Using an option offense and a tight defense, Navy cruised to a 45-17 win over the Tulsa Golden Hurricane, Saturday, in front of 17,951 at H.A. Chapman Stadium.

 “Hats off to Navy. I thought they played a really nice game,” said Tulsa head coach Philip Montgomery. “Option is always difficult to defend, and we knew it was going to be a really tough ball game coming in. They’re very talented, and we had opportunities early in the game to really try to establish something, get a lead, we get the great play there on the kick off and have an opportunity to score there on the very first get and just don’t connect.”

Tulsa scored first on a 41-yard field goal by Jacob Rainey, but then Navy scored four unanswered touchdowns, and led 28-3 at halftime.

The Golden Hurricane got a touchdown from Corey Taylor on a one-yard run in the third quarter, and a 12-yard touchdown pass from Zach Smith to TK Wilkerson in the fourth quarter, but Navy’s offense proved too much for the Tulsa defense to contain.

“That was a great win for our football program, coming on the road,” said Navy head coach Ken Niumatalolo. “Tulsa is a good football team. They had SMU on the ropes at last week. Beat a Wyoming team. Wyoming beat Missouri. Tulsa beat a San Jose State team that beat Arkansas. So, that’s a really good football team. I thought we played really well. I thought our defense was phenomenal. We did a lot of great things on defense. That was really a potent offense. Coach Montgomery knows what he’s doing on offense. I thought our defense played really, really well.”

Navy quarterback Malcolm Perry rushed for 218 yards and three touchdowns. The Midshipmen tallied 423 total yards on offense, while the Golden Hurricane totaled 323 yards of total offense. Perry completed two of only four passes for nine yards, but considering Navy’s running game was virtually flawless against Tulsa defense, they didn’t have to put the ball in the air very often.

Tulsa quarterback Zach Smith completed 23-of-49 passes for 254 yards and one touchdown, while Shamari Brooks rushed for 55 yards on 12 carries.

Tulsa has had an issue with an abundance of penalties this season, but it wasn’t a major factor in this game. The Golden Hurricane was flagged 10 times for 51 yards, while Navy committed four penalties for a total of 35 yards.

“Give credit to our guys, I thought they continued to fight throughout, I thought they continued to work extremely hard,” said Montgomery. “For now, we have got to move past this one. It’s one game. Got an extremely tough schedule in front of us and know next week it’s going to be another tough one. So, got to get back on the practice field, learn from what we did, take away some of the good things. Defensively, you can really throw this one out because you don’t face this again. But offensively, you got some things to learn from, obviously. Got a chance to get better.”

Navy improved to 4-1 overall and 2-1 in the American Athletic Conference, while Tulsa fell to 2-4 and 0-2 in the AAC. Tulsa will visit Cincinnati on Saturday, with the kickoff scheduled for 2:30 pm (CT). The game will be aired on ESPNU.

OILERS OPEN SEASON

The Tulsa Oilers opened the 2019-20 ECHL season at home this past weekend with a trio of games; beating Kansas City, 5-2 on Friday, losing to Allen, 5-4, on Saturday, and losing 5-3 to Rapid City, on Sunday.

On Friday night, with the Stanley Cup on display at the BOK Center, Deven Sideroff, assigned to Tulsa from the Anaheim Ducks, opened the scoring at 4:09 into the first period. The Mavericks Jack Walker tied the game quickly, before Oilers’ captain Adam Pleskach, playing in his 400th game with the Oilers, scored to give Tulsa a 2-1 lead.

On Saturday night, the Allen Americans’ Mike Hedden tipped home the game-winning goal with 2:09 remaining, to give Allen the 5-4 win.

Sunday, Rapid City Rush jumped out to a 3-0 in the first period and led 4-0 before Tulsa scored their first goal of the game at 1:18 of the third period. Although the Oilers scored three goals in the third period, it wasn’t enough to mount a full comeback.

The Oilers will host Rapid City in a pair of games this weekend – Saturday at 7:05 p.m. and Sunday at 4:05 p.m.