Vincent Terrell Jr.’s 3-yard touchdown run in the closing minutes brought the score to its 53-21 final.
Navy had scored 53 total points in its first four games of the season.
The Midshipmen (2-3 overall) dominated visiting Tulsa in front of 30,658 fans at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium on Oct. 8 to improve to 2-1 in American Athletic Conference play.
The win comes one week after an emotional 13-10 loss to service academy rival Air Force.
“We gave everything. We laid everything on the field at Colorado Springs and came up three points short,” Navy head coach Ken Niumatalolo said. “But to the credit of the character of these young men — the resolve, the grit of the type young men and young women that are here at the Naval Academy — our kids battled.”
Navy scored its sole passing touchdown on its opening possession of the second half on a trick play in which Kai Puailoa-Rojas threw to quarterback Tai Lavatai, who had slipped out of the backfield after handing the ball to the slotback. Lavatai made the catch down the left sideline and easily ran the rest of the way for the 26-yard touchdown.
“I saw that he wasn’t covering me, I was like, ‘Wow, this is it. This is about to happen,'” Lavatai said, noting that he played wide receiver during his junior year of high school. “It’s a lot scarier — I give the wideouts a lot more credit now. When that ball’s in the air for a while, it feels like eternity. I just didn’t want to drop it. When I ended up catching it, it was a big sigh of relief. I didn’t want to mess that up. Great throw by Kai, great protection up front.”
Sophomore fullback Daba Fofano ran for three touchdowns before halftime. The last, an 11-yard burst, capped the second-straight series beginning in Tulsa territory after linebacker Nicholas Straw intercepted Golden Hurricane quarterback Davis Brin and returned it 18 yards to the 34-yard line.
Fofano’s previous touchdown runs both came earlier in the second quarter — from lengths of 47 and 15 yards. The first capped a 72-yard touchdown drive and the latter followed a 57-yard punt return by sophomore Amin Hassan — the longest by a Navy returner since 1996.
Kicker Daniel Davies, fulfilling the duty for only the third time in his career, drilled a 46-yard field goal 11 seconds before halftime to give the Midshipmen a 36-14 halftime lead. He went 3-for-3 on the afternoon.
Navy’s defense forced its first safety since the 2020 season as junior linebacker Will Harbour hit Brin in the end zone with 10 minutes left in the first half. The quarterback was flagged for intentional grounding as his desperation fling failed to reach the line of scrimmage, growing the Midshipmen’s lead to 26-7.
Navy’s 26 second-quarter points were more than it had scored in any of its first four games of the season. The Midshipmen’s previous single-game high was 23 in an overtime win against East Carolina.
Navy jumped out to a 10-0 first-quarter lead on a reverse to freshman wide receiver Nathan Kent, who turned upfield and outran the entire defense for a 70-yard touchdown. The speedster will also run track for the Midshipmen.
Brin completed 20 of 31 attempts for 284 yards and a pair of touchdowns — a 22-yarder to Machai Jones in the first quarter to pull within three (10-7) and a 76-yard strike to Keylon Stokes late in the third.
Golden Hurricane running back Steven Anderson capped his team’s scoring with a 1-yard rush in the fourth quarter.
Lavatai completed just one pass for 9 yards, making Puailoa-Rojas Navy’s leading passer.
Here are five takeaways from Navy’s win:
1. Navy hadn’t gotten much from its fullbacks so far. Daba Fofana changed that with his monster game.
Fofana rumbled for 159 yards and a trio of touchdowns. He averaged 7.6 yards per attempt, and his 47-yard burst to the end zone in the second quarter was more than double Navy’s longest run from the season’s first four games.
“I thought he played really well. I’m just really happy for him,” Niumatalolo said. “He’s a great young man. I think of Naval Academy football players, I think of Daba. He’s a really smart student, he plays the cello, he’s just a great all-around young man.”
Additionally, backup Logan Point rushed eight times 61 yards and an identical 7.6 average yards per carry.
2. As a result, the Midshipmen had its best offensive game in years.
On Fofano’s second touchdown run of the afternoon, Navy surpassed its previous season-high in rushing yards.
Nearly 11 minutes remained until halftime.
The Midshipmen gained 455 yards on the ground — the most since a 2018 win against Lehigh. Navy’s 490 yards of offense and 53 points are the most since it gained 554 yards while beating Houston 56-41 in 2019.
Terrell rushed for 94 yards on 17 attempts.
3. Navy continued its defensive dominance against the run while finally forcing the turnovers it hadn’t managed to earlier.
The Midshipmen entered ranked 25th nationally against the run, allowing 101.8 rushing yards per game coming into the game on Oct. 8.
Tulsa managed only 25 yards on the ground and averaged 1.8 yards per attempt. The total was the fourth fewest rushing yards allowed under Niumatalolo and the second time this season the Navy had held a team to 25 or fewer yards on the ground.
“We knew if we stopped the run we could maintain their explosive pass game,” senior striker John Marshall said. “That was a primary focus for this week — let’s eliminate that part. The guys up front are just playing really well and at a really high level.”
One week ago, the Midshipmen held offensive powerhouse Air Force to less than half of its rushing average.
But while Navy has found success in stopping the run, it had not managed to take the ball away with any frequency. The Midshipmen only intercepted one pass in their first four games.
That also changed, as Navy picked off Brin three times and recovered a fumble to win the turnover battle, 4-1. The Mids scored 17 points off the turnovers they created.
Straw, Elias Larry, and Colin Ramos intercepted passes while Rayuan Lane recovered a Tulsa fumble.
“[Defensive coordinator Brian] Newberry says, ‘One’s going to come to us, keep playing hard and keep doing your job, and one’s going to eventually fall our way.’ And it came our way tonight,” Straw said. “The ball bounced our way this game and we played really well. It feels great.”
4. The first quarter has been Navy’s Achilles’ heel all season. That finally ended against Tulsa.
Navy, a notoriously slow-starting team all season, took a 3-0 lead on a 25-yard Daniels field goal. The Midshipmen went 57 yards on seven plays, aided by a 15-yard horse collar penalty and a 20-yard rumble by Fofana — Navy’s longest run of the season until Kent shattered the mark on the following possession.
Next came Kent’s explosive 70-yard reverse. The Midshipmen led 10-7 after one quarter.
While that may not seem significant, Navy had been outscored 30-7 in first quarters and only scored 13 first-half points all season prior to Oct. 8.
The fast start led to the monster 26-point second quarter and 19-point halftime lead.
5. Niumatalolo decided Navy needed to put the game away early in the second half and got tricky to do so.
Navy began the second half with a nine-play, 75-yard drive that ended with the trick-play pass to Lavatai. Two plays before that, the Midshipmen ran a fake punt to extend the possession. Lane, a sophomore defensive back, took the snap and rushed for 28 yards and the first down.
“I wish I had something scientific or analytical about it, but it was just all gut feel,” Niumatalolo said. “I didn’t want to give them the ball back. We scored a field goal to end the half and I wanted to start the second half with a score.”
Photo Credit: Kenya Allen/PressBox