NCAA Playoffs - First Round
#4 Mount Union vs. Washington & Lee (Va.)
Saturday, November 20 at 12 p.m.
Mount Union Stadium - Alliance, Ohio

Video: 
http://oac.boxcast.com

Radio: 
WRMU 91.1 FM (Ben Johnson-Bowers, Riley Sullivan and Jacob Buttar)
WDPN 1310 AM (Sam Bourquin and Ryan Keller)

Mount Union Notes (PDF)
W&L Game Notes (PDF)

The Matchup: No. 4 ranked University of Mount Union hosts Washington & Lee (Va.) in the first round of the 2021 NCAA Division III Football Playoffs Saturday, Nov. 20 at 12 pm at Mount Union Stadium.

The Purple Raiders are 10-0 overall and won their 32nd Ohio Athletic Conference title to claim one of 27 automatic bids to the tournament.

Mount Union has a 104-18 record in NCAA Playoff games and the Raiders have advanced to the Stagg Bowl 21 times since 1993 with a record 13 National Championships.

Mount Union has now made the tournament a record 32 times.

Washington & Lee, located in Lexington, Virginia, is 8-2 overall and making its sixth NCAA Playoff appearance as champions of the Old Dominion Athletic Conference.

The Generals have an 0-5 record in the NCAA Playoffs and their last appearance was a first round game at Mount Union Stadium in 2017, which the Raiders won 21-0.

The Series: This will be the second-ever meeting between the teams with a first being a 2017 NCAA first round game at Mount Union Stadium.

The Raiders won 21-0 in a driving rain-storm as then freshman Josh Petruccelli (Perry) rushed for 109 yards while then sophomore quarterback D'Angelo Fulford ran for a score and threw for two more to pace the Purple Raiders offense.

Mount Union's defense held the Generals to 269 total yards as linebacker Danny Robinson led the unit with 13 stops and a sack.

Up Next: The winner of this game will take on the winner of a matchup between No. 11 Salisbury (Md.) and No. 16 Johns Hopkins (Md.) Saturday, November 27 at noon at a location to be announced.

Bracketology: Since 2005, the NCAA Division III Football Championship has consisted of a 32-team field. 
 
For perspective, in Mount Union's first appearance in the playoffs in 1985, the field was 16 teams. 
 
This year's field breaks down like this: automatic bids were given to 27 conference champions and the other five spots are national at-large bids.
 
Each team is allowed to only dress a total of 58 players for a playoff game.

Aye Captain: Mount Union has three team captains this season in senior linebacker Kordell Ford (Massillon / Massillon Washington), senior wide receiver Derrick Harvey, Jr. (Akron/ Buchtel) and junior quarterback Braxton Plunk.

On the Air: All Mount Union football games will be broadcast on the radio on WDPN 1310 AM and WRMU 91.1 FM and simulcast online along with a LIVE STATS game tracker. You can also hear the WRMU 91.1 FM feed on any phone by calling 605-781-3283.

This week's game will be broadcast live online at oac.boxcast.com and on Smart TV apps Amazon Fire, Apple and Roku. 

Scouting the Generals: Washington & Lee's two losses came in its very first game -- a 28-24 loss at Christopher Newport (Va.) and its regular season finale last week -- a 14-6 loss at Shenandoah (Va.).

The loss last week meant the Generals shared the Old Dominion Athletic Conference title with Randolph-Macon but a 25-24 W&L win on Sept. 25 ended up giving them the NCAA automatic playoff bid.

W&L runs a version of the option out of a shotgun formation on offense averaging 55 rushing attempts per game.  The Generals are fourth in the nation in rushing averaging 324 yards per game on the ground. 

The two that run the offense is senior back Josh Breece and sophomore quarterback Stephen Murrin. Breece has 154 carries for 810 yards and 11 touchdowns while Murrin has 101 carries for 777 yards and five TD's. Murrin has also completed a team-best 23 passes on the season for 294 yards with three touchdowns and five interceptions.

The Generals are 36th in the nation in total defense allowing opponents 274.5 yards per game. Senior linebacker Alex Andros has a team-best 59 tackles, junior defensive end Robert Poindexter has 11.5 tackles for loss and 5.5 sacks and senior defensive back Dean Johnson has a team-high three interceptions. 

General Connection: W&L senior linebacker Adam Harter is son of former Mount Union football and wrestling All-American Steve Harter '84. The elder Harter after leaving campus became a successful businessman and has contributed to many projects at Mount Union with the two most notable being the Wable-Harter Football Locker Room and the Kolenbrander-Harter Information Center. Just last week, Harter was nominated for Academic All-America Hall of Fame and will be the second Raider on the ballot joining Iowa State head coach Matt Campbell '02.

Ruby is a Gem: Mount Union's Wayne Ruby (Miami, Fla. / Flanagan) went over 1,000 yards for the season last week as he has 75 catches for 1,008 yards with eight TD's. The 7.5 catches per game is second most in a single season at Mount Union to Adam Marino, who averaged 7.86 catches per game over 14 games in 2000.

Fantastic Four: Mount Union's defense had four interceptions at Marietta last week which was the most in a single game since four in a 2018 playoff game against Centre (Ky.). Josh Jones (Akron / St. Vincent-St. Mary) had two of those pics last week. Malik Britt (Bossier City, La. / Airline) had one, which gave him a team-best four on the season while the last one was caught by Derrick Bradley (Bradenton, Fla. / Palmetto).