ORONO, Maine – A chance appeared with less than a minute to play — Colgate's sophomore defensive lineman Justin Tedim gave the Raiders the ball back. Colgate was down three points, needing a drive long enough to make it into field goal range to send their season-opener in Orono to overtime.
Quarterback Michael Brescia completed three-straight passes and needed one more first down to give the Raiders a chance to tie the score. Instead, Maine's defense came up with the ball, intercepting it at the line of scrimmage.
Despite the effort, the Raiders couldn't make the final step and fell to the Black Bears in their season opener, 17-14.
"When we go back and look at the film I'm sure there'll be a couple things that we could correct," Head coach
Stan Dakosty said. "Both sides of the ball there's going to be takeaways and turnovers in the first game of the season. There's going to be questions about how our guys will respond."
Takeaways
Senior quarterback Michael Brescia kicked off his senior season with 235 yards of offense, including 61 rushing yards and a 10-yard touchdown run. The signal caller led Colgate in rushing yards, averaging 4.7 yards per carry.
The Raiders and Black Bears were scoreless through the first quarter with zeroes on the scoreboard until Brescia handed the ball to running back Brendan Cassamajor for the first touchdown of the 2024 season. Then Brescia put Colgate within three with 4:27 to play with his 29th career touchdown, making him the fourth-highest scoring quarterback in program history.
Brescia now has over 3,281 career passing yards and over 1,500 career passing yards.
On the other side of the ball, the Raiders held Maine to under 300 yards of total offense, and earned the first turnover during the late comeback attempt. Tedim scooped up the ball in a fumble recovery that began the final push.
Junior linebacker Cole Kozlowski had himself a career day, posting a personal-best 10 tackles against Maine. Aiding the hard-hitting linebacker, senior defensive lineman Andrew Taddeo had three tackles-for-loss and 1.5 sacks to start his senior season.
Though the Raiders couldn't get into field goal range, Dakosty said he's expecting his team to review what went wrong — whether it be inefficient drives or the game-ending turnover — and move forward for another CAA matchup around the corner.
"There's going to be drives and series of plays we can pull out and say 'Yeah we can win with that,'" Dakosty said. "But then there's going to be plays that we're going to have a tough time winning with."
Up Next
The Raiders head home to host Villanova at 7 p.m. on September 7. The game will be streamed in ESPN+.
