Football Continues Decades-Long Winning Tradition In 2024

While Saturday's (Nov. 30) loss at California, Pa., in the second round of the NCAA Division II playoffs ended the 2024 season, Ashland University's football team continued to build upon what was started more than a century earlier.
 
Finishing at 9-4 and with a Great Midwest Athletic Conference championship, the Eagles have done the following over the past three seasons:

• Won 28 games, the most in a three-season stretch since 2015-17 (30).
• Earned a pair of conference titles, also the best in a three-year span since 2015-17 (two).
• Made the NCAA postseason for the second time in three years or less for the third time (2015-17 and 2007-08).
• Recorded the program's first bowl win in 2023.

Head coach Doug Geiser won 18 games in his first two seasons at the Eagle helm – the most of any Ashland head football coach to start a tenure. He also is the fastest AU head football coach to reach the NCAA playoffs for the first time (Lee Owens and Gary Keller each did it in their fourth seasons).
 
After an 0-2 non-conference start to 2024, the Eagles ran off seven straight wins, including three straight against Ohio rivals Tiffin at home, Ohio Dominican in the program's 100^th Homecoming game, and, most memorably, at nationally-ranked Findlay following two long lightning delays.
 
Eagle wins this fall came in all shapes and sizes, from 9-7 at home vs. Northwood to 40-38 at nationally-ranked Charleston – the program's first road NCAA playoff win in 45 years in Division II.
 
Some nuggets to wrap up 2024 and head into 2025:

• Senior wide receiver Tony Pannunzio, one of the best walk-on-to-starter stories in recent AU memory, gained 933 receiving yards – fifth-most in a season in program history, and the most since the Ashland Hall of Fame pair of Nick Bellanco (1,101) and Joe Horn (1,065) in 2008.
• Both of Ashland's sophomore tailbacks, Ty'aris Stevenson and Olando Kamara, had a pair of 100-yard rushing games. Stevenson rushed for five TDs in the regular-season finale, one short of the school record, and their 20 combined rushing TDs were AU's best for a tailback tandem since 2014 (20 – Anthony Taylor 13, Jordan McCune seven).
• Ashland gained more than 500 yards of offense in the two postseason games (553 at Charleston, 501 at California). The last time the Eagles racked up at least 500 yards in back-to-back games was 2016 (630 at Lake Erie, 693 at Kentucky Wesleyan).
• The Eagles have blocked 21 kicks over the last three seasons (four in 2022, 10 in 2023, seven in 2024). In the previous 10 seasons (2011-19, 2021), they had 15, and eight of those came in 2019.