St. Thomas football lost 64-0 against Lindenwood University Saturday at Harlen C. Hunter Stadium in St. Charles, Missouri.
The 64 points was the most any team has scored on St. Thomas under coach Glenn Caruso. Lindenwood scored touchdowns rushing, passing, on defense, on special teams and three field goals. St. Thomas was never able to respond.
“I just think that they, Lindenwood, did a fantastic job and played well in every facet: offense, defense, certainly the kicking game and they took it to us, there’s no other way to put it,” Caruso told ESPN Radio after the game.
Caruso and his staff continued their struggle of finding their true starting quarterback, pulling sophomore Michael Rostberg for junior Amari Powell, and then switching them multiple times throughout Saturday’s game.
The Tommies found themselves facing fourth down on their second drive of the game. After Rostberg’s pass to junior tight end Patrick Wagner was overturned and ruled complete, the Tommies were forced to punt with their backs pinned against their own goal line.
The ball was blocked almost as soon as it left sophomore punter Elliot Huether’s foot and scooped and scored by Lindenwood.
St. Thomas continued to get stuck throughout the game and was unable to string together a long drive. The team only got nine first downs and converted just one of its 13 third down attempts.
“So there’s a disconnection on special teams, with being able to block the guys we need to in a very, very simple punt formation. There’s disconnection in fitting the run game,” Caruso said.
On the next drive it only took three plays for St. Thomas to turn the ball over. Rostberg had junior receiver Colin Chase in his sights, but junior defensive back Jayden Patrick intercepted the ball and ended the Tommies’ drive.
Patrick and the rest of the Lindenwood secondary held St. Thomas to 41 total passing yards.
“The ability for them on defense to be able to line up and play straight man coverage, even at times when the offense would move the ball and the ball was in the air. And we had really great looks, their DBs did a great job and our young receivers were not able to come down with them,” Caruso said.
Shortly after, Rostberg was replaced with junior quarterback Amari Powell, who played until midway through the third quarter when Rostberg was put in again.
Rostberg finished the game 3/12 with two interceptions and a fumble. Powell threw 5/10 for 10 yards.
“That was part of the package, and when we had that package in, the ball was being moved, we got a couple first downs. The offensive coaches felt like that was the best guy to finish the half with,” Caruso told ESPN at halftime.
The Tommie defense had been on the field for ten seconds of the second quarter when senior running back Cortezz Jones took the ball up the middle of the field. Although the purple and gray defensive line closed the hole, Jones made one of his own and took the ball 51 yards for a touchdown.
Just three minutes of game time later, Lions junior quarterback Nate Glantz got the St. Thomas defense to bite on a fake handoff and front-flipped into the endzone untouched on a 16-yard run.
Again, under four minutes later, the Lions struck again. Jones gave the Tommie defense deja vu when he nearly copy and pasted his last touchdown run. Junior linebacker Ryan Sever met Jones but the 238-lb. running back shed him and ran for 48 yards to the endzone.
Jones ended the first half with 4 rushes and 112 of the Lions’ 187 rush yards. In total, he had 152 yards of the team’s 277 rushing yards. Junior running back Robert Giaimo added 66 yards and a third-quarter touchdown.
Going into the season, one would’ve thought that the Tommies would have been dominating the run game with running backs senior Hope Adebayo and junior Gabe Abel. But after injuries to both in previous games, St. Thomas has had to rely on the first-year tandem of Joseph Koch and Marc Coy, who rushed for 76 of the Tommies’ 107 yards on Saturday.
Multiple other starters didn’t suit up due to injury across both sides of the ball.
“I understand we’re playing with a lot of young guys. Very young to be playing Division I football right now, but as I just told the guys, it is what it is,” Caruso said, “and that is where we’re at, and we’re going to have to find a way to get better, because you’re not going to recruit someone new in the middle of the season.”
The Lindenwood offense proved they’ll do more than just run the ball. Junior defensive back Ryan Calcagno rushed into the backfield and had Glantz falling backwards into his own endzone, but the Lions quarterback was able to sling a pass to junior receiver Jeff Caldwell who snagged it with one hand for a 93-yard touchdown. Those 93 yards were more than the entire Tommie offense’s 88 total first-half yards.
Caldwell finished with 153 receiving yards and two touchdowns on 5 catches, over three times as many yards as the entirety of the Tommies’ 41 receiving yards.
“The long plays that they had in the first half were probably three games worth, and credit them for doing that,” Caruso said.
Glantz ended the first half with more hand-off trickery, scoring a two-yard touchdown after faking it to Jones to cap off a 73-yard drive to make it 42-0 for Lindenwood.
Caldwell grabbed a 29-yard touchdown pass after the St. Thomas offense continued to struggle to put points on the board, going up 52-0 after a field goal earlier.
Another touchdown and two more field goals put the game away and shut out the Tommies. St. Thomas allowed 541 total yards from Lindenwood and only put up 148.
“People don’t want to hear it when you say, ‘We have a lot of work to do and we’re not very good right now.’ People don’t want to hear that. They think every coach is sandbagging but we have so much to do and we’re not very good right now, and that’s who we are,” Caruso said.
Lindenwood is in its third year as a D-I university after accepting an offer to join the Ohio Valley Conference in July of 2022. The school is in a similar reclassification period as St. Thomas, although the Lions are coming from D-II, not D-III.
Caruso looked to the season ahead as an opportunity to improve on the aspects that led to this particular loss.
“I’m grateful for the opportunity that there’s still a season ahead of us and getting a chance to go into league. If we are able to get our minds right and get the guys on the same page, then I still think there’s a lot of wonderful things that are out there for us,” Caruso said.
St. Thomas has a bye week before starting Pioneer League play against Stetson University at 1 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 5 at O’Shaughnessy Stadium.
Adam Mueller can be reached at muel7541@stthomas.edu.
Miles Schiffer can be reached at schi9629@stthomas.edu.