SPRINGFIELD, Ohio - It has been 51 years since a Wittenberg football team has started a season with two consecutive losses and more than 12 years since a Wittenberg football team has been defeated two times in a row. On Community Night at Edwards-Maurer Field, the 2004 edition of the Wittenberg Tigers just narrowly avoided accomplishing both feats, rallying from the brink to defeat visiting Thomas More, 35-31.

Thomas More scored 17 unanswered points in the third and fourth quarters to take a commanding 31-21 lead. But Wittenberg, with suddenly hot senior quarterback Ryan Holmes at the controls, responded at gut-check time. First, junior tailback Tristan Murray took a swing pass 63 yards for a touchdown with 7:43 left in the fourth quarter to bring Wittenberg to within three points. Then, Holmes led the Tigers on a victory march, directing Wittenberg on a game-winning 87-yard, 13-play drive that culminated in a four-yard touchdown pass to sophomore wide receiver Eric Kubilus with just 33.6 seconds showing on the clock.

The Tigers then stopped Thomas More's last-gasp effort, which included a bizarre lateral play that covered much of the middle of the field with seven pitches to different Saints players with no time remaining on the clock. The win improved Wittenberg to 1-1 on the season, and it provided a much-needed boost after the season-opening 49-16 loss at Capital on Sept. 4. Thomas More fell to 1-2 on the season and to 0-4 all-time against Wittenberg.

Holmes came up big in this game when he had to. He finished 19 of 36 for 303 yards, in the process turning in just the ninth 300-yard passing game in school history and the first of his career. His four touchdown passes - Kubilus caught the first and last ones, junior wideout Braden Freeman hauled in a third-quarter strike that covered 54 yards and Murray had his catch and run - were a career best and one short of a Wittenberg record as well.

Murray had his biggest game in the Red & White, going for 105 yards on 18 carries and adding three receptions for 93 yards in his first start and second game overall since transferring from Brown University last winter. Holmes also had 28 yards on 11 carries, including a key fourth-down scramble that kept a first half touchdown drive alive and a two-yard sneak on fourth down on the final drive.

Thomas More picked up 97 rushing yards from Tyran Thompson on 18 carries in his first game action of the season due to injuries. The quarterback tandem of Nate Berkley and Seth Ellis combined for 237 passing yards and two touchdowns, and Chase Weber had perhaps the Saints' biggest play of the game, a fourth-quarter 11-yard touchdown pass to D.J. Johnson off a fake field goal that gave Thomas More a seemingly secure 10-point lead.

Wittenberg is back in action at 1 p.m. on Sept. 25 against Huntingdon College. The Hawks have never won a game in their two years of varsity football - last year Wittenberg won 45-21 in a game played in Montgomery, Ala.