Lynchburg, Va. – -Kaidon Salter threw two touchdowns passes and added 160 yards rushing, Quinton Cooley scored three rushing touchdown and Liberty beat Middle Tennessee 42-35 Tuesday night. Salter was 12-of-20 passing for 140 yards and Cooley had 123 yards rushing on 22 carries for Liberty (7-0, 5-0 Conference USA).
Cooley’s third touchdown, a 10-yard run, made it 35-all late in the third quarter and a few plays later Brylan Green forced a fumble that was recovered by Kobe Singleton and gave Liberty possession at its own 42. Salter ran for a 10-yard gain on a third-and-14 but an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty gave the Flames a fresh set of downs and, on the ensuing play, threw a 37-yard TD pass to CJ Daniels that capped the scoring with 14:37 to play. The Middle Tennessee (2-6, 1-3) offense stalled on each of its next two drives before a 12-yard punt gave the Blue Raiders possession at the Liberty 23 with 5:17 to play. One play later, Nicholas Vattiato had pass a pass intercepted by Preston Hodge in the end zone and, after another short punt and a couple Middle Tennessee first downs moved the ball to the 38, Green picked off a fourth-and-8 pass to seal the win.
:“Here’s what I’m proud of though- defensively we stunk for a long time but they found away they’re in the special half of special they’re in the fourth quarter to make plays they got turnovers got big plays and lived up to the way we should be playing defense,” Liberty head coach Jamey Chadwell said after the game.
“Defense, yeah I think it’s just a trust that we all have an each other to do our jobs and stuff like that. We were in man coverage on that pick(interception) and the guy ran into my low hole player, he did his job and we got the deflection and I was just lucky to be right there and got the ball. So just to trust I think that’s what it is,” safety Brylan Green said.
Vattiato completed 24 of 37 passes for 332 yards and four touchdowns - all to different receivers - but was just 2-of-10 passing for 17 yards with two interceptions in the fourth quarter. Zack Dobson scored on a 2-yard touchdown just before halftime and caught a pop pass at the line of scrimmage, got a block from wide receiver Taharin Sudderth, and raced down the right sideline for a 72-yard TD that gave the Blue Raiders a 35-28 lead 6:10 left in the third.
Liberty, which joined the conference in July, became the first team in history to win its first five C-USA games. First-year coach Jamey Chadwell became the only Flames coach to win each of his first seven games with the team, breaking the record set by Sam Rutigliano, who won his first six games as Liberty head coach in 1989
“You gotta win challenging games, you gotta take everybody’s best shot and the lesson? -- you know -- we talked all week that you can’t allow complacency to step in you know and we didn’t have a great week of practice and it showed up. We played like we didn’t have a great week of practice, but fortunately we found a way to win and continue to Move on and put ourselves one step closer to what we wanna try to get accomplished with this team,” Chadwell says.
”Well clearly both sides, both of our offenses were very explosive today. Gave our defense some good work today so hopefully that’ll help us for the long run and on our side of the ball we just went out there and execute it as best as we could do,” quarterback Kaidon Salter said.
Liberty faces Western Kentucky Tuesday night October 24th in another Conference USA test.