The Hillsdale College football team gave up 639 total yards of offense — its second-most allowed ever — as the eighth-ranked undefeated Ashland Eagles soared past the Chargers 52-21 on Saturday afternoon.
“We’ve all got to play better. We’ve got to coach better and we’ve got to play better,” head coach Keith Otterbein said. “We all have to do our job better against a good team, but, that being said, that’s a good football team. Give credit where it’s due. Ashland has a lot of tools.”
Redshirt freshman quarterback Chance Stewart, in his second collegiate start and first start ever on the road, completed 17 of his 29 pass attempts for 206 yards and two passing touchdowns. His 7-yard rushing touchdown with 6:36 remaining in the first quarter brought Hillsdale level with Ashland 7-7 at the time, but the Eagles rattled off 38 straight points before the end of the third quarter to put the game away.
Stewart said his first two starts went “okay.”
“There’s lots to learn from. The offensive line is playing great and giving me a lot of time to do my job,” Stewart said. “The offensive playbook is coming along. It took a while to get a hang of it, but I feel like I have a good understanding of it now.”
Otterbein recognizes his young quarterback is progressing.
“He’s showing a lot of composure on game day. He didn’t get rattled as the game separated, he just stayed within what we’re trying to do as an offense so those are very bright spots. He’s a pretty mature young man,” Otterbein said. “He’s used to the setting and the limelight and he’s handling that part of it very well. He continues to work hard on the schematic part of it and you’d expect nothing less. He’s a great kid.”
Saturday’s loss was Hillsdale’s fifth defeat in a row, dropping the Chargers to 1-6 on the season.
“We’re a really resilient group,” senior left guard Justice Karmie said. “Obviously if we’re focusing on our record we’re going to be miserable. The season hasn’t gone the way we thought it would but every one of those guys out there is out there because we want to win and because we love playing football.”
With four games still remaining in the season, the Chargers have not started thinking about next year.
“There’s only so many snaps in a college football player’s career, and to pull those away from a kid who is in that situation where you think you want to get snaps for a younger kid, I’ve never believed in that,” Otterbein said. “You owe it to Team 123 to prepare and compete tooth and nail right down to the end of the last snap of the last game. That’s just the mentality that I was raised in the game with.”
Otterbein’s players are focused on making the most of their final games of the season.
“We have a four-game season left,” Karmie said. “The younger guys have to think about what kind of momentum they want to take into next season, and the older guys have to think if they want to be remembered as the team who started out 1-6 and then just curled up, or do they want to be the guys who said, ‘Alright, we’ve got four games left. Let’s do something with it.’”
Hillsdale will play the first of their four remaining games on Saturday at 4:30 p.m. when they host the Tiffin Dragons, which are 4-2 in the GLIAC this season. The Chargers are preparing to deal with Tiffin quarterback Antonio Pipkin, who is “one of the most dynamic football players in the GLIAC right now,” according to Karmie.
“They’ve got a really athletic quarterback that is really good at picking and choosing his times, if you’ve got guys covered, to tuck it and run,” Otterbein said. “If you put all your eggs into stopping him the other guys are good enough to hurt you too. On both sides of the ball this team makes you be very assignment sound.”
