Navy coach Paul Johnson tells his players before every season they will develop an identity unique to the teams that came before them.
When asked the Midshipmen entering 108th meeting against Army next Saturday, Johnson quickly came up with one word: resilient. The Midshipmen (7-4) have won three straight since they hit what Johnson called the lowest point of the season: a 59-52 loss to Football Championship Subdivision foe Delaware on Oct. 27.
“It’s been a bizarre year, but I don’t pay that much attention,” Johnson said. “I just take it one game at a time and try to score one more point than the other team. Once the game is over, I put it behind me and move on.”
Since that loss to Delaware, Navy has won in a number of ways starting with its historic 46-44 triple-overtime win at Notre Dame, which snapped the Fighting Irish’s 43-game winning streak over the Midshipmen.
Navy then rallied from an early 21-3 deficit to defeat North Texas, 74-62, in a game that set the Football Bowl Subdivision record for most combined points scored in regulation. Navy won its home finale last week, 35-24, over Northern Illinois and is focused on defeating Army (3-8) for the sixth straight year.
“I think it’s hard to shake [our team],” Johnson said. “You take the North Texas game when we were down by 18 points on five different times in the game. They just didn’t quit. They had a belief that they were going to score every time they got the ball and the defense believed they were going to get a stop when they had to.”
Navy senior linebacker Irv Spencer said this season has been memorable for him for many different reasons, including going 2-1 in three overtime games and being in position to win a fifth straight Commander-in-Chief’s trophy outright despite a season in which they will likely allow more points than any team in school history. Navy has allowed 435 through 11 games; the 2002 team gave up 436. But there?s a gigantic difference between the two squads: Navy finished 2-10 in 2002.
“It say a lot about us as individuals and our character,” Spencer said. “Adversity comes and we just find a way to keep going. These are things that I can take with me when I join the fleet to show others how to keep morale up when things are down.”
Navy’s strong close to the season should come as no surprise as the Midshipmen are 17-5 in games played after Oct. 31 the last five years. The Midshipmen average 38.5 points per game in those contests, including 51.7 a game in three games this year.
“We showed a lot of perseverance overcoming so many obstacles and being able to keep going,” Navy senior slot back Reggie Campbell said. “That is a great attribute of this team and it’s help us as we’ve gone along.”
NAVY NOTES
>>Navy has won 10 of its last 11 games played after Oct. 31. The loss was a 25-24 setback to Boston College in last year’s Meineke Car Care Bowl in Charlotte, N.C.
>>Navy has scored on 31 of its past 45 possessions, including 27 touchdowns during that span.
>>In a statistical oddity, Navy’s offense has gained 5,041 total yards ? the exact amount it has allowed.
