Winston-Salem State had Division I rival North Carolina A&T by the collar, and WSSU head coach Robert Massey knows his team let it off the hook.
The Rams’ 27-20 overtime loss to the Aggies kept their head coach up most of the night.
“I didn’t sleep well. I did not. NO I probably literally went to bed about 4:30,” Massey said when asked directly. “I’m upset, disappointed pissed off.”
Massey assigned himself the blame for the loss — pointing to a play with just over two minutes left in the first half that he felt changed the course of the game.
“We tried to score — tried to go down and score. We took a shot instead of just running and getting to the half. That allowed them to get that timeout and they put that 53, 52 yard field goal on us. That hurt us. That’s my fault. So that’s why I told the guys that’s my fault. Moving forward — I’ve got to make better decisions.
Saturday’s game against North Carolina A&T was the first meeting between the two programs in 14 years, and it lived up to its billing. The sell-out crowd at Truist Stadium witnessed a compelling and entertaining game despite the difference in NCAA Divisions. Massey said he wasn’t not surprised.
“You can throw the divisions out the window, throw out all that simply because in this case right down the street 30 minutes or less until there’s a lot of guys that played against each other in high school — that were teammates — so they know each other well,” Massey said. “So that makes for a real good rivalry. I don’t know if we’ll get the opportunity to play again. I hope, but, I thought we put ourselves in position and we played well enough to win. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.”
WSSU defensive back Merari Jewsome said the team definitely felt off the energy of the crowd.
“Honestly — the atmosphere was like one of a kind. Never experienced anything like that before,” he said. “And you could feel the support in the stands. It was it was amazing, to be honest.”
WSSU will make its home debut on Saturday taking on Ohio Dominican in the return game of a home-and-home series with the Divsion II program. While there won’t be 21k plus fans in Bowman Gray Stadium on Saturday, WSSU is hoping to have an enthusiastic crowd behind it on Saturday.
“That crowd over at A&T was a real good crowd,” Massey said. “But we expect to have that type of crowd consistently, because we’ve put together a pretty good program right now coach.”
Ohio Dominican is 1-0 after a 21-14 win over Seton Hill last week. ODU won last season’s game 26-14 in Columbus, OH. Massey talked about the word ‘redemption.’
“To use that word — I don’t know. But yes, we need to redeem ourself against a good football team. And it makes a statement for us in terms of the direction we’re going if we can win that game.”