Wheeling Jesuit opened up the Tom Duffy era with a 30-14 defeat of Lindenwood-Belleville in a key non-conference game for both programs.

Lindenwood-Belleville, which had opened up its independent schedule with a win over Tennessee, looked fairly strong in the first half. 

"We did well when we had clean ball," said Coach Pat Clifton. "But we struggled in the scrums and were very poor in the lineout in the first half. We saw several good attacking chances go begging because of the lineout."

Wheeling Jesuit, meanwhile was fairly patient in building toward the second half.

"We had plenty of line breaks in the first half, and they had a couple, but overall we felt good going into halftime and just talked about getting back to executing our system," said veteran player Allan Hanson.

And so they did. WJU led 8-7 at halftime, and after an early try from the both teams, the Lynx led 14-13 going into the final 30 minutes. That's when Wheeling Jesuit took control. Even though Lindenwood-Belleville's lineout started to function, they still struggled to control things.

"We couldn't get any attacking ball, and we gave up two soft tries from bad restarts," lamented Clifton.

Hanson said the WJU ball retention was solid, and the kicking game was very good, pinning the Lynx back in their end.

"A lot of our guys are very good in the air," said Hanson. "We when we kick it we feel we can get it back. The team overall has skills, and we're really confident in our defense. We've been working a lot on reading a team's plays and identifying who the blocker runners are."

Outside center Cullen Buckley did a superb job on defense and was instrumental in preventing L-B getting the ball out wide. Prop Frank Rolf scored two tries for WJU and was a powerful presence in tight.

WJU thus exploded with three late tries to win it 30-14.