Koch's big night helps Great Danes win Tom Perkovich's UAlbany football coaching debut

ALBANY – Tom Perkovich’s rebuilt football team and Joey Koch’s reconstructed knee both looked very healthy in the season opener on Friday night.

After a slow start, the University at Albany seized control and won in Perkovich’s debut as head coach with a 28-14 victory over New Hampshire in a Coastal Athletic Association game in front of 6,600 fans at Casey Stadium.

“I think it met the expectations, right, with (a) big crowd here,” said Perkovich, who was hired from Division III Susquehanna. “I think our team was ready. I was a little bit worried as we went through (preparing), as any coach, I think, is. You’ve got some butterflies going into that first game of, ‘How will we show up?’ We talked at length about those typical Week 1 mistakes that we can’t make.”

Already, the Great Danes (1-0) are halfway to last year’s win total.

UNH took a 7-0 lead after UAlbany senior quarterback Kai Colon, a Princeton transfer, threw an interception on the opening drive. A penalty kept the Wildcats’ touchdown drive alive, and Perkovich blamed the poor start on opening-night jitters.

However, the Great Danes settled down and ripped off 21 unanswered points. UAlbany possessed the ball for more than 39 minutes by rushing for 374 yards, including 144 on seven carries from Koch, a junior from Mahopac.

Two years ago, Koch suffered a devastating knee injury in practice. He tore his anterior cruciate, lateral collateral and medial collateral ligaments, and suffered nerve damage. He returned to appear in 11 games last season, but had only three career carries for nine yards entering Friday’s opener.

Against New Hampshire, he ripped off a 79-yard run that set up his first career touchdown, a 3-yard run that he bounced outside for a 21-7 lead in the second quarter. Later, a 35-yard Koch run led to backup quarterback Aidan Semo’s 8-yard touchdown rush in the third quarter.

“I knew today would happen,” Koch said. “I didn’t care how long it would take, I was going to get back to the point and I was going to trust my rehab, trust my hard work. It felt good today.”

Perkovich had watched the practice film of Koch’s knee injury.

“It was a gruesome deal,” Perkovich said. “To see him come back from that, and have the night he had, is pretty special.”

He subbed into the game for starter Rahshan La Mons, the former Division III star at Susquehanna who followed Perkovich to UAlbany. La Mons scored UAlbany’s first touchdown on a 1-yard rush and finished with 70 yards on 19 carries.

Even Colon, not known as a runner, got in on the act. He scrambled for 92 yards, including a few timely first downs.

They ran behind a starting offensive line of junior left tackle Joe McMahon, junior left guard Devan Taylor, senior center Jackson Nixon, sophomore right guard Sam Fallon and freshman right tackle Morgan Jordan. They were without senior tackle Emmitt Harris, who was out with a lower-body injury.

Fallon made his second career start. Taylor, a Wagner transfer, made his UAlbany debut and Jordan had his first college start.

“We kept (UNH’s) high-powered people off the field and allowed our defense to be fresh and ready,” Perkovich said. “Anytime you can run the ball for – what we did run for, 374 (yards)? I mean, that’s winning football right there, right?”

The defense also showed up by holding UNH to 62 yards rushing. Protecting a 28-14 lead, linebacker Dillon Dunathan had a key goal-line interception on an errant pass caused by safety Jaydon Williams’ pressure to open the fourth quarter.

The Great Danes didn’t need to pass the ball much. Colon was 7-for-17 for 57 yards. He said the Great Danes realize they’ll have to improve with a game at Buffalo of the Football Bowl Subdivision looming on Thursday night.

“I thought it was awesome,” Colon said. “Like Coach said, we have some stuff to work on in the passing game, but, running-wise, our guys up front did a great job. Super-satisfying. (We’re) 1-0, nothing else.”

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This article originally published at Koch’s big night helps Great Danes win Tom Perkovich’s UAlbany football coaching debut.