MONTREAL -- Linebacker
Antoine Mongeau of Laval, Que., recovered a fumble and scampered 69 yards for a touchdown midway through the final quarter as McGill rallied for a 23-17 victory at Concordia in a thriller as the RSEQ university football regular season concluded, Saturday.
The result clinched a second consecutive third-place finish for McGill, which went 3-5 in the Quebec conference and will make the short jaunt around Mt. Royal to confront the second-seeded Montreal Carabins (6-2) -- who have lost two consecutive contests -- in a semifinal next Saturday (Nov. 2) at 2 p.m.
The Stingers finished fourth at 2-6 and will face the unenviable task of playing a semifinal against division-leading Laval (7-1) in front of an expected Quebec City crowd in excess of 15,000.
McGill, which defeated the Stingers 40-14 in their first meeting back in August, swept their season series with Concordia for the first time since 2013 and extended their head-to-head win streak to three. They improved to 40-45 in 85 lifetime meetings with the Stingers, including a 19-26 mark at the Loyola campus field.
It was a marathon that took three hours and 14 minutes to complete, despite not being on television -- in a game that featured 11 injury delays and a combined 37 penalties for a whopping 291 yards of real estate. The most serious injury occurred late in the first quarter with a collision between McGill's starting tight end
Jean Bidaux and Concordia linebacker
William Benoit, both of them first-year players. A 10-minute delay ensued as medical teams surrounded both players in close proximity. The more serious injury was to Bidaux, a native of France, who suffered both a broken tibia and fibula, according to McGill head coach
Ronald Hilaire. He was taken off on a stretcher to an onsite ambulance, which waited more than an hour for another ambulance to arrive before heading to a nearby hospital.
"Bidaux is all heart and didn't want to leave until the end of the game but he was eventually forced to go (when the second ambulance arrived in the fourth quarter)," said Hilaire. "The guys all fought hard and wanted to win it for him.
"Everything that could go wrong for us today did just that but we kept fighting," noted Hilaire, in his sixth season as bench boss. "We were undisciplined, didn't execute and had a bunch of injuries. But our veterans on the defensive side took over and made sure that we came away with the win."
McGill opened the scoring at 3:26 of the first quarter when quarterback
Dimitrios Sinodinos hooked up with receiver
Mathieu Soucy for a 15-yard touchdown strike. Concordia responded with 2:51 remaining in the quarter on a 29-yard field-goal by
Andrew Stevens.
The Stingers took a 10-7 lead just 22 seconds into the second stanza, when quarterback
Adam Vance found receiver
Jeremy Murphy in the endzone for his first of two TDs.
McGill regained a 16-10 lead after three consecutive field-goals from place-kicker
Findlay Brown, from distances of 20, 36 and 23 yards.
Mongeau then gave his troops a 23-10 lead at 7:40 of the final quarter with his lengthy TD romp after Vance had attempted to avoid a sack and fumbled on the McGill 41-yard line.
The Stingers narrowed the gap to six when Vance tossed an 18-yard TD strike to Murphy with 2:42 remaining in the game. The veteran quarterback subsequently almost engineered a game-winning drive on Concordia's final series. He moved the ball from the Stingers 47-yard line to the McGill 5, where the comeback attempt fizzled with 15 seconds left on the clock on a third-down passing gamble that was knocked down in the endzone by
Guillaume Beland, a junior defensive back from the Town of Mt. Royal, Que.
Vance completed 24 of 42 passing attempts for 334 yards but was picked off twice and sacked three times. He directed an offence that generated 451 net yards and 21 first downs.
McGill only managed a dozen first-downs and 219 yards, including 162 rushing. The lion's share of the ground attack was produced by junior
Quincy Williams, a native of Brossard, Que., who entered the game with a total of 13 rushing yards and came away with 18 carries for a career-high 122 yards.
"There's a lot more to be written this season but it was definitely a great game for me, especially after all I've been through to get to this point," said Williams, a stocky 5-foot-11, 238-pound fullback who served as an equipment assistant with the team last season while sitting out his sophomore year to focus on his studies. "At first it was very difficult to accept not playing but then I thought about how I could turn the situation around into a positive. I just saw last year as an opportunity to get myself focussed on the right things, getting my mind right and my body into shape and focusing on school, doing what I had to do to play this year."
With McGill's running game working time and time again, Sinodinos only attempted 22 passing plays. He completed nine of them, for one TD, no picks and was sacked only once.
McGill's "bend-but-don't break" defence was credited with two interceptions, four knockdowns, three QB sacks, one forced fumble and two fumble recoveries.
The picks went to defensive halfback
Benjamin Carre and cornerback
Guillaume Beland. Senior linebacker
Jean-Philippe Hudon spearheaded the defence with five solo and two assisted tackles. Leading the sack attack was defensive end
Joshua Archibald (2) and defensive tackle
Andrew Seinet-Spaulding (1), a six-foot, 292-pound senior from Pierrefonds, Que., who led the league with seven sacks in eight games.
McGill finished third in the league with 20 sacks in eight games, behind Laval (31) and Montreal (24). The 20 sacks ranks as the seventh-highest single season total in school history and is 10 shy of the team record accomplished in 2012.
McGill now turns its focus on the upcoming playoff game at Stade CEPSUM against the Carabins, a heavily-favoured rival that has won 26 consecutive head-to-head meetings since a 58-0 McGill conquest on Oct. 7, 2002.
BOXSCORE
RSEQ STATS & RECORDS
2019 RSEQ UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL STANDINGS (FINAL)
