Three fumbles, and Dukes tumbled

HARRISONBURG - James Madison coach Mickey Matthews lost his star quarterback late in the first half of Friday night's Football Championship Subdivision semifinal game.

His defense was unable to contain the well-balanced attack of fourth-seeded Montana for most of the evening.

But Matthews was adamant about what cost his top-seeded Dukes most dearly in a 35-27 loss that ended their season.

"There's really nothing else to talk about," Matthews said. "The fumbles were the entire game. We just dropped the ball. We hadn't been doing it all year."

JMU (12-2) lost three fumbles - two of them on kickoff returns - and was intercepted once. Montana (14-1) didn't commit a turnover.

The Grizzlies converted two of the fumbles into 14 points and used the other two to stop drives deep in their territory.

"We dominated the football game, by and large, in terms of yards and first downs," said Matthews, whose club had 419 yards of offense (to Montana's 298) and 26 first downs to the visitors' 14.

"When you think about it, those [turnovers] were a possible [difference of] 28 points. They had two short fields for 14 points, and that's two possessions we lost. That's the game."

The interception at Montana's 2 and a fumble by Rodney Landers that was recovered at the Grizzlies' 9 also were a potential 14 points for the Dukes.

"They made some good plays," Matthews said. "But they had some short fields. They went 15 yards for a touchdown. They went 34 yards for a touchdown. Those are huge."

In the Dukes' first 13 games, they had 12 turnovers, eight coming on fumbles.

Losing Landers to a sprained ankle with 4½ minutes left in the opening half was a crushing blow to JMU. The senior, who graduated yesterday, came into the game having accounted for more than 3,200 yards and 37 TDs rushing and passing. But he wasn't able to continue after one of Montana's defenders fell on him.

"We had a quarterback zone play, and I went up in the line of scrimmage and started to gain some yards," Landers said. "I just got caught up in the pile, and there's some big guys out there. Just got rolled up."

Landers was treated at halftime but decided he wouldn't be able to help the team in that condition.

"For the type of offense we run and the type of player I am, I just didn't feel I could give 100 percent," Landers said. "I wasn't going to force myself to play and penalize our team. Drew [Dudzik] is a great quarterback, and he made some great plays. He's the quarterback of the future."

Dudzik made the most of a difficult situation, leading JMU to a pair of second-half TDs, both of which he scored on runs of 10 and 18 yards. The redshirt sophomore also converted a two-point conversion with a head-over-heels flip that just broke the plane of the goal line.

"I was confident, and my teammates were confident in me," said Dudzik, who rushed for 88 yards and passed for 70. "Rodney is a great player, the best player in the country, and obviously, it was a shock to everybody when he got hurt. But we still felt like we were going to win. We were moving the ball the whole game."

Dudzik is expected to compete with redshirt freshman Justin Thorpe (Varina High) for the QB job in the spring, when JMU will get ready to replace four starters on offense and four on defense for 2009.

"We had a great year," Matthews said. "But in playoff football, there's only going to be one happy team at the end. After we played a dad-gum good football team [in Villanova in the quarterfinals] last week and won, we thought we'd probably score 40 or 50 points in this game and have a lot of yards, which we should have. Until we started fumbling the ball."

Montana ------------------------- 14 0 21 0-35
James Madison ------------------------- 3 7 7 10-27
First Quarter

JMU-FG Stannard 32, 8:58.

Mont-Reynolds 2 run (McKnight kick), 4:59.

Mont-Reynolds 7 run (McKnight kick), 4:02.
Second Quarter

JMU-Holloman 1 run (Stannard kick), 11:54.
Third Quarter

Mont-Reynolds 27 pass from Bergquist (McKnight kick), 11:06.

Mont-Pfahler 16 pass from Bergquist (McKnight kick), 8:14.

JMU-Dudzik 10 run (Stannard kick), 5:02.

Mont-Ferriter 9 pass from Bergquist (McKnight kick), 1:06.
Fourth Quarter

JMU-Safety, 8:22.

JMU-Dudzik 18 run (Dudzik run), 6:10.

A-15,976.
Mont

JMU
First downs-------------------------14

26
Return yards------------------------- 0

(-3)
Punts-Avg.-------------------------2-38.5

0-0.0
Rushes-yards-------------------------35-156

58-334
Passing yards-------------------------142

85
Comp-Att-Int-------------------------11-17-0

7-17-1
Fumbles-lost-------------------------0-0

4-3
Penalties-yards-------------------------2-12

3-32
Time of possession-------------------------27:30

32:30
RUSHING

Montana (35-156) , Reynolds 26-123, Bergquist 5-42, Schmidt 1-3, Team 3-(minus 12). JMU (58-334) , Holloman 21-105, Dudzik 12-88, Landers 17-84, Yancey 6-44, Long 1-9, McGee 1-4.
PASSING

Montana (11-17-0-142) , Bergquist 11-17-0-142. JMU (7-17-1-85) , Dudzik 6-13-1-70, Landers 1-4-0-15.
RECEIVING

Montana , Mariani 3-50, Reynolds 3-50, Pfahler 3-29, Ferriter 2-13. JMU , Turner 4-25, Long 1-29, Holloman 1-16, Ward 1-15.
TACKLES

Montana: Anderson 18, Schillinger 12, Fisher 10, Stadnyk 9, Mettler 7, Lebsock 6, Corwin 6, Palmer 5, Fetherston 3, Mullins 3, Swink 3, Thompson 3, Stoll 3, Carlson 3, Pelluer 3, Cummings 2, McSurdy, Larson, Mariani, Lisowski. JMU: Williams 11, Skolnitsky 9, Haywood 7, Griffin 7, Nelson 7, Veney 6, Moats 5, Abdul-Wahid 3, McGee 2, Cuffee 2, McCollough 2, Daniels 2, Pritchard, Bryant.
SACKS

Montana: Corwin. JMU: Skolnitsky ½, Moats ½.
INTERCEPTION

Montana: Swink.
FUMBLE RECOVERIES

Montana: Fetherston, Pelluer, Lisowski.