Spiders suffer defeat against Holy Cross on homecoming

The University of Richmond football team was narrowly defeated by the College of the Holy Cross with a score of 28-22 on Saturday, Oct. 18.

This match was the Spider’s homecoming game and its first home match in two weeks. It follows its narrow victory against Colgate on Oct. 11.

This is only the second match between Richmond and Holy Cross’s Crusaders with its first match taking place over 60 years ago in 1964 with the Spiders winning the match.

The game started off strong for the Spiders as senior quarterback Kyle Wickersham made a successful pass to sophomore wide receiver Andreas Hill and scored UR’s first touchdown in the first two minutes of the game.

However, Holy Cross was able to keep the ball in its possession for the next several minutes and was able to score their first touchdown in the last 5 minutes. The Crusaders then followed that play up by forcing the Spiders to punt and began its next scoring drive at the end of the quarter.

Holy Cross was able to build upon the previous quarter and scored its second touchdown in the first minutes of the second. The teams then went back and forth for possession of the ball until the last minute, where the Spiders drove deep into Holy Cross’s territory, but were forced to settle for a field goal after failing to make it to the endzone.

After a halftime event honoring alumni who were inducted into the Richmond Athletics Hall of Fame, the Spiders returned to the field. After forcing the Crusaders to punt, UR were held to a field goal again after several more failed touchdown attempts.

However, despite forcing Holy Cross to punt again, Wickersham fumbled the ball, which allowed for the Crusaders to score their third touchdown of the game. The Spiders rebounded in the final minutes as junior running back Aziz Foster-Powell scored a second touchdown several minutes later, but Wickersham failed to make the two-point conversion.

Holy Cross opened the final quarter by scoring their final touchdown in the quarter’s first five minutes. Richmond responded with several failed touchdown attempts and being forced to settle for a field goal for the third time in the game. The Spiders then attempted two drives in the final minutes of the game, but both were blocked with one resulting in Wickersham being sacked.

Richmond was narrowly defeated with a score of 28-22, removing the team from the picture for the playoffs.

“We just gotta finish in the red zone, I think if we do that we’ll get more points and it’ll put some pressure on the other team," Wickersham said in a postgame interview. “Everyone is down right now, but it’s a 24 hour mindset and we gotta wipe it”

Despite its loss, the Spiders led the game in yardage with 191 yards compared to The Crusaders’ 162 with the majority coming from Wickersham and Foster-Powell

“This is a tough match to swallow, but our guys will be resilient,” Head Coach Russ Huesman said in a postgame interview. “We’ll come and work hard to try and win our next four.”

The Spiders will have a bye-week and remain at the Robins Stadium to face Fordham University on November 1 at 2pm.

Contact sports writer Liam Gunawardena at liam.gunawardena@richmond.edu