When Johns Hopkins hosts Rowan at noon on Saturday, it will be the Blue Jays' first postseason appearance since losing to Wesley, 29-24, last November. The team surrended a 33-yard game-winning touchdown pass with 13 seconds remaining in that game.
Senior left tackle Kyle Flynn said that first-round exit in the NCAA Division III postseason helped propel Johns Hopkins (10-0) to its sixth straight Centennial Conference title this month.
“When you start getting success this year, it’s something you put in the back of your mind, but I definitely know as players, it’s something we definitely remember and it’s something that is motivating us because it went quickly from ‘We’re moving onto the second round of the playoffs’ to ‘The season has come to an end,’” he said Wednesday morning. “So I know that as players, it motivates us.”
Senior safety Ryan Rice, however, had a different take.
“That’s just not something that we think about,” he said. “We’ve just got to take this game and take it one game at a time. It’s win or go home.”
The harshness of the postseason is most poignant for the seniors, according to coach Jim Margraff.
“We prepare the same way each week,” he said. “But I think the guys realize that you win or it’s over. For the seniors, you win or it’s over and I don’t play football ever again. So there seems to be a lot more at stake. That’s what happened last year. With 13 seconds left, we went from beating a tremendous opponent and advancing to the second round to losing and the season being over.”
The Blue Jays, which earned the Centennial Conference’s automatic bid to the playoffs, will face a Profs team (7-3) that captured a share of its second consecutive New Jersey Athletic Conference championship and that league’s automatic berth. This will be the first meeting for both teams, which yields positives and negatives for both sides.
“You’ve got to have a little bit of everything ready to go,” Margraff said. “I think it energizes you as a staff, and I think the players get that right away. There’s a lot to get done in a very, very short period of time. So it’s exciting.”