns, began a string of scores when he ran a play action and found wide receiver Conner Vernon open in the endzone to make the score 10-7.
The barn-burner began, and FIU answered back right after, as Carroll found his tight end Jonathan Faucher for a leaping catch in the endzone for his first touchdown catch of the season.
There was no stopping the Duke passing game, however, and for the third straight time in the first quarter Renfree passed his away to a score, this time finding Cooper Helfet for a 22-yard touchdown catch in the endzone to make the score 17-14 at the end of the quarter.
Both defenses regained their composure for the next two quarters and held each other in check with only two scores being allowed, 36- and 33-yard field goals from Jack Griffin that put FIU up 20-17 going into the fourth quarter.
FIU was hoping to regain the spark that they had in earlier in the game and found one on the first play in the fourth quarter. Receiver Jacob Younger got a chance to throw the ball on a flea flicker play and found Dominique Rhymes for a big gain to put FIU in a position to score.
“He’s got a good arm. He played quarterback in high school and we wanted to try it and used it and Dominique caught a good ball,” said Cristobal.
The play resulted in a 44-yard gain that set up a 34-yard touchdown pass from Carroll to Wayne Times to put the Golden Panthers ahead 27-17 with 13:30 left in the game.
Duke came back with seven points of their own a minute and a half later off a six-yard rush from running back Juwan Thompson that made it a three-point game again.
Things went from bad to worse when Carroll got stripped of the ball by Jeffrey Ijjas and put Duke deep into Panther territory. The Blue Devils quickly turned FIU’s lone turnover of the game into the game-winning rushing touchdown from Thompson, putting them up 31-27 with less than seven minutes to go.
“Penetration,” said Carroll. “I got to get the ball out sooner. I put that on me. It’s just something we have to get back in the film room and make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
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